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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Judith Of The Plains by Marie Manning
+
+
+
+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 http://www.gutenberg.org/license
+
+
+
+Title: Judith Of The Plains
+
+Author: Marie Manning
+
+Release Date: April 2005 [Ebook #15573]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO 8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JUDITH OF THE PLAINS***
+
+
+
+
+
+Judith Of The Plains
+By Marie Manning
+
+Harper & Brothers Publishers
+New York And London
+
+Copyright, 1903. By Harper & Brothers
+
+Printed In The United States Of America
+
+
+
+
+
+                                [Image #1]
+
+Peter's Hand Sought Hers, And All Her Woman's Fear Of The Vague Terrors Of
+      The Dreadful Night Spoke In Her Answering Pressure--See p. 154.
+
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+"Town"
+The Encounter
+Leander And His Lady
+Judith, The Postmistress
+The Trail Of Sentiment
+A Daughter Of The Desert
+Chugg Takes The Ribbons
+The Rodneys At Home
+Mrs. Yellett And Her "Gov'ment"
+On Horse-thief Trail
+The Cabin In The Valley
+The Round-up
+Mary's First Day In Camp
+Judith Adjusts The Situation
+The Wolf-hunt
+In The Land Of The Red Silence
+Mrs. Yellett Contends With A Cloudburst
+Foreshadowed
+"Rocked By A Hempen String"
+The Ball
+
+
+
+
+
+
+JUDITH OF THE PLAINS
+
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+                                  "Town"
+
+
+It was June, and a little past sunrise, but there was no hint of early
+summer freshness in the noxious air of the sleeping-car as it toiled like
+a snail over the infinity of prairie. From behind the green-striped
+curtains of the berths, now the sound of restless turning and now a
+long-drawn sigh signified the uneasy slumber due to stifling air and
+discomfort.
+
+The only passenger stirring was a girl whose youth drooped under the
+unfavorable influences of foul air, fatigue, and a strained anxiety to
+come to the end of this fateful journey. She had been up while it was yet
+dark, and her hand--luggage, locked, strapped, and as pitifully new at the
+art of travelling as the girl herself, clustered about the hem of her blue
+serge skirt like chicks about a hen. The engine shrieked, but its voice
+sounded weak and far off in that still ocean of space; the girl tightened
+her grasp on the largest of the satchels and looked at the approaching
+porter tentatively.
+
+"We're late twenty-fi'e minutes," he reassured her, with the hopeless
+patience of one who has lost heart in curbing travellers' enthusiasms.
+
+She turned towards the window a pair of shoulders plainly significant of
+the burdensome last straw.
+
+"Four days and nights in this train"--they were slower in those days--"and
+now this extra twenty-five minutes!"
+
+Miss Carmichael's famous dimple hid itself in disgust. The demure lines of
+mouth and chin, that could always be relied upon for special pleading when
+sentence was about to be passed on the dimple by those who disapproved of
+dimples, drooped with disappointment. But the light-brown hair continued
+to curl facetiously--it was the sort of hair whose spontaneous rippling
+conveys to the seeing eye a sense of humor.
+
+The train plodded across the spacious vacancy that unrolled itself farther
+and farther in quest of the fugitive horizon. The scrap of view that came
+within a closer range of vision spun past the car windows like a bit of
+stage mechanism, a gigantic panorama rotating to simulate a race at
+breakneck speed. But Miss Carmichael looked with unseeing eyes; the
+whirling prairie with its golden flecks of cactus bloom was but part of
+the universal strangeness, and the dull ache of homesickness was in it
+all.
+
+"My dear! my dear!"--a head in crimpers was thrust from between the
+curtains of the section opposite--"I've been awake half the night. I was so
+afraid I wouldn't see you before you got off."
+
+The head was followed, almost instinctively, by a hand travelling
+furtively to the crimpers that gripped the lady's brow like barnacles
+clinging to a keel.
+
+Mary expressed a grieved appreciation at the loss of rest in behalf of her
+early departure, and conspicuously forbore to glance in the direction of
+the barnacles, that being a first principle as between woman and woman.
+
+"And, oh, my dear, it gets worse and worse. I've looked at it this
+morning, and it's worse in Wyoming than it was in Colorado. What it 'll be
+before I reach California, I shudder to think."
+
+"It's bound to improve," suggested Mary, with the easy optimism of one who
+was leaving it. "It couldn't be any worse than this, could it?"
+
+The neuter pronoun, it might be well to state, signified the prairie; its
+melancholy personality having penetrated the very marrow of their train
+existence, they had come to refer to it by the monosyllable, as in certain
+nether circles the head of the house receives his superlative distinction
+in "He."
+
+Again the locomotive shrieked, again the girl mechanically clutched the
+suit-case, as presenting the most difficult item in the problem of
+transportation, and this time the shriek was not an idle formality. The
+train slowed down; the uneasy sleepers behind the green-striped curtains
+stirred restlessly with the lessening motion of their uncouth cradle. The
+porter came to help her, with the chastened mien of one whose hopes of
+largess are small, the lady with the barnacles called after her redundant
+farewells, and a moment later Miss Carmichael was standing on the station
+platform looking helplessly after the train that toiled and puffed, yet
+seemed, in that crystalline atmosphere, still within arm's-reach. She
+watched it till its floating pennant of smoke was nothing but a gray
+feather blowing farther and farther out of sight on the flat prairie.
+
+The town--it would be unkind to mention its name--had made merry the night
+before at the comprehensive invitation of a sheepman who had just disposed
+of his wool-clip, and who said, by way of general summons, "What's the use
+of temptin' the bank?" "Town," therefore, when Mary Carmichael first made
+its acquaintance, was still sleeping the sleep of the unjust. Those among
+last night's roisterers who had had to make an early start for their camps
+were well into the foot-hills by this time, and would remember with
+exhilaration the cracked tinkle of the dance-hall piano as inspiring music
+when the lonesomeness of the desert menaced and the young blood again
+clamored for its own.
+
+"Town"--it contained in all some two dozen buildings--was very unlovely in
+slumber. It sprawled in the lap of the prairies, a grimy-faced urchin,
+with the lines of dismal sophistication writ deep. Yet where in all the
+"health resorts" of the East did air sweep from the clean hill-country
+with such revivifying power? It seemed a glad world of abiding youth.
+Surely "Town" was but a dreary illusion, a mirage that hung in the
+unmapped spaces of this new world that God had made and called good; an
+omen of the abominations that men would make when they grew blind to the
+beauty of God's world.
+
+Mary Carmichael, with much the feelings of a cat in a strange garret,
+wandered about the sluggard town; and presently the blue-and-white sign of
+a telegraph office, with the mythological figure of a hastening messenger,
+suggested to her that a reassuring telegram was only Aunt Adelaide's due.
+Whereupon she began to rap on the door of the office, a scared pianissimo
+which naturally had little effect on the operator, who was at home and
+asleep some three blocks distant. But the West is the place for woman if
+she would be waited upon. No seven-to-one ratio of the sexes has tempered
+the chivalry of her sons of the saddle. A loitering something in a
+sombrero saw rather than heard the rapping, and, at the sight, went in
+quest of the dreaming operator without so much as embarrassing Miss
+Carmichael with an offer of his services. And presently the operator,
+whose official day did not begin for some two hours yet, appeared, much
+dishevelled from running and the cursory nature of his toilet, prepared to
+receive a message of life and death.
+
+The wire to Aunt Adelaide ran:
+
+
+    "Practically at end of journey. Take stage to Lost Trail this
+    morning. Am well. Don't worry about me.
+
+                                                               "MARY."
+
+
+And the telegraph operator, dimly remembering that he had heard Lost Trail
+was a "pizen mean country," and that it was tucked some two hundred miles
+back in the foot-hills, did not find it very hard to forgive the girl, who
+was "practically at end of journey," particularly as the dimple had come
+out of hiding, and he had never been called upon to telegraph the word
+"practically" before. He was a progressive man and liked to extend his
+experiences.
+
+After sending the telegram, Miss Carmichael, quite herself by reason of
+the hill air, felt that she was getting along famously as a traveller, but
+that it was an expensive business, and she was glad to be "practically" at
+the end of her journey. And, drawing from her pocket a square envelope of
+heavy Irish linen, a little worn from much reading, but primarily an
+envelope that bespoke elegance of taste on the part of her correspondent,
+she read:
+
+
+                                                 "LOST TRAIL, WYOMING.
+
+    "My Dear Miss Carmichael,--Pray let me assure you of my
+    gratification that the preliminaries have been so satisfactorily
+    arranged, and that we are to have you with us by the end of June.
+    The children are profiting from the very anticipation of it, and
+    it will be most refreshing to all us isolated ones to be able to
+    welcome an Eastern girl as a member of our family.
+
+    "Although the long journey across the continent is trying,
+    particularly to one who has not made it before, I hope you may not
+    find it utterly fatiguing. Please remember that after leaving the
+    train, it will be necessary to take a stage to Lost Trail. If it
+    is possible, I shall meet you with the buckboard at one of the
+    stage stations; otherwise, keep to the stage route, being careful
+    to change at Dax's Ranch.
+
+    "Unfortunately, the children vary so in their accomplishments that
+    I fear I can make no suggestions as to what you may need to bring
+    with you in the way of text-books. But I think you will find them
+    fairly well grounded.
+
+    "I had a charming letter from Mrs. Kirkland, who said the
+    pleasantest things possible of you. I am glad the wife of our
+    Senator was able conscientiously to commend us.
+
+    "With our most cordial good wishes for a safe journey, believe me,
+    dear Miss Carmichael,
+
+                                                     "Sincerely yours,
+
+                                                      "SARAH YELLETT."
+
+
+In the mean time, "Town" came yawning to breakfast. It was not so prankish
+as it had been the night before, when it accepted the sheepman's
+broad-gauge hospitality and made merry till the sun winked from behind the
+mountains. It made its way to the low, shedlike eating-house with a
+pre-breakfast solemnity bordering on sulkiness. Not a petticoat was in
+sight to offset the spurs and sombreros that filed into breakfast from
+every point in the compass, prepared to eat primitively, joke broadly, and
+quarrel speedily if that sensitive and often inconsistent something they
+called honor should be brushed however lightly.
+
+But the eternal feminine was within, and, discovering it, the temper of
+"Town" was changed; it ate self-consciously, made jokes meet for the ears
+of ladies, and was more interested in the girl in the sailor-hat than it
+was in remembering old feuds or laying the foundations of new.
+
+In its interior aspect, the eating-house conveyed no subtle invitation to
+eat, drink, and be merry. On the contrary, its mission seemed to be that
+of confounding appetite at every turn. A long, shedlike room it was, with
+walls of unpainted pine, still sweating from the axe. Festoons of
+scalloped paper, in conflicting shades, hung from the ceiling, a menace to
+the taller of the guests. On the rough walls some one, either prompted by
+a latent spirit of æstheticism or with an idea of abetting the town
+towards merrymaking--an encouragement it hardly required--had tacked posters
+of shows, mainly representing the tank-and-sawmill school of drama.
+
+Miss Carmichael sat at the extreme end of the long, oilcloth-covered
+table, on which a straggling army of salt and pepper shakers, catsup
+bottles, and divers commercial condiments seemed to pause in a discouraged
+march. A plague of flies was on everything, and the food was a threat to
+the hardiest appetite. One man summed up the steak with, "You got to work
+your jaw so hard to eat it that it ain't fair to the next meal."
+
+His neighbor heaved a sigh. "This here formation, whatever it be"--and he
+turned the meat over for better inspection--"do shore remind me of an
+indestructible doll that an old maid aunt of mine giv' my sister when we
+was kids. That doll sort of challenged me, settin' round oncapable o'
+bein' destroyed, and one day I ups an' has a chaw at her. She war
+ondestructible, all right; 'fore that I concluded my speriments I had left
+a couple o' teeth in her."
+
+"Well, I discyards the steak and draw to a pair of aces," and the first
+man helped himself to a couple of biscuits.
+
+Miss Carmichael knew, by the continual scraping of chairs across the
+gritty floor, that the places at the table must be nearly all taken; and
+while she anticipated, with an utterly unreasonable terror, any further
+invasion of her seclusion at the end of the table, still she could not
+persuade herself to raise her eyes to detect the progress of the enemy,
+even in the interest of the diary she had kept so conscientiously for the
+past three days; which was something of a loss to the diary, as those
+untamed, manly faces were well worth looking at. Reckless they were in
+many instances, and sometimes the lines of hardship were cruelly writ
+across young faces that had not yet lost the down of adolescence, but
+there were humor and endurance and the courage that knows how to make a
+crony of death and get right good sport from the comradeship. Their faults
+were the faults of lusty, red-blooded youth, and their virtues the
+open-handed generosity, the ready sympathy of those uncertain tilters at
+life who ride or fall in the tourney of a new country.
+
+At present, "the yearling," drinking her execrable coffee in an agony of
+embarrassment, weighed heavily on their minds. They would have liked to
+rise as a man and ask if there was anything they could do for her. But as
+a glance towards the end of the table seemed to increase her discomfiture
+tenfold, they did the kindest and for them the most difficult thing and
+looked in every direction but Miss Carmichael's. With a delicacy of
+perception that the casual observer might not have given them credit for,
+they had refrained from taking seats directly opposite her, or those
+immediately on her right, which, as she occupied the last seat at the
+table, gave her at least a small degree of seclusion.
+
+As one after another of them came filing in, bronzed, rugged, radiating a
+beauty of youth and health that no sketchy exigence of apparel could
+obscure, some one already seated at the table would put a foot on a chair
+opposite him and send it spinning out into the middle of the floor as a
+hint to the new-comer that that was his reserved seat. And the
+cow-puncher, sheep-herder, prospector, or man about "Town," as the case
+might be, would take the hint and the chair, leaving the petticoat
+separated from the sombreros by a table-land of oilcloth and a range of
+four chairs.
+
+But now entered a man who failed to take the hint of the spinning chair.
+In fact, he entered the eating-house with the air of one who has dropped
+in casually to look for a friend and, incidentally, to eat his breakfast.
+He stopped in the doorway, scanned the table with deliberation, and
+started to make his way towards Mary Carmichael with something of a
+swagger. Some one kicked a chair towards him at the head of the table.
+Some one else nearly upset him with one before he reached the middle, and
+the Texan remarked, quite audibly, as he passed:
+
+"The damned razor-back!"
+
+But the man made his way to the end of the table and drew out the chair
+opposite Miss Carmichael with a degree of assurance that precipitated the
+rest of the table into a pretty pother.
+
+Suppose she should countenance his audacity? The fair have been known to
+succumb to the headlong force of a charge, when the persistence of a long
+siege has failed signally. What figures they would cut if she did!--and
+Simpson, of all men! A growing tension had crept into the atmosphere of
+the eating-house; knives and forks played but intermittently, and Mary,
+sitting at the end of the oilcloth-covered table, felt intuitively that
+she was the centre of the brewing storm. Oh, why hadn't she been contented
+to stay at home and make over her clothes and share the dwindling fortunes
+of her aunts, instead of coming to this savage place?
+
+"From the look of the yearling's chin, I think he'll get all that's coming
+to him," whispered the man who had nearly upset him with the second chair.
+
+"You're right, pard. If I'm any good at reading brands, she is as
+self-protective as the McKinley bill."
+
+The man Simpson was not a pleasant vis-ā-vis. He wore the same picturesque
+ruffianliness of apparel as his fellows, but the resemblance stopped
+there. He lacked their dusky bloom, their clearness of eye, the suppleness
+and easy flow of muscle that is the hall-mark of these frontiersmen. He
+was fat and squat and had not the rich bronzing of wind, sun, and rain.
+His small, black eyes twinkled from his puffy, white face, like raisins in
+a dough-pudding.
+
+He was ogling Mary amiably when the woman who kept the eating-house
+brought him his breakfast. Mrs. Clark was a potent antidote for the
+prevailing spirit of romance, even in this woman-forsaken country. A good
+creature, all limp calico, Roman nose, and sharp elbows, she brought him
+his breakfast with an ill grace that she had not shown to the others. The
+men about the table gave him scant greeting, but the absence of enthusiasm
+didn't embarrass Simpson.
+
+He lounged expansively on the table, regarding Miss Carmichael attentively
+meanwhile; then favored her with the result of his observations, "From the
+East, I take it." And the dumpling face screwed into a smile whose mission
+was pacific.
+
+Every knife and fork in the room suspended action in anxiety to know how
+the "yearling" would take it. Would their chivalry, which strained at a
+gnat, be compelled to swallow such a conspicuous camel as the success of
+Simpson? With the attitude he had taken towards the girl, there had crept
+into the company an imperceptible change; deep-buried impulses sprang to
+the surface. If a scoundrel like Simpson was going to try his luck, why
+shouldn't they? They didn't see a pretty girl once in a blue moon. With
+the advent of the green-eyed monster at the board, each man unconsciously
+became the rival of his neighbor.
+
+But Miss Carmichael merely continued her breakfast, and if she heard the
+amiable deductions of Simpson regarding her, she gave no sign. But a
+rebuff to him was in the nature of an appetizer, a fillip to press the
+acquaintance. He encroached a bit farther on the narrow limits of the
+table and continued, "Nice weather we're having."
+
+Miss Carmichael gave her undivided attention to her coffee. The spurs and
+sombreros, that had not relaxed a muscle in their strained observation of
+the little drama, breathed reflectively. Perhaps it was just as well that
+they had not emulated Simpson in his brazen charge; the "yearling" was not
+to be surprised into talking, that was certain.
+
+"He shore is showing hisself to be a friendly native," commented the man
+who had sacrificed milk-teeth investigating the indestructible doll.
+
+"Seems to me that the system he's playing lacks a heap of science. My
+money's on the yearling." And the man who had "discarded the steak and
+drawn to the biscuits" leaned a little forward that he might better watch
+developments.
+
+Simpson by this time fully realized his error, but failure before all
+these bantering youngsters was a contingency not to be accepted lightly.
+As he phrased it to himself, it was worth "another throw." "Seems kind o'
+lonesome not having any one to talk to while you're eatin', don't it?"
+
+Miss Carmichael's air of perfect composure seemed a trifle out of tune
+with her surroundings; the nice elevation of eyebrow, the slightly
+questioning curl of the lip as she, for the first time apparently, became
+aware of the man opposite, seemed to demand a prim drawing-room rather
+than the atmosphere of the slouching eating-house.
+
+"Well, really, I've hardly had a chance of finding out." And her eyes were
+again on her coffee-cup. And there was joy among the men at table that
+they had not rushed in after the manner of those who have a greater
+courage than the angels.
+
+"No offence meant," deprecated Simpson, with an uneasy glance towards the
+other end of the table, where the men sat with necks craned forward in an
+attitude uncomfortably suggestive of hounds straining at the leash.
+Simpson felt rather than saw that something was afoot among the sombreros.
+There was a crowding together in whispered colloquy, and in a flash some
+half-dozen of them were on their feet as a man. Descending upon Simpson,
+they lifted him, chair and all, to the other end of the table, as far
+removed as possible from Miss Carmichael.
+
+The man who thought Simpson's system lacked science rubbed his hands in
+delight. "She took the trick all right; swept his hand clean off the
+board!"
+
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+                              The Encounter
+
+
+Simpson, from the seat to which he had been so rapidly transplanted,
+looked about him with blinking anxiety. It was more than probable that the
+boys intended "to have fun with him," though his talking, or rather trying
+to talk, to a girl that sat opposite him at an eating-house table was,
+according to his ethics, plainly none of their business. He knew he wasn't
+popular since he had done for Jim Rodney's sheep, though the crime had
+never been laid at his door, officially. He had his way to make, the same
+as the next one; and, all said and done, the cattle-men were glad to get
+Jim Rodney's sheep off the range, even if they treated him as a felon for
+the part he had played in their extermination.
+
+Thus reasoned Simpson, while he marked with an uneasy eye that the temper
+of the company had grown decidedly prankish with the exit of the girl,
+who, after having caused all the trouble, had, with an irritating quality
+peculiar to her sex, vanished through the kitchen door.
+
+Some three or four of the boys now ran to Simpson's former seat at the
+table and rushed towards him with his half-eaten breakfast, as if the
+errand had been one of life and death. They showered him with mock
+attentions, waiting on him with an exaggerated deference, and the pale,
+fat man, remembering the hideousness of some of their manifestations of a
+sense of humor, breathed hard and felt a falling-off of appetite.
+
+Costigan, the cattle-man, a strapping Irish giant, was clearing his throat
+with ominous sounds that suggested the tuning-up of a bass fiddle.
+
+"Sure, Simpson, me lad, if ye happen to have a matther av fifty dollars,
+'tis mesilf that can tell ye av an illegint invistmint."
+
+Simpson looked up warily, but Costigan's broad countenance did not harbor
+the wraith of a smile. "What kin I git for fifty chips? 'Tain't much,"
+mused the pariah, with the prompt inclination to spend that stamps the
+comparative stranger to ready money.
+
+"Ye can git a parrut, man--a grane parrut--to kape ye coompany while ye're
+aiting--"
+
+Simpson interrupted with an oath.
+
+"Don't be hard on old Simmy; remember he's studied for the ministry! How
+did I savey that Simpson aimed to be a sharp on doctrine?" A cow-puncher
+with a squint addressed the table in general. "I scents the aroma of dogma
+about Simpson in the way he throwed his conversational lariat at the
+yearling. He urbanes at her, and then comes his 'firstly,' it being a
+speculation as to her late grazing-ground, which he concludes to be the
+East. His 'secondly' ain't nothing startling, words familiar to us all
+from our mother's knee--'nice weather'--the congregation ain't visibly
+moved. His 'thirdly' is insinuating. In it he hints that it ain't good for
+man to be alone at meals--"
+
+"'Twas the congregation that added the 'foinelly,' though, before hastily
+leaving be the back door!" and Costigan slapped his thigh.
+
+"The gentleman in question don't seem to be makin' much use of his present
+conversational opportunities. I'm feelin' kinder turned down myself"; and
+the Texan began to look over his six-shooter.
+
+The man with the squint looked up and down the board.
+
+"Gentlemen, I believe the foregoing expresses the sentiment of this
+company, which, while it incloodes many foreign and frequent-warring
+elements, is at present held together by the natchral tie of eating."
+
+Thumping with knife and fork handles, stamping of feet, cries of "Hear!
+hear!" with at least three cow-boy yells, argued well for a resumption of
+last night's festivities. Simpson glowered, but said nothing.
+
+"Seems to me you-all goin' the wrong way 'bout drawin' Mistu' Simpson out.
+He is shy an' has to be played fo' like a trout, an' heah you-all come at
+him like a cattle stampede." The big Texan leaned towards Simpson. "Now
+you-all watch my methods. Mistu' Simpson, seh, what du think of the
+prospects of rain?"
+
+There was a general recommendation from Simpson that the entire company go
+to a locality below the rain-belt.
+
+A boy, plainly "from the East," and looking as if the ink on his
+graduating thesis had scarce had time to dry, was on his feet, swaggering;
+he would not have swapped his newly acquired _camaraderie_ with these
+bronzed Westerners for the Presidency.
+
+"Gentlemen, you have all heard Simpson say it is lonesome having no one to
+talk to during meals. We sympathized with him and offered him a choice of
+subjects. He greets our remarks by a conspicuous silence, varied by
+profanity. This, gentlemen, reflects on us, and is a matter demanding
+public satisfaction. All who feel that their powers as conversationalists
+have been impugned by the silence of Simpson, please say 'Ay.'"
+
+"Ay" was howled, sung, and roared in every note of the gamut.
+
+"If me yoong frind here an me roight"--and Costigan jerked a shoulder
+towards the boy--"will be afther closin' that silf-feeding automatic
+dictionary av his for a moment, I shud be glad to call the attintion av
+the coomp'ny to somethin' in the nature av an ixtinuatin' circoomsthance
+in the case av Simpson."
+
+"Hear! hear!" they shouted. The broad countenance of Costigan beamed with
+joy at what he was about to say. "Gintlemin, the silence av Mr. Simpson is
+jew in all probabilitee to a certain ivint recalled by many here prisint,
+an' more that's absent, an' amicablee settled out av coort--"
+
+Up to this time the unhappy Simpson had shown an almost superhuman
+endurance. Now he bristled--and after looking up and down the board for a
+sympathetic face, and not finding one, he declared, loudly and generally,
+"'Tain't so!"
+
+"Ye may have noticed that frind Simpson do be t'reatened wid lockjaw in
+the societee av min, but in the prisince av a female ye can't count on
+him. Now, talk wid a female is an agreeable, if not a profitable, way av
+passin' the toime, but sure ye niver know where it will ind--as witness
+Simpson. This lady I'm recallin'--'tis a matther av two years ago--followed
+the ancient and honorable profission av biscuit shootin' not far from
+Caspar. Siz Simpson to the lady some such passin' civilitee as,
+'Good-marnin'; plisent weather we're havin'.' Whereupon the lady filt a
+damage to her affictions an' sued him for breach av promise."
+
+"'Twan't that way, at all!" screamed Simpson. "'Sall a lie!"
+
+"Yu ought er said 'Good-evenin'' to the lady, Mistu Simpson; hit make a
+diffunce," drawled the man from Texas, pleasantly.
+
+"But 'twas 'Good-marnin'' Simpson made chyce av," resumed Costigan. "An'
+the lady replied, 'You've broke my heart.' Whereupon Simpson, havin' a
+matther av t'ree thousand dollars to pay for his passin' civilitee,
+learned thot silince was goolden."
+
+They all remembered the incident in question, and thundered applause at
+the reappearance of an old favorite. Without warning, a shadow fell across
+the sunlight-flooded room, and, as one after another of the men glanced up
+from the table, they saw standing in the doorway a man of such malignant
+aspect that his look fell across the company like a menace. The swing of
+their banter slowed suddenly; it was as if the cold of a new-turned grave
+had struck across the June sunshine checking their roughshod fun. None of
+them had the hardihood to joke with a man that stood in the shadow of
+death; and hate and murder looked from the eyes of the man in the doorway
+and looked towards Simpson. One by one they perceived the man of the
+shadow, all but Simpson, eating steak drowned in Worcestershire.
+
+The man in the doorway was tall and lean, and the prison blench upon his
+face was in unpleasant contrast to the ruddy tan of the faces about the
+table. His sombrero was tipped back and the hair hung dank about the pale,
+sweating forehead, suggestive of sickness. But weak health did not imply
+weak purpose; every feature in that hawk-like face was sharp with hatred,
+and in the narrowing eye was vengeance that is sweet.
+
+He stood still; there was in his hatred a something hypnotic that grew
+imperceptibly and imperceptibly communicated itself to the men at table.
+He gloated over the eating fat man as if he had dwelt much in imagination
+on the sight and was in no hurry to curtail his joy at the reality. The
+men began to get restless, shuffle their feet, moisten their lips; only
+the college boy spoke, and then from a wealth of ignorance, knowing
+nothing of the rugged, give-and-take justice of the plains--an eye for an
+eye, a tooth for a tooth, and the law and the courts go hang while a man's
+got a right arm to pull a trigger. Not one in all that company, even the
+cattle-men whose interests were opposed to Rodney's, but felt the justice
+of his errand.
+
+"When did they let him out?" whispered the college boy; and then,
+"Oughtn't we to do something?"
+
+"Yis, me son," whispered Costigan. "We ought to sit still and learn a
+thing or two."
+
+The fat man cleaned his plate with a crust of bread stuck on the point of
+a knife. There was nothing more to eat in the way of substantials, and he
+debated pouring a little more of the sauce on his plate and mopping it
+with a bit of bread still uneaten. Considering the pro and con of this
+extra tid-bit, he glanced up and saw the gaunt man standing in the
+doorway.
+
+Simpson dropped the knife from his shaking hand and started up with a cry
+that died away in a gurgle, an inhuman, nightmare croak. He looked about
+wildly, like a rat in a trap, then backed towards the wall. The men about
+the table got up, then cleared away in a circle, leaving the fat man. It
+was all like a dream to the college boy, who had never seen a thing of the
+kind before and could not realize now that it was happening. Rodney
+advanced, never once relaxing the look in which he seemed to hold his
+enemy as in a vise. Simpson was like a man bewitched. Once, twice, he made
+a grab for his revolver, but his right hand seemed to have lost power to
+heed the bidding of his will. Rodney, now well towards the centre of the
+room, waited, with a suggestion of ceremony, for Simpson to get his
+six-shooter.
+
+It was one of those moments in which time seems to have become petrified.
+The limp-clad proprietress of the eating-house, made curious by the sudden
+silence, looked in from the kitchen. Simpson, his eyes wandering like a
+trapped rat, saw, and called, through teeth that chattered in an ague of
+fear, "Ree--memm--her thth--there's la--dies p--present! For Gawd's sake,
+remember t--there's ladies p--present!"
+
+The pale man looked towards the kitchen, and, seeing the woman, he gave
+Simpson a look in which there was only contempt. "You've hid behind the
+law once, and this time it's petticoats. The open don't seem to have no
+charm for you. But--" He didn't finish, there was no need to. Every one
+knew and understood. He put up his revolver and walked into the street.
+
+The men broke into shouts of laughter, loud and ringing, then doubled up
+and had it out all over again. And their noisy merriment was as clear an
+indication of the suddenly lifted strain, at the averted shooting, as it
+was of their enjoyment of the farce. Simpson, relieved of the fear of
+sudden death, now sought to put a better face on his cowardice. Now that
+his enemy was well out of sight, Simpson handled his revolver with easy
+assurance.
+
+"Put ut up," shouted Costigan, above the general uproar. "'Tis toime to
+fear a revolver in the hands av Simpson whin he's no intinsions av
+shootin'."
+
+Simpson still attempted to harangue the crowd, but his voice was lost in
+the general thigh-slapping and the shouts and roars that showed no signs
+of abating. But when he caught a man by the coat lapel in his efforts to
+secure a hearing, that was another matter, and the man shook him off as if
+his touch were contagion. Simpson, craving mercy on account of petticoats,
+evading a meeting that was "up to him," they were willing to stand as a
+laughing-stock, but Simpson as an equal, grasping the lapels of their
+coats, they would have none of.
+
+He slunk away from them to a corner of the eating-house, feeling the
+stigma of their contempt, yet afraid to go out into the street where his
+enemy might be waiting for him. Much of death and blood and recklessness
+"Town" had seen and condoned, but cowardice was the unforgivable sin. It
+balked the rude justice of these frontiersmen and tampered with their
+code, and Simpson knew that the game had gone against him.
+
+"What was it all about? Were they in earnest, or was it only their way of
+amusing themselves?" inquired Mary Carmichael, who had slipped into Mrs.
+Clark's kitchen after the men at the table had taken things in hand.
+
+"Jim Rodney was in earnest, an' he had reason to be. That man Simpson was
+paid by a cattle outfit--now, mind, I ain't sayin' which--to get Jim
+Rodney's sheep off the range. They had threatened him and cut the throats
+of two hundred of his herd as a warning, but Jim went right on grazin'
+'em, same as he had always been in the habit of doing. Well, I'm told they
+up and makes Simpson an offer to get rid of the sheep. Jim has over five
+thousand, an' it's just before lambing, and them pore ewes, all heavy, is
+being druv' down to Watson's shearing-pens, that Jim always shears at. Jim
+an' two herders and a couple of dawgs--least, this is the way I heard it--is
+drivin' 'em easy, 'cause, as I said before, it's just before lambing. It
+does now seem awful cruel to me to shear just before lambing, but that's
+their way out here.
+
+"Well, nothing happens, and Jim ain't more'n two hours from the pens an'
+he comes to that place on the road that branches out over the top of a
+caņon, and there some one springs out of a clump of willows an' dashes
+into the herd and drives the wether that's leading right over the cliff.
+The leaders begin to follow that wether, and they go right over the cliff
+like the pore fools they are. The herder fired and tried to drive 'em
+back, they tell me, an' he an' the dawg were shot at from the clump of
+willows by some one else who was there. Three hundred sheep had gone over
+the cliff before Jim knew what was happening. He rode like mad right
+through the herd to try and head 'em off; but you know what sheep is
+like--they're like lost souls headin' for damnation. Nothing can stop 'em
+when they're once started. And Jim lost every head--started for the
+shearing-pens a rich man--rich for Jim--an' seen everything he had swept
+away before his eyes, his wife an' children made paupers. My son he come
+by and found him. He said that Jim was sittin' huddled up in a heap, his
+knees drawed up under his chin, starin' straight up into the noonday sky,
+same as if he was askin' God how He could be so cruel. His dead dawg, that
+they had shot, was by the side of him. The herder that was with Jim had
+taken the one that was shot into Watson's, so when my son found Jim he was
+alone, sittin' on the edge of the cliff with his dead dawg, an' the sky
+about was black with buzzards; an' Jim he just sat an' stared up at 'em,
+and when my son spoke to him he never answered any more than a dead man.
+He shuck him by the arm, but Jim just sat there, watchin' the sun, the
+buzzards, and the dead sheep."
+
+"Was nothing done to this man Simpson?"
+
+"The cattle outfit that he done the dirty work for swore an alibi for him.
+Jim has been in hard luck ever since. He's been rustlin' cattle right
+along; but Lord, who can blame him? He got into some trouble down to
+Rawlins--shot a man he thought was with Simpson, but who wasn't--and he's
+been in jail ever since. Course now that he's out Simpson's bound to get
+peppered. Glad it didn't happen here, though. 'Twould be a kind of
+unpleasant thing to have connected with a eating-house, don't you think
+so?" she inquired, with the grim philosophy of the country.
+
+The eating-house patrons had gone their several ways, and the quiet of the
+dining-room was oppressive by contrast with its late boisterousness. Mrs.
+Clark, her hands imprisoned in bread-dough, begged Mary to look over the
+screen door and see if anything was happening. "I'm always suspicious when
+it's quiet. I know they're in deviltry of some sort."
+
+Mary tiptoed to the door and peeped over, but the room was deserted, save
+for Simpson, huddled in a corner, biting his finger-nails. "The nasty
+thing!" exploded Mrs. Clark, when she had received the bulletin. "I'd turn
+him out if it wasn't for the notoriety he might bring my place in gettin'
+killed in front of it."
+
+"I dare say I'd better go and see after my trunk; it's still on the
+station platform." Mary wondered what her prim aunts would think of her
+for sitting in Mrs. Clark's kitchen, but it had seemed so much more of a
+refuge than the sordid streets of the hideous little town, with its droves
+of men and never a glimpse of a woman that she had been only too glad to
+avail herself of the invitation of the proprietress to "make herself at
+home till the stage left."
+
+"Well, good luck to you," said Mrs. Clark, wiping her hand only partially
+free from dough and presenting it to Miss Carmichael. She had not inquired
+where the girl was going, nor even hinted to discover where she came from,
+but she gave her the godspeed that the West knows how to give, and the
+girl felt better for it.
+
+At the station, where Mary shortly presented herself, in the interest of
+that old man of the sea of all travellers, luggage, she learned that the
+stage did not leave town for some three-quarters of an hour yet. A young
+man, manipulating many sheets of flimsy, yellow paper covered with large,
+flourishing handwriting, looked up in answer to her inquiries about Lost
+Trail. This young man, whose accent, clothes, and manner proclaimed him
+"from the East," whither, in all probability, he would shortly return if
+he did not mend his ways, disclaimed all knowledge of the place as if it
+were an undesirable acquaintance. But before he could deny it thrice, a
+man who had heard the cabalistic name was making his way towards the desk,
+the pride of the traveller radiating from every feature.
+
+The cosmopolite who knew Lost Trail was the type of man who is born to be
+a Kentucky colonel, and perhaps may have achieved his destiny before
+coming to this "No Man's Land," for reasons into which no one inquired,
+and which were obviously no one's business. They knew him here by the name
+of "Lone Tooth Hank," and he wore what had been, in the days of his
+colonelcy--or its equivalent--a frock-coat, restrained by the lower button,
+and thus establishing a waist-line long after nature had had the last word
+to say on the subject. With this he wore the sombrero of the country, and
+the combination carried a rakish effect that was positively sinister.
+
+The scornful clerk introduced Mary as a young lady inquiring about some
+place in the bad-lands. Off came the sombrero with a sweep, and Lone Tooth
+smiled in a way that accented the dental solitaire to which he owed his
+name. Miss Carmichael, concealing her terror of this casual cavalier,
+inquired if he could tell her the distance to Lost Trail.
+
+"I sho'ly can, and with, consid'able pleasure." The sombrero completed a
+semicircular sweep and arrived in the neighborhood of Mr. Hank's heart in
+significance of his vassalage to the fair sex. He proceeded:
+
+"Lost Trail sutney is right lonesome. A friend of mine gets a little too
+playful fo' the evah-increasin' meetropolitan spirit of this yere camp,
+and tries a little tahget practice on the main bullyvard, an' finds the
+atmospheah onhealthful in consequence. Hearin' that the quiet solitude of
+Lost Trail is what he needs, he lit out with the following circumstance
+thereof happenin'. One day something in his harness giv' way--and he
+recollects seein' a boot sunnin' itself back in the road 'bout a quartah
+of a mile. An' he figgahs he'll borry a strip of leather off the boot to
+mend his harness. Back he goes and finds it has a kind of loaded feelin'.
+So my friend investigates--and I be blanked if there wasn't a foot and leg
+inside of it."
+
+Miss Carmichael had always exercised a super-feminine self-restraint in
+the case of casual mice, and it served her in the present instance.
+Instead of screaming, she said, after the suppression of a gasp or two:
+
+"Thank you so much, but I won't detain you any longer. Your information
+makes Lost Trail even more interesting than I had expected."
+
+Besides, Miss Carmichael had a faint suspicion that this might be a
+preconcerted plan to terrify the "lady tenderfoot," and she prided herself
+on being equal to the situation. The time at her disposal before the stage
+would embark on that unknown sea of prairies she spent in the delectable
+pastime of shopping. The financial and social interests of the town seemed
+to converge in Hugous & Co.'s "trading store," where Miss Carmichael
+invested in an extra package of needles for the mere excitement of being
+one of the shoppers, though her aunt Adelaide had stocked the little
+plaid-silk work-bag to repletion with every variety of needle known to
+woman. She pricked up her ears, meanwhile, at some of the purchases made
+by the cow-boys for their camp-larders--devilled ham, sardines, canned
+tomatoes heading the list as prime favorites. Did these strapping border
+lads live by the fruit of the tin alone? Apparently yes, with the
+sophisticated accompaniment of soda biscuit, to judge by the quantity of
+baking-powder they invested in--literally pounds of it. Men in any other
+condition of life would have died of slow poisoning as the result of it.
+
+There were other customers at Hugous' that morning besides the spurred and
+booted cow-puncher and his despised compeer, the sheep-herder. That
+restless emigrant class, whose origin, as a class, lay in the community of
+its own uncertain schemes of fortune; the West, with her splendid, lavish
+promises, called them from their thriftless farms in the South and their
+gray cabins in New England. They began their journeying towards the land
+of promise long before the Indians had ever seen the shrieking
+"fire-wagon." All day they would toil over the infinitude of prairie, the
+sun that hid nightly behind that maddeningly elusive vanishing-point, the
+horizon, their only guide. But the makeshifts of the wagon life were not
+without charm. They began to wander in quest of they knew not precisely
+what, and from these vague beginnings there had sprung into existence that
+nomadic population that was once such a feature of the far West, but is
+now going the way of the Indians and the cow-boys.
+
+This breathing-space in the long journey had for them the stimulus of a
+holiday-making. They bought their sides of bacon and their pounds of
+coffee as merrily as if they were playing a game of forfeits, the women
+fingering the calico they did not want for the joy of pricing and making
+shoppers' talk.
+
+The scene had a scriptural flavor that not even the blue overalls of the
+men nor the calico gowns of the women could altogether eliminate. Their
+wagons, bulging with household goods and trailing with kitchen utensils
+secured by bits of rope, were drawn up in front of the trading-store. From
+a pump, at some little distance, the pilgrims filled their stone
+water-bottles, for the wise traveller does not trust to the chance springs
+of the desert. Baskets of chickens were strapped to many of the wagons,
+but whether the unhappy fowls were designed to supply fresh eggs and an
+occasional fricassée, or were taken for the pleasure of their company,
+there was no means of determining short of impertinent cross-questioning.
+Sometimes a cow, and invariably a dog, formed one of the family party, and
+an edifying _esprit de corps_ seemed to dwell among them all.
+
+Lone Tooth Hank, in his capacity of man about town, stood on the steps of
+Hugous' watching the preparations; and, seeing Miss Carmichael, approached
+with the air of an old and tried family friend.
+
+"Do I obsehve yu regyarding oweh 'settleahs,' called settleahs 'cause they
+nevah settle?" Hank laughed gently, as one who has made a joke meet for
+ladies. "I've known whole famblies to bohn an' raise right in one of them
+wagons; and tuhn out a mighty fine, endurin' lot, too, this hyeh
+prospectin' round afteh somethin' they wouldn't reco'nize if they met.
+Gits to be a habit same as drink. They couldn't live in a house same as
+humans, not if yu filled their gyarden with nuggets an' their well with
+apple-jack."
+
+Miss Carmichael looked attentive but said nothing. In truth, she was more
+afraid of Hank, his obvious gallantry, and his grewsome tales of boots
+with legs in them than she was of the unknown terrors of Lost Trail.
+
+"I believe that is my stage," she said, as a red conveyance not unlike a
+circus wagon halted at some little distance from the trading-store. And as
+she spoke she saw four of her companions of the breakfast-table heading
+towards the stage, each with a piece of her precious luggage. Mary
+Carmichael was precipitated in a sudden panic; she had heard tales of the
+pranks of these playful Western squires--a little gun-play to induce the
+terrified tenderfoot to put a little more spirit into his Highland fling,
+"by request." She remembered their merrymaking with Simpson at breakfast.
+What did they intend to do with her belongings? And as she remembered the
+little plaid sewing-bag that Aunt Adelaide had made for
+her--surreptitiously drying her tears in the mean time--when she remembered
+that bag and the possibility of its being submitted to ignominy, she could
+have cried or done murder, she wasn't sure which.
+
+"Well, 'pon my wohd, heah ah the boys with yo' baggage. How time du fly!"
+
+"Oh!" she gasped, "what are they going to do with it?"
+
+"Place it on the stage, awaitin' yo' ohdahs." And to her expression of
+infinite relief--"Yo' didn't think any disrepec' would be shown the baggage
+of a lady honorin' this hyeh metropolis with her presence?"
+
+She thanked the knights of the lariat the more warmly for her unjust
+suspicions. They stowed away the luggage with the deft capacity of men who
+have returned to the primitive art of using their hands. She climbed
+beside the driver on the box of the stage. Lone Tooth Hank and the
+cow-punchers chivalrously raised their sombreros with a simultaneous
+spontaneity that suggested a flight of rockets. The driver cracked his
+whip and turned the horses' heads towards the billowing sea of foot-hills,
+and the last cable that bound Mary Carmichael to civilization was cut.
+
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+                           Leander And His Lady
+
+
+The only stage passenger besides Miss Carmichael was a fat lady, whose
+entire luggage seemed to consist of luncheon--pasteboard boxes of
+sandwiches, baskets of fruit, napkins of cake. These she began to dispose
+of, before the stage had fairly started, with an industry almost
+automatic, continuing faithful to her post as long as the supplies lasted.
+Then she dozed, sleeping the sleep of the just and those who keep their
+mouths open. From time to time the stage-driver invoked his team in
+cabalistic words, and each time the horses toiled forward with fresh
+energy; but progress became a mockery in that ocean of space, their
+driving seemed as futile as the sport of children who crack a whip and
+play at stage-coach with a couple of chairs; the mountains still mocked in
+the distance.
+
+A flat, unbroken sweep of country, a tangle of straggling sage-brush, a
+glimpse of foot-hills in the distance, was the outlook mile after mile.
+The day grew pitilessly hot. Clouds of alkaline dust swept aimlessly over
+the desert or whirled into spirals till lost in space. From horizon to
+horizon the sky was one cloudless span of blue that paled as it dipped
+earthward. Mary Carmichael dozed and wakened, but the prospect was always
+the same--the red stage crawling over the wilderness, making no evident
+progress, and always the sun, the sage-brush, and the silence.
+
+It was all so overwhelmingly different from the peaceful atmosphere of
+things at home. The mellow Virginia country, with its winding, red roads,
+wealth of woodland, and its grave old houses that were the more haughtily
+aloof for the poverty that gnawed at their vitals. This wilderness was so
+gaunt, so parched; she closed her eyes and thought of a bit of landscape
+at home. A young forest of silver beeches growing straight and fine as the
+threads on a loom; and through the gray perspective of their satin-smooth
+trunks you caught the white gleam of a fairy cascade as it tumbled over
+the moss-grown stones to the brook below. It was like a bit from a
+Japanese garden in its delicate artificiality.
+
+And harder to leave than these cherished bits of landscape had been the
+old house Runnymede, that always seemed dozing in the peaceful comatose of
+senility. It was beyond the worry of debt; the succession of mortgages
+that sapped its vitality and wrote anxious lines on the faces of Aunt
+Adelaide and Aunt Martha was nothing to the old house. Had it not
+sheltered Carmichaels for over a century?--it had faith in the name. But
+Mary could never remember when the need of money to pay the mortgage had
+not invaded the gentle routine of their home-life, robbing the sangaree of
+its delicate flavor in the long, sleepy summer afternoons, invading the
+very dining-room, an unwelcome guest at the old mahogany table, prompting
+Aunt Adelaide to cast anxious glances at the worn silver--would it go to
+pay that blood-sucking mortgage next?
+
+But hardest of all to leave had been Archie, best and most promising of
+young brothers--Archie, who had come out ahead of his class in the
+high-school, all ready to go to The University--the University of Virginia
+is always "The University"; but who, it had seemed at a certain dark
+season, must give up this long-cherished hope for lack of the wherewithal.
+Mary, being four years older than her brother and quite twenty, had long
+felt a maternal obligation to administer his affairs. If he did not go to
+the university, like his father and grandfather before him, it would be
+because she had failed in her duty. At this particular phase of the
+domestic problem there had appeared, in a certain churchly periodical, a
+carefully worded advertisement for a governess, and the subsequent
+business of references, salary, and information to be imparted and
+received proving eminently satisfactory, Mary had finally received a
+tearful permission from her aunts to depart for some place in Wyoming, the
+name of which was not even to be found on the map. She was to consider
+herself quite one of the family, and the compensation was to be fifty
+dollars a month. Archie would now be able to go to "The University."
+
+As the day wore on the sage-brush became scarcer and grayer, there were
+fewer flowering cacti, and the great white patches of alkali grew more and
+more frequent. In the distance there was a riot of rainbow tints--violet,
+pink, and pale orange. It seemed inconceivable that such barrenness could
+produce such wealth of color; nothing could have been more beautiful--not
+even the changing colors on a pigeon's neck--than the coppery iridescence,
+shading to cobalt and blue on some of the buttes.
+
+Night had fallen before they made the first break in their journey. The
+low, beetle-browed cabin that faced them in the wilderness carried in its
+rude completeness a hint of the prestidigitateur's art--a world of
+desolation, and behold a log cabin with smoke issuing from the chimney and
+curtains at the windows! The interior was unplastered, but this
+shortcoming was surmounted by tacking cheesecloth neatly over the logs, a
+device at once simple and strategic, as in the lamplight the effect was
+that of plaster. Miss Carmichael, suddenly released from the actual
+rumbling of the stage, felt its confused motion the more strongly in
+imagination, and hardly knew whether she was eating canned tomatoes,
+served uncooked directly from the tin, fried steak, black coffee, and soda
+biscuit, in company with the fat lady, the stage-driver, and the woman who
+kept the road ranch, or if it was all some Alice in Wonderland delusion.
+
+The fat lady had brought her own bedding--an apoplectic roll of
+bedquilts--and these she insisted on making a bed of, despite the protests
+of the ranch-woman, who seemed to detect a covert insinuation against her
+accommodations in the precedent. Miss Carmichael profited by the
+controversy. The landlady, touched no doubt by the simple faith of a
+traveller who trusted to the beds of a road-ranch, or because she was
+young or a girl, led the way in triumph to her own bedroom, and indicating
+an imposing affair with pillow-shams, she defied Miss Carmichael to find a
+more comfortable bed "in the East."
+
+In the unaccountable manner of these desert conveyances, that creak and
+groan across the arid wastes with an apparently lumbering inconsequence,
+the stage that brought the travellers to the Dax ranch left at sunrise to
+pursue a seemingly erratic career along the North Platte, while Miss
+Carmichael and the fat lady were to continue their journey with one Lemuel
+Chugg, who drove a stage northward towards the Red Desert, when he was
+sober enough to handle the ribbons.
+
+Breakfast was largely devoted to speculation regarding the approximate
+condition of Mr. Chugg--would he be wholly or partially incapacitated for
+his job? Mrs. Dax, flirting a feather-duster in the neighborhood of Miss
+Carmichael in a futile effort to beguile her into giving a reason for her
+solitary journey across the desert, took a gloomy view of the situation.
+
+But Miss Carmichael kept her own counsel. Not so the fat lady. Falling
+into the snare ingenuously set for another, she divulged her name, place
+of residence, and the object of her travels, which was to visit a son on
+Sweetwater. Furthermore, she stated the probable cause of every death in
+her family for the past thirty-five years. Miss Carmichael felt an
+especial interest in an Uncle Henry who "died of a Friday along of eating
+clams." He stood out with such refreshing vividness against a background
+of neutralities who succumbed to consumption, bile colic, and other more
+familiar ailments of the patent-medicine litany. But loquacity,
+apparently, like virtue, is its own reward, for the landlady scarce
+vouchsafed a comment on this dismal recitative, while Miss Carmichael
+remained the object of her persistent attentions.
+
+But there seemed to be no topic of universal interest but Chugg's
+condition, Mrs. Dax finally asserting, "Before I'd trust my precious neck
+to him, I'd get Mr. Dax to shoot me."
+
+Meditating on this Spartan statement, Mary and the fat lady became aware
+for the first time of a subtle, silent force in the domestic economy. But
+so unobtrusive was this influence that one had to scrutinize very closely,
+indeed, to detect the evanescent personality of Mrs. Dax's husband.
+Leander was his name, but it is safe to say that he swam no Hellesponts
+for the masterful wife of his bosom. Otherwise he was slender, willowy,
+bald; if he ever stood straight enough to get the habitually apologetic
+crooks out of his knees, he would be tall; but so in the habit was he of
+repressing himself in the marital presence that Leander passed for middle
+height. He waited on the table at breakfast with the dumb submissiveness
+of a trained dog that has been taught to give pathetic imitations of human
+servility. But no sooner had his lady left the room than Leander began
+quite brazenly to call attention to himself as a man and an individual,
+coughing, rattling his dishes, and clearing his throat. Mary and the fat
+lady, out of very pity, responded to these crude signals with overtures
+equally frank, and Leander ventured finally to inquire if they aimed to
+spend the night at his brother's ranch, it being the next mess-box between
+here and nowhere. They admitted that his brother's ranch was their next
+stopping-place, and Leander went through perfect contortions of apology
+and self-effacement before he could bring himself to ask them to do him a
+favor. It would have taken a very stern order of womankind to refuse
+anything so abject, and they blindly committed themselves to the pledge.
+
+"Tell him I send my compliments," he whispered, and, looking about him
+furtively, he repeated the blood-curdling request.
+
+"Is that all?" sniffed the fat lady, at no pains to conceal her
+disappointment.
+
+"It's enough, if it was known, to raise a war-whoop and stampede this yere
+family." His glance at the door through which his wife had disappeared was
+pregnant with meaning.
+
+"Family troubles?" asked the fat lady, as a gourmet might say "Truffles."
+
+"Looks like it," said Leander, dismally. "Me and Johnnie don't ask for
+nothin' better than to bask in each other's company; but our wives insists
+on keepin' up the manoeuvres of a war-dance the whole endoorin' time."
+
+"So," said the fat lady, as a gourmet might tell of a favorite way of
+preparing truffles, "it's a case of wives?"
+
+"Yes, marm, an' teeth an' nails an' husbands thrown in, when they get a
+sight of each other's petticoats."
+
+"I've known sisters-in-law not to agree," helped on the fat lady, by way
+of an encouraging parallel.
+
+"While I deplores usin' such a comparison to the refinin' and softenin'
+inflooance of wimmen, the meetin' of the Dax ladies by chanst anywheres
+has all the elements of danger and excitement that accompanies an Injun
+uprisin'."
+
+The travellers looked all manner of encouragement.
+
+"You see, my wife's a great housekeeper; her talent lies"--and here Leander
+winked knowingly--"in managin' the help."
+
+"Land's sake!" interrupted the fat lady. "Why don't you kick?"
+
+Leander sighed softly. "I tried to once. As an experiment it partook of
+the trustfulness of a mule kickin' against the stony walls of Badger
+Caņon. But to resoom about the difficulties that split the Dax family.
+Before Johnnie got mislaid in that matrimonial landslide o' his, he herds
+with us. Me an' him does the work of this yere shack, and my wife just
+roominates and gives her accomplishments as manager full play. She never
+put her hand in dirty water any more than Mrs. Cleveland sittin' up in the
+White House parlor. Johnnie done the fancy cookin'; he could make a pie
+like any one's maw, and while you was lost to the world in the delights of
+masticatin' it, he'd have all his greasy dishes washed up and put away--"
+
+"No wonder she hated to lose a man like that," interrupted the fat lady,
+feelingly.
+
+"But he took to pinin' and proclaimin' that he shore was a lone maverick,
+and he just stampeded round lookin' for trouble and bleatin' a song that
+went:
+
+  "'No one to love,
+  None to caress.'
+
+"Well, the lady that answers his signal of distress don't bear none of the
+brands of this yere range. She lives back East, and him and her took up
+their claims in each other's affections through a matrimonial paper known
+as _The Heart and Hand_. So they takes their pens in hand and gets through
+a hard spell of courtin' on paper. Love plumb locoes Johnnie. His spellin'
+don't suit him, his handwritin' don't suit him, his natchral letters don't
+suit him. So off he sends to Denver for all the letter-writin' books he
+can buy--_Handbook of Correspondence, The Epistolary Guide, The Ready
+Letter-Writer_, and a stack more. There's no denyin' it, Johnnie certainly
+did sweat hisself over them letters."
+
+"Land's sakes!" said the fat lady.
+
+"Yes, marm; he used to read 'em to me, beginnin' how he had just seized
+five minutes to write to her, when he'd worked the whole day like a mule
+over it. She seemed to like the brand, an' when he sent her the money to
+come out here an' get married, she come as straight as if she had been
+mailed with a postage-stamp."
+
+"The brazen thing!" said the fat lady.
+
+"They stopped here, goin' home to their place. My Lord! warn't she a
+high-flyer! She done her hair like a tied-up horse-tail--my wife called it
+a Sikey knot--and it stood out a foot from her head. Some of the boys,
+kinder playful, wanted to throw a hat at it and see if it wouldn't hang,
+but they refrained, out of respect to the feelin's of the groom.
+
+"From the start," continued Leander, "the two Mrs. Daxes just hankered to
+get at each other; an' while I, as a slave to the fair sex"--here he bowed
+to the fat lady and to Miss Carmichael--"hesitates to use such langwidge in
+their presence, the attitood of them two female wimmin shorely reminds me
+of a couple of unfriendly dawgs just hankerin' to chaw each other.
+
+"At first, Johnnie waited on her hand an' foot, and she just read novels
+and played stylish all the time and danced. She was the hardest dancer
+that ever struck this yere trail, and she could give lessons to any old
+war-dancin' chief up to the reservation. No dance she ever heard of was
+too far for her to go to. She just went and danced till broad daylight.
+Many a man would have took to dissipation, in his circumstances, but
+Johnnie just lost heart and grew slatterly. Why, he'd leave his dishes go
+from one day till the next--"
+
+"There's more as would leave their dishes from one day till the next if
+they wasn't looked after." And the wife of his bosom stood in the door
+like a vengeful household goddess. Mr. Dax made a grab for the nearest
+plates.
+
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+                         Judith, The Postmistress
+
+
+The arrival of Chugg's stage with the mail should have been coincident
+with the departure of the stage that brought the travellers from "Town,"
+but Chugg was late--a tardiness ascribed to indulgence in local lethe
+waters, for Lemuel Chugg had survived a romance and drank to forget that
+woman is a variable and a changeable thing. In consequence of which the
+sober stage-driver departed without the mails, leaving Mary Carmichael and
+the fat lady to scan the horizon for the delinquent Chugg, and
+incidentally to hear a chapter of prairie romance.
+
+Some sort of revolution seemed to be in progress in the room in which the
+travellers had breakfasted. Mrs. Dax had assumed the office of dictator,
+with absolute sway. Leander, as aide-de-camp, courier, and staff, executed
+marvellous feats of domestic engineering. The late breakfast-table, swept
+and garnished with pigeon-holes, became a United States post-office,
+prepared to transact postal business, and for the time being to become the
+social centre of the surrounding country.
+
+Down the yellow road that climbed and dipped and climbed and dipped again
+over foot-hills and sprawling space till it was lost in a world without
+end, Mary Carmichael, standing in the doorway, watched an atom, so small
+that it might have been a leaf blowing along in the wind, turn into a
+horseman.
+
+There was inspiration for a hundred pictures in the way that horse was
+ridden. No flashes of daylight between saddle and rider in the jolting,
+Eastern fashion, but the long, easy sweep that covers ground imperceptibly
+and is a delight to the eye. It needed but the solitary figure to signify
+the infinitude of space in the background. In all that great, wide world
+the only hint of life was the galloping horseman, the only sound the
+rhythmical ring of the nearing hoofs. The rider, now close enough for Miss
+Carmichael to distinguish the features, was a thorough dandy of the
+saddle. No slouching garb of exigence and comfort this, but a pretty
+display of doeskin gaiter, varnished boot, and smart riding-breeches. The
+lad--he could not have been, Miss Carmichael thought, more than twenty--was
+tanned a splendid color not unlike the bloomy shading on a nasturtium. And
+when the doughty horseman made out the girl standing in the doorway, he
+smiled with a lack of formality not suggested by the town-cut of his
+trappings. Throwing the reins over the neck of the horse with the real
+Western fling, he slid from the saddle in a trice, and--Mary Carmichael
+experienced something of the gasping horror of a shocked old lady as she
+made out two splendid braids of thick, black hair. Her doughty cavalier
+was no cavalier at all, but a surprisingly handsome young woman.
+
+Miss Carmichael gasped a little even as she extended her hand, for the
+masquerader had pulled off her gauntlet and held out hers as if she was
+conferring the freedom of the wilderness. It was impossible for a homesick
+girl not to respond to such heartiness, though it was with difficulty at
+first that Mary kept her eyes on the girl's face. Curiosity, agreeably
+piqued, urged her to take another glimpse of the riding clothes that this
+young woman wore with such supreme unconcern.
+
+Now, "in the East" Mary Carmichael had not been in the habit of meeting
+black-haired goddesses who rode astride and whose assurance of the
+pleasure of meeting her made her as self-conscious as on her first day at
+dancing-school; and though she tried to prove her cosmopolitanism by not
+betraying this, the attempt was rather a failure.
+
+"Are you surprised that I did not wait for an introduction?" the girl in
+the riding clothes asked, noticing Mary's evident uneasiness; "but you
+don't know how good it is to see a girl. I'm so tired of spurs and
+sombreros and cattle and dust and distance, and there's nothing else
+here."
+
+"Where I come from it's just the other way--too many petticoats and
+hat-pins."
+
+The horseman who was no horseman dropped Miss Carmichael's hand and went
+into the house. Mary wondered if she ought to have been more cordial.
+
+From the back door came Leander, with dishcloths, which he began to hang
+on the line in a dumb, driven sort of way.
+
+"Who is she?" asked Mary.
+
+"Her?" he interrogated, jerking his head in the direction of the house.
+"The postmistress, Judith Rodney; yes, that's her name." He dropped his
+voice in the manner of one imparting momentous things. "She never wears a
+skirt ridin', any more than a man."
+
+Mary felt that she was tempting Leander into the paths of gossip,
+undoubtedly his besetting sin, but she could not resist the temptation to
+linger. He had disposed of his last dish-cloth, and he withdrew the
+remaining clothes-pin from his mouth in a way that was pathetically
+feminine.
+
+"She keeps the post-office here, since Mrs. Dax lost the job, and boards
+with us; p'r'aps it's because she is my wife's successor in office, or
+p'a'ps it's jest the natural grudge that wimmin seem to harbor agin each
+other, I dunno, but they don't sandwich none."
+
+Leander having disposed of his last dish-towel, squinted at it through his
+half-closed eyes, like an artist "sighting" a landscape, saw apparently
+that it was in drawing, and next brought his vision to bear on the back
+premises of his own dwelling, where he saw there was no wifely figure in
+evidence.
+
+"Sh-sh-h!" he said, creeping towards Mary, his dull face transfigured with
+the consciousness that he had news to tell. "Sh-sh--her brother's a
+rustler. If 'twan't for her"--Leander went through the grewsome pantomime
+of tying an imaginary rope round his neck and throwing it over the limb of
+an imaginary tree. "They're goin' to get him for shore this time, soon as
+he comes out of jail; but would you guess it from her bluff?"
+
+There was no mistaking the fate of a rustler after Mr. Dax's grisly
+demonstration, but of the quality of his calling Mary was as ignorant as
+before.
+
+"And why should they do that?" she inquired, with tenderfoot simplicity.
+
+"Stealin' cattle ain't good for the health hereabouts," said Leander, as
+one who spoke with authority. "It's apt to bring on throat trouble."
+
+But Mary did not find Leander's joke amusing. She had suddenly remembered
+the pale, gaunt man who had walked into the eating-house the previous
+morning and walked out again, his errand turned into farce-comedy by the
+cowardice of an unworthy antagonist. The pale man's grievance had had to
+do with sheep and cattle. His name had been Rodney, too. She understood
+now. He was Judith Rodney's brother, and he was in danger of being hanged.
+Mary Carmichael felt first the admiration of a girl, then the pity of a
+woman, for the brave young creature who so stoutly carried so unspeakable
+a burden. But she could not speak of her new knowledge to Leander.
+
+She glanced towards this childlike person and saw from his stealthy manner
+that he had more to impart. He walked towards the kitchen door, saw no
+one, and came back to Mary.
+
+"There ain't a man in this Gawd-forsaken country wouldn't lope at the
+chance to die for her--but the women!" Leander's pantomimic indication of
+absolute feminine antagonism was conclusive.
+
+"The wimmin treats her scabby--just scabby. Don't you go to thinkin' she
+ain't a good girl on that account"; and something like an attitude of
+chivalrous protection straightened the apologetic crook in his craven
+outline.
+
+"She's good, just good, and when a woman's that there's no use in sayin'
+it any more fanciful. As I says to my wife, every time she give me a
+chance, 'If Judy wasn't a good girl these boys about here would just
+natchrally become extinct shootin' each other upon account of her.' But
+she don't favor none enough to cause trouble."
+
+"Are the women jealous of her?"
+
+"It's her independence that riles 'em. They take on awful about her ridin'
+in pants, an' it certainly is a heap more modest than ridin' straddle in a
+hitched up caliker skirt, same as some of them do."
+
+"And do all the women out here ride astride?" Mary gasped.
+
+"A good many does, when you ain't watchin'; horses in these parts ain't
+broke for no such lopsided foolishness as side-saddles. But you see she
+does it becomin', and that's where the grudge comes in. You can't stir
+about these foot-hills without coming across a woman, like as not, holdin'
+on to a posse of kids, and ridin' clothes-pin fashion in a looped-up
+skirt; when she sees you comin' she'll p'r'aps upset a kid or two
+assoomin' a decorous attitood. That's feemi_nine_, and as such is approved
+by the ladies, but"--and here Leander put his head on one side and gave a
+grotesque impression of outraged decorum--"pants is considered unwomanly."
+
+"Leander! Leander!" came in accusing accents from the kitchen.
+
+"Run!" gasped Mrs. Dax's handmaiden; "don't let her catch us chinnin'."
+
+Mary Carmichael ran round one side of the house as she was bidden, but,
+like Lot's wife, could not resist the temptation of looking back. Leander,
+with incredible rapidity, grabbed two clothes-pins off the line, clutched
+a dish-towel, shook it. "Comin'! comin'!" he called, as he went through
+the farce of rehanging it.
+
+The lonesomeness of plain and foot-hill, the utter lack of the human
+element that gives to this country its character of penetrating
+desolation, had been changed while Mary Carmichael forgathered with
+Leander by the clothes-line. From the four quarters of the compass, men in
+sombreros, flannel shirts, and all manner of strange habiliments came
+galloping over the roads as if their horses were as keen on reaching Dax's
+as their riders. They came towards the house at full tilt, their horses
+stretching flat with ears laid back viciously, and Mary, who was unused to
+the tricks of cow-ponies, expected to see them ride through the front
+door, merely by way of demonstrating their sense of humor. Not so; the
+little pintos, buckskins, bays, and chestnuts dashed to the door and
+stopped short in a full gallop; as a bit of staccato equestrianism it was
+superb.
+
+And then the wherefore of all this dashing horsemanship, this curveting,
+prancing, galloping revival of knightly tourney effects was
+apparent--Judith Rodney had opened post-office. She had changed her riding
+clothes; or, rather, that portion of them to which the ladies took
+exception was now concealed by a long, black skirt. Her wonderful braids
+of black hair had been twisted high on her head. She was well worth a trip
+across the alkali wastes to see. The room was packed with men. One
+unconsciously got the impression that a fire, a fight, or some
+crowd-collecting casualty had happened. Above the continual clinking of
+spurs there arose every idiom and peculiarity of speech of which these
+United States are capable. There is no Western dialect, properly speaking.
+Men bring their modes of expression with them from Maine or Minnesota, as
+the case may be, but their figures of speech, which give an essential
+picturesqueness to their language, are almost entirely local--the cattle
+and sheep industries, prospecting, the Indians, poker, faro, the
+dance-halls, all contribute their printable or unprintable embellishment.
+
+Judith managed them all--cow-punchers, sheep-herders, prospectors,
+freighters--with an impersonal skill that suggested a little solitary
+exercise in the bowling-alley. The ten-pins took their tumbles in good
+part--no one could congratulate himself on escaping the levelling ball--and
+where there's a universal lack of luck, doubtless also there will be found
+a sort of grim fellowship.
+
+That they were all more or less in love with her there could be no doubt.
+As a matter of fact, Judith Rodney did not depend on the scarcity of women
+in the desert for her pre-eminence in the interests of this hot-headed
+group. Her personality--and through no conscious effort of hers--would have
+been pre-eminent anywhere. As it was, in this woman-forsaken wilderness
+she might have stirred up a modern edition of the Trojan war at any
+moment. That she did not, despite the lurking suggestion of temptation
+written all over her, brought back the words of Leander: "If Judy wasn't a
+good girl, these boys would just nacherally become extinct shooting each
+other upon account of her."
+
+And yet what a woman she was! It struck Miss Carmichael, as she watched
+Judith hold these warring elements in the hollow of her hand, that her
+interest might be due to a certain temperamental fusion; that there might
+lie, at the essence of her being, a subtle combination of saint and devil.
+One could fancy her leading an army on a crusade or provoking a bar-room
+brawl. The challenging quality of her beauty, the vividness of color, the
+suggestion of endurance and radiating health in every line, were
+comparable to the great primeval forces about her. She was cast to be the
+mother of men of brawn and muscle, who would make this vast, unclaimed
+wilderness subject to them.
+
+At present neither pole of her character, as it had been hastily
+estimated, was even remotely suggested. The atmosphere in the post-office
+was, considering the potential violence of its visitors, singularly calm.
+And Judith, feeding these wild border lads on scraps of chaff and banter,
+and retaining their absolute loyalty, was a sight worth seeing. She had
+the alertness of a lion-tamer locked in a cage with the lords of the
+jungle; the rashly confident she humbled, the meek she exalted, and all
+with such genuine good-fellowship, such an absence of coquetry in the
+genial game of give and take, that one ceased to wonder at even the
+devotion of Leander. And since they were to her, on her own confession,
+but "spurs and sombreros," one wondered at the elaboration of the comedy,
+the endless wire-pulling in the manipulation of these most picturesque
+marionettes--until one remembered the outlaw brother and felt that what she
+did she did for him.
+
+"You right shore there ain't a letter for me, Miss Judith. My creditors
+are pretty faithful 'bout bearing me in mind." It was the third time that
+the big, shambling Texan who had been one of the company at Mrs. Clark's
+eating-house had inquired for mail, and seemed so embarrassed by his own
+bulk that he moved cautiously, as if he might step on a fellow-creature
+and maim him. Each time he had asked for a letter he took his place at the
+end of the waiting-line and patiently bided his time for the chance of an
+extra word with the postmistress.
+
+"They've begun to lose hope, Texas."
+
+She shuffled the letters impartially, as a goddess dispensing fate, and
+barely glanced at the man who had ridden a hundred and fifty miles across
+sand and cactus to see her.
+
+"That's the difference between them and me." There was a grim finality in
+his tone.
+
+"What, you're going to take your place at the end of that line again! I'll
+try and find you a circular."
+
+He tried to look at her angrily, but she smiled at him with such
+good-fellowship that he went off singing significantly that universal
+anthem of the cow-puncher the West over:
+
+  "Oh, bury me not on the lone prairie,
+    In a narrow grave just six by three,
+    Where the wild coyotes will howl o'er me.
+  Oh, bury me not on the lone prairie."
+
+"Ain't there a love letter for me?" The young man who inquired seemed to
+belong to a different race from these bronzed squires of the saddle. He
+suggested over-crowded excursion boats on Sunday afternoons in swarming
+Eastern cities. He buttonholed every one and explained his presence in the
+West on the score of his health, as though leaving his native asphalt were
+a thing that demanded apology.
+
+"Yes," answered the postmistress, with a real motherly note, "here is one
+from Hugous & Co."
+
+A roar went up at this, and the blushing tenderfoot pocketed his third
+bill for the most theatrical style of Mexican sombrero; it had a brass
+snake coiled round the crown for a hat-band, and a cow-puncher in good and
+regular standing would have preferred going bareheaded to wearing it.
+
+"She seems to be pressing her suit, son; you better name the day," one of
+the loungers suggested.
+
+"The blamed thing ain't worth twenty-five dollars," the young man from the
+East declared. A conspicuous silence followed. It seemed to irritate the
+owner of the hat that no one would defend it. "It ain't worth it," he
+repeated.
+
+"I think you allowed you was out here for your health?" the big Texan, who
+had returned from the corral, inquired.
+
+"Betcher life," swaggered the man with the hat, "N'York's good enough for
+me."
+
+"But"--and the Texan smiled sweetly--"the man who sold you the hat ain't out
+here for his."
+
+Judith hid her head and stamped letters. The boys were suspiciously quiet,
+then some one began to chant:
+
+  "The devil examined the desert well,
+  And made up his mind 'twas too dry for hell;
+  He put up the prices his pockets to swell,
+  And called it a--heal-th resort."
+
+The postmistress waited for the last note of the chorus to die away, and
+read from a package she held in her hand--"'Mrs. Henry Lee, Deer Lodge,
+Wyoming.' Well, Henry, here's a wedding-present, I guess. And my
+congratulations, though you've hardly treated us well in never saying a
+word."
+
+The unfortunate Henry, who hadn't even a sweetheart, and who was noted as
+the shyest man in the "Goose Creek Outfit," had to submit to the mock
+congratulations of every man in the room and promise to set up the drinks
+later.
+
+"I never felt we'd keep you long, son; them golden curls seldom gets a
+chance to ripen singly."
+
+"Shoshone squaw, did you say she was, Henry? They ain't much for looks,
+but there's a heep of wear to 'em."
+
+"Oh, go on, now; you fellows know I ain't married." And the boy handled
+the package with a sort of dumb wonder, as if the superscription were
+indisputable evidence of a wife's existence.
+
+"Open it, Henry; you shore don't harbor sentiments of curiosity regarding
+the post-office dealings of your lady."
+
+"Now, old man, this here may be grounds for divorce."
+
+"See what the other fellow's sending your wife."
+
+Henry, badgered, jostled, the target of many a homely witticism, finally
+opened the package, which proved to be a sample bottle of baby food. At
+sight of it they howled like Apaches, and Henry was again forced to
+receive their congratulations. Judith, who had been an interested
+on-looker without joining in the merriment, now detected in the tenor of
+their humor a tendency towards breadth. In an instant her manner was
+official; rapping the table with her mailing-stamp, she announced:
+
+"Boys, this post-office closes in ten minutes, if you want to buy any
+stamps."
+
+The silence following this statement on the part of the postmistress was
+instantaneous. Henry took his mirth-provoking package and went his way;
+some of the more hilariously inclined followed him. The remainder confined
+themselves absolutely to business, scrawling postal-cards or reading their
+mail. The pounce of the official stamp on the letters, as the postmistress
+checked them off for the mail-bag, was the only sound in the hot
+stillness.
+
+A heavily built man, older than those who had been keeping the post-office
+lively, now took advantage of the lull to approach Judith. He had a
+twinkling face, all circles and pouches, but it grew graver as he spoke to
+the postmistress. He was Major Atkins, formerly a famous cavalry officer,
+but since his retirement a cattle-man whose herds grazed to the pan-handle
+of Texas. As he took his mail, talking meantime of politics, of the heat,
+of the lack of water, in the loud voice for which he was famous, he
+managed, with clumsy diplomacy, to interject a word or two for her own ear
+alone.
+
+"Jim's out," he conveyed to her, in a successfully muffled tone. "He's
+out, and they're after him, hot. Get him out of the State, Judy--get him
+out, _quick_. He tried to kill Simpson at Mrs. Clark's, in town,
+yesterday. The little Eastern girl that's here will tell you." Then the
+major was gone before Judith could perfectly realize the significance of
+what he had told her.
+
+She threw back her head and the pulse in her throat beat. Like a wild
+forest thing, at the first warning sound, she considered: Was it time for
+flight?--or was the warning but the crackling of a twig? Major Atkins was a
+cattle-man: her brother hated all cattle-men. How disinterested had been
+the major's warning! He had always been her friend. Mrs. Atkins had been
+one of the ladies at the post who had helped to send her to school to the
+nuns at Santa Fé. She despised herself for doubting; yet these were
+troublous times, and all was fair between sheep and cattle-men. Major
+Atkins had spoken of the Eastern girl; then that pretty, little,
+curly-haired creature, whom Judith had found standing in the sunshine, had
+seen Jim--had heard him threaten to kill. Should she ask her about
+it--consult her? Judith's training was not one to impel her to give her
+confidence to strangers, still she had liked the little Eastern girl.
+
+These were the perplexities that beset her, sweeping her thoughts hither
+and thither, as sea-weed is swept by the wash of the waves. She strove to
+collect her faculties. How should she rid the house of her cavaliers? She
+had regularly to refuse some half-dozen of them each day that she kept
+post-office.
+
+In a few minutes more the group in the post-office began to disperse under
+the skilful manipulation of the postmistress. To some she sold stamps with
+an air of "God speed you," and they were soon but dwindling specks on the
+horizon. To others she implied such friendly farewells that there was
+nothing to do but betake themselves to their saddles. Others had
+compromised with the saloon opposite, and their roaring mirth came in
+snatches of song and shouts of laughter. She fastened up the little pile
+of letters that had remained uncalled for with what seemed a deliberate
+slowness. Each time any one entered the room she looked up--then the hope
+died hard in her face. Leander came in with catlike tread and removed the
+pigeon-holes from the table. The post-office was closed. Family life had
+been resumed at the Daxes'.
+
+Judith left the room and stood in the blinding sunlight, basking in it as
+if she were cold. The mercury must have stood close to a hundred, and she
+was hatless. There was no trace of her ebullient spirits of the morning.
+Her head was sunk on her breast and she held her hands with locked fingers
+behind her. It was hot, hot as the breaths of a thousand belching
+furnaces. A white, burning glare had spread itself from horizon to
+horizon, and the earth wrinkled and cracked beneath it. From every corner
+of this parched wilderness came an ominous whirring, like the last
+wheezing gasp of an alarm-clock before striking the hour. This menacing
+orchestration was nothing more or less than millions of grasshoppers
+rasping legs and wings together in hoarse appreciation of the heat and
+glare; but it had a sound that boded evil. Again and again she turned
+towards the yellow road as it dipped over the hills; but there was never a
+glimpse of a horseman from that direction.
+
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+                          The Trail Of Sentiment
+
+
+Within the house the travellers had disposed themselves in a repressed and
+melancholy circle that suggested the suspended animation of a funeral
+gathering. The fat lady had turned back her skirt to save her travelling
+dress. The stage was late, and there was no good and sufficient reason for
+wearing it out. A similar consideration of economy led her to flirt off
+flies with her second best pocket-handkerchief. Mrs. Dax presided over the
+gathering with awful severity. Every one truckled to her shamefully,
+receiving her lightest remarks as if they were to be inscribed on tablets
+of bronze. Leander, his eyes bright with excitement at being received in
+the family circle on an equal footing, balanced perilously on the edge of
+his chair, anticipating dismissal.
+
+"Chugg's never ben so late as this," said Mrs. Dax, rocking herself
+furiously. She strongly resembled one of those mottled chargers of the
+nursery whose flaunting nostrils seem forever on the point of sending
+forth flame. Leander, the fat lady, and Miss Carmichael meekly murmured
+assent and condemnation.
+
+"And there ain't a sign of him," said Mrs. Dax, returning to the house
+after straining the landscape through her all-observant eye, and not
+detecting him in any of the remote pin-pricks on the horizon, in which
+these plainsfolk invariably decipher a herd of antelope, an elk or two, or
+a horseman.
+
+"Bet he had a woman in the stage and upset it with her," said Leander, in
+the animated manner of a poor relation currying favor with a bit of news.
+
+Mrs. Dax regarded him severely for a moment, then conspicuously addressed
+her next remark to the ladies. "Bet he had a woman in the stage, the old
+scoundrel!"
+
+"Wonder who she was?" said Leander, with the sparkling triumph of a poor
+relation whose surmise had been accepted. But Mrs. Dax had evidently
+decided that Leander had gone far enough.
+
+"Was you expectin' any of your lady friends by Chugg's stage that you are
+so frettin' anxious?" she inquired, and the poor relation collapsed
+miserably.
+
+"You've heard about Chugg's goin' on since 'Mountain Pink' jilted him?"
+inquired Mrs. Dax of the fat lady, as the only one of the party who might
+have kept abreast with the social chronicles of the neighborhood.
+
+"My land, yes," responded the fat lady, proud to be regarded as socially
+cognizant. "M' son says he's plumb locoed about it--didn't want me to
+travel by his stage. But I said he dassent upset a woman of my age--he just
+nacherally dassent!"
+
+Miss Carmichael, by dint of patient inquiry, finally got the story which
+was popularly supposed to account for the misdemeanors of the
+stage-driver, including his present delinquency that was delaying them on
+their journey.
+
+It appeared that Lemuel Chugg, then writhing in the coils of perverse
+romance, was among the last of those famous old stage-drivers whose
+talents combined skill at handling the ribbons with the diplomacy
+necessary to treat with a masked envoy on the road. His luck in these
+encounters was proverbial, and many were the hair-breadth escapes due to
+Chugg's ready wit and quick aim; and, to quote Leander, "while he had been
+shot as full of holes as a salt-shaker, there was a lot of fight in the
+old man yet."
+
+Chugg had had no loves, no hates, no virtues, no genial vices after the
+manner of these frontiersmen. Avarice had warmed the cockles of his heart,
+and the fetish he prayed to was an old gray woollen stocking, stuffed so
+full of twenty-dollar gold pieces that it presented the bulbous appearance
+of the "before treatment" view of a chiropodist's sign. This darling of
+his old age had been waxing fat since Chugg's earliest manhood. It had
+been his only love--till he met Mountain Pink.
+
+Mountain Pink's husband kept a road-ranch somewhere on Chugg's
+stage-route. She was of a buxom type whose red-and-white complexion had
+not yet surrendered to the winds, the biting dust, and the alkali water.
+Furthermore, she could "bring about a dried-apple pie" to make a man
+forget the cooking of his mother. Great was the havoc wrought by Mountain
+Pink's pies and complexion, but she followed the decorous precedent of
+Cæsar's wife, and, like her pastry, remained above suspicion.
+
+Her husband, whose name was Jim Bosky, seemed, to the self-impanelled jury
+that spent its time sitting on the case, singularly insensible to his own
+advantages. Not only did he fail to take a proper pride in her beauty, but
+there were dark hints abroad that he had never tasted one of her pies.
+When delicately questioned on this point, at that stage of liquid
+refreshment that makes these little personalities not impossible, Bosky
+had grimly quoted the dearth of shoes among shoe-makers' children.
+
+Whatever were the facts of the case, Mountain Pink got the sympathy that
+might have been expected in a section of the country where the ratio of
+the sexes is fifty to one. Chugg, eating her pies regularly once a week on
+his stage-route, said nothing, but he presented her with a red plush
+photograph album with oxidized silver clasps, and by this first reckless
+expenditure of money in the life of Chugg, Natrona, Johnson, Converse, and
+Sweetwater counties knew that Cupid had at last found a vulnerable spot in
+the tough and weather-tanned hide of the old stage-driver.
+
+Nor did Cupid stop here with his pranks. Having inoculated the
+stage-driver with the virus of romance, madness began to work in the veins
+of Chugg. He presented Mountain Pink with the gray woollen stocking--not
+extracting a single coin--and urged her to get a divorce from the clodlike
+man who had never appreciated her and marry him.
+
+Mountain Pink coyly took the stocking so generously given for the divorce
+and subsequent trousseau, and Chugg continued to drive his stage with an
+Apollo-like abandon, whistling love-songs the while.
+
+Coincident with Mountain Pink's disappearance Dakotaward, in the interests
+of freedom, went also one Bob Catlin, a mule-wrangler. Bosky, with
+conspicuous pessimism, hoped for the worst from the beginning, and as time
+went on and nothing was heard of either of the wanderers, some of Mountain
+Pink's most loyal adherents confessed it looked "romancy." But crusty old
+Chugg remained true to his ideal. "She'll write when she gets good and
+ready," and then concluded, loyally, "Maybe she can't write, nohow," and
+nothing could shake his faith.
+
+When Mountain Pink and the mule-wrangler returned as bride and groom and
+set up housekeeping on the remainder of Chugg's stocking, and on his
+stage-route, too, so that he had to drive right past the honeymoon cottage
+every time he completed the circuit, they lost caste in Carbon County.
+Chugg never spoke of the faithlessness of Mountain Pink. His bitterness
+found vent in tipping over the stage when his passengers were confined to
+members of the former Mrs. Bosky's sex, and, as Leander said, "the flask
+in his innerds held more." And these were the only traces of tragedy in
+the life of Lemuel Chugg, stage-driver.
+
+Judith had continued her unquiet pacing in the blinding glare while the
+group within doors, somnolent from the heat and the incessant shrilling of
+the locusts, droningly discussed the faithlessness of Mountain Pink,
+dozed, and took up the thread of the romance. Each time she turned Judith
+would stop and scan the yellow road, shading her eyes with her hand, and
+each time she had turned away and resumed her walk. Mary, who gave the
+postmistress no unstinted share of admiration for the courage with which
+she faced her difficulties, and who had been seeking an opportunity to
+signify her friendship, and now that she saw the last of the gallants
+depart, inquired of Judith if she might join her.
+
+They walked without speaking for several minutes, enjoying a sense of
+comradeship hardly in keeping with the brevity of their acquaintance; a
+freedom from restraint spared them the necessity of exchanging small-talk,
+that frequently irritating toll exacted as tribute to possible friendship.
+
+The desert lay white and palpitating beneath the noonday glare, and from
+the outermost rim of desolation came dancing "dust-devils" whirling and
+gliding through the mazes of their eerie dance. "I think sometimes," said
+Judith, "that they are the ghosts of those who have died of thirst in the
+desert."
+
+Mary shuddered imperceptibly. "How do you stand it with never a glimpse of
+the sea?"
+
+"You'll love it, or hate it; the desert is too jealous for half measures.
+As for the sea"--Judith shrugged her fine shoulders--"from all I've heard of
+it, it must be very wet."
+
+Each felt a reticence about broaching the subject uppermost in her
+thoughts--Judith from the instinctive tendency towards secretiveness that
+was part of the heritage of her Indian blood; Mary because the subject so
+closely concerned this girl for whom she felt such genuine admiration.
+
+Judith finally brought up the matter with an abruptness that scarce
+concealed her anxiety.
+
+"You saw my brother yesterday at Mrs. Clark's eating-house; will you be
+good enough to tell me just what happened?"
+
+Mary related the incident in detail, Judith cross-examining her minutely
+as to the temper of the men at table towards Jim. Did she know if any
+cattle-men were present? Did she hear where her brother had gone?
+
+Mary had heard nothing further after he had left the eating-house; the
+only one she had talked to had been Mrs. Clark, whose sympathy had been
+entirely with Jim. Judith thanked her, but in reality she knew no more now
+than she had heard from Major Atkins.
+
+Judith now stopped in their walk and stood facing the road as it rolled
+over the foot-hills--a skein of yellow silk glimmering in the sun. Then
+Mary saw that the object spinning across it in the distance, hardly bigger
+than a doll's carriage, was the long-delayed stage. She spoke to the
+postmistress, but apparently she did not hear--Judith was watching the
+nearing stage as if it might bring some message of life and death. She
+stood still, and the drooping lines of her figure straightened, every
+fibre of her beauty kindled. She was like a flame, paling the sunlight.
+
+And presently was heard the uncouth music of sixteen iron-shod hoofs
+beating hard from the earth rhythmic notes which presently grew hollow and
+sonorous as they came rattling over the wooden bridge that spanned the
+creek.
+
+"Chugg!" exclaimed Leander, rushing to the door in a tumult. There was
+something crucial in the arrival of the delayed stage-driver. His
+delinquencies had deflected the course of the travellers, left them
+stranded in a remote corner of the wilderness; but now they should again
+resume the thread of things; Chugg's coming was an event.
+
+"'Tain't Chugg, by God!" said Leander, impelled to violent language by the
+unexpected.
+
+"It's Peter Hamilton!" exclaimed Mrs. Dax.
+
+"Land's sakes, the New-Yorker!" said the fat lady. Only Judith said
+nothing.
+
+Mr. Hamilton held the ribbons of that battered prairie-stage as if he had
+been driving past the judges' bench at the Horse Show. Furthermore, he
+wore blue overalls, a flannel shirt, and a sombrero, which sartorial
+inventory, while it highly became the slim young giant, added an extra
+comedy touch to his rôle of whip. He was as dusty as a miller;
+close-cropped, curly head, features, and clothes were covered with a fine
+alkali powdering; but he carried his youth as a banner streaming in the
+blue. And he swung from the stage with the easy flow of muscle that is the
+reward of those who live in the saddle and make a fine art of throwing the
+lariat.
+
+They greeted him heartily, all but Judith, who did not trust herself to
+speak to him before the prying eyes of Mrs. Dax, and escaped to the house.
+Chugg's latest excursion into oblivion had resulted in a fall from the
+box. He was not badly hurt, and recuperation was largely a matter of
+"sleeping it off," concluded Peter Hamilton's bulletin of the condition of
+the stage-driver. So the travellers were still marooned at Dax's, and the
+prospect of continuing their journey was as vague as ever.
+
+"Last I heard of you," said Mrs. Dax to Hamilton, with a sort of stone-age
+playfulness, "you was punching cows over to the Bitter Root."
+
+"That's true, Mrs. Dax"--he gave her his most winning smile--"but I could
+not stay away from you long."
+
+Leander grimaced and rubbed his hands in an ecstasy of delight at finding
+a man who had the temerity to bandy words with Mrs. Dax.
+
+"Hum-m-m-ph!" she whinnied, with equine coquetry. "Guess it was rustlers
+brought you back as much as me."
+
+Judith, who had entered the room in time to hear Mrs. Dax's last remark,
+greeted him casually, but her eyes, as they met his, were full of
+questioning fear. Had he come from the Bitter Root range to hunt down her
+brother? The thought was intolerable. Yet, when he had bade her good-bye
+some three weeks ago, he had told her that he did not expect to return
+much before the fall "round-up." She had heard, a day or two before, that
+he was again in the Wind River country, and her morning vigil beneath the
+glare of the desert sun had been for him.
+
+Mrs. Dax regarded them with the mercilessness of a death-watch; she
+remembered the time when Hamilton's excuses for his frequent presence at
+the post-office had been more voluble than logical. But now he no longer
+came, and Judith, for all her deliberate flow of spirits, did not quite
+convince the watchful eyes of Leander's lady--the postmistress was a trifle
+too cheerful.
+
+"Mrs. Dax," pleaded Peter, boyishly, "I'm perishing for a cup of coffee,
+and I've got to get back to my outfit before dark."
+
+"Oh, go on with you," whinnied the gorgon; but she left the room to make
+the coffee.
+
+Judith's eyes sought his. "Why don't you and Leander form a coalition for
+the overthrow of the enemy?" His voice had dropped a tone lower than in
+his parley with Mrs. Dax; it might have implied special devotion, or it
+might have implied but the passing tribute to a beautiful woman in a
+country where women were few--the generic admiration of all men for all
+women, ephemerally specialized by place and circumstance.
+
+But Judith, harassed at every turn, heart-sick with anxiety, had
+anticipated in Peter's coming, if not a solution of her troubles, at least
+some evidence of sustaining sympathy, and was in no mood for resuscitating
+the perennial pleasantries anent Leander and his masterful lady.
+
+The shrilling of the locusts emphasized their silence. She spoke to him
+casually of his change of plan, but he turned the subject, and Judith let
+the matter drop. She was too simple a woman to stoop to oblique measures
+for the gaining of her own ends. If he was here to hunt down her brother,
+if he was here to see the Eastern woman at the Wetmore ranch--well, "life
+was life," to be taken or left. Thus spoke the fatalism that was the
+heritage of her Indian blood.
+
+The thought of Miss Colebrooke at Wetmore's reminded her of a letter for
+Peter that had been brought that morning by one of the Wetmore cow-boys.
+
+"I forgot--there's a letter for you." She went to the pigeon-holes on the
+wall that held the flotsam and jetsam of unclaimed mail, and brought him a
+square, blue linen envelope--distinctly a lady's letter.
+
+Peter took it with rather a forced air of magnanimity, as if in neglecting
+to present it to him sooner she drew heavily on his reserve of patience.
+Tearing open the envelope, he read it voraciously, read it to the
+exclusion of his surroundings, the world at large, and--Judith. He strode
+up and down the floor two or three times, and called to Leander, who was
+passing:
+
+"Dax, I must have that gray mare of yours right away." He went in the
+direction of the stable, without a second glance at the postmistress, and
+presently they saw him galloping off in the opposite direction from which
+he had come. Mrs. Dax came in with a tray on which were a pot of coffee
+and sundry substantial delicacies.
+
+"Where's he gone?" she demanded, putting the tray down so hard that the
+coffee slopped.
+
+"I dunno," said Leander. "He said he'd got to have the gray mare, saddled
+her hisself, and rode off like hell."
+
+Mrs. Dax looked at them all savagely for the explanation that they could
+not give. In sending her out to make coffee she felt that Peter, whom she
+regarded in the light of a weakness, had taken advantage of her affections
+to dupe her in regard to his plans.
+
+"Take them things back to the kitchen," she commanded Leander.
+
+Mary Carmichael involuntarily glanced at Judith; the fall of the leaf was
+in her cheek.
+
+Peter Hamilton, bowed in his saddle and flogging forward inhumanely, bred
+rife speculation as to his destination among the group that watched him
+from the Daxes' front door. Mrs. Dax, who entertained so profound a
+respect for her own omniscience that she disdained to arrive at a
+conclusion by a logical process of deduction, was "plumb certain that he
+had gone after 'rustlers!'" Leander, who had held no opinions since his
+marriage except that first and all-comprehensive tenet of his creed--that
+his wife was a person to be loved, honored, and obeyed instantly--agreed
+with his lady by a process of reflex action. The fat lady, who had a
+commonplace for every occasion, didn't "know what we were all coming to."
+Miss Carmichael, who was beginning to find her capacity for amazement
+overstrained, alone accepted this last incident with apathy. Mr. Hamilton
+might have gone in swift pursuit of cattle thieves or he might be riding
+the mare to death for pure whimsy. Only Judith Rodney, who said nothing,
+felt that he was spurring across the wilderness at breakneck speed to see
+a girl at Wetmore's. But her lack of comment caused no ripple of surprise
+in the flow of loose-lipped speculation that served, for the time being,
+to inject a casual interest into the talk of these folk, bored to the
+verge of demoralization by long waiting for Chugg.
+
+Judith preferred to confirm her apprehensions regarding Hamilton's ride,
+alone. She knew--had not all her woman's intuitions risen in clamorous
+warning--and yet she hoped, hoped despairingly, even though the dread
+alternative to the girl at the Wetmore ranch threatened lynch law for her
+brother. Her very gait changed as she withdrew from the group about the
+door, covertly gaining her vantage-ground inch by inch. The heels of her
+riding-boots made no sound as she stole across the kitchen floor, toeing
+in like an Indian tracking an enemy through the forest. The small window
+at the back of the kitchen commanded a view of the road in all its
+sprawling circumlocution. Seen from this prospect, it had no more design
+than the idle scrawlings of a child on a bit of paper; but the choice of
+roads to Good and Evil was not fraught with more momentous consequences
+than was each prong of that fork towards which Hamilton was galloping.
+
+The right arm swung towards the Wetmore ranch, where at certain times
+during the course of the year a hundred cow-punchers reported on the stock
+that grazed in four States. At certain seasons, likewise, despite the fact
+that the ranch was well into the foot-hill country, there might be found a
+New York family playing at life primeval with the co-operation of
+porcelain bath-tubs, a French _chef_, and electric light.
+
+The left fork of the road had a meaner destiny. It dipped straight into
+desolation, penetrating a naked wilderness where bad men skulked till the
+evil they had done was forgotten in deeds that called afresh to Heaven for
+vengeance. It was well away on this west fork of the road that they
+lynched Kate Watson--"Cattle Kate"--for the crime of loyalty. It was she,
+intrepid and reckless, who threatened the horde of masked scoundrels when
+they came to lynch her man for the iniquity of raising a few vegetables on
+a strip of ground that cut into their grazing country. And when she,
+recognizing them, masked though they were, threatened them with the
+vengeance of the law, they hanged her with her man high as Haman.
+
+Judith watched Hamilton with narrowing eyes. And now she was all Indian,
+the white woman in her dead. Only the Sioux watched, and, in the patient,
+Indian style, bided its time. "Cattle thieves," "the girl at
+Wetmore's"--the words sang themselves in her head like an incantation.
+"Cattle thieves" meant her brother, their recognized leader--her brother,
+who was dearer to her than the heart in her breast, the eye in her head,
+the right hand that held together the shambling, uncertain destiny of her
+people. Would he turn to the left, Justice, on a pale horse, hunting her
+brother gallowsward? Would he turn towards the right, the impetuous lover
+spurring his steed that he might come swiftly to the woman. A pulse in her
+bosom rose slowly until her breath was suspended, then fell again; she was
+still watching, without an outward quiver, long after he had turned to the
+right--and the woman.
+
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+
+                         A Daughter Of The Desert
+
+
+Judith knew that the name of the girl whose letter sent Peter Hamilton
+vaulting to the saddle was Katherine Colebrooke. There had been a deal of
+letter-writing between her and the young cow-puncher of late, of which
+perforce, by a singular irony of fate, the postmistress had been the
+involuntary instrument. The correspondence had followed a recent hasty
+journey to New York, undertaken somewhat unwillingly by Hamilton in the
+interest of certain affairs connected with the settlement of an estate.
+
+The precipitancy of this latest turn of events bewildered Judith; but yet
+a little while--a matter of weeks and days--and her friendship with Hamilton
+had been of that pleasantly indefinite estate situated somewhere on the
+borderland of romance, a kingdom where there is no law but the mutual
+interest of the wayfarers. Judith and Peter had been pitifully new at the
+game of life when the gods vouchsafed them the equivocal blessing of
+propinquity. Judith was but lately come from the convent at Santa Fé, and
+Hamilton from the university whose honors availed him little in the
+trailing of cattle over the range or in the sweat and tumult of the
+branding-pen. It was a strange election of opportunity for a man who had
+been class poet and had rather conspicuously avoided athletics during his
+entire college course. In pursuing fortune westward Hamilton did not lack
+for chroniclers who would not have missed a good story for the want of an
+authentic dramatic interpretation of his plans. His uncle, said they, who
+had put him through college, was disposed to let him sink or swim by his
+own efforts; or, again, he had quarrelled with this same omnipotent uncle
+and walked from his presence with no prospects but those within grasp of
+his own hand. Again, he had taken the negative of a fair lady more to
+heart than two-and-twenty is in the habit of taking negatives. Peter made
+no confidences. He went West to punch cows for the Wetmore outfit; he was
+a distant connection of the Wetmores through his mother's side of the
+family.
+
+In those days Peter wore his rue--whether for lady fair or for towering
+prospects stricken down--with a tinge of wan melancholy not unbecoming to a
+gentle aquilinity of profile, softened by the grace of adolescence. His
+instinctive aristocracy of manners and taste would have availed him little
+with his new associates had he been a whit less manly. But as he shirked
+no part of the universal hardship, they left him his reticence. He even
+came to enjoy a sort of remote popularity as one who was conversant with
+the best--a nonchalant social connoisseur--yet who realized the stern
+primitive beauties of the range life.
+
+Judith's convent upbringing had conferred on her the doubtful advantage of
+a gentlewoman's tastes and bearing, making of her, therefore, an alien in
+her father's house. When Mrs. Atkins, who was responsible for her
+education, realized the equivocal good of these things, and saw moreover
+that the girl had grown to be a beauty, she offered to adopt her; but
+Judith, with the pitiful heroism of youth that understands little of what
+it is renouncing, thought herself strong enough to hold together a family,
+uncertain of purpose as quicksilver.
+
+In those tragic days of readjustment came Peter Hamilton, as strange to
+the bald conditions of frontier life as the girl herself. From the
+beginning there had been between them the barrier of circumstance.
+Hamilton was poor, Judith the mainstay of a household whose thriftlessness
+had become a proverb. He came of a family that numbered a signer of the
+Declaration of Independence, a famous chief-justice, and the dean of a
+great university; Judith was uncertain of her right to the very name she
+bore. And yet they were young, he a man, she a woman--eternal fountain of
+interest. A precocious sense of the fitness of things was the compass that
+enabled Peter to steer through the deep waters in the years that followed.
+But the girl paid the penalty of her great heart; in that troublous sea of
+friendship, she was soon adrift without rudder, sail, or compass.
+
+Judith was now eight-and-twenty, and a sculptor would have found a hundred
+statues in her. Long of limb, deep-bosomed, youth and health radiated from
+her as sparks fly upward. In sunlight, her black hair had the bluish
+iridescence of a ripe plum. The eyes were deep and questioning--the eyes of
+a young seraph whose wings had not yet brushed the far distant heights of
+paradise. Again, in her pagan gladness of living, she might have been a
+Valkyr come down from Valhalla on a shooting-star. And yet, in this
+wilderness that was famishing for woman's love and tears and laughter, by
+a very perversity of fate she walked alone.
+
+She was a true daughter of the desert, the child of stark, unlovely
+circumstance. No well-bred romance of book and bells and churchly
+benediction had ushered her into being. Her maternal grandfather had been
+the famous Sioux chief, Flying Hawk; her grandmother, a white woman, who
+knew no word of her people's tongue, nor yet her name or race. The Indians
+found the white baby sleeping by her dead mother after the massacre of an
+emigrant train. They took her with them and she grew up, in the Black Hill
+country, a white-skinned Sioux, marrying a chief of the people that had
+slain her people. She accepted her squaw's portion uncomplainingly; slaved
+cheerfully at squaw's work while her brave made war on the whites, hunted,
+and smoked. She reared her half-breed children in the legends of their
+father's people, and died, a withered crone, cursing the pale-faces who
+had robbed the Sioux of the buffalo and their hunting-ground.
+
+Her daughter, Singing Stream, who knew no word of English, but who could
+do better bead-work than any squaw in the tribe, went to live with Warren
+Rodney when he finished his cabin on Elder Creek. That was before the gold
+fever reached the Black Hills, and Rodney built the cabin that he might
+fish and hunt and forget the East and why he left it. There were reasons
+why he wanted to forget his identity as a white man in his play at being
+an Indian. In the first flare of youth and the joy of having come into her
+woman's kingdom, the half-breed squaw was pretty; she was proud, too, of
+her white man, the house he had built her, and the girl pappoose with blue
+eyes. Furthermore, she had been taught to serve man meekly, for he was the
+lord of creation.
+
+Rodney talked Sioux to her. He had all but forgotten he was a white man.
+The girl pappoose ran about the cabin, brown and bare, but for the bead
+jacket Singing Stream had made for her in the pride of her maternity.
+Rodney called the little girl "Judith." Her Indian mother never guessed
+the significance of the strange name that she could not say, but made at
+least ten soft singing syllables of, in the Indian way. The little Judith
+greeted her father in strange lispings; Warren Rodney was far from unhappy
+in playing at primitive man. This recessional into conditions primeval
+endured for "seven snows," as the Indian tongue hath it. Then the squaw
+began to break, after the manner of the women of her father's people. She
+had begun her race with time a decade after Warren Rodney, and she had
+outdistanced him by a decade.
+
+And then the Tumlins came from Tennessee to the Black Hills. They came in
+an ox-cart, and the days of their journey were more than two years. They
+had stopped in Ohio, and again in Illinois; and, behold! neither was the
+promised land, the land that their excited imaginations had painted from
+the large talk of returning travellers, and that was further glorified
+through their own thriftless discontent with conditions at home. They had
+travelled on and on across half a continent in the wake of a vanishing
+sky-line. The vague westward impulse was luring them to California, but
+they waited in Dakota that their starved stock might fatten, and while
+they rested themselves from the long journey, Warren Rodney made the
+acquaintance of Sally Tumlin, who rallied him on being a "squaw man."
+
+Warren Rodney had almost forgotten the sorceries of the women of his
+people; he had lived so long with a brown woman, who spread no silken
+snares. Sally's blushes stirred a multitude of dead things--the wiles of
+pale women, all strength in weakness, fragile flowers for tender
+handling--the squaw had grown as withered as a raisin.
+
+Now, Sally Tumlin had no convictions about life but that the world owed
+her "a home of her own." Her mother had forged the bolt of this particular
+maxim at an early date. And Sally saw from precocious observation that the
+business of women was home-getting, to which end they must be neat and
+sweet and sparing of speech. After the home was forthcoming, then, indeed,
+might a woman take ease in slippers and wrapper, and it is surely a wife's
+privilege to speak her mind. Sally knew that she hated travelling westward
+after the crawling oxen; each day the sun pursued them, caught up with
+them, outdistanced them, and at night left them stranded in the
+wilderness, and rose again and mocked them on the morrow. Her father and
+oafish brother loved the makeshifts of the wagon life, with its chance
+shots at fleeing antelope, scurrying sage-hens, and bounding cotton-tails;
+a chance parley with a stray Indian but added zest to the game of chance.
+But Sally hated it all. The cabin on Elder Creek had a tight roof; Warren
+Rodney had money in the bank. He had had uncommon luck at trapping. His
+talk to Sally was largely of his prospects.
+
+Sally knew that the world owed her "a home of her own"; and why should she
+let a squaw keep her from it? Sally's mother giggled when consulted. She
+plainly regarded the squaw as a rival of her daughter. The ethics of the
+case, as far as Mrs. Tumlin was concerned, was merely a question of white
+skin against brown, and which should carry the day. Singing Stream knew
+not one word of the talk, much of which occurred in her very presence,
+that threatened to pull her home about her ears, but she knew that Sally
+was taking her man from her. The white-skinned woman wore white ruffles
+about her neck and calico dresses that were the color of the wild roses
+that grew among the willows at the creek. Sally Tumlin's pink calico gowns
+sowed a crop of nettles in the mind of the squaw. It was the rainbow
+things, she felt, that were robbing her of her man. All her barbaric
+craving for glowing colors asserted itself as a means towards the one
+great end of keeping him. Singing Stream began to scheme schemes. One day
+Rodney was splitting wood at the Tumlin camp--though why he should split
+wood where there were two women puzzled the squaw. But the ways of the
+pale-faces were beyond her ken. She only knew that she must make herself
+beautiful in the eyes of Warren Rodney, like this devil woman, and then
+perhaps the pappoose that she expected with the first snowfall would be a
+man-child; and she hoped great things of this happening.
+
+With such primitive reasoning did Singing Stream put the horses to the
+light wagon, and, taking the little Judith with her, drove to Deadwood, a
+matter of two hundred miles, to buy the bright calicoes that were to make
+her like a white woman. It never occurred to the half-breed woman to make
+known her plans to Warren Rodney. In circumventing Sally Tumlin the man
+became the spoils of war, and it is not the Indian way to tell plans on
+the war-trail. So the squaw left her kingdom in the hands of the enemy,
+without a word.
+
+Sally Tumlin and Warren Rodney looked upon the disappearance of the squaw
+in the light of a providential solution of the difficulties attending
+their romance. They admitted it was square of her to "hit the trail," and
+they decided to lose no time in going to the army post, where a chaplain,
+an Indian missionary, happened to be staying at the time, and have a real
+wedding, with a ring and a fee to the parson. The wedding party started
+for the post, old mother Tumlin fluttering about the bride as complacently
+as if the ceremony had been the culmination of the most decorous
+courtship. The oafish brother drove the bridal party, making crude jests
+by-the-way, to the frank delight of the prospective groom and the giggling
+protestations of the bride. The chaplain at the post was disposed to ask
+few questions. Parsons made queer marriages in those tumultuous days, and
+it was regarded as a patent of worthy motives that the pair should call in
+the man of the gospel at all. To the question whether or not he had been
+married before, Rodney answered:
+
+"Well, parson, this is the first time I have ever stood up for a life
+sentence." And the ceremony proceeded.
+
+Some of the ladies at the post, hearing that there was to be a wedding,
+dropped in and added their smiles and flutterings to the rather grim
+party; among them, Mrs. Atkins, who had just come to the post as a bride.
+They even added a trifle or two from their own store of pretty things, as
+presents to Sally. And Miss Tumlin left the post Mrs. Warren Rodney, with
+"a home of her own" to go to.
+
+Singing Stream did not hasten in her quest for bright fabrics with which
+to stay the hand of fate. To the half-breed woman the journey to town was
+not without a certain revivifying pleasure. The Indian in her stirred to
+the call of the open country. The tight roof to the cabin on Elder Creek
+had not the attractions for her that it had for Sally Tumlin. She had
+chafed sometimes at a house with four walls. But now the dead and gone
+braves rose in her as she followed the old trail where they had so often
+crept to battle against their old enemies, the Crows, before the white
+man's army had scattered them. And as she drove through the foot-hill
+country, she told the solemn-eyed little Judith the story of the Sioux,
+and what a great fighting people they had been before Rodney's people
+drove them from their land. Judith was holding a doll dressed exactly like
+herself, in soft buckskin shirt, little trousers, and moccasins, all
+beautifully beaded. In her turn she told the story to the doll.
+
+Singing Stream told her daughter of the making of the world, as the Sioux
+believe the story of creation; of the "Four who Never Die"--Sharper, or
+Bladder, Rabbit, Turtle, and Monster; likewise of the coming of a mighty
+flood on which swam the Turtle and a water-fowl in whose bill was the
+earth atom, from which presently the world began to grow, Turtle
+supporting the bird on his great back, which was hard like rock. The rest
+of the myth, that deals with the rising and setting of the sun, Singing
+Stream could not tell her daughter, as the old Sioux chiefs did not think
+it wise to let their women folk know too much about matters of theology.
+Nor did they relate to squaws the sun myth, with its account of much
+cutting-off of heads--thinking, perhaps, with wisdom, that these good
+ladies saw enough of carnage in their every-day life without introducing
+it into their catechism.
+
+But Singing Stream knew the story of "Sharper," or "Bladder," as he is
+called by some of the people, because he is round and his grotesquely fat
+figure resembles a bladder blown to bursting. Bladder's province it is to
+make a fool of himself, diving into water after plums he sees reflected
+there from the branches of the trees. He dives again and again in his
+pursuit of folly, even tying stones to his wrists and ankles to keep
+himself down while he gathers the reflected fruit. After his rescue, which
+he fights against valiantly, as he lies gasping on the bank of the stream,
+he sees the fruit on the branches above his head. It is this same Bladder
+who is one of the _dramatis personæ_ in the moon myth, and that is told to
+women as safely without the limits of that little learning that is a
+dangerous thing. Bladder met Rabbit hunting; and Bladder kept throwing his
+eye up into the tree-tops to look for game. The Rabbit watched him
+enviously, thinking what a saving of effort it would be if he could do the
+same thing. Wherefore Bladder promised to instruct him, telling him to
+change eyes after using one four times, but Rabbit did not think that the
+first time counted, as that was but a trial. So he lost his eye after
+throwing it up the fifth time. And the eye of the rabbit is the moon, and
+the face seen in the full moon is the reflection of the rabbit seen in his
+own eye as we see ourselves reflected in the eye of a friend if we look
+closely. The little girl was wonderfully impressed. She put her hand to
+her own eyes, but they were in tight, too tight to throw up to the
+tree-tops.
+
+Singing Stream also told little Judith that the Great Mystery had shown
+truths, hid to man, to the trees, the streams, the hills; and the clouds
+that shaped themselves, drifting hither and yon, were the Great Mystery's
+passing thoughts. But he had deprived all these things of speech, as he
+did not trust them fully, and they could only speak to man in dreams, or
+in some passing mood, when they could communicate to him the feeling of
+one of the Great Spirits, and warn man of what was about to befall him.
+Judith was not quite four when she took this memorable drive with her
+mother, but the impression of these things abided through all her years.
+It was to the measureless spaces of desert loneliness that she learned to
+bring her sorrows in the days of her arid youth, and to feel a kinship
+with all its moods and to hear in the voice of its silence a never-failing
+consolation.
+
+And when they had come within a mile of Warren Rodney's cabin on Elder
+Creek, Singing Stream halted and prepared for the great event of
+reinstatement. First she made a splendid toilet of purple calico torn into
+strips and tied about the waist to simulate the skirts of the devil woman.
+Over these she wore a shirt of buckskin, broidered with beads of many
+colors, and a necklace of elk teeth, wound twice about the throat. On her
+feet she wore new moccasins of tanned elk-hide, and these, too, were
+beaded in many colors. Her hair, now braided with strips of scarlet
+flannel, hung below the waist. And she walked to Rodney's cabin, not as an
+outgrown mistress, but as the daughter of a chief. The little Judith held
+up her head and clung tight to the doll. She knew that something of moment
+was about to happen.
+
+The gala trio, Singing Stream, Judith, and Judith's doll, presented
+themselves at Rodney's house, before which the bride was washing clothes,
+the day being fine. Sally, as usual, wore one of the rose-colored calicoes
+with the collar turned well in and the sleeves rolled above the elbows.
+She washed vigorously, with a steady splashing of suds. Sally enjoyed this
+home of her own and all the household duties appertaining to it. She was
+singing, and a strand of pale-brown hair, crinkly as sea-weed, had blown
+across the rose of her cheek, when she felt rather than saw a shadow fall
+across her path, and, glancing up, she saw facing her the woman whom she
+had supplanted, and the solemn-eyed little girl holding tight to her doll.
+Now, neither woman knew a word of the other's speech, but Sally was
+proficient in the language of femininity, and she was not at a loss to
+grasp the significance of the purple calico, the beaded buckskin shirt,
+and the necklace of elk teeth. The half-breed walked as a chief's daughter
+to the woman at the tub, and Sally grew sick and chill despite her white
+skin and the gold ring that made Warren Rodney her man in the face of the
+law. The dark woman held Judith proudly by the hand, as a sovereign might
+carry a sceptre. Judith was her staff of office, her emblem of authority
+in the house of Warren Rodney.
+
+Singing Stream held out her hands to Sally in a gesture of appeal--and
+blundered. Of the chief's daughter, walking proudly, Sally was afraid; but
+a supplicating half-breed in strips of purple calico, not even hemmed, was
+a matter for merriment. Sally put her hands on her hips, arms akimbo, and
+laughed a dry cackle. The light in the brown woman's eyes, as she looked
+at the white, was like prairie-fires rolling forward through darkness.
+There was no need of a common speech between them. The whole destiny of
+woman was in the laugh and the look that answered it.
+
+And the man they could have murdered for came from the house, an unheroic
+figure with suspenders dangling and a corncob pipe in his mouth, sullen,
+angry, and withal abjectly frightened, as mere man inevitably is when he
+sniffs a woman's battle in the air. The bride, at sight of her husband,
+took to hysterics. She wept, she laughed, and down tumbled her hair. She
+felt the situation demanded a scene. Rodney, with a marital brevity hardly
+to be expected so soon, commanded Sally to go into the house and to "shut
+up."
+
+Then he faced Singing Stream and said to her in her own language: "You
+must go away from here. The pale-faced woman is my wife by the white man's
+law--ring and Bible. No Indian marriage about this."
+
+But the brown woman only pointed to Judith. She asked Rodney had she not
+been a good squaw to him.
+
+And Rodney, who at best was but a poltroon, could only repeat: "You got to
+keep away from here. It's the white man's law--one squaw for one man."
+
+From within came the sound of Sally's lamentation as she called for her
+father and brother to take her from the squaw and contamination. Warren
+Rodney was a man of few words. It had become his unpleasant duty to act,
+and to act quickly. He snatched Judith from her mother and took her into
+the house, and he returned with his Winchester, which was not loaded, to
+Singing Stream.
+
+"You got to go," he said, and levelling the Winchester, he repeated the
+command. Singing Stream looked at him with the dumb wonder of a forest
+thing. "I was a good squaw to you," she said; and did not even curse him.
+And turning, she ran towards the foot-hills, with all the length of purple
+calico trailing.
+
+Now Mrs. Rodney, _née_ Tumlin, was but human, and her cup of happiness as
+the wife of a "squaw man" was not the brimming beaker she had anticipated.
+The expulsion of her predecessor, at such a time, to make room for her own
+home-coming, was, it seemed, open to criticism. "The neighborhood"--it
+included perhaps five families living in a radius of as many hundred
+miles--felt that the Tumlins had established a bad precedent. A "squaw man"
+driving out a brown wife to make room for a white is not a heroic figure.
+It had been done before, but it would not hand down well in the traditions
+of the settling of this great country. Trespass of law and order, with
+their swift, red-handed reckoning, were but moves of the great game of
+colonization. But to shove out a brown woman for a white was a mean move.
+Few stopped at the Rodneys' ranch, though it marked the first break in the
+journey from town to the gold-mining country. Rodney had fallen from his
+estate as a pioneer; his political opinions were unsought in the conclaves
+that sat and spat at the stove, when business brought them to the joint
+saloon and post-office. The women dealt with the question more openly,
+scorning feminine subtlety at this pass as inadequate ammunition. When
+they met Mrs. Rodney they pulled aside their skirts and glared. This
+outrage against woman it was woman's work to settle.
+
+Mrs. Rodney, who had no more moral sense than a rabbit, felt that she was
+the victim of persecution. She knew she was a good woman. Hadn't she a
+husband? Had there ever been a word against her character? What was the
+use of making all that fuss over a squaw? It was not as if she was a white
+woman. The injustice of it preyed on the former Miss Tumlin. She took to
+the consolations of snuff-dipping and fell from her pink-and-white estate.
+
+The Tumlin family did not remain long enough in the Black Hill country to
+witness Sally's failure as the wife of a pioneer. The restlessness of the
+"settler," if the paradox be permissible, was in the marrow of their
+bones. The makeshifts of the wagon, the adventures of the road, were the
+only home they craved. The spring after Sally's marriage they set forth
+for California, the year following for New Mexico, and still sighed for
+new worlds to visit. They were happier now that Sally, the one element of
+discontent, had been removed from their perennial journeying by the
+merciful dispensation of marriage. Old Tumlin, his wife, and the son gave
+themselves up more than ever to the day-dreams of the road, the freedom of
+the open country, and the spirit of adventure.
+
+Rodney's squaw wife was taken in by some neighbors, good folk who were
+conversant with all phases of the romance. They stood by her in her hour
+of trial, and afterwards continued to keep her as a servant. Her son Jim
+grew up with their own children. When he was four years of age his mother,
+Singing Stream, died, and Sally persuaded her husband to take young Jim
+into their own home, partly as a sop to neighborly criticism, partly as a
+salve to her own conscience. Sally had children of her own, and looked at
+things differently now from the time when she fought the squaw for
+Rodney's favor.
+
+Jim's foster-parents were, in truth, glad to part with him. From his
+earliest babyhood he had been known as a "limb of Satan." He was an
+Ishmael by every instinct of his being. And Mrs. Warren Rodney, _née_
+Tumlin, felt that in dealing with him, in her capacity of step-mother, she
+daily expiated any offence that she might have done to his mother.
+
+Sally grew slatternly with increasing maternity. She spent her time in a
+rocking-chair, dipping snuff--a consolation imported from her former
+home--and lamenting the bad marriage she had made. Rodney ascribed his
+ill-fortune to unjust neighborly criticism. He farmed a little, he raised
+a little stock, and he drank a great deal of whiskey. Sally hated the
+Black Hill country. She felt that it knew too much about her. The
+neighborly inquisition had fallen like a blight on the family fortunes. A
+vague migratory impulse was on her. She wanted to go somewhere and begin
+all over again. By dint of persistent nagging she persuaded her husband to
+move to Wyoming, then in the golden age of the cattle industry. Those were
+days when steers, to speak in the cow language, had "jumped to
+seventy-five." The wilderness grew light-headed with prosperity. Wonderful
+are the tales still told about those fat years in cattle-land. It was in
+those halcyon days of the Cheyenne Club that the members rode from the
+range, white with the dust of the desert, to enjoy greater luxuries than
+those procurable at their clubs in New York.
+
+Nor was it all feasting and merrymaking. A heroic band it was that battled
+with the wilderness, riding the range with heat and cold, starvation and
+death, and making small pin-pricks in that empty blotch of the United
+States map that is marked "Great Alkali Desert" blossom into settlements.
+When the last word has been said about the pioneers of these United
+States, let the cow-boy be remembered in the universal toast, that bronzed
+son of the saddle who lived his little day bravely and merrily, and whose
+real heroism is too often forgotten in the glamour of his own
+picturesqueness.
+
+Judith was ten years old when her father, his wife, and their children
+moved from Dakota--they were not so particular about North and South
+Dakota, in those days--to take up a claim on Sweetwater, Wyoming. Judith
+gave scant promise of the beauty that in later life became at once her
+dower and her misfortune, that which was as likely to bring wretchedness
+as happiness. In Wyoming she was destined to find an old friend, Mrs.
+Atkins, who, as the bride of the young lieutenant, had been present at the
+marriage of Sally Tumlin and Warren Rodney, and who had always felt a
+wholly unreasonable sense of guilt at witnessing the ceremony and
+contributing a lace handkerchief to the bride. Her husband, now Major
+Atkins, was stationed at Fort Washakie, Wyoming. Mrs. Atkins happening
+again on the Rodney family, and her husband having increased and
+multiplied his army pay many times over by a successful venture in cattle,
+the scheme of Judith's convent education was put through by the major's
+wife, who had kept her New England conscience, the discomforts of frontier
+posts notwithstanding.
+
+So Judith went to the nuns to school, and stayed with them till she was
+eighteen. Mrs. Atkins would have adopted her then; but Judith by this time
+knew her family history in all its sordid ramifications, and felt that
+duty called her to her brother, who had not improved his unfortunate start
+in life, though his step-mother did not spoil him for the staying of the
+rod.
+
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+
+                         Chugg Takes The Ribbons
+
+
+Chugg, comforted with liquids and stayed with a head-plaster, presented
+himself at the Dax ranch just twenty-four hours after he was due. His mien
+combined vagueness with hostility, and he harnessed up the stage that
+Peter Hamilton had driven over the day before, when his prospective
+passengers were looking, with a graphic pantomimic representation of "take
+it or leave it." Under the circumstances, Miss Carmichael and the fat lady
+consented to be passengers with much the same feeling of finality that one
+might have on embarking for the planet Mars in an air-ship.
+
+There was, furthermore, a suggestion of last rites in the farewells of the
+Daxes, each according to their respective personalities, that was far from
+reassuring.
+
+"Here's some bread and meat and a bottle of cold coffee, if you live to
+need it," was Mrs. Dax's grim prognostication of accident. Leander, being
+of an emotional nature, could scarce restrain his tears--the advent of the
+travellers had created a welcome variation in the monotony of his dutiful
+routine--he felt all the agitation of parting with life-long friends. Mary
+Carmichael and Judith promised to write--they had found a great deal to say
+to each other the preceding evening.
+
+Chugg cracked his whip ominously, the travellers got inside, not daring to
+trust themselves to the box.
+
+The journey with the misanthrope was but a repetition of that first day's
+staging--the sage-brush was scarcer, the mountains seemed as far off as
+ever, and the outlook was, if possible, more desolate. The entry in Miss
+Carmichael's diary, inscribed in malformed characters as the stage jolted
+over ruts and gullies, reads: "I do not mind telling you, in strictest
+confidence, 'Dere Diary'--as the little boy called you--that when I so
+lightly severed my connection with civilization, I had no idea to what an
+extent I was going in for the prairie primeval. How on earth does a woman
+who can write a letter like Mrs. Yellett stand it? And where on the map of
+North America is Lost Trail?"
+
+"Land sakes!" regretted the fat lady, "but I do wish I had a piece of that
+'boy's favorite' cake that I had for my lunch the day we left town. I just
+ate and ate it 'cause I hadn't another thing to do. If I hadn't been so
+greedy I could offer him a piece, just to show him that some women folk
+have kind hearts, and that the whole sect ain't like that Pink."
+
+"Boy's favorite," as adequate compensation for shattered ideals, a broken
+heart, and the savings of a lifetime, seemed to Mary Carmichael inadequate
+compensation, but she forbore to express her sentiments.
+
+The fat lady had never relaxed her gaze from Chugg's back since the stage
+had started. She peered at that broad expanse of flannel shirt through the
+tiny round window, like a careful sailing-master sweeping the horizon for
+possible storm-clouds. At every portion of the road presenting a steep
+decline she would prod Chugg in the back with the handle of her ample
+umbrella, and demand that he let her out, as she preferred walking. The
+stage-driver at first complied with these requests, but when he saw they
+threatened to become chronic, he would send his team galloping down grade
+at a rate to justify her liveliest fears.
+
+"Do you think you are a-picnicking, that you crave roominating round these
+yere solitoodes?" And the misanthrope cracked his whip and adjured his
+team with cabalistic imprecations.
+
+"Did you notice if Mrs. Dax giv' him any cold coffee, same as she did us?"
+anxiously inquired the fat lady from her lookout.
+
+Mary hadn't noticed.
+
+"He's drinking something out of a brown bottle--seems to relish it a heep
+more'n he would cold coffee," reported the watch. "Hi there! Hi! Mr.
+Chugg!" The stage-driver, thinking it was merely a request to be allowed
+to walk, continued to drive with one hand and hold the brown bottle with
+the other. But even his too solid flesh was not proof against the
+continued bombardment of the umbrella handle.
+
+"Um-m-m," he grunted savagely, applying a watery eye to the round window.
+
+"Nothing," answered the fat lady, quite satisfied at having her worst
+fears confirmed.
+
+Chugg returned to his driving, as one not above the weakness of seeing and
+hearing things.
+
+"'Tain't coffee."
+
+"Could you smell it?" questioned Mary, anxiously.
+
+"You never can tell that way, when they are plumb pickled in it, like
+him."
+
+"Then how did you know it wasn't coffee?"
+
+"His eyes had fresh watered."
+
+Mary collapsed under this expert testimony. "What are we going to do about
+it?"
+
+"Appeal to him as a gentleman," said the fat lady, not without dramatic
+intonation.
+
+"You appeal," counselled Mary; "I saw him look at you admiringly when you
+were walking down that steep grade."
+
+"Is that so?" said the fat lady, with a conspicuous lack of incredulity;
+and she put her hand involuntarily to her frizzes.
+
+This time she did not trust to the umbrella-handle as a medium of
+communication between the stage-driver and herself. Putting her hand
+through the port-hole she grasped Chugg's arm--the bottle arm--with no
+uncertain grip.
+
+"Why, Mr. Chugg, this yere place is getting to be a regular summer resort;
+think of two ladies trusting themselves to your protection and travelling
+out over this great lonesome desert."
+
+Chugg's mind, still submerged in local Lethe waters, grappled in silence
+with the problem of the feminine invasion, and then he muttered to himself
+rather than to the fat lady, "Nowhere's safe from 'em; women and
+house-flies is universally prevailing."
+
+The fat lady dropped his arm as if it had been a brand. "He's no
+gentleman. As for Mountain Pink, she was drove to it."
+
+All that day they toiled over sand and sage-brush; the sun hung like a
+molten disk, paling the blue of the sky; the grasshoppers kept up their
+shrill chirping--and the loneliness of that sun-scorched waste became a
+tangible thing.
+
+Chugg sipped and sipped, and sometimes swore and sometimes muttered, and
+as the day wore on his driving not only became a challenge to the
+endurance of the horses, but to the laws of gravitation. He lashed them up
+and down grade, he drove perilously close to shelving declivities, and
+sometimes he sang, with maudlin mournfulness:
+
+  "'Oh, bury me not on the lone prairie.'
+  The words came low and mournfully
+  From the cold, pale lips of a youth who lay
+  On his dying couch at the close of day."
+
+The fat lady reminded him that he was a gentleman and that he was driving
+ladies; she threatened him with her son on Sweetwater, who began, in the
+maternal chronicles, by being six feet in his stockings, and who steadily
+grew, as the scale of threats increased, till he reached the altitude of
+six feet four, growing hourly in height and fierceness.
+
+But Chugg gave no heed, and once he sang the "Ballad of the Mule-Skinner,"
+with what seemed to both terrified passengers an awful warning of their
+overthrow:
+
+  "As I was going down the road,
+  With a tired team and a heavy load,
+  I cracked my whip and the leaders sprung--
+  The fifth chain broke, and the wheelers hung,
+  The off-horse stepped on the wagon tongue--"
+
+This harrowing ballad was repeated with accompanying Delsarte at intervals
+during the afternoon, but as Mary and the fat lady managed to escape
+without accident, they began to feel that they bore charmed lives.
+
+At sundown they came to the road-ranch of Johnnie Dax, bearing Leander's
+compliments as a secret despatch. The outward aspect of the place was
+certainly an awful warning to trustful bachelors who make acquaintances
+through the columns of _The Heart and Hand_. The house stood solitary in
+that scourge of desolation. The windows and doors gaped wide like the
+unclosed eyes of a dead man on a battle-field. Chugg halloed, and an old
+white horse put his head out of the door, shook it upward as if in assent,
+then trotted off.
+
+"That's Jerry, and he's the intelligentest animal I ever see," remarked
+the stage-driver, sobering up to Jerry's good qualities, and presently
+Johnnie Dax and the white horse appeared together from around the corner
+of the house.
+
+This Mr. Dax was almost an exact replica of the other, even to the
+apologetic crook in the knees and a certain furtive way of glancing over
+the shoulder as if anticipating missiles.
+
+"Pshaw now, ladies! why didn't you let me know that you was coming? and
+I'd have tidied up the place and organized a few dried-apple pies."
+
+"Good house-keepers don't wait for company to come before they get to
+their work," rebukefully commented the fat lady.
+
+Mr. Dax, recognizing the voice of authority, seized a towel and began to
+beat out flies, chickens, and dogs, who left the premises with the ill
+grace of old residents. Two hogs, dormant, guarded either side of the
+door-step and refused so absolutely to be disturbed by the flicking of the
+towel that one was tempted to look twice to assure himself that they were
+not the fruits of the sculptor's chisel.
+
+"Where's your wife?" sternly demanded the fat lady.
+
+"Oh, my Lord! I presume she's dancin' a whole lot over to Ervay. She
+packed her ball-gown in a gripsack and lit out of here two days ago,
+p'inting that way. A locomotive couldn't stop her none if she got a chance
+to go cycloning round a dance."
+
+In the mean time, the two hogs having failed to grasp the fact that they
+were _de trop_, continued to doze.
+
+"Come, girls, get up," coaxed Johnnie, persuasively. "Maude, I don't know
+when I see you so lazy. Run on, honey--run on with Ethel." For Ethel, the
+piebald hog, finally did as she was bid.
+
+Mary Carmichael could not resist the temptation of asking how the hogs
+happened to have such unusual names.
+
+"To tell the truth, I done it to aggravate my wife. When I finds myself a
+discard in the matrimonial shuffle, I figgers on a new deal that's going
+to inclood one or two anxieties for my lady partner--to which end--viz.,
+namely, I calls one hawg Ethel and the other hawg Maude, allowing to my
+wife that they're named after lady friends in the East. Them lady friends
+might be the daughters of Ananias and Sapphira, for all they ever
+happened, but they answers the purpose of riling her same as if they were
+eating their three squares daily. I have hopes, everything else failing,
+that she may yet quit dancing and settle down to the sanctity of the home
+out of pure jealousy of them two proxy hawgs."
+
+"I can just tell you this," interrupted the fat lady: "I don't enjoy
+occupying premises after hawgs, no matter how fashionable you name 'em. A
+hawg's a hawg, with manners according, if it's named after the President
+of the United States or the King of England."
+
+"That's just what I used to think, marm, of all critters before I enjoyed
+that degree of friendliness that I'm now proud to own. Take Jerry now,
+that old white horse--why, me and him is just like brothers. When I have to
+leave the kid to his lonesome infant reflections and go off to chop wood,
+I just call Jerry in, and he assoomes the responsibility of nurse like he
+was going to draw wages for it."
+
+"I reckon there's faults on both sides," said the fat lady, impartially.
+"No natural woman would leave her baby to a horse to mind while she went
+off dancing. And no natural man would fill his house full of critters, and
+them with highfalutin names. Take my advice, turn 'em out."
+
+Mary did not wait to hear the continuation of the fat lady's advice. She
+went out on the desert to have one last look at the west. The sun had
+taken his plunge for the night, leaving his royal raiment of crimson and
+gold strewn above the mountain-tops.
+
+Her sunset reflections were presently interrupted by the fat lady, who
+proposed that they should walk till Mr. Dax had tidied up his house,
+observing, with logic, that it did not devolve on them to clean the place,
+since they were paying for supper and lodging. They had gone but a little
+way when sudden apprehension caused the fat lady to grasp Mary's arm. Miss
+Carmichael turned, expecting mountain-lions, rattlesnakes, or
+stage-robbers, but none of these casualties had come to pass.
+
+"Land sakes! Here we be parading round the prairie, and I never found out
+how that man cooked his coffee."
+
+"What difference does it make, if we can drink it?"
+
+"The ways of men cooks is a sealed book to you, I reckon, or you wouldn't
+be so unconcerned--'specially in the matter of coffee. All men has got the
+notion that coffee must be b'iled in a bag, and if they 'ain't got a
+regular bag real handy, they take what they can get. Oh, I've caught 'em,"
+went on the fat lady, darkly, "b'iling coffee in improvisations that'd
+turn your stomach."
+
+"Yes, yes," Mary hastily agreed, hoping against hope that she wasn't going
+to be more explicit.
+
+"And they are so cute about it, too; it's next to impossible to catch 'em.
+You ask a man if he b'iles his coffee loose or tight, and he'll declare he
+b'iles it loose, knowing well how suspicious and prone to investigate is
+the female mind. But you watch your chance and take a look in the
+coffee-pot, and maybe you'll find--"
+
+"Yes, yes, I've heard--"
+
+"I've seen--"
+
+"Let's hurry," implored Mary.
+
+"Have you made your coffee yet?" inquired the fat lady.
+
+"Yes, marm," promptly responded Johnnie.
+
+"I hope you b'iled it in a bag--it clears it beautiful, a bag does."
+
+Johnnie shifted uneasily. "No, marm, I b'iles it loose. You see, bags
+ain't always handy."
+
+The fat lady plied her eye as a weapon. No Dax could stand up before an
+accusing feminine eye. He quailed, made a grab for the coffee-pot, and
+rushed with it out into the night.
+
+"What did I tell you?" she asked, with an air of triumph.
+
+Johnnie returned with the empty coffee-pot. "To tell the truth, marm, I
+made a mistake. I 'ain't made the coffee. I plumb forgot it. P'raps you
+could be prevailed on to assist this yere outfit to coffee while I
+organizes a few sody-biscuits."
+
+After supper, when the fat lady was so busy talking "goo-goo" language to
+the baby as to be oblivious of everything else, Mary Carmichael took the
+opportunity to ask Johnnie if he knew anything about Lost Trail. The name
+of her destination had come to sound unpleasantly ominous in the ears of
+the tired young traveller, and she feared that her inquiry did not sound
+as casual as she tried to have it. Nor was Johnnie's candid reply
+reassuring.
+
+"It's a pizen-mean country, from all I ever heard tell. The citizens
+tharof consists mainly of coyotes and mountain-lions, with a few rattlers
+thrown in just to make things neighborly. This yere place"--waving his hand
+towards the arid wastes which night was making more desolate--"is a summer
+resort, with modern improvements, compared to it."
+
+Mary screwed her courage to a still more desperate point, and inquired if
+Mr. Dax knew a family named Yellett living in Lost Trail.
+
+"Never heard of no family living there, excepting the bluff at family life
+maintained by the wild beasts before referred to. See here, miss, I ain't
+makin' no play to inquire into your affairs, but you ain't thinkin' o'
+visitin' Lost Trail, be you?"
+
+"Perhaps," said Mary, faintly; and then she, too, talked "goo-goo" to the
+baby.
+
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+
+                           The Rodneys At Home
+
+
+All that long and never-to-be-forgotten night the stage lurched through
+the darkness with Mary Carmichael the solitary passenger. The fat lady had
+warned Johnnie Dax that he was on no account to replenish Chugg's flask,
+if he had the wherewithal for replenishment on the premises. Moreover, she
+threatened Dax with the fury of her son should he fail in this particular;
+and Johnnie, hurt to the quick by the unjust suspicion that he could fail
+so signally in his duty to a lady, not only refused to replenish the
+flask, but threatened Chugg with a conditional vengeance in the event of
+accident befalling the stage. It was with a partially sobered and
+much-threatened stage-driver, therefore, that Mary continued her journey
+after the supper at Johnnie Dax's, but the knowledge of it brought scant
+reassurance, and it is doubtful if the red stage ever harbored any one
+more wakeful than the pale, tired girl who watched all the changes from
+dark to dawn at the stage window.
+
+Once or twice she caught a glimpse of distant camp-fires burning and knew
+that some cattle outfit was camped there for the night; and once they
+drove so close that she could hear the cow-boys' voices, enriched and
+mellowed by distance, borne to them on the cool, evening wind. It gave a
+sense of security to know that these big-hearted, manly lads were within
+call, and she watched the dwindling spark of their camp-fires and strained
+her ears to catch the last note of their singing, with something of the
+feeling of severed comradeship. Range cattle, startled from sleep by the
+stage, scrambled to their feet and bolted headlong in the blind impulse of
+panic, their horns and the confused massing of their bodies showing in
+sharp silhouette against the horizon for a moment, then all would settle
+into quiet again. There was no moon that night, but the stars were sown
+broadcast--softly yellow stars, lighting the darkness with a shaded luster,
+like lamps veiled in pale-yellow gauze. The chill electric glitter of the
+stars, as we know it from between the roofs of high houses, this world of
+far-flung distance knows not. There the stars are big and still, like the
+eyes of a contented woman.
+
+The hoofs of the horses beat the night away as regularly as the ticking of
+a clock. It grew darker as the night wore on, and sometimes a coyote would
+yelp from the fringe of willows that bordered a creek in a way that made
+Mary recall tales of banshees. And once, when the first pale streak of
+dawn trembled in the east and the mountains looked like jagged rocks
+heaved against the sky and in danger of toppling, the whole dread picture
+brought before her one of Vedder's pictures that hung in the shabby old
+library at home.
+
+They breakfasted somewhere, and Chugg put fresh horses to the stage. She
+knew this from their difference of color; the horses that they had left
+the second Dax ranch with had been white, and these that now toiled over
+the sand and desolation were apparently brown. She could not be certain
+that they were brown, or that they were toiling over the sand and
+desolation, or that her name was Mary Carmichael, or indeed of anything.
+Four days in the train, and what seemed like four centuries in the stage,
+eliminated any certainty as to anything. She could only sit huddled into a
+heap and wait for things to become adjusted by time.
+
+Chugg was behaving in a most exemplary manner. He drove rigidly as an
+automaton, and apparently he looked no longer on the "lightning" when it
+was bottled. Once or twice he had applied his eye to the pane that
+separated him from his passenger, and asked questions relative to her
+comfort, but Mary was too utterly dejected to reply in more than
+monosyllables. As they crept along, the sun-dried timbers of the stage
+creaked and groaned in seeming protest at wearing its life away in endless
+journeyings over this desert waste, then settled down into one of those
+maddeningly monotonous reiterations to which certain inanimate things are
+given in seasons of nervous tension. This time it was: "All the world's--a
+stage--creak--screech--all--the world's a stage--creak--screech!" over and over
+till Mary found herself fast succumbing to the hypnotic effect of the
+constant repetition, listening for it, even, with the tyrannous eagerness
+of overwrought nerves, when the stage-driver broke the spell with, "This
+here stage gets to naggin' me along about here. She's hungry for her
+axle-grease--that's what ails her."
+
+"I suppose," Mary roused herself to say, "you have quite a feeling of
+comradeship for the stage."
+
+"Me and Clara"--the stage had this name painted on the side--"have been
+travelling together nigh onto four year. And while there's times that I
+would prefer a greater degree of reciprocity, these yere silent companions
+has their advantages. Why, compare Clara to them female blizzards--the two
+Mrs. Daxes--and you see Clara's good p'ints immejit. Yes, miss, the
+thirst-quenchers are on me if either one of the Dax boys wouldn't be glad
+to swap, but I'd have to be a heap more locoed than I am now to consent to
+the transaction."
+
+At sunset the interminable monotony of the wilderness was broken by a
+house of curious architecture, the like of which the tired young traveller
+had never seen before, and whose singular candor of design made her doubt
+the evidence of her own thoroughly exhausted faculties. The house seemed
+to consist of a series of rooms thrown, or rather blown, together by some
+force of nature rather than by formal design of builder or carpenter. The
+original log-cabin of this composite dwelling looked better built, more
+finished, neater of aspect than those they had previously stopped at in
+crossing the Desert. Springing from the main building, like claws from a
+crustacean, were a series of rooms minus either side walls or flooring.
+Indeed, they might easily have passed for porches of more than usually
+commodious size had it not been for the beds, bureaus, chairs, stove with
+attendant pots, kettles, and supper in the course of preparation. Seen
+from any vantage-point in the surrounding country, the effect was that of
+an interior on the stage--the background of some homely drama where pioneer
+life was being realistically depicted. The _dramatis persona_ who occupied
+the centre of the stage when Mary Carmichael drove up was an elderly woman
+in a rocking-chair. She was dressed in a faded pink calico gown, limp and
+bedraggled, whose color brought out the parchment-like hue and texture of
+her skin in merciless contrast. Perhaps because she still harbored
+illusions about the perishable quality of her complexion, which gave every
+evidence of having borne the brunt of merciless desert suns, snows,
+blizzards, and the ubiquitous alkali dust of all seasons, she wore a pink
+sun-bonnet, though the hour was one past sundown, and though she sat
+beneath her own roof-tree, even if lacking the protection of four walls.
+From the corner of her mouth protruded a snuff-brush, so constantly in
+this accustomed place that it had come to be regarded by members of her
+family as part and parcel of her attire--the first thing assumed in the
+morning, the last thing laid aside at night. Mary Carmichael had little
+difficulty in recognizing Judith Rodney's step-mother, _née_ Tumlin--she
+who had been the heroine of the romance lately recorded.
+
+Mrs. Rodney's interest in the girl alighting from the stage was evinced in
+the palsied motion of the chair as it quivered slightly back and forth in
+place of the swinging seesaw with which she was wont to wear the hours
+away. The snuff-brush was brought into more fiercely active commission,
+but she said nothing till Mary Carmichael was within a few inches of her.
+Then, shifting the snuff-brush to a position more favorable to
+enunciation, she said: "Howdy? Ye be Miz Yellett's gov'ment, ain't ye?"
+There was something threatening in her aspect, as if the office of
+governess to the Yelletts carried some challenging quality.
+
+"Government?" repeated Mary, vaguely, her head still rumbling with the
+noise and motion of the stage; "I'm afraid I hardly understand."
+
+"Ain't you-uns goin' to teach the Yellett outfit ther spellin', writin',
+and about George Washington, an' how the Yankees kem along arter he was in
+his grave an' fit us and broke up the kentry so we had ter leave our home
+in Tennessee an' kem to this yere outdacious place, where nobody knows the
+diffunce between aig-bread an' corn-dodger? I war a Miss Tumlin from
+Tennessee."
+
+The rocking-chair now began to recover its accustomed momentum. This
+much-heralded educational expert was far from terrifying. Indeed, to Mrs.
+Rodney's hawklike gaze, that devoured every visible item of Mary's
+extremely modest travelling-dress, there was nothing so very wonderful
+about "the gov'ment from the East." With a deftness compatible only with
+long practice, Mrs. Rodney now put a foot on the round of an adjoining
+chair and shoved it towards Mary Carmichael in hospitable pantomime, never
+once relaxing her continual rocking the meantime. Mary took the chair, and
+Mrs. Rodney, after freshening up the snuff-brush from a small, tin box in
+her lap, put spurs to her rocking-chair, so to speak, and started off at a
+brisk canter.
+
+"I 'low it's mighty queer you-uns don't recognize the job you-uns kem out
+yere to take, when I call it by name." From the sheltering flap of the
+pink sun-bonnet she turned a pair of black eyes full of ill-concealed
+suspicion. "Miz Yellett givin' herself as many airs 'bout hirin' a
+gov'ment 's if she wuz goin' to Congress. Queer you don't know whether you
+be one or not!" She withdrew into the sun-bonnet, muttering to herself.
+She could not be more than fifty, Mary thought, but her habit of muttering
+and exhibiting her depopulated gums while she was in the act of
+revivifying the snuff-brush gave her a cronish aspect.
+
+A babel of voices came from the open-faced room on the opposite side of
+the house corresponding to the one in which Mary and Mrs. Rodney were
+sitting. Apparently supper was being prepared by some half-dozen young
+people, each of whom thought he or she was being imposed upon by the
+others. "Hand me that knife." "Git it yourself." "I'll tell maw how you
+air wolfing down the potatoes as fast as I can fry 'em." "Go on,
+tattle-tale." This was the repartee, mingled with the hiss of frying meat,
+the grinding of coffee, the thumping sound made by bread being hastily
+mixed in a wooden bowl standing on a wooden table. The babel grew in
+volume. Dogs added to it by yelping emotionally when the smell of the
+newly fried meat tempted them too near the platter and some one with a
+disengaged foot at his disposal would kick them out of doors.
+Personalities were exchanged more freely by members of the family, and the
+meat hissed harder as it was newly turned. "Laws-a-massy!" muttered Mrs.
+Rodney; and then, shoving back the sun-bonnet, she lifted her voice in a
+shrill, feminine shriek:
+
+"Eudory! Eu-dory! You-do-ry!"
+
+A Hebe-like creature, blond and pink-cheeked, in a blue-checked apron
+besmeared with grease and flour, came sulkily into her mother's presence.
+Seeing Mary Carmichael, she grasped the skirt of the greasy apron with the
+sleight of hand of a prestidigitateur and pleated it into a single
+handful. Her manner, too, was no slower of transformation. The family
+sulks were instantly replaced by a company bridle, aided and abetted by a
+company simper. "I didn't know the stage was in yet, maw. I been talking
+to Iry."
+
+"This here be Miz Yellett's gov'ment. Maybe she'd like to pearten up some
+before she eats." She started the rocking-chair at a gallop, to signify to
+her daughter that she washed her hands of further responsibility. Being
+proficient in the sign language of Mrs. Rodney's second self, as indeed
+was every member of the family, Eudora led Mary to a bench placed in one
+of the rooms enjoying the distinction of a side wall, and indicated a
+family toilet service, which displayed every indication of having lately
+seen active service. A roll-towel, more frankly significant of the
+multitude of the Rodneys than had been the babel of voices, a discouraged
+fragment of comb, a tin basin, a slippery atom of soap, these Eudora
+proffered with an unction worthy of better things. "I declare Mist' Chugg
+have scarce left any soap, an' I don't believe thar's 'nother bit in the
+house." Eudora's accent was but faintly reminiscent of her mother's strong
+Smoky Mountain dialect, as a crude feature is sometimes softened in the
+second generation. It was not unpleasing on her full, rosy mouth. The girl
+had the seductiveness of her half-sister, Judith, without a hint of
+Judith's spiritual quality.
+
+Mary told her not to mind about the soap, and went to fetch her hand-bag,
+which, consistent with the democratic spirit of its surroundings, was
+resting against a clump of sage-brush, whither it had been lifted by
+Chugg. Miss Carmichael's individual toilet service, which was neither
+handsome nor elaborate, impressed Eudora far more potently in ranking Mary
+as a personage than did her dignity of office as "gov'ment."
+
+"I reckon you-uns must have seen Sist' Judy up to Miz Dax's. I hope she
+war lookin' right well." There was in the inquiry an unmistakable note of
+pride. The connection was plainly one to be flaunted. Judith, with her
+gentle bearing and her simple, convent accomplishments, was plainly the
+_grande dame_ of the family. Eudora had now divested herself of the
+greasy, flour-smeared apron, flinging it under the wash-bench with a
+single all-sufficient movement, while Mary's look was directed towards her
+dressing-bag. In glancing up to make some remark about Judith, Mary was
+confronted by a radiant apparition whose lilac calico skirts looked fresh
+from the iron.
+
+At the side of the house languished a wretched, abortive garden, running
+over with weeds and sage-brush, and here a man pottered with the
+purposeless energy of old age, working with an ear cocked in the direction
+of the house, as he turned a spade of earth again and again in hopeless,
+pusillanimous industry. But when his strained attention was presently
+rewarded by a shouted summons to supper, and he stood erect but for the
+slouching droop of shoulders that was more a matter of temperament than of
+age, one saw a tall man of massive build, whose keen glance and slightly
+grizzled hair belied his groping, ineffectual labor. The head, and face
+were finely modelled. Unless nature had fashioned them in some vagrant,
+prankish mood, such elegance of line betokened prior generations in which
+gentlemen and scholars had played some part--the vagabond scion of a good
+family, perhaps. A multitude of such had grafted on the pioneer stock of
+the West, under names that carried no significance in the places whence
+they came.
+
+Weakness and self-indulgence there were, and those writ large and deep, on
+the face of Warren Rodney; and, in default of an expression of deeper
+significance, the wavering lines of instability produced a curiously
+ambiguous effect of a fine head modelled by a 'prentice hand; a lady's
+copy of the Belvidere, attempted in the ardors of the first lessons, might
+approximate it.
+
+A smoking kerosene lamp revealed a supper-table of almost institutional
+proportions. There were four sons and two daughters of the Tumlin union,
+strapping lads and lasses all of them, with more than a common dower of
+lusty health and a beauty that was something deeper than the perishable
+iridescence of youth. There was Fremont, named for the explorer-soldier;
+there was Orlando, named from his mother's vague, idle musings over
+paper-backed literature at certain "unchancy" seasons; there was Richards,
+named from pure policy, for a local great man of whom Warren Rodney had
+anticipated a helping hand at the time; there was Eudora, whose nominal
+origin was uncertain, unless it bore affiliation to that of Orlando; there
+was Sadie, thus termed to avoid the painful distinctions of "old Sally"
+and "young Sally"; and, lastly, like a postscript, came Dan--with him,
+fancy, in the matter of names, seemed to have failed. Dan was now six, a
+plump little caricature of a man in blue overalls, which, as they had
+descended to him from Richards in the nature of an heirloom, reached high
+under his armpits and shortened the function of his suspenders to the
+vanishing point.
+
+Eudora was now sixteen, and the woman-famine in all the land had gifted
+her with a surprising precocity. Eudora knew her value and meant to make
+the most of it. Unlike her mother in the old Black Hill days, she expected
+more than a "home of her own." To-night four suitors sat at table with
+Eudora, and she might have had forty had she desired it. Any one of the
+four would have cheerfully murdered the remaining three had opportunity
+presented itself. Supper was a mockery to them, a Barmecide feast. Each
+watched his rivals--and Eudora. This was a matter of life and death. There
+was no time for food. The girl revelled in the situation to the full of
+her untaught, unthinking, primitive nature. She gave the incident a
+tighter twist by languishing at them in turns. She smiled, she sighed, she
+drove them mad by taking crescent bites out of a slice of bread and
+exhibiting the havoc of her little, white teeth with a delectably dainty
+gluttony.
+
+Her mother, mumbling her supper with toothless impotency, renewed her
+youth vicariously, and, while she quarrelled with her daughter from the
+rising of the sun to the setting of the same, she added the last straw to
+the burden of the distracted suitors by announcing what a comfort Eudora
+was to her and how handy she was about the house.
+
+Warren Rodney supported the air of an exile at his own table. Beyond a
+preliminary greeting to his daughter's guests, he said nothing. His
+family, in their dealings with him, seemed to accord him the exemptions of
+extreme age. He ate with the enthusiasm of a man to whom meals have become
+the main business in life.
+
+"How's your mine up to Bad Water comin' along, Iry?" Orlando inquired, not
+from any hospitable interest in Ira's claim, but because he had sundry
+romantic interests in that neighborhood and hoped to make use of the young
+prospector's interest in his sister by securing an invitation to return
+with him. Ira regarded the inquiry in the light of a special providence.
+Here was his chance to impress Eudora with the splendor of his prospects
+and at the same time smite the claims of his rivals, and behold! a brother
+of his lady had led the way.
+
+Ira cleared his throat. "They tell me she air like to yield a million any
+day." At this Eudora gave him the wealth of her eyes, and her mother
+reached across two of the glowering suitors and dropped a hot flapjack on
+his plate.
+
+"Who sez that she air likely to yield a million any day?" inquired Ben
+Swift, openly flouting such prophecy. "Yes, who sez it?" inquired Hawks
+and Taylor, joining forces for the overthrow of the common enemy.
+
+"'They sez' is easy talkin', shore 'nuff," mumbled Mrs. Rodney, as she
+helped herself to butter with her own knife.
+
+"A sharp from the Smithsonian Institute at Washington, he said it, and he
+has taken back speciments with him."
+
+"Ye can't keep lackings from freightin' round speciments--naw, sir, ye
+can't, not till the fool-killer has finished his job." Ben Swift charged
+the table with the statement as the prosecution subtly appeals to the high
+grade of intelligence on the part of the jury. The point told. Eudora,
+wavering in her donation of hot flapjacks, gave them to Ben Swift.
+
+Hawks now leaned across the table with a sinuous, beguiling motion, and,
+extending his long neck towards the prospector, with the air of a
+turkey-gobbler about to peck, he crooned, softly: "Ira, it's a heap risky
+puttin' your faith in maverick sharps that trail around the country,
+God-a'mightying it, renaming little, old rocks into precious stones,
+seein' gold mines in every gopher-hole they come to. They names your
+backyard and the rocks appertainin' thereunto a heap fashionable, and like
+as not some sucker gives him good money to float the trash back East."
+
+Mrs. Rodney, whose partisanship in any discussion was analogous to the
+position of a hen perching on a fence unable to decide on which side to
+flutter, was visibly impressed by Hawks's presentation of the case.
+Looking towards her daughter from under the eaves of her sun-bonnet, she
+"'lowed she had hearn that Bad Water was hard on the skin, an' that it
+warn't much of a place arter all. Folks over thar war mostly half-livers."
+
+Ira, now losing all semblance of policy at being thus grievously put down
+by his possible mother-in-law, "reckoned that herdin' sheep over to the
+Basin was a heap easier on the skin than livin' in a comf'table house over
+to Bad Water"--this as a fling at Hawks, who herded a small bunch of sheep
+"over in the Basin."
+
+"Ai-yi," openly scoffed the former Miss Tumlin; "talk's cheap before--" She
+would have considered it indelicate to supply the word "marriage," but by
+breaking off her sentence before she came to the pith of it she continued
+to maintain the proprieties, and at the same time conveyed to her audience
+that she was too old and experienced to permit any fledgling from her nest
+to be caught, for want of a warning, by such obvious ante-matrimonial
+chaff as fair promises.
+
+"Laws a massy!" she continued, reminiscently, working her toothless jaw to
+free it from an escaped splinter from the snuff-brush. "When me an' paw
+war keepin' comp'ny, satin warn't good enough for me. He lowed I wuz to
+have half creation. Sence we wuz married he 'ain't never found time,
+endurin' all these years, to build me a bird-house."
+
+The unbuilt bird-house was the Banquo's ghost at the Rodney board, Mrs.
+Rodney hearkening back to it in and out of season. If the family made
+merry over a chance windfall of game or fresh vegetables, a prospect of
+possible employment for one of the boys, a donation of money from Judith,
+Mrs. Rodney remembered the unbuilt bird-house and indulged herself to the
+full of melancholy. It is not improbable that, if she had been asked to
+name the chiefest disappointment of her wretched married life, she would
+have mentioned the bird-house that was never built.
+
+At mention of it Warren Rodney murmured broken, deprecatory excuses. His
+dull eyes nervously travelled about the table for some one to make excuses
+for him. The family broke into hearty peals of laughter; the tragedy of
+the first generation had grown to be the unfailing source of merriment for
+the second.
+
+"Maw," began Orlando, "the reason you don't get no bird-house built out
+hyear is that they ain't no birds. We have offered time and time again to
+build you a house fo' buzzuds, they bein' the only birds hyearabouts, but
+you 'low that you ain't fav'ble to tamin' 'em."
+
+"I wuz raised in Tennessee, an' we-uns had a house for martins made out'n
+gourds, an' it was pearty." The pride with which she repeated this
+particular claim to honor in an alien land never diminished with
+repetition. As she advanced further through the dim perspective of years,
+the little mountain town in Tennessee became more and more the centre of
+cultivation and civic importance. The desolate cabin that she had left for
+the interminable journey westward was recalled flatteringly through the
+hallowing mists of time. The children, by reason of these chronicles, had
+grown to regard their mother as a sort of princess in exile.
+
+"Mrs. Rodney"--Swift leaned towards her and whispered something in her ear.
+She regarded him tentatively, then grinned. At her time of life, why
+should she put faith in the promises of men? "You fix it up, an' you get
+your bird-house," was the conclusion of his sentence.
+
+While this discussion had been in progress the viands had not been
+neglected except by such members of the company as had been bereft of
+appetite by loftier emotions--in consequence of which the table appeared to
+have sustained a visitation of seventeen-year locusts. Eudora, ever
+economic in the value she placed not only upon herself but her
+environment, proposed to her guests that they should wash the dishes, an
+art in which they were by no means deficient, being no exception to the
+majority of range bachelors in their skill in homely pursuits. And thus it
+came to pass that Eudora's suitors, swathed in aprons, meekly washed
+dishes shoulder to shoulder, while their souls craved the performance of
+valorous deeds.
+
+As this was the last stage station on the way to Lost Trail, Mary
+Carmichael was perforce obliged to content herself till Mrs. Yellett
+should call or send for her. After supper, Chugg, with fresh horses to the
+stage, left Rodney's, apparently for some port in that seemingly pathless
+sea of foot-hills. That there should be trails and defined routes over
+this vast, unvaried stretch of space seemed more wonderful to Mary than
+the charted high-roads of the Atlantic. The foot-hills seemed to have
+grown during the long journey till they were foot-hills no longer; they
+had come to be the smaller peaks of the towering range that had formed the
+spine of the desert. The air, that seemed to have lost some of its
+crystalline quality on the flat stretches of the plains, was again
+sparkling and heady in the clean hill country. It stirred the pulses like
+some rare vintage, some subtle distillation of sun-warmed fruit that had
+been mellowing for centuries.
+
+Very lonely seemed the Rodney home among the great company of mountains. A
+brooding desolation had settled on it at close of day, and all the
+laughter and light footsteps and gayly ringing voices of the young folk
+could not dispel the feeling of being adrift in a tiny shell on the black
+waters of some unknown sea; or thus it seemed to the stranger within their
+gate.
+
+Mrs. Rodney retired within the flap of her sun-bonnet after the evening
+meal, settling herself in the rocking-chair as if it were some sort of
+conveyance. Her family, who might have told the hour of day or her passing
+mood by the action of the chair, knew by her pacific gait that she would
+lament the unbuilt bird-house no more that night. The snuff-brush, newly
+replenished from the tin box, kept perfect time to the motion of the
+chair. With the lady of the house it was one of the brief seasons of
+passing content vouchsafed by an ample meal and a good digestion.
+
+Warren Rodney took down a gun from the wall and began to clean it. His
+hands had the fumbling, indefinite movements, the obscure action, directed
+by a brain already begun to crumble. His industry with the gun was of a
+part with the impotent dawdling in the garden. His eyes would seek for the
+rag or the bottle of oil in a dull, glazed way, and, having found them, he
+would forget the reason of his quest. Not once that evening had they
+rested on his wife or any member of his family. He had shown no interest
+in any of the small happenings of home, the frank rivalry of Eudora's
+suitors, the bickerings of the girls and boys over the division of
+household labor. The one thing that had momentarily aroused his somnolent
+intelligence was a revival of his wife's plaint anent the unbuilt
+bird-house. That, and a certain furtive anxiety during supper lest his
+daughter Eudora should forget to keep his plate piled high, were the only
+signs of a participation in the life about him.
+
+From one of the rooms that opened to the world like a stage to the
+audience, Mrs. Rodney kept her evening vigil. The last faint amethystine
+haze on the mountains was deepening. They towered about the valley where
+the house lay, with a challenging immensity, mocking the pitiful grasp of
+these pygmies on the thousand hills. The snow on the taller of the peaks
+still held the high lights. But all the valleys and the spaces between the
+mountains were wrapped in sombre shadows; the crazy house invading the
+great company of mountains, penetrating brazenly to the very threshold of
+their silent councils, seemed but a pitiful ant-hill at the mercy of some
+possible giant tread. The ill-adjusted family, disputing every inch of
+ground with the wilderness, became invested with a dignity quite out of
+keeping with its achievements. Their very weaknesses and vanities, old
+Sally still clinging to her sun-bonnet and her limp rose-colored skirts,
+an eternal requiem for the dead and gone complexion, lost the
+picturesqueness of the pioneer and ranked as universal qualities,
+admissible in the austerest setting. Perhaps in some far distant council
+of the Daughters of the Pioneers a prospective member of the house of
+Rodney would unctuously announce: "My great-great-grandmother was a Miss
+Tumlin of Tennessee; great-great-grandfather's first wife had been a Sioux
+squaw. Isn't it interesting and romantic?"
+
+Eudora now came to her mother with great news. Hawks had taken the first
+opportunity of being alone with her to tell her of Jim's release from jail
+and of his abortive encounter with Simpson in the eating-house. He had not
+deferred the telling from any feeling of reticence regarding the
+disclosure of family affairs before strangers. News travels in the desert
+by some unknown agency. Twenty-four hours after a thing happened it would
+be safe to assume that every cow and sheep outfit in a radius of three
+hundred miles would be discussing it over their camp-fires; and this long
+before there was an inch of telegraph wire or a railroad tire in the
+country. Hawks had merely reserved the news for Eudora's private ear
+because he hoped thus to gain an advantage over his three rivals.
+
+"Ai-yi!" said old Sally, sharply, and the chair came to an abrupt
+stand-still. "In the name o' Heaven, how kem they to let him out?" Mrs.
+Rodney's knowledge of the law was of the vaguest; and if incarceration
+would keep a prisoner out of more grievous trouble, she could not
+understand giving him his freedom. To her the case was analogous to
+releasing a child from the duress of a corner and turning him loose to
+play with matches. "How kem they to let him out?" she repeated, the still
+rocking-chair conveying the impersonal dignity of the pulpit or the
+justice-seat. "I 'ain't hearn tell of so pearty a couple as the jail an'
+Jim in years."
+
+The meaning that she put into her words belied their harsh face-value.
+With Jim in jail, her mind was comparatively at rest about him. She knew
+he had been branding other men's cattle since the destruction of his
+sheep, and she knew the fate of cattle-thieves, and that Jim would be no
+exception to the rule. With her purely instinctive maternity, she had been
+fond of Jim. He had been one more boy to mother. She harbored no
+ill-feeling towards him that he was not her own. Moreover, she wanted no
+gallows-tree intermingled with the annals of her family. It suited her
+convenience at this particular time that Jim should stay in jail. That he
+had been given his freedom loosed the phials of her condemnation on the
+incompetents that released him.
+
+"I 'low they wuz grudgin' him the mouthful they fed to him, that they ack
+so outdaciously plumb locoed as to tu'n a man out to get hisself hanged.
+An' Jim never wuz a hearty eater. He never seemed to relish his food, even
+when he wuz a growin' kid."
+
+A pale, twinkling point of light, faintly glimmering in the vast solitudes
+above the billowing peaks, suddenly burst into a dazzling constellation
+before the girl and her mother. "It's a warning!" shivered the old woman.
+"Some'um's bound to happen." She began to rock herself slowly. The thing
+she dreaded had already come to pass in her imagination. Jim a free man
+was Jim a dead man. He was so dead that already his step-mother was going
+on with a full acceptance of the idea. She reviewed her relationship to
+him. No, she had nothing to blame herself for. He had been more
+troublesome than any of her own children and for that reason she had been
+more liberal with the rod. And yet--the face of the squaw rose before her,
+wraithlike, accusing! "Ai-yi!" she said; but this time her favorite
+expletive was hardly more than a sigh.
+
+"I mind Jim when he first kem to us," she said, more to herself than to
+Eudora, who sat at her feet. The impending tragedy in the family had
+robbed her of all the joy in her suitors. They sat on a bench on the
+opposite side of the house, divided by the very nature of their interests
+yet companions in misery.
+
+"He wuz scarce four, an' yet he had never been broke of the habit of
+sucking his thumb. Ef he'd ben my child, I'd a lammed it out'n him before
+he'd a seen two, but seem' he was aged for an infant havin' such
+practices, I tried to shame him out'n it. But, Lord a massy, men folks is
+hard to shame even at four. I hissed at him like a gyander every time I
+seen him do it. Now I'd a knowed better--I'd a sewed it up in a pepper
+rag."
+
+"What's suckin' his thumb as an infant got to do with his gettin' lynched
+now?" demanded Eudora, with the scepticism of the second generation.
+
+"Wait till you-uns has children of your own," sniffed her mother, from the
+assured position of maternal experience, "an' see the infant that's
+allowed to suck its thumb has the makin's in him of a felon or a
+unfortunit." She rocked a slow accompaniment to her dismal, prophecy.
+
+Eudora's eyes, big with wonder, were fixed on the crouching flank of a
+distant mountain. Her mother broke the silence. Not often did they speak
+thus intimately. Old Sally belonged to that class of mothers who feel a
+pride in their reticent dealings with their daughters, and who consider
+the management of all affairs of the heart peculiarly the province of
+youth and inexperience.
+
+But to-night she was prompted by a force beyond her ken to speak to the
+girl. "Eudory, in pickin' out one of them men," she jerked her thumb
+towards the opposite side of the house, "git one tha's clar o' the trick
+o' stampedin' round other wimming. It's bound to kem back to ye, same as
+counterfeit money."
+
+Eudora giggled. She was of an age when the fascinations of curiosity as to
+the unknown male animal prompt lavish conjecture. "I 'lowed they all
+stampeded."
+
+"Yes," leered the old woman--and she grinned the whole horrid length of her
+empty gums--"the most of 'em does. But you must shet your eyes to it. The
+moment they know you swallow it, they's wuthless, like horses that has run
+away once."
+
+"Hark!" said Eudora. "Ain't that wheels?"
+
+"It be," answered her mother. "It be that old Ma'am Yellett after her
+gov'ment."
+
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+
+                     Mrs. Yellett And Her "Gov'ment"
+
+
+The buckboard drew up to the back or open-faced entrance of the Rodney
+house with a splendid sweep, terminating in a brilliantly staccato halt,
+as if to convey to the residents the flattering implication that their
+house was reached via a gravelled driveway, rather than across lumpish
+inequalities of prairie overgrown with cactus stumps and clumps of
+sage-brush. From the buckboard stepped a figure whose agility was
+compatible with her driving.
+
+No sketchy outline can do justice to Mrs. Yellett or her costume. Like the
+bee, the ant, and other wonders of the economy of nature, she was not to
+be disposed of with a glance. And yet there was no attempt at subtlety on
+her part; on the contrary, no one could have an appearance of greater
+candor than the lady whose children Mary Carmichael had come West to
+teach. Her costume was a thing apart, suggesting neither sex, epoch, nor
+personal vanity, but what it lacked of these more usual sartorial
+characteristics, it more than made up in a passionate individualism; an
+excessively short skirt, so innocent of "fit" or "hang" in its wavering,
+indeterminate outline as to suggest the possible workmanship of teeth
+rather than of scissors; and riding-boots coming well to the knee,
+displaying a well-shaped, ample foot, perched aloft on the usual high heel
+that cow-punchers affect as the expression of their chiefest vanity. But
+Mrs. Yellett was not wholly mannish in her tastes, and to offset the boots
+she wore a bodice of the type that a generation ago used to be known as a
+"basque." It fitted her ample form as a cover fits a pin-cushion, the row
+of jet buttons down the front looking as if a deep breath might cause them
+to shoot into space at any moment with the force of Mauser bullets.
+
+Such a garb was not, after all, incongruous with this original lady's
+weather-beaten face. Her skin was tanned to a fine russet, showing tiny,
+radiating lines about the eyes when they twinkled with laughter, which was
+often. No individual feature was especially striking, but the general
+impression of her countenance was of animation and activity, mingled with
+geniality and with native shrewdness.
+
+"Howdy, Miz Yellett," called out old Sally, hitching her rocker forward,
+in an excitement she could ill conceal. "You-uns' gov'ment come, an' she
+ain't much bigger'n a lettle green gourd. Don't seem to have drawed all
+the growth comin' to her yit."
+
+"In roundin' up the p'ints of my gov'ment, Mis' Rodney, you don't want to
+forget that green gourds and green grapes is mighty apt to belong to the
+sour fambly, when they hangs beyant your reach."
+
+"Ai-yi!" grimaced old Sally. "It's tol'able far to send East for green
+fruit. We can take our own pep'mint."
+
+The prospective advent of a governess in the Yellett family, moreover, one
+from that mysterious centre of culture, the East, had not only rent the
+neighborhood with bitter factions, but had submitted the Yelletts to the
+reproach of ostentation. In those days there were no schools in that
+portion of the Wind River country where the Yelletts grazed their flocks
+and herds. Parents anxious to obtain "educational advantages"--that was the
+term, irrespective of the age of the student or the school he
+attended--sent them, often, with parental blindness as to the equivocal
+nature of the blessing thus conferred, to visit friends in the neighboring
+towns while they "got their education." Or they went uneducated, or they
+picked up such crumbs of knowledge as fell from the scant parental board.
+But never, up to the present moment, had any one flown into the face of
+neighborly precedent except sturdy Sarah Yellett.
+
+Old Sally, in her eagerness to convey that she was in no degree impressed
+with the pedagogical importation, like many another belligerent lost the
+first round of the battle through an excess of personal feeling. But
+though down, Sally was by no means out, and after a brief session with the
+snuff-brush she returned to the field prepared to maintain that the
+Yellett children, for all their pampering in the matter of having a
+governess imported for their benefit, were no better off than her own
+brood, who had taken the learning the gods provided.
+
+"Too bad, Miz Yellett, that you-uns had to hire that gov'ment without
+lookin' over her p'ints. I've ben takin' her in durin' supper, and she'll
+never be able to thrash 'em past Clem. She mought be able to thrash Clem
+if she got plumb mad, these yere slim wimmin is tarrible wiry 'n' active
+at such times, but she'll never be able to thrash beyant her." And having
+injected the vitriolic drop in her neighbor's cup of happiness, Old Sally
+struck a gait on her chair which was the equivalent of a gallop.
+
+But Mrs. Yellett was not the sort of antagonist to be left gaping on the
+road, awed to silence by the action of a rocking-chair, no matter how
+brilliant.
+
+"I reckon I can thrash my own children when it's needed, without gettin'
+in help from the East, or hereabouts either, for that matter. If other
+folks would only take out their public-spirited reformin' tendencies on
+their own famblies, there'd be a heap less lynchin' likely to happen round
+the country in the course of the next ten years."
+
+Old Sally let the home-thrust pass. "Who ever hearn tell of a good teacher
+that wasn't a fine thrasher in the bargain?" She swung the chair about
+with a pivotal motion, as if she were addressing an assemblage instead of
+a single listener, and then, bethinking herself of a clinching
+illustration, she called aloud to her daughter to bear witness. "Eudory!
+Eu-do-ry! You-do-ry!"
+
+"Ye-'s ma'am," drawled the daughter, coming most unwillingly from the
+open-faced room opposite, where she had been inciting all four of the
+suitors to battle.
+
+"What was it they called that teacher down to Caspar that larruped the
+hide off'n the boys?"
+
+"A fine dis-a-_ply_-narian, maw."
+
+"Yes, that's it--a dis-a-_ply_-narian. What kin a lettle green gourd like
+her know 'bout dis-apply-in?"
+
+"Your remarks shore remind me of a sayin' that 'the discomfort of havin'
+to swallow other folks' dust causes a heap of anxiety over their reckless
+driving.'"
+
+Mrs. Yellett flicked her riding-boot with her whip. Her voice dropped a
+couple of tones, her accent became one of honeyed sweetness.
+
+"Your consumin' anxiety regardin' my gov'ment and my children shore
+reminds me of a narrative appertainin' to two dawgs. Them dawgs was
+neighbors, livin' in adj'inin' yards separated by a fence, and one day one
+of them got a good meaty bone and settled hisself down to the enj'yment
+thereof. And his intimate friend and neighbor on the other side of the
+fence, who had no bone to engage his faculties, he began to fret hisself
+'bout the business of his friend. S'pose he was to choke hisself over that
+bone. S'pose the meat disagreed with him. And he begins to bark warnin's,
+but the dawg with the bone he keeps right on. But the other dawg he dashes
+hisself again the fence and he scratches with his claws. He whines
+pitiful, he's that anxious about his friend. But the dawg with the bone he
+went right on till he gnawed it down to the last morsel, and, goin' to the
+hole in the fence whar his friend had kep' that anxious vigil, he says:
+'Friend, the only thing that consoled me while having to endure the
+anguish of eatin' that bone was the thought of your watchful sympathy!'
+Which bein' the case, I'd thank you to tell me whar I can find my
+gov'ment."
+
+"Ai-yi!" said old Sally. "I ain't seein' no bone this deal. Just a lettle
+green gourd 's all I see with my strongest specs."
+
+Mary Carmichael, in one of the inner rooms, was writing a home letter,
+which was chiefly remarkable for what it failed to relate. It gave long
+accounts of the scenery, it waxed didactic over the future of the country;
+but the adventures of the trip, with her incidental acquaintance with the
+Daxes and Chugg, were not recorded. Eudora announced the arrival of Mrs.
+Yellett, and Mary, at the news, dropped the contents of her portfolio and
+started up with much the feeling a marooned sailor might have on hearing a
+sail has been sighted. At this particular stage of her career Miss
+Carmichael had not developed the philosophy that later in life was
+destined to become her most valuable asset. Her sense of humor no longer
+responded to the vagaries of pioneer life. The comedy element was coming a
+little too thick and fast. She was getting a bit heart-sick for a glimpse
+of her own kind, a word with some one who spoke her language. And here, at
+last, was the woman who had written such a charming letter, who had so
+graciously intimated that there was room for her at the hearth-stone. Mary
+was, indeed, eager to make the acquaintance of Mrs. Yellett.
+
+To the end of her life she never forgot that first meeting--the perfect
+confidence with which she followed Eudora to the open room, the ensuing
+blank amazement, the utter inability to reconcile the Mrs. Yellett of the
+letter with the Mrs. Yellett of fact. The lamp on the table, burning
+feebly, seemed to burst into a thousand shooting-stars as the girl
+struggled with her tears. Home was so far, and Mrs. Yellett was so
+different from what she had expected! And yet, as she felt her fingers
+crush in the grip of that hard but not unkindly hand, there was in the
+woman's rugged personality a sustaining quality; and, thinking again of
+Archie's prospects, Mary was not altogether sorry that she had come.
+
+"You be a right smart young maverick not to get lost none on this long
+trail, and no one to p'int you right if you strayed," commented Mary's
+patroness, affably. "But we won't roominate here no longer than we can
+help. It's too hard on old Ma'am Rodney. She's just 'bout the color of
+withered cabbage now, 'long of me havin' you."
+
+While she talked, Mrs. Yellett picked up Mary's trunk and bags and stowed
+them in the back of the buckboard with the ease with which another woman
+might handle pasteboard boxes. One or two of the male Rodneys offered to
+help, but she waved them aside and lashed the luggage to the buckboard,
+handling the ropes with the skill of an old sailor. The entire Rodney
+family and the suitors of Eudora assembled to witness the departure. "It's
+a heap friendly of you to fret so," was the parting stab of Sarah Yellett
+to Sally Rodney; and she swung the backboard about, cleared the cactus
+stumps in the Rodney door-yard, and gained the mountain-road.
+
+"Ai-yi!" said old Sally. "What's this country comin' to?"
+
+"A few more women, thank God!" remarked Ira. Eudora had just snubbed him,
+and he put a wealth of meaning into his look after the vanishing
+buckboard.
+
+The night was magnificent. From horizon to horizon the sky was sown with
+quivering points of light. Each straggling clump of sage-brush, rocky
+ledge, and bowlder borrowed a beauty not its own from the yellow radiance
+of the stars.
+
+They had gone a good two miles before Mary's patroness broke the silence
+with, "Nothing plumb stampedes my temper like that Rodney outfit--old Sally
+buckin' an' pitchin' in her rockin'-chair same as if she was breakin' a
+bronco, an' that Eudory always corallin', deceivin', and jiltin' one
+outfit of men after another. If she was a daughter of mine, I'd medjure
+her length across my knee, full growed and courted though she is. The only
+one of the outfit that's wuth while is Judith, an' she ain't old woman
+Rodney's girl, neither. You hyeard that already, did you? Well, this yere
+country may be lackin' in population, but it's handy as a sewin'-circle in
+distributin' news."
+
+Mary mentioned Leander. "Yes," answered Mrs. Yellett, reflectively,
+"Leander's mouth do run about eight and a half octaves. Sometimes I don't
+blame his wife for bangin' down the lid."
+
+They talked of Jim Rodney's troubles, and the growing hatred between sheep
+and cattle men, because of range rights.
+
+"Now that pore Jim had a heap of good citizen in him, before that
+pestiferous cattle outfit druv' his sheep over the cliff. Relations 'twixt
+sheep and cattle men in this yere country is strained beyant the
+goin'-back place, I can tell you. My pistol-eye 'ain't had a wink of sleep
+for nigh on eighteen months, an' is broke to wakefulness same as a
+teethin' babe.
+
+"Jim was wild as a coyote 'fore he marries that girl. She come all the way
+from Topeka, Kansas, thinking she was goin' to find a respectable home,
+and when she come out hyear and found the place was a dance-hall, she
+cried all the time. She didn't add none to the hilarity of the place. An'
+one day Jim he strolled in, an' seem' the girl a-cryin' like a freshet and
+wishin' she was dead, he inquired the cause. She told him how that old
+harpy wrote her, an', bein' an orphant, she come out thinkin' she was
+goin' to a respectable place as waitress, an' Jim he 'lowed it was a case
+for the law. He was a little shy of twenty at the time, just a young
+cockerel 'bout br'ilin' size. Some of the old hangers-on 'bout the place
+they see a heap of fun in Jim's takin' on 'bout the girl, he bein' that
+young that he had scarce growed a pair of spurs yet. An' one of 'em says
+to him,' Sonny, if you're afeerd that this yere corral is onjurious to the
+young lady's morals, we'll call in the gospel sharp, if you'll stand for
+the brand.' Now Jim hadn't a cent, nor no callin', nor a prospect to his
+back, but he struts up to the man that was doin' the talkin', game as a
+bantam, an' he says, 'The lady ain't rakin' in anythin' but a lettle white
+chip, in takin' me, but if she's willin', here's my hand.'
+
+"At which that pore young thing cried harder than ever. Well, Jim he up
+an' marries the girl an' it turns out fine. He gets a job herdin' sheep on
+shares, an' she stays with the Rodney outfit till he saves enough to build
+a cabin. Things is goin' with Jim like a prairie afire. In a few years he
+acquires a herd of his own, a fine herd, not a scabby sheep in the bunch.
+Alida she makes him the best kind of a wife, them kids is the pride of his
+life, and then, them cursed cattle-men do for him. Of course, he takes to
+rustlin'; I'd do more'n rustle if they'd touch mine."
+
+The pair of broncos that Mrs. Yellett was driving humped their backs like
+cats as they climbed the steep mountain-road. With her, driving was an
+exact science. It was a treat to see her handle the ribbons. Mary asked
+some trifling question about the children and it elicited the information
+that one of the girls was named Cacta. "Yes," she said, "I like new names
+for children, not old ones that is all frazzled out and folks has suffered
+an' died to. It seems to start 'em fair, like playin' cards with a new
+deck. Cacta's my oldest daughter, and I named her after the flowers that
+blooms all over the desert spite of everything, heat, cold, an' rain an'
+alkali dust--the cactus blooms right through it all. Even its own thorns
+don't seem to fret it none. I called her plain Cactus till she was three,
+and along came a sharp studyin' the flowers an' weeds out here, and he
+'lowed that Cactus was a boy's name an' Cacta was for girls--called it a
+_fee_minin tarnation, or somethin' like that, so we changed it. My second
+daughter 'ain't got quite so much of a name. She's called Clematis. That
+holds its own out here pretty well, 'long by the willows on the creek. Paw
+'lowed he was terrible afraid that I'd name the youngest girl Sage-brush,
+so he spoke to call her Lessie Viola, an' I giv' in. The boys is all plain
+named, Ben, Jack, and Ned. Paw wouldn't hear of a fancy brand bein' run
+onto 'em."
+
+The temperature fell perceptibly as they climbed the heights, and the air
+had the heady quality of wine. It was awesome, this entering into the
+great company of the mountains. Presently Mary caught the glimmer of
+something white against the dark background of the hills. It gleamed like
+a snow-bank, though they were far below the snow-line on the mountain-side
+they were climbing.
+
+"Well, here be camp," announced Mrs. Yellett. What Mary had taken for a
+bank of snow was a huge, canvas-covered wagon. Several dogs ran down to
+greet the buckboard, barking a welcome. In the background was a shadowy
+group, huge of stature, making its way down the mountain-path. "And here's
+all the children come to meet teacher." Mrs. Yellett's tone was tenderly
+maternal, as if it was something of a feat for the children to walk down
+the mountain-path to meet their teacher. But Mary, straining her eyes to
+catch a glimpse of her little pupils, could discover nothing but a group
+of persons that seemed to be the sole survivors of some titanic race. Not
+one among them but seemed to have reached the high-water mark of six feet.
+Was it an optical illusion, a hallucination born of the wonderful
+starlight? Or were they as huge as they seemed? The young men looked
+giants, the girls as if they had wandered out of the first chapters of
+Genesis. Their mother introduced them. They all had huge, warm, perspiring
+hands, with grips like bears. Mary looked about for a house into which she
+could escape to gather her scattered faculties, but the starlight, yellow
+and luminous, revealed none. There was the huge covered wagon that she had
+taken for a snow-bank, there was a small tent, there were two light
+wagons, there were dogs innumerable, but there was no sign of a house.
+
+"What do you think of it?" inquired Mrs. Yellett, smilingly, anticipating
+a favorable answer.
+
+"It's almost too beautiful to leave." Mary innocently supposed that Mrs.
+Yellett referred to the starlit landscape. "But I'm so tired, Mrs.
+Yellett, and so glad to get to a real home at last, that I'm going to ask
+if you will not show me the way to the house so that I may go to bed right
+away."
+
+This apparently reasonable request was greeted by a fine chorus of titanic
+laughter from Mary's pupils. Mrs. Yellett waved her hand over the
+surrounding landscape in comprehensive gesture.
+
+"Ain't all this large enough for you?" she asked, gayly.
+
+"You mean the mountains? They're wonderful. But--I really think I'd like to
+go in the house."
+
+"I shore hope you ain't figgerin' on goin' into no house, 'cause there
+ain't no house to go into." She laughed merrily, as if the idea of such an
+effete luxury as a house were amusing. "This yere family 'ain't ever had a
+house--it camps."
+
+Mary gasped. The real meaning of words no longer had the power of making
+an impression on her. If Mrs. Yellett had announced that they were in the
+habit of sleeping in the moon, it would not have surprised her.
+
+"If you are tired, an' want to go to bed, you can shuck off and lie down
+any time. Ben, Jack, Ned, go an' set with paw in the tent while the
+gov'ment gets ready for bed. Cacta and Clem, you help me with them
+quilts."
+
+Mary stood helpless in the wilderness while quilts and pillows were
+fetched somewhere from the adjacent scenery, and Mrs. Yellett asked her,
+with the gravity of a Pullman porter interrogating a passenger as to the
+location of head and foot, if she liked to sleep "light or dark." She
+chose "dark" at random, hating to display her ignorance of the
+alternatives, with the happy result that her bed was made up to leeward of
+the great sheep-wagon, in a nice little corner of the State of Wyoming.
+Mary was grateful that she had chosen dark.
+
+As she dozed off, she was reminded of a certain magazine illustration that
+Archie had pinned over his bed after the aunts had given a grudging
+consent to this westward journey. There was a line beneath the pictorial
+decoy which read: "Ranch Life in the New West." And there were piazzas
+with fringed Mexican hammocks, wild-grass cushions, a tea-table with a
+samovar, and, last, a lady in white muslin pouring tea. The stern reality
+apparently consisted in scorching alkali plains, with houses of the
+packing-box school of architecture at a distance of seventy or eighty
+miles apart. No ladies in white muslin poured tea; they garbed themselves
+in simple gunny-sacking, and their repartee had an acrid, personal note.
+But Mary was glad to know that Archie had that picture, and that he
+thought of her in such ideal surroundings.
+
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+
+                           On Horse-thief Trail
+
+
+Judith, on her black mare, Dolly, left the Dax ranch after the mid-day
+meal to go in quest of her brother. He had left his comfortable cabin on
+the Bear Creek, when he had turned rustler, and moved into the "bad man's
+country," one of those remote mountain fastnesses that abound in Wyoming
+and furnish a natural protection to the fugitive from justice. Judith took
+the left fork of the road even as Peter Hamilton had chosen the right, the
+day she had watched him gallop towards Kitty Colebrooke with never a
+glance backward. Judith strove now to put him and the memory of that day
+from her mind by turning towards the open country without a glance in the
+direction he had taken. But her thoughts were weary of journeying over
+that trail that she would not look towards; in imagination she had
+travelled it with Peter a hundred times, saw each dip and turn of the
+yellow road, each feature of the landscape as he rode exultant to Kitty,
+to be turned, tried, taken or left as her mood should prompt. But Judith
+was more woman than saint, and in her heart there was a blending of joy
+and pain. For she knew--such skill has love in inference from detail--that
+the mysterious far-away girl, who was so powerful that she could have
+whatever she wanted, even to Peter, loved her own ambitions better than
+she did Peter or Peter's happiness, and that she would not marry him
+except as a makeshift. For Miss Colebrooke wrote verses; Peter had a
+white-and-gold volume of them that Judith fancied he said his prayers to.
+
+As for Peter himself, he had never been able to explain the magic Kitty
+had brewed for him. There was a heady quality in the very ring of her
+name. His first glimpse of her, on Class Day, in a white gown and a hat
+that to his manly indiscrimination looked as guileless as a sheaf of
+poppies nodding above the pale-yellow hair that had the sheen of
+corn-silk, had been a vision that stirred in him heroic promptings. He had
+no difficulty in securing an introduction. She was a connection of the
+Wetmores, as was he, though through opposite sides of the house. In the
+few minutes' talk that followed, he had the disconcerting sensation of
+being "talked down to." There was the indulgent tolerance of the woman of
+the world to the "nice boy" about this amazing young woman, who might have
+been eighteen. Hamilton had repudiated the very suggestion of being a
+"nice boy." But he felt himself blushing, groping for words, saying stupid
+things, supplying every requisite of the "nice boy" as if he were acting
+the part. Her chaperon bore her away presently, and he was left with a
+radiant impression of corn-silk hair and a complexion that justified
+Bouguereau's mother-of-pearl flesh tints. And when she had tilted the
+ruffled lace parasol over her shoulder, so that it framed her head like a
+fleecy halo, he had seen that her eyes were green as jade. Withal he had a
+sense of having acquitted himself stupidly.
+
+Later, when he ran the gamut of some friends, they had chaffed him on his
+hardihood. By Jove! He had nerve to look at her! Didn't he know she was
+"the" Miss Colebrooke? Now Hamilton was absolutely ignorant of Miss
+Colebrooke's right of way to the definite article, but it was
+characteristic of him to make no inquiries. On the whole, he found the
+situation meeting with a greater number of the artistic requirements than
+such situations usually presented. He was still dallying with this
+pleasant vagueness of sensation when he picked up a copy of a magazine,
+and the name Katherine Colebrooke caught his eye and held it like the
+flight of a comet. Her contribution was a sonnet entitled "The Miracle."
+As a naïve emotional confession, "The Miracle" interested him; as a
+sonnet, he rent it unmercifully.
+
+Peter was to learn, however, that this sonnet was but a solitary flake in
+a poetic fall of more or less magnitude. He rather conspicuously avoided a
+reference to her poetry when they met again. To him it was the very least
+of her gifts. Her hair, that had the tender yellow of ripening corn, was
+worthy a cycle of sonnets, but pray leave the making of them to some one
+else! By daylight the jade-colored eyes seemed to shut out the world. The
+pupils shrank to pin-points. The green looked deep--as many fathoms as the
+sea. She was all Diana by daylight, a huntress, if you will, of the
+elusive epithet, but essentially a maiden goddess, who would add no
+sprightly romance to the chronicles of Olympus. By lamp-light she
+suggested quite another divinity. The pin-points expanded; they burned
+black, like coals newly breaking into flame.
+
+When Hamilton knew her better, he did not like to think that he had
+thought her eighteen at their first meeting. It impugned his judgment as a
+man of the world. Young ladies of eighteen could not possibly be
+contributors of several years' standing to the various magazines.
+Disconcerting scraps of gossip floated to him. He heard of her as
+bridesmaid at a famous wedding of six years back, when she had deflected
+the admiration from the bride and remained the central figure of the
+picture. Her portrait by Sargent had been the sensation of the Salon when
+he had been a grubby-faced boy with his nose in a Latin grammar. An
+unusual situation was abhorrent to him. That he should marry an older
+woman, one, moreover, who had gained her public in a field to which he had
+not gained admission, was doubly distasteful by reason of his deference to
+the conventional. If she had flirted with him, his midsummer madness would
+have evaporated into thin air; but she kept him at arm's-length,
+ostensibly took him seriously, and the boy proposed.
+
+Her rejection of him was a matter of such consummate skill that Hamilton
+did not realize the keenness of his disappointment till he was swinging
+westward over the prairies. She had confided to him that her work claimed
+her and that she must renounce those sweet responsibilities that made the
+happiness of other women. It was with the protective mien of one who
+sought to shield him from an adverse destiny that she declined his suit.
+
+This had all happened seven years ago. In the mean time he had adjusted
+his disappointment to the new life of the West. To say that he had fallen
+in love with the situation would be to misrepresent him. But the rôle of
+lonely cow-puncher loyally wedded to the thought of his first love was not
+without charm to Peter. How long his constancy would have survived the
+test of propinquity to a woman of Judith Rodney's compelling personality,
+other things being equal, it would be difficult to hazard a guess. The
+coming of Judith from the convent increased the perspective into which
+Kitty was retreating. With the vivid plainswoman in the foreground, the
+pale-haired writer of verse dwindled almost to reminiscence. But the
+reverence for the usual, that made up the underlying motive for so much of
+Hamilton's conduct, presented barriers alongside of which his previous
+quandary regarding Miss Colebrooke's seniority shrank to insignificance.
+He might marry a woman older than himself and swallow the grimace of it,
+but by no conceivable system of argument could he persuade himself to
+marry into a family like that of the Rodneys--the girl herself, for all her
+beauty and rare womanliness, a quarter Indian, her father the synonyme for
+obloquy, her brother a cattle thief. Hamilton preferred that other men
+should make the heroic marriages of a new country. He was prepared to
+applaud their hardihood of temperament, but in his own case such a thing
+was inconceivable. Similar arguments have ensnared multitudes in the web
+of caution and provided a rich feast for the arch-spider, convention, the
+shrivelled flies dangling in the web conveying no significance,
+apparently, beyond that of advertising the system.
+
+When Peter went East, he had expected to find Kitty worn by the pursuit of
+epithets, haunted by the phantom of a career, resigned to the slings and
+arrows of remorseful spinsterhood. An obvious regret, or, at least,
+resignation tempered with remembrance, was the unguent he anticipated at
+the hands of Kitty. But alas for sanctuaries built to refuge wounded
+pride! He found Kitty the pivot of an adoring coterie, the magazines
+flowing with the milk and honey of her verse and she looking younger, if
+possible, than when he had first known her. Time, experience, even the
+pangs of literary parturition had not writ a single character on that
+alabaster brow. The very atrophy of the forces of time which she had
+accomplished by unknown necromancy seemed to endow her with an elfin
+youth, making her seem smaller, more childlike, more radiantly elusive
+than when she had worn the poppy hat at Cambridge.
+
+The tan and hardship of the prairie had adjusted the blunder of their
+ages. Stark conditions had overdrawn his account perhaps a decade; she
+retained a surplus it would be rude to estimate. Her greeting of him was
+radiant, her welcome panoplied in words that verged close to inspiration.
+A woman would have scented warning instantly, deep feeling and the curled
+and perfumed phrase being suspicious cronies and sure to rouse those
+lightly slumbering watch-dogs, the feminine wits. But Peter only turned
+the other cheek. More than once, in the days that followed, he devoutly
+thanked his patron saint, caution, that his relations with Judith had been
+governed by characteristic prudence. Kitty admitted him to her coterie,
+but he had lost nothing of his attitude of grand Turk towards her verses.
+The sin be upon the heads of whomever took such things seriously! The
+irony of fate that compelled a class poet to punch cows may have tinctured
+his judgment.
+
+A telegram recalled him to the ranch and prevented a final leave-taking
+with Miss Colebrooke. He made his adieux by letter, and they were frankly
+regretful. Miss Colebrooke's reply mingled sorrow in parting from her old
+friend with joy in having found him. Her letter, a masterpiece of
+phrase-spinning, presented to Peter the one significant fact that she
+would not be averse to the renewal of his suit. In reading her letter he
+made no allowance for the fact that the lady had made a fine art of saying
+things, and that her joy and regret at their meeting and parting might
+have been reminiscent of the printed passion that was so prominent a
+feature of magazinedom. Her letters--the like of them he had never seen
+outside printed volumes of letters that had achieved the distinction of
+classics--culminated in the one that Judith had given him that morning,
+announcing that unexpectedly she had decided to join the Wetmore girls and
+would be glad to see him at the ranch.
+
+That he had flown at her bidding, Judith knew. What she would least have
+suspected was that Miss Colebrooke had received her visitor as if his
+breakneck ride across the desert had been in the nature of an afternoon
+call. If Judith, knowing what she did of this long-drawn-out romance,
+could have known likewise of her knight's chagrin, would she have pitied
+him?
+
+Ignorant of the recent anticlimax, and with a burden of many heavy
+thoughts, Judith was penetrating a world of unleavened desolation. Beneath
+the scourge of the noon-day sun the desert lay, stripped of every
+illusion. Vegetation had almost ceased, nothing but sun-scorched,
+dust-choked sage-brush could spring from such sterility. The fruit of
+desolation, it gave back to desolation a quality more melancholy than
+utter barrenness. Glittering in the sunlight, the beds of alkali gleamed
+leper white; above them the agitated air was like the hot waves that dance
+and quiver about iron at white heat. From horizon to horizon the curse of
+God seemed to have fallen on the land; it was as if, cursing it, He had
+forgotten it, and left it as the abomination of desolation. Judith scarce
+heeded, her thoughts straying after first one then another of the group
+that made up her little world--Peter Hamilton, Kitty Colebrooke, Jim, his
+family--thoughts inconsequent as the dancing dust-devils that whirled over
+that infinity of space, and, whirling, disappeared and reappeared at some
+new corner of the compass.
+
+The trail that she must take to Jim's camp in the mountain was known to
+but few honest men. Fugitives from justice--the grave, impersonal justice
+of the law, or the swift justice of the plains--found there an asylum. And
+while they sometimes suffered, in death by thirst or hunger, a sentence
+more dreadful than the law of the land or the law of the rope would have
+given them, the desert, like the sea, seldom gave up her own. It was more
+than probable that no woman except Alida Rodney had ever taken that trail
+before, and reasonably certain that no woman had ever taken it alone.
+Dolly, when she saw the beds of alkali grow more frequent, and that the
+trails of the range cattle turned back, sniffed the lack of water in the
+air, slackened her pace, and turned an interrogatory ear towards her
+mistress.
+
+"It's all right, old girl"; the gauntleted hand patted the satin neck.
+"We're in for"--Judith flung her head up and confronted the infinite
+desolation yawning to the sky-line--"God knows what."
+
+Dolly broke into a light canter; this evidently was not an occasion for
+dawdling. There was a touch of business about the way the reins were held
+that made the mare settle down to work. But her flying hoofs made little
+apparent progress against the space and silence of the desert. Five, ten,
+fifteen miles and the curving shoulder of the mountain, that she must
+cross, still mocked in the distance. Only the sun moved in that vast world
+of seemingly immutable forces.
+
+There was no stoic Sioux in Judith now. The girl that breasted the crests
+of the foot-hills shrank in terror from the loneliness and the suggestion
+of foes lurking in ambush. The sun dropped behind the mountain, leaving a
+blood-red pool in his wake, like fugitive Cain. Already night was sweeping
+over the earth from mountain shadows that flowed imperceptibly together
+like blackened pools. To the girl following the trail the silence was more
+dreadful than a chorus of threatening voices. She listened till the
+stillness beat at her ears like the stamping of ten thousand hoofs, then
+pulled up her horse, and the desert was as still as the chamber of death.
+
+"Ah, Dolly, my dear, a house is the place for women folk when the night
+comes--a house, the fire burning clear, the kettle singing, and--" Dolly
+whinnied an affirmative without waiting for the picture to be completed.
+The wilderness was being gradually swallowed by the shadows, as
+deliberately as a snake swallows its victim. They were nearing the
+mountains. The hot blasts of air from the desert blew more and more
+intermittently. The breeze swept keen from the hills, towering higher and
+higher, and Judith breathed deep of the piny fragrance and felt the
+tension of things loosen a little.
+
+Whitening cattle bones gleamed from the darkness, tragic reminders of hard
+winters and scant pasturage, and Judith, with the Indian superstition that
+was in the marrow of her bones, read ghostly warnings in the empty
+eye-sockets of the grinning skulls that stared up at her. She dared not
+think of the dangers that the looming darkness might conceal, or of what
+she might find at her journey's end, or--"Whoa, Dolly! softly, girl. Is it
+my foolish, white-blood nerves, or is some one following?"
+
+The mare had been trained to respond to the slightest touch on her mouth,
+and stopped instantly. Judith swayed slightly in the saddle with the
+heaving of the sweating horse. The blood beat at her temples, confusing
+what she actually heard with what her imagination pictured. She was
+half-way up a towering spur of the Wind River when she slid from the
+saddle, and putting her ear to the ground listened, Indian fashion. Above
+the throbbing stillness of the desert night, that came to her murmurously,
+like the imprisoned roar of the sea from a shell, she could hear the
+regular beat of horse's hoofs following up the steep mountain grade. She
+scrambled up with the desperate nimbleness of a hunted thing, but when she
+attempted to vault to the saddle her limbs failed and she sank clinging to
+the pommel. Twice she tried and twice the trembling of her limbs held her
+captive. With the loss of each moment the beat of the hoofs on the trail
+below became more distinct. The very desperation of her plight kept her
+clinging to the pommel, incapable of thought, so that when she finally
+flung herself to the saddle she was surprised to find herself there. To
+the left the trail dropped sharply to a precipice, choked by the close
+crowding of many scrub pines. To the right the snow-clad spires of the
+Wind River kept their eternal vigil. If she should call aloud for help,
+these white, still mountains would echo the anguish of her woman's cry and
+give no further heed to her plight.
+
+The trail had begun to widen. The horse behind her again stumbled,
+loosening a stone that rolled with crashes and echoings down to the
+precipice below. She took advantage of the widening of the trail to urge
+Dolly forward. Her impulse was to put spurs to the mare and run, to take
+chances with loose stones, a narrowing trail, and the possibility of
+Dolly's stumbling and breaking a leg; but discretion prompted the showing
+of a brave front, the pleasantries of the road, with flight as the last
+resource of desperation.
+
+Suddenly gaining what seemed to be a plateau, she wheeled and waited the
+coming of this possible friend or foe. The thudding of hoofs through the
+inferno of darkness stopped, as the rider below considered the latest move
+of the horseman above. They were so near that Judith could hear the
+labored breathing of the sweating horse. The blackness of the night had
+become a tangible thing. The towering mountains were one piece with the
+gaping precipice, the trail, the scrub pines, the gauntlet on her hand.
+The horse below resumed its stumbling gait. Judith crowded Dolly close to
+the rocky wall. If the chance comrade of the wilderness should pass her by
+in the darkness--God speed him!
+
+"What the devil are you blocking the trail for?" sung out a voice from the
+darkness. At sound of it Judith's heart stopped beating. The voice was
+Peter Hamilton's.
+
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+
+                         The Cabin In The Valley
+
+
+And Judith, taken unawares by the unexpected turn of things, comforted as
+a lost child that is found, told all her feeling for him in the way she
+called his name. The easy tenderness of the man awoke; his senses swayed
+to the magic of her voice, the mystery of the night, the shadow world in
+which they two, 'twixt earth and sky, were alone. They rode without
+speaking. Peter's hand sought hers, and all her woman's terror of the
+desolation, her fear of the vague terrors of the dreadful night, spoke in
+her answering pressure. It was as if the desert had given them to each
+other as they groped through the silent darkness. In the great company of
+earth, sky, silence, and this great-hearted woman, Peter grew conscious of
+a real thrill. There were depths to life--vast, still depths; this woman's
+unselfish love for him made him realize them. He felt his soul sweeping
+out on the great tide of things. Farther and farther it swept; his patron
+saint, caution, beckoning frantically from the receding shore, was miles
+behind. "Judith!" he said, and he scarce recognized his own voice.
+"Judith!" he struggled as a swimmer in a drowning clutch. Then his patron
+saint threw him a life-line and he saved the situation.
+
+"Judith!" he said, a third time, and now he knew his voice. It was the
+voice of the man who tilted at life picturesquely in a broad-brimmed hat,
+who loved his darling griefs and fitted them as a Rembrandt fits its
+background. And still, in the same voice, the voice he knew, he said: "I
+feel as if we had died and our souls were meeting. You know Aldrich's
+exquisite lines:
+
+  "Somewhere in desolate, wind-swept space,
+    In twilight land--no man's land--
+  Two hurrying shapes met face to face
+    And bade each other stand.
+
+  "'And who are you?' cried one, agape,
+    Shuddering in the gloaming light.
+  I know not,' said the other shape,
+  'I only died last night.'"
+
+"'I only died last night!'" she repeated the line, slowly, significantly.
+In her questioning she forgot the night, the desolation, the presence of
+the man. Had she died last night? Had youth, the joy of living, her
+infinite capacity for love, had they died when Peter, with the ugly haste
+of the man without a nice sense of the time that should elapse between the
+old and the new love, had spurred away cheerfully at the beck of another
+woman? And now the desert, this earth-mother as she called it, in the
+Indian way, had given him back to her, thrown them together as driftwood
+in the still ocean of space. She drew a long breath, the breath of one
+waking from an anguished dream. A wild, unreasoning gladness woke in her
+heart, the joy of living swept her back again to life. She had not died
+last night, she was riding through the wilderness with Peter.
+
+"Look!" she whispered. The sky had lost its forbidding blackness. The
+sharp notches of the mountains, faintly outlined in white, undulated
+through an eternity of space. Venus hung in the west, burning softly as a
+shaded lamp. The trail they climbed seemed to end in her pale yellow
+light.
+
+Peter had saved the situation, but the wild beauty of the night stirred in
+him that gift of silvery speech that was ever his tribute to the sex,
+rather than the woman. He bent towards Judith. A loosened strand of her
+hair blew across his cheek. The breakneck ride to Kitty was already the
+madness of a dead and gone incarnation. He pointed to the pale star, and
+told her it was the omen of their destiny; the formless blackness through
+which they had groped was the way of life, but for such as were not
+condemned to eternal darkness Venus held high her lamp and they scaled the
+heights.
+
+And Judith, listening, found her heart a battle-field of love and hate.
+"Were women dogs, that men should play with them in idle moods, caress
+them, and fling them out for other toys?" she demanded of herself, even
+while the tones of his voice melted her innermost being to thankfulness
+for this hour that he was wholly hers.
+
+Gayly, with ready turns of speech and snatches of song, trolled in his
+musical barytone, Peter rode through the night, even as he rode through
+life, a Sir Knight of the Joyous Heart, unbrushed by the wing of sorrow,
+loving his pale griefs for the values they gave the picture. And Judith
+understood by reason of that exquisite perception that was hers in all
+matters pertaining to him, and, knowing, only loved the more.
+
+Down the valley came the sharp yelp of a coyote, and in a moment the
+towering crags had taken it up, the echo repeating it and giving it back
+to the valley, where the coyote barked again at the shadow of his voice.
+The night was full of the eerie laughter. Peter put a restraining hand on
+Dolly's bridle, and, waiting for the coyote to stop, called Judith's name,
+and all the mountains made music of it. The echo sang the old Hebrew name
+as if it had been a psalm. Peter's voice gave it to the mountains
+joyously, but the mountains gave it back in the minor. And Judith was
+reminded of the soft, singing syllables that her mother, in the Indian
+way, had made of her daughter's Indian name. The remembrance tugged at her
+heart. In her joy at seeing Peter she had forgotten that the errand that
+had brought her was an errand of life and death--life and death for her
+brother!
+
+But Peter's ready enthusiasms pressed him hard. Surely love-making was the
+business of such a night. "Ah, Judith, goddess of the heights, if I could
+sing your name like the mountains, would you love me a little?"
+
+For his pains he had a flash of white teeth in a smile that recalled his
+first acquaintance with Kitty, the sort of smile one would give to a "nice
+boy" when his manoeuvres were a trifle obvious. "Not if you sang my name
+as the chorus of all the Himalayas and the Rockies and Andes, and with the
+fire of all their volcanoes and the beauty of their snows and the strength
+of all their hills, for it's not my way to love a little!"
+
+He bent towards her; to brush her cheek lightly as they rode was but to
+imply his appreciation of the scene as a bit of chiaroscuro, the panorama
+of the desert night, eternal romance typified by the man and woman scaling
+the heights, the goddess of love lighting them on their way by her flaming
+torch. But Judith, who said little because she felt much, was in no mood
+to brook such dalliance, and, urging the mare sharply, she cantered down
+the divide at peril of life and limb. Peter, cursing the heavy-footed
+beast he rode, came stumbling after.
+
+Judith rode wildly through the night, leaving Peter laps behind, to
+beseech, to prophesy dire happening if she should slip, and to scramble
+after, as best he might, on the heavy-footed beast he repudiated, with all
+his ancestors, as oxen, to the fourth generation. But the woman kept her
+pace. She had stern questions to put to herself, and they were likely to
+have truer answers if Peter were elsewhere than riding beside her. Whither
+was he going? They had met casually on a trail known to few honest men. It
+led over a spur of the Wind River to a sort of no man's land, the
+hiding-place of horse and cattle thieves. She had gone to warn her
+brother. Could he be going there--She could not bring herself to finish.
+
+Her heart was divided against itself. Within it were fought again the red
+and the white man's battles, bitterly, and to the finish. And now the
+white man, with his open warfare, won, and all her love rose up and
+scourged her little faith. She would wait on the trail for Peter, penitent
+and ashamed. And while she waited suspicions bred of her Indian blood
+stirred distrustfully, and she told herself that her mother's daughter
+made a worthy champion of the ways of white men. Did Hamilton hunt her
+brother gallowsward, making merry with her the meantime? He had not even
+been courteously concerned as to where she was going when they met on the
+divide. They had met and ridden together as casually as if it had been the
+most natural thing for them both to be taking the horse-thief trail as a
+summer evening's ride. And she had not thought to wonder at his possible
+destination, when the man from whom she rode in terror through the night
+proved to be Peter, because the lesser question of his errand had been
+swallowed up in the greater miracle of his presence.
+
+She was by this time well down the divide. The temperature had risen
+perceptibly on the down grade. The heat of the plains had already mingled
+with the cool hill air; the heights, where Venus kept her love vigil, were
+already past. Judith gave Dolly a breathing spell, herself lounging easily
+meanwhile. She knew how to take her ease in the saddle as well as any
+cow-puncher on the range.
+
+"The Hayoka has dominion over me," she mused, with Indian fatalism. "As
+well resign myself to sorrow with dignity. Hayoka, Hayo--ka!" and she began
+to croon softly a hymn of propitiation to the Hayoka, the Sioux god of
+contrariety. According to the legends, he sat naked and fanned himself in
+a Dakota blizzard and huddled, shivering, over a fire in the heat of
+summer. Likewise the Hayoka cried for joy and laughed for sorrow.
+
+She remembered how the nuns at Santa Fé had been shocked at her for
+praying to Indian gods, and how once she had built a little mound of
+stones, which was the Sioux way of making petition, in the shadow of the
+statue of the Virgin Mary, and how Sister Angela had scattered the stones
+and told her to pray instead to the Blessed Lady. She still prayed to the
+Blessed Lady every day; but sometimes, too, she reared little mounds of
+stones in the desert when she was very sad and the kinship between her and
+the dead gods of her mother's people seemed the closer for their common
+sorrow.
+
+Peter, coming up with a much-blown horse, found her still chanting the
+Indian song.
+
+"Sing him a verse for me, Judith. Heaven knows I need something to
+straighten out my infernal luck. Tell the Hayoka that I'm a good fellow
+and need only half a chance. Tell him to prosper my present venture."
+
+She had begun to chant the invocation, then stopped suddenly. "I must not;
+you know I am a Catholic." Suspicion that had been scotched, not killed,
+raised its head. "What was his present venture?" Her eye had not changed
+in expression, nor a tone of her voice, but in her heart was a sickening
+distrust for all things.
+
+A belated moon had come up. The level plain, on which their horses threw
+grotesque, elongated shadows, was flooded with honey-colored light. Each
+straggling clump of sage-brush, whitening bone and bowlder, gleamed
+mysterious, ghostly in the radiant flood-tide. They seemed to be riding
+through a world that had no kinship with that black, formless void through
+which they had groped but yet a little while. Then darkness had been upon
+the face of the deep. Now there was a miracle of light such as only the
+desert, in its desolation, knows. To Judith, with a soul attuned to every
+passing expression of nature, there was significance in this transition
+from darkness to light. The sudden radiance was emblematic of her belated
+perception, coming as it did after a blindness so dense as to appear
+almost wilful. Her mind was busy with a multitude of schemes. Fool though
+she had been, she would not be the instrument of her brother's undoing.
+
+"I've come too far," she cried, in sudden dismay. "I should have stopped
+at the foot of the divide. I've never been over the trail before."
+
+"You foolish child, why should you stop in the middle of the wilderness?"
+
+She wheeled the mare about and faced him, a figure of graven resolution.
+
+"I promised to meet Tom Lorimer there--now you know."
+
+With which she cracked Dolly sharply with her heel and began to retrace
+her way over the trail. Peter turned his horse and followed, with the
+feeling of utter helplessness that a man has when confronted with the
+granite obstinacy of women. Judith had meanwhile expected that the
+announcement of her mythical appointment with Tom Lorimer would be
+received differently. Tom Lorimer's reputation was of the worst. An
+Eastern man formerly, an absconder from justice, rumor was busy with tales
+of ungodly merrymaking that went on at his ranch, where no woman went
+except painted wisps from the dance-halls. But Peter was too loyal a
+friend, despite his shortcomings as a lover, to see in Judith's statement
+anything more than a sisterly devotion so deeply unselfish that it failed
+to take into account the danger to which she subjected herself.
+
+However, it was plainly his duty to prevent an unprotected rendezvous with
+Lorimer, to reason, to plead, and, if he should fail to bring her to a
+reasonable frame of mind, to go with her, come what would of the result.
+There were reasons innumerable why he, a cattle-man, should avoid the
+appearance of dealing with the sheep faction, he reflected, grimly.
+Lorimer owned sheep, many thousand head. His herds had been allowed to
+graze unmolested, while smaller owners, like Jim Rodney, had been crowded
+out because his influence, politically, was a thing to be reckoned with.
+So Peter followed Judith, pleading Judith's cause; she did not understand,
+he told her, what she was doing; and while perhaps there was not another
+man in the country who would not honor her unselfishness in coming to him,
+Lorimer's chivalry was not a thing to be reckoned with, drunken beast that
+he was. And Judith, worn with the struggle, tried beyond measure, made
+reckless by the daily infusion of ill-fortune, pulled up the mare and
+laughed unpleasantly.
+
+"You think I'm going to see Lorimer about Jim? I'm going with him to a
+merrymaking. We're old pals, Lorimer and I."
+
+"Judith, dear, has it come to this, that you not only distrust an old
+friend, but that you try to degrade yourself to hide from him the fact
+that you are going to your brother's? You've never spoken to Lorimer. I
+heard him say, not a week ago, that he had never succeeded in making you
+recognize him. You deceived me at first when you spoke of meeting him--I
+thought you had a message from Jim--but this talk of merrymaking is beneath
+you." He shrugged his shoulders in disgust. He felt the torrent of grief
+that rent her. No sob escaped her lips; there was no convulsive movement
+of shoulder. She rode beside him, still as the desert before the
+sand-storm breaks, her soul seared with white-hot iron that knows no
+saving grace of sob or tear. She rode as Boadicea might have ridden to
+battle; there was not a yielding line in her body. But over and over in
+her woman's heart there rang the cry: "I am so tired! If the long night
+would but come!"
+
+Peter drew out his watch. "It's a quarter to eleven. We'll have a hard bit
+of riding to reach Blind Creek before midnight."
+
+Then he knew as well as she, perhaps better, the route to Jim's
+hiding-place; she had never been there as yet. And if Peter knew,
+doubtless every cattle-man in the country knew. What a fool she had been
+with her talk of meeting Tom Lorimer! A sense of utter defeat seemed to
+paralyze her energies. She felt like a trapped thing that after eluding
+its pursuers again and again finds that it has been but running about a
+corral. Physical weariness was telling on her. She had been in the saddle
+since a little past noon and it was now not far from midnight. And still
+there was the unanswered question of Peter's errand. It was long since
+either had broken the silence. A delicious coolness had crept into the air
+with the approach of midnight. Judith, breathing deep draughts of it,
+reminded herself of the stoicism that was hers by birthright.
+
+"Peter"--her voice lost some of its old ring, but it had a deeper
+note--"Peter, we make strange comrades, you and I, in a stranger world. We
+meet on Horse-Thief Trail, and there is reason to suppose that our errands
+are inimical. You've pierced all my little pretences; you know that I am
+going to my brother, who is an outlaw--my brother, the rope for whose
+hanging is already cut. And yet we have been friends these many years, and
+we meet in this world of desolation and weigh each other's words, and
+there is no trust in our hearts. Our little faith is more pitiful than the
+cruel errands that bring us. I take it you, too, are going to my
+brother's?"
+
+"I'm going there to see that you arrive safe and sound, but I had no
+intention of going when I left camp. You've brought me a good twenty miles
+out of my way, not to mention accusing me of ulterior motives. Now, aren't
+you penitent?" He smiled at her, boyish and irresistible. To Judith it was
+more reassuring than an oath. "It's like dogs fighting over a picked bone;
+the meat's all gone. The range is overworked; it needs a good, long rest."
+He turned towards Judith, speaking slowly. "What you have said is true.
+We're friends before we're partisans of either faction. I'm on my way to a
+round-up. There's been an unexpected order to fill a beef contract--a
+thousand steers. We're going to furnish five hundred, the XXX two hundred
+and fifty, and the "Circle-Star" two hundred and fifty. Men have been
+scouring the enemy's country for days rounding up stragglers. It will go
+hard with the rustlers after this round-up, Judith."
+
+She felt a great wave of penitence and shame sweep over her. She had not
+trusted him; in her heart she had nourished hideous suspicions of him, and
+he was telling her, quite simply, of the plans of his own faction,
+trusting her, as, indeed, he might, but as she never expected to be
+trusted.
+
+"Peter, do you know that sometimes I think Jim has gone quite mad with
+these range troubles. He's acted strangely ever since his sheep were
+driven over the cliff. He's not been home to Alida and the children since
+he has been out of jail, and you know how devoted to them he has always
+been! He spends all his time tracking Simpson. Alida wrote me that she
+expects him to-night, and I'm going there on the chance."
+
+"It's the devil's own hole for desolation that he's come to." Peter looked
+about the cup-shaped valley that was but a _cul-de-sac_ in the mountains.
+Its approach was between the high rock walls of a caņon. Passing between
+them, the rise of temperature was almost incredible. The great barrier of
+mountain-range, that cut it off from the rest of the world, seemed also to
+cut it off from light and air. The atmosphere hung lifeless, the
+occasional bellow of range-cattle sounded far-off and muffled. Vegetation
+was scant, the sage-brush grew close and scrubby, even the brilliant
+cactus flowers seemed to have abandoned the valley to its fate. A lone
+group of dead cotton-woods grew like sentinels close to the rocky walls.
+Their twisted branches, gaunt and bare, writhed upward as if in dumb
+supplication. There was about them a something that made Judith come
+closer to Peter as they passed them by. The night wind sang in their
+leafless branches with a long-drawn, shuddering sigh. The despair of a
+barren, deserted thing seemed to have settled on them.
+
+"Those frightful trees, how can Alida stand them?" She looked back. "Oh, I
+wish they were cut down!"
+
+Before them was the cabin, its ruined condition pitifully apparent even by
+night. It had been deserted ten years before Jim brought his family to it.
+Rumor said it was haunted. Grim stories were told of the death of a woman
+who had come there with a man, and had not lived to go away with him. The
+roof of the adjoining stable had fallen in, the bars of the corral were
+missing. The house was dark but for a feeble light that glimmered in one
+window, the beacon that had been lighted, night after night, against Jim's
+coming. It added a further note of apprehension, peering through the dark,
+still valley like a wakeful, anxious eye, keeping a long and unrewarded
+vigil. Judith felt the consummation of the threatening tragedy after her
+first glimpse of the sentinel trees. She could not explain, but her heart
+cried, even as the wind in them had sung of death. Perhaps her mother's
+spirit spoke to her, just as she had said, on that memorable drive, that
+the Great Mystery spoke to his people in the earth, the sky, and the
+frowning mountains.
+
+"Peter"--she had slid from her horse and was clinging to his arm--"when it
+happens, Peter, you will have no part in it?"
+
+"It won't happen, Judith, if I can help it."
+
+She kissed his hand as it held the loose reins.
+
+"Lord, I am not worthy!" was the thought in his heart. He sat graven in
+the saddle. Sir Knight of the Joyous Heart though he was, the unsought
+kiss of trust gifted him with a self-reverence that would not soon forsake
+him.
+
+Judith was rapping on the door and calling to Alida not to be frightened.
+And presently it was opened. Peter wanted to leave Judith, now that she
+was safely at the end of her journey, but she would not hear of it till he
+had eaten.
+
+"You would have had your comfortable supper five hours ago had you not
+been playing cavalier to me all over the wilderness." And Peter yielded.
+
+Judith busied herself about the kitchen. Her mood of racking apprehension
+had disappeared. Indian stoicism had again the guiding hand. She waved
+Peter from the fire that she was kindling, as if he were a blundering
+incompetent. But she let him slice the bacon and grind the coffee as one
+lets a child help. Alida came in, white-faced and anxious over the long
+absence of her husband, but conscientiously hospitable nevertheless. Peter
+noticed that Judith made a gallant pretence of eating, crumbling her bread
+and talking the meanwhile. The pale wife, who had little to say at the
+best of times, was put to the test to say anything at all. But, withal,
+their intent was so genuinely hospitable that Peter himself could not
+speak with the pity of it. Accustomed as he was to the roughness of these
+frontier cabins, never had he seen a human habitation so desolate as this.
+The mud plaster had fallen away from between the logs, showing cross
+sections of the melancholy prospect. An atmosphere of tragedy brooded over
+the place. Whether from its long period of emptiness, or from the vaguely
+hinted murder of the woman who had died there, or whether it took its
+character from the prevailing desolation, the cabin in the valley was an
+unlovely thing. Nor did the cleanliness, the conscientious making the best
+of things, soften the woful aspect of the place. Rather was the appeal the
+more poignant to the seeing eye, as the brave makeshift of the
+self-respecting poor strikes deeper than the beggar's whine. The house was
+bare but for the few things that Alida could take in the wagon in which
+they made their flight. And all through the pinch of poverty and grinning
+emptiness there was visible the woman-touch, the brave making the best of
+nothing, the pitiful preparation for the coming of the man. Wild roses
+from the creek bloomed against the gnarled and weather-warped logs of the
+walls. Sprays of clematis trailed their white bridal beauty from cans
+rescued from the ashes of a camp-fire. But Alida was a strategist when it
+came to adorning her home, and the rusty receptacle was hid beneath
+trailing green leaves. There was at the window a muslin curtain that in
+its starched and ruffled estate was strongly suggestive of a child's frock
+hastily converted into a window drapery. The curtain was drawn aside that
+the lamp might shed its beam farther on the way of the traveller who came
+not. There was but one other light in the place, a bit of candle. Alida
+apologized for the poor light by which they must eat, but she did not
+offer to take the lamp from the window.
+
+Peter was no longer Sir Knight of the Joyous Heart as he watched the
+little, white-faced woman, who went so often to the door to look towards
+the road that entered the valley that she was no longer aware of what she
+did. He saw her wide eyes full of fear, the bow of the mouth strained taut
+with anxiety, her unconscious fear of him as one of the alien faction, and
+withal her concern for his comfort. Judith's control was far greater, but
+though she hid it skilfully, he knew the sorrow that consumed her.
+
+There was a cry from the room beyond, and Judith, snatching up the candle,
+went in to the children. All three of them were sleeping cross-ways in one
+bed, their small, round arms and legs striking out through the land of
+dreams as swimmers breasting the waves. She gave a little cry of delight
+and appreciation, and called Peter to look. Little Jim, who had cried in
+some passing fear, sat up sleepily. He stretched out his small arms to
+Peter, whom he had never seen before. Peter took him, and again he settled
+to sleep, apparently assured that he was in friendly hands.
+
+The warm, small body, giving itself with perfect confidence, strongly
+affected Peter's heightened susceptibilities. In the very nature of the
+situation he could be no friend to Jim Rodney, yet here in his arms lay
+Jim Rodney's son, loving, trusting him instinctively. Judith noticed that
+his face paled beneath its many coats of tan. He was afraid of the little
+sleeping boy, afraid that his unaccustomed touch might hurt him, and yet
+loath to part with the small burden. Judith took the boy from Peter and
+placed him between the two little girls on the bed.
+
+Through the window they could see Alida's dress glimmering, like a phantom
+in the darkness, as she strained her eyes towards the path. Peter hated to
+leave the women and children in this desolate place. The night was far
+spent. To reach the round-up in season, he could at best snatch a couple
+of hours' sleep and be again in the saddle while the stars still shone.
+His saddle and saddle blanket were enough for him. The broad canopy of
+heaven, the bosom of mother earth, had given him sound, dreamless sleep
+these many years. He bade the women good-night, and made his bed where the
+caņon gave entrance to the valley. But sleep was slow to come. Now, in
+that vague, uncertain world where we fall through oceans of space, and the
+waking is the dream, the dream the waking, Peter caught pale flashes of
+Kitty's gold head as she ran and ran, ever in the pursuit of something,
+she knew not what. And as she ran hither and thither, she would turn her
+head and beckon to Peter, and as he followed he felt the burden of years
+come upon him. And then he saw Judith's eyes, still and grave. He turned
+and wakened. No, it was not Judith's eyes, but the stars above the
+mountain-tops.
+
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+
+                               The Round-up
+
+
+The stars were still shining when Peter Hamilton looked at his watch next
+morning, but he sternly fought the temptation to lie another two minutes
+by remembering the day's work before him, and went in search of the horse
+that he had not picketed overnight, as the beast required a full belly
+after the hard night's ride he had given him. Peter had rolled out of his
+blankets with a keen anticipatory relish for the day ahead. It was well,
+he knew, that there was ample work of a definite nature for Peter the
+cow-puncher; as for Peter the man, he was singularly at sea. Had Judith
+Rodney been his desert comrade all these cheerful years for him to get his
+first belated insight into the real Judith only a few little hours back?
+Or was it, he wondered, her seeming unconsciousness of him, as she rode
+brave and sorrowful through the night, to avert, if might be, her
+brother's death--at all events, to comfort and inspirit the frightened
+woman and her little children--that had freshly tinged the friendship he
+had so long felt for her? Many were the questions that Peter vaguely put
+to himself as he started out for his long day in the saddle; and none of
+them he answered. Indeed, he could not satisfactorily explain to himself
+why he should think of Judith at all in this way--Judith, whom he had known
+so long, and upon whom he counted so securely--Judith, who understood
+things, and was as good a comrade as a man. Surely it was a strange thing
+that he should discover himself in a sentimental dream of Judith!
+
+For it was in such dreams that Katherine Colebrooke had figured ever since
+Peter could remember. For years, indeed--and Judith knew it!--he had stood,
+tame and tractable, waiting for Chloe to throw her dainty lariat. But
+Chloe had intimated that her graceful fingers were engaged with the inkpot
+and her head with schemes for further sonneting. Chloe was becoming
+famous. To Peter, who was unmodern, there was little to be gained in
+arguing against a state of affairs so crassly absurd as career-getting for
+women. At such seasons it behooved sane men to pray for patience rather
+than the gift of tongues. When the disheartened fair should weary of the
+phantom pursuit, then might the man of patience have his little day. Peter
+winced at the picture. To the world he knew that his long waiting on the
+brink of the bog, while his ambitious lady floundered after false lights,
+was, in truth, no more impressive a spectacle than the anguished squawking
+of a hen who watches a brood of ducklings, of her own hatching, try their
+luck in the pond.
+
+And there was Judith the great-hearted, Judith who was as inspiring as a
+breath of hill air, Judith with no thought of careers beyond the loyal
+doing of her woman's part, Judith, trusty and loyal--and Judith with that
+accursed family connection!
+
+Peter tightened his cinch and turned his horse westward. The stars had
+grown dim in the sky. The world that the night before had seemed to float
+in a silvery effulgence looked gray and old. The cabin in the valley
+flaunted its wretched squalor, like a beggar seeking alms on the highway.
+Riding by, Peter lifted his sombrero. "Sweet dreams, gentle lady!" He dug
+the rowel into his horse's side and began his day at no laggard pace. Nor
+did he spare his horse in the miles that lay between him and breakfast.
+The beast would have no more work to do that day, when once he reached
+camp, and Peter was not in his tenderest mood as he spurred through the
+gray of the morning. The pale, chastened world was all his own at this
+hour. Not a creature was stirring. The mountains, the valleys, the softly
+huddled hills slept in the deep hush that is just before the dawn. He
+looked about with questioning eyes. Last night this very road had been a
+pale silver thread winding from the mountain crests into a world of
+dreams. To-day it was but a trail across the range. "Where are the snows
+of yester year?" he quoted, with a certain early-morning grimness. At
+heart he was half inclined to believe Judith responsible for the vanished
+world; Judith, Judith--he was riding away from her as fast as his horse
+could gallop, and yet his thoughts perversely lingered about the cabin in
+the valley.
+
+After a couple of hours' hard riding he could dimly make out specks moving
+on that huge background of space, and presently his horse neighed and put
+fresh spirit into his gait, recognizing his fellows in moving dots on the
+vast perspective. And being a beast of some intelligence, for all his
+heavy-footed failings, he reasoned that food and rest would soon be his
+portion. Peter had no further use for the rowel.
+
+Breakfast was already well under way when he reached camp. The outfit,
+seated on saddles in a semicircle about the chuck wagon, ate with that
+peculiar combination of haste and skill that doubtless the life of the
+saddle counteracts, as digestive troubles are apparently unknown among
+plainsmen. The cook, in handing Peter his tin plate, cup, spoon, and
+black-handled fork, asked him if "he would take overland trout or
+Cincinnati chicken, this morning?" The cook never omitted these jocular
+inquiries regarding the various camp names for bacon. He seemed to think
+that a choice of alias was as good as a change of menu. There was little
+talk at breakfast, and that bearing chiefly on the day's work. Every one
+was impatient for an early start. The horse wrangler had his string
+waiting, the cook was scouring his iron pots, saddles were thrown over
+horses fresh from a long night's good grazing, cinches were tightened,
+slickers and blankets were adjusted, and camp melted away in a troup of
+horsemen winding away through the gray of early morning.
+
+The scene of the beef round-up was a mighty plain, affording limitless
+scope for handling the cattle of a thousand hills. In the distance rose
+the first undulations of the mountains, that might be likened to the
+surplusage of space that rolled the length of the sweeping levels, then
+heaped high to the blue. The specks in the far distance began to grow as
+if the screw of a field-glass were bringing them nearer, turning them into
+horsemen, bunches of cattle, "chuck-wagons" of the different outfits,
+reserves of horses restrained by temporary rope-corrals, all the equipment
+of a great round-up. Dozens of men, multitudes of horses, hordes of
+cattle--the mighty plain swallowed all the little, prancing, galloping,
+bellowing things, and still looked mighty in its loneliness. Fling a
+handful of toys from a Noah's Ark--if they make such simple toys now--in an
+ordinary field, and the little, wooden men, horses and cows, will suggest
+the round-up in relation to its background. Men darted hither and thither,
+yelling shrilly; cows--born apparently to be leaders--broke from the bunches
+to which they had been assigned and started at a clumsy run, followed by
+kindred susceptible to example. Cow-punchers, waiting for just such
+manifestations of individuality, whirled after them like comets, and soon
+they were again in the pawing, heaving, sweltering bunch to which they
+belonged.
+
+Peter Hamilton, whose particular skill as a cow-puncher lay in that branch
+of the profession known as "cutting out," found that the work of the
+rustlers had been carried on with no unsparing hand since the early spring
+round-up. Calves bearing the "H L" brand--that claimed by a company known
+to be made up of cattle-thieves--followed mothers bearing almost every
+brand that grazed herds in that part of the State. The Wetmore outfit,
+that used a "W" enclosed in a square, were apparently the heaviest losers.
+The cows and calves were herded at the right of the plain, convenient to
+the branding-pen, the steers well away to the opposite side. As Peter
+drove a "W-square" cow, followed by a little, white-faced calf, whose
+brand had plainly been tampered with, he heard one of his associates say:
+
+"There's nothing small about the 'H L' except their methods."
+
+"What's 'H L' stand for, anyway?" the other cow-puncher asked.
+
+"Why, Hell, or, How Long; depends whether you're with 'em or again 'em."
+
+Peter wheeled from the men and headed for the bunch he was cutting out. He
+fancied that the man had looked at him strangely as he offered a choice of
+meanings for the "H L"--and yet he could not have known that Peter had gone
+to Rodney's cabin last night. He flung himself heart and soul into his
+work, dashing full tilt at the snorting, stamping bedlam, enveloped in
+clouds of dust that dimmed the very daylight. Calves bleated piteously as
+they were jammed in the thickening pack. Peter shouted, swung the rope
+right and left, thinning the bunch about him, and a second later emerged,
+driving before him a cow, followed by a calf. These were turned over to
+cow-boys waiting for them. Time after time Hamilton returned to that mass
+of unconscious power, that with a single rush could have annihilated the
+little band of horsemen that handled them with the skill of a dealer
+shuffling, cutting, dealing a pack of cards.
+
+To the left were the steers, pawing and tearing up the earth in a very
+ecstasy of impotent fury. Picture the giant propeller of an ocean liner
+thrashing about in the sands of the desert and you will have an
+approximate knowledge of the dust raised by a thousand steers. Their
+long-drawn, shrieking bellow had a sinister note. Horns, hoofs, tails beat
+the air, their bloodshot eyes looked menacingly in every direction; but a
+handful of cow-boys kept them in check, circling round and round them on
+ponies who did their work without waiting for quirt or rowel.
+
+The noonday sun looked down upon a scene that to the eye unskilled in
+these things was as confusion worse confounded. Cow-boys dashed from
+nowhere in particular and did amazing things with a bit of rope, sending
+it through the air with snaky undulations after flying cattle. The rope,
+taking on lifelike coils, would pursue the flying beast like an aerial
+reptile, then the noose would fall true, and the thing was done. A second
+later a couple of cow-boys would be examining the disputed brand on the
+prone animal.
+
+The smell of burning flesh and hair rose from the branding-pen and mingled
+with the stench of the herds in one noisome compound. The yells of the
+cow-punchers, each having its different bearing on the work in hand, were
+all but lost in the dull, steady roar of the cattle, bellowing in a chorus
+of fear, rage, and pain. And still the work of sorting, branding,
+cutting-out, went steadily on. Though an outsider would not have perceived
+it, the work was as crisp-cut and exact in its methods as the work in a
+counting-house. One of the cow-boys, in hot pursuit of a fractious heifer,
+encountered a gopher-hole, and horse and rider were down in a heap. In a
+second a dozen helping hands were dragging him from under the horse. He
+limped painfully, but stooped to examine his horse. The beast had broken a
+leg, and turned on the man eyes almost human in their pain.
+
+"Bob, Bob!" The cow-puncher went down on his knees and put his arms about
+the neck of his pet. "My God!" he said, "me and Bob was just like
+brothers. Everybody knowed that." He uncinched the saddle with clumsy
+tenderness; not a man thought a whit less of him because he could not see
+well at the moment. He turned his head away, that he might not see the
+well-aimed shot that would release his pet from pain. Then he limped away
+after another horse--it was all in the day's work.
+
+The beef contract called for a thousand steers, four and five years old,
+and these having been well and duly counted, and some dozen extra head
+added in case of accident, they were immediately started on the trail, as
+they could accomplish some seven or eight miles before being bedded down
+for the night. Hamilton, who had crossed to the beef side of the round-up
+to have a necessary word with the "Circle-Star" foreman, was amazed to
+find Simpson making ready to start with the trail herd. Peter inquired,
+with a few expletives, "how long he had been a cow-man, in good and
+regular standing?"
+
+"As far as the regularity is concerned, that would be a pretty hard thing
+to answer, but he's had an interest in the 'XXX' since--since--"
+
+"He drove Rodney's sheep over the cliff?"
+
+"Ain't you a little hard on the beginning of his cattle career? It usually
+goes by a more business-like name, but--" he shrugged his shoulders--"it's
+up to the 'XXX.' We wouldn't have him help to pull bogged cattle out of a
+creek."
+
+The beeves, hidden in a simoom of their own stamping, were gradually being
+pressed forward on the trail, a huge pawn, ignorant of its own strength,
+manipulated by a handful of men and horses. Its bellowing, like the tuning
+of a thousand bass-fiddles, shook the stillness like the long, sullen roar
+of the sea, as out of the plain they thundered, to feed the multitude.
+
+"Well, there goes as pretty a bunch of porterhouses as I'd want to put
+tooth to. If I get away from here within the next two months, as I'm
+expecting, doubtless I'll meet some of you again with your personality
+somewhat obscured by reason of fried onions."
+
+The foreman of the "Circle-Star" waved his hand after the slowly moving
+herd that gradually pressed forward like an army in loose marching order.
+Outriders galloped ahead, like darting insects, and pointing the lumbering
+mass that trailed its half-mile length at a snail's-pace. The great column
+steadily advanced, checked, turned, led as easily as a child trails his
+little steam-cars after him on the nursery floor, and always by the little
+force of a handful of men and a few horses.
+
+After supper came general relaxation around the camp-fire. The men, who
+had all day been strung to a keen pitch of nervous energy, lounged in
+loose, picturesque uncouthness, while each began to unravel his own lively
+miscellany of information or invention. There was jest, laughter, spinning
+of yarns, singing of songs. As Peter lay in the fire-light, smoking his
+brier-wood, he noticed that the man next him spent a great deal of time
+poring over a letter, holding it close to the blaze, now at arm's-length,
+which was hardly surprising, considering the penmanship of the more common
+variety of _billet-doux_. The man was plainly disappointed that Peter
+would not notice or comment. Finally he folded it up, and with sentimental
+significance returned it to the left side pocket of his flannel shirt, and
+remarked to Peter, "It's from her."
+
+"Indeed," said Peter, who had not the faintest notion who "her" could be.
+"Let me congratulate you."
+
+"Yes, sir," and there was conviction in the cow-puncher's tone; "it's from
+old man Kinson's girl, up to the Basin, and the parson's goin' to give us
+the life sentence soon. A man gets sick o' helling it all over creation."
+He rolled a cigarette, lit it, took a puff or two, then turned to Peter,
+as one whose acquaintance with the broader side of life entitled him to
+speak with a certain authority. "Is it that, or is it that we're getting
+on, a little long in the tooth, logy in our movements?"
+
+"I think we're just sick of helling it." Peter looked towards the star
+that last night had been the beacon towards which he and Judith had scaled
+the heights. "Yes, we get sick of helling it after we've turned thirty."
+
+"Then I can't be making a mistake. If I thought it was because I was
+getting on, I'd stampede this here range. It don't seem fair to a girl to
+allow that you're broke, tamed, and know the way to the corral, when it's
+just that you're needin' to go to an old man's home."
+
+"Now this is really love," said Peter to himself, with interest. "This is
+humility." A sympathetic liking for the self-distrustful lover surged hot
+and generous into Peter's heart, and he continued to himself: "Now that's
+what Judith would appreciate in a man, some directness, some humility!"
+Poor Judith! Poor burden-bearer! Who was to love her as she deserved to be
+loved, even as old man Kinson's girl, of the Basin, was loved? Yet suppose
+some one did love her in such fashion and she returned it? It was a
+picture Peter had never conjured up before. Nonsense! he was accustomed to
+think of Judith a great deal, and that was not the way to think of her.
+"Dear Judith!" said Peter, half unconsciously to himself, and looked again
+at the fellow, who had gone back to his dingy letter and continued to
+reread it in the fire-light as if he hoped to extract some further meaning
+from the now familiar words. Nature had fitted him out with a rag-bag
+assortment of features--the nose of a clown, the eyes of a ferret, the
+mouth that hangs agape like a badly hinged door, the mouth of the
+incessant talker. And withal, as he lounged in the fire-light, dreamily
+turning his love-letter, he had a sort of superphysical beauty, reflected
+of the glow that many waters cannot quench.
+
+Costigan, who had led the merriment against Simpson at Mrs. Clark's
+eating-house, was playing "mumbly-peg" with Texas Tyler. They had been
+working like Trojans all day at the round-up, but they pitched their
+pocket-knives with as keen a zest as school-boys, bickering over points in
+the game, accusing each other of cheating, calling on the rest of the
+company to umpire some disputed point.
+
+But presently, from the opposite side of the fire, some one began to sing,
+in a rich barytone, a dirgelike thing that caught the attention of first
+one then another of the men, making them stop their yarning and
+knife-throwing to listen. The tune, in its homely power to evoke the image
+of the ceremonial of death, was more or less familiar to most of them.
+There was a conscious funeral pageantry in the ring of its measured
+phrases that recalled to many burials of the dead that had taken place in
+their widely scattered homes. Mrs. Barbauld's hymn, "Flee as a Bird to the
+Mountain," are the words usually sung to the air.
+
+Costigan presently cut across the dirgelike refrain with: "Phwat th' divil
+is ut about that chune that Oi'm thinkin' of?"
+
+"This," said the man with the barytone voice, "is the tune that Nick
+Steele saved his neck to."
+
+"Begorra, that's ut. I wasn't there mesilf, but Oi've heard th' story told
+more times than Oi've years to me credit."
+
+"My father was in that necktie party," spoke up a young cow-puncher, "and
+I've heard him tell the story scores of times, and he always wondered why
+the devil they let Steele off. Never could understand it after the thing
+was done. He was talking of it once to a man who was a sharp on things
+like mesmerism, and the man called it hypnotic suggestion. Said that
+Steele got control of the whole outfit and mesmerized 'em so they couldn't
+do a thing to him."
+
+Several of the men asked for the story, echoes of which had come down
+through all the forty years since its happening. And the cow-puncher,
+lighting a cigarette, began:
+
+"It was in the good old forty-nine days in California, when gold was
+sometimes more plentiful than bread, and women were so scarce that one day
+when they found a girl's shoe on the trail they fitted a gold heel to it
+and put it up in camp to worship. But sentiment wasn't exactly their long
+suit, and any little difficulties that cropped up were straightened out by
+the vigilance committee--and a rope. One day a saddle, or maybe it was a
+gun, that didn't belong to him, was found among this man Steele's traps,
+and though he swore that some one had put it there for a grudge, the
+committee thought that a hemp necktie was the easiest way out of the
+argument. And this here Steele party finds himself, at the age of
+twenty-four, with something like thirty minutes of life to his credit. He
+don't take on none, nor make a play for mercy, nor try any fancy
+speech-making. He just waits round, kinder pale, but seemin' indifferent,
+considerin' it was his funeral that was impendin'. I've heard my father
+say that he was a tall, slim boy, with a kind of girlish prettiness, and
+the committee looked some for hysterics and they didn't get none. The
+noose was made ready and they told Steele he could have five minutes to
+pray, if he wanted to, or he could take it out in cursing, just as he
+chose. The boy said he felt that he hadn't quite all that was coming to
+him in the way of enjoyment, and that while he was far from criticising
+the vigilance committee, he was not altogether partial to the nature of
+his demise, and if it was just the same to them, instead of praying or
+cursing, he'd take that five minutes for a song.
+
+"They was agreeable, and he up and steps on the scaffold, what they was
+mighty proud of, it bein' about the only substantial structure the town
+could boast. He began to sing that thing you've all been listening to, and
+he had a voice like water falling light and fine in a pool below. They
+crowded up close about the scaffold and listened. The words he put to it
+were his own story, just like those old minstrels that you read about, and
+at the end of each verse came the chorus, slow and solemn as the moment
+after something great has happened. There wasn't a hangin'-face in the
+crowd after he was started. At some time or other every man had heard
+somebody he thought a heap of, buried to that tune, and his voice got to
+workin' on their imaginations and turned their hearts to water. I don't
+remember anything but the chorus--that went like this:
+
+  "'Who'll weep for me, on the gallows tree,
+    As I sway in the wind and swing?
+  Is there never a tear to be shed for me,
+    As I swing by a hempen string?
+  Who'll weep, who'll keep
+  Watch, as I'm rocked to sleep,
+    Rocked by a hempen string?'"
+
+There was a long silence, broken only by the crackle of the logs in the
+camp-fire and the night sounds of the lonely plain. The leaping flames
+showed a group of thoughtful faces. Finally, Costigan broke the silence
+with:
+
+"Begorra, 'tis some av thim 'ud be doin' well to be lukin' to their
+music-lessons about here, Oi'm thinkin', afther th' day's wurruk."
+
+The Irishman, with his instinctive loquacity, had expressed what none of
+the rest would have considered politic to hint. It was like the giving way
+of the pebble that starts the avalanche. Soon they were deep in tales of
+lynchings. Peter knew only too well the trend of their talk, the "XXX" men
+were feeling the public pulse, as it were. Now, according to the unwritten
+code of the plains, lynching was "meet, right, just, and available" for
+the cattle-thief. And Peter felt himself false to his creed, false to his
+employer, false to himself, in seeking to evade the question. And yet that
+pitiful cabin, the white-faced woman running to the door so often that she
+knew not what she did, and the little rosy boy, who had put out his arms
+so trustfully! Peter broke into their grewsome yarning. "Lord, but you're
+like a lot of old women just come from a funeral!"
+
+"Whin the carpse died hard, and th' wake was a success." Costigan turned
+over. "Werra, werra, but we'll be seein' fairies the night!"
+
+A "XXX" man turned his head with a deliberate slowness and regarded Peter
+with narrowing eyes: "If the subject of cattle-thieves and their
+punishment is unpleasant to the gentleman from New York, perhaps he will
+favor us with something more cheerful." It was the same man who had given
+the two definitions of the "H L" brand that morning at the round-up.
+
+"Delighted," said Peter, affecting not to notice the significance of the
+man's remark. "Did you ever hear of the time that Tony Neville was burned
+with snow?"
+
+The "XXX" man yawned long and audibly. No one seemed especially interested
+in Tony Neville's having been burned with snow, but Peter struck out
+manfully, just in time to head off a man who said that he had seen Jim
+Rodney or some one who looked like him, following the trail-herd.
+
+"Once on a time, when it paid to be a cattle-man," began Peter, "there was
+an outfit near Laramie that hailed from the United Kingdom, every mother's
+son of them. A fine, manly lot of fellows, but wedded to calamity along of
+their cooks--not the revered range article," and Peter waved his hand
+towards the "W-square" cook, who was one of the party, "but the pampered
+ranch article that boasts a real stove, planted in a real kitchen, the
+spoiled darling that never has to light a fire out of wet wood in the
+rain.
+
+"These unhappy Britons had every species of ill luck that could befall an
+outfit, in the way of cooks; they were of every nationality, age, and sex,
+and they stole, drank, quarrelled, till the outfit determined to sweep the
+house clear of them and do its own cooking. Every man was to have a turn
+at it for a week. There was a Scotchman, who gave them something called
+'pease bannocks,' three times a day; followed by an Irishman, who
+breakfasted them on potatoes and whiskey. There was an Englishman, who had
+a beef slaughtered every time he fancied a tenderloin. There was a
+Welshman, who sang as he cooked. There were as many different kinds of
+indigestion as there were men in the outfit. They would beg to do
+night-herding, anything to get them away from that ranch. Finally, when
+their little tummies got so bad that their overcoats thickened, or wore
+through, or whatever happens to stomachs' overcoats that are treated
+unkindly, some one's maiden aunt sent him a tract saying that rice was the
+salvation of the human race, as witness the Chinese. Whosever turn it was
+to cook that week determined to try the old lady's prescription. Rice was
+procured, about a peck, I think; and the man who was cooking, pro tem, put
+the entire quantity on to boil in a huge ham-boiler, over a slow fire, as
+per the directions of the maiden aunt. The rice seemed to be doing nicely,
+when some one came in and said that a bunch of antelope was over on the
+hills and there was a good chance to get a couple. Every man got his gun,
+all but the cook, and he looked at the rice, that hadn't done a thing over
+the slow fire, in a way that would melt your heart. 'Just my luck that it
+should be my week to pot-wrestle when there's good hunting right at one's
+front door.'
+
+"'Oh, come on,' some one said. 'Didn't Kellett's aunt say the rice ought
+to be cooked over a slow fire? Kellett, get your aunt's letter and read
+the directions for cooking that rice again.'
+
+"The cook didn't need a second invitation, and they got into their
+saddles, cook and all, and went for the antelope.
+
+"Now antelope are not like stationary wash-tubs; they move about. And when
+that particular outfit arrived at the spot where those antelope were last
+seen, they had moved, but the boys found traces of them, and continued on
+their trail. They went in the foot-hills and they searched for those
+antelope all day. They caught up with old man Hall's outfit at dinner-time
+and were invited to take a bite. Coming home by way of the 'Circle-Star'
+ranch, Colonel Semmes asked them in to have a mint-julep; the colonel was
+a South Carolinian, and he had just succeeded in raising some mint. They
+had several--I fear more than several--drinks before leaving for home, with
+never a trace of antelope nor a thought of the rice cooking over the slow
+fire. The colonel remembered some hard cider that he had, and topping off
+on that, they set out. The weather was pretty warm, and on their way home
+they experienced some remorse over the hard cider. Now hard cider is an
+accumulative drink; it piles up interest like debt or unpaid taxes. And by
+the time those Englishmen had turned the little lane leading into their
+home corral, they saw a sight that made their sombreros rise. As I have
+said before, it was hot, being somewhere in the month of August.
+Gentlemen, I hardly expect you to believe me when I say it was snowing on
+their house, and not on another God blessed thing in the landscape.
+
+"The blame thing about it was, that every man took the phenomenon to be
+his own private view of snakes, or their bibulous equivalent, manifested
+in another and more terrifying form. Here was the August sun pouring down
+on the plain where their ranch-house was situated; everything in sight hot
+and dry as a lime-kiln, grasshoppers chirping in a hot-wave prophecy, and
+snow covering the house and the ground, about to what seemed a depth of
+four inches. Every one of them felt sensitive about mentioning what he saw
+to the others. You see, gentlemen, being unfamiliar with American drinks,
+and especially old Massachusetts cider, they merely looked to keep their
+saddles and no questions asked.
+
+"But when they got a bit closer the horror increased. Flying right out of
+their windows were perfect drifts of snow, banks of it, gentlemen, and the
+thermometer up past a hundred. One of the men looked about him and noticed
+the pallor on the faces of the rest:
+
+"'Do you notice anything strange, old chap? These cursed American drinks!'
+
+"'Strange!'--the boy he had spoken to was about eighteen, a nice,
+red-cheeked English lad out with his uncle learning the cattle business.
+'Good God!' the boy said. 'I've always tried to lead a good life, and here
+I am a paretic before I've come of age.'
+
+"They halted their horses and held a consultation. The boss came to the
+conclusion that since they had all seen it, there was nothing to do but
+continue the investigation and send the details to the 'Society for
+Psychical Research,' when he got down from his horse and walked towards
+the door of the house. At his approach, as if to rebuke his wanton
+curiosity, a great blast of snow blew out of the window and got him full
+in the face. He howled--the snow was scalding hot.
+
+"Then they remembered the rice."
+
+"Is that all?" demanded the man who had wanted to talk about rustling.
+
+"Isn't it enough?" said Peter, who could afford to be magnanimous, now
+that he had accomplished his point.
+
+"When I first heard that story, 'bout ten years ago, it ended with the
+Britishers riding like hell over to the Wolcott ranch to borrow umbrellas
+to keep off the hot rice while they got into the house," said the man,
+still sulky.
+
+"That's the way they tell it to tenderfeet," and Peter turned on his heel.
+The story-telling for the evening was over, the boys got their blankets
+and set about making their beds for the night.
+
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+
+                         Mary's First Day In Camp
+
+
+The first day spent as governess to the family of Yellett reminded Mary
+Carmichael of those days mentioned in the opening chapter of Genesis, days
+wherein whole geological ages developed and decayed. Any era, geological
+or otherwise, she felt might have had its rise, decline, and fall during
+that first day spent in a sheep camp.
+
+She awoke to the sound of faint tinklings, and accepted the towering peaks
+of the Wind River mountains, with their snowy mantles all shadowy in the
+whitening dawn, and the warmer grays of huddling foot-hills, as one
+receives, without question, the fantastic visions of sleep. The faint
+tinkling grew nearer, mingled with a light pitter patter and a far off
+baa-ing and bleating; then, as shadowy as the sheep in dreams, a great
+flock came winding round the hill; in and out through the sage-brush they
+went and came, elusive as the early morning shadows they moved among. The
+air was crystalline and sparkling; creation's first morning could not have
+promised more. It would have been inconsistent in such a place to waken in
+a house; the desert, that seemed a lifeless sea, the sheep moving like
+gray shadows, were all parts of a big, new world that had no need of
+houses built by hands.
+
+Ben, oldest of the Brobdingnag tribe, who had greeted Mary's request to be
+directed to "the house" as a bit of dry Eastern humor, led the herd to
+pasture. Ben's right-hand man was "Stump," the collie, so named because he
+had no tail worth mentioning, but otherwise in full possession of his
+faculties. Stump was newly broken to his official duties and authority sat
+heavily on him. Keenly alert, he flew hither and thither, first after one
+straying member of the herd, then another, barking an early morning
+roll-call as he went. Two other male Brobdingnags came from some
+sequestered spot in the landscape and joined Ben--Mary recognized two more
+pupils.
+
+Mrs. Yellett then unrolled the pillow constructed the night previous of
+such garments as she had been willing to dispense with, and put them on.
+The vastness of her surroundings did not prevent her from locating the
+minutest article, and Mary gave her the respectful admiration of a woman
+who has spent a great deal of time searching for things in an infinitely
+smaller space. The matriarch then called the remaining members of her
+household officially--the Misses Yellett accomplished their early morning
+toilets with the simplicity of young robins. Only the new governess hung
+back, but finally mustered up enough courage to say that if such a thing
+was possible she would like to have a bath.
+
+Mrs. Yellett greeted her request with the amused tolerance of one who has
+never given such a trifle a thought.
+
+"The habit of bathing," she commented, "is shore like religion: them that
+observes it wonders how them that neglects it gets along." She beckoned
+Mary to follow, and led the way to a bunch of willows that grew about a
+stone's-throw from the camp. "Here be a whole creek full of water, if you
+don't lack the fortitood. It's cold enough to sell for ten cents a glass
+down to Texas."
+
+Somewhat dismayed, Mary stepped gingerly into the creek. Its intense cold
+numbed her at first, but a second later awoke all her young lustiness, and
+she returned to camp in a fine glow of courage to encounter whatever else
+there might be of novelty. Mrs. Yellett was preparing breakfast at a
+sheet-iron stove, assisted by Cacta and Clematis.
+
+"Your hankering after a bath like this"--she added another handful of flour
+to the biscuit dough--"do shore remind me of an Englishman who come to
+visit near Laramie in the days of plenty, when steers had jumped to
+forty-five. This yere Britisher was exhibit stock, shore enough, being
+what's called a peer of the realm, which means, in his own country, that
+he is just nacherally entitled from the start to h'ist his nose high.
+
+"The outfit he was goin' to visit wasn't in the habit of havin' peers drop
+in on them casual, but they aimed to make him feel that he wasn't the
+first of the herd that headed that way by a quart"--she cut four biscuits
+with a tin cup, and resumed--"to which end they rounded up every specimen
+of canned food that's ever come across the Rockies.
+
+"'Let him ask for "salmon esplinade," let him ask for "chicken marine-go,"
+let him ask for plum-pudding, let him ask for hair-oil or throat
+lozengers, this yere outfit calls his bluff,' says Billy Ames, who owns
+the 'twin star' outfit and is anticipatin' this peer as a guest.
+
+"Well, just as everything is ready, the can-opener, sharp as a razor,
+waitin' to open up such effete luxuries as the peer may demand, Bill Ames
+gets called to California by the sickness of his wife. He feels mean about
+abandonin' the peer, but he don't seem to have no choice, his wife bein'
+one of them women who shares her bad health pretty impartially round the
+family. So Billy he departs. But before he goes he expounds to Joplin Joe,
+his foreman, the nature of a peer and how his wants is apt to be a heap
+fashionable, and that when he asks for anything to grasp the can-opener
+and run to the store-house--Cacta, you put on the coffee!
+
+"That peer arrives in the afternoon, and he never makes a request any more
+than a corpse. Beyond a marked disposition to herd by himself and to
+maintain the greatest possible distance between his own person and a
+six-shooter, he don't vary none from the bulk of tenderfeet. At night,
+when all parties retires, and Joplin Joe ponders on them untouched, effete
+luxuries in the store-room, and how the can-opener 'ain't once been dimmed
+in the cause of hospitality, it frets him considerable, and he feels he
+ain't doin' his duty to the absent Billy Ames.
+
+"At sunrise he can stand it no longer. He thunders on the Britisher's door
+with the butt of his six-shooter, calling out:
+
+"'Peer, peer, be you awake?'
+
+"The peer allowed he was, though his teeth was rattling like broken
+crockery.
+
+"'Peer, would you relish some "salmon esplinade"?'
+
+"The peer allowed he wouldn't.
+
+"'Peer, would you relish some "chicken marine-go"?'
+
+"The peer allowed he shore wouldn't, and the crockery rattled harder than
+ever. Joplin Joe then tried him on the hair-oil and the throat lozengers,
+the peer declining each with thanks.
+
+"'Peer,' said Joplin Joe, fair busting with hospitality, 'is there
+anything in this Gawd's world that you do want?'
+
+"The crockery rattled an interlood, then Joplin Joe made out:
+
+"'Thanks, very much. I should like a ba-ath'--Clematis, you see if them
+biscuits is brownin'.
+
+"Joe he ran to the store-room, and his eye encountered a barrel of
+corned-beef. He calls to a couple of cow-punchers, and the first thing you
+know that late corned steer is piled onto the prairie and them
+cow-punchers is hustling the empty barrel in to the peer. Next they
+detaches the steps from the kitchen door, ropes 'em to the barrel and
+introduces the peer to his bath. He's good people all right, and when he
+sees they calls his bluff he steps in all right and lets 'em soak him a
+couple of buckets. This here move restores all parties to a mutual
+understanding, and the peer he bathes in the corned-beef barrel regular
+durin' his stay--you see the habit had cinched him."
+
+Ned had shot an antelope a day or two previous, and antelope steak,
+broiled over a glowing bed of wood coals, with black coffee, stewed dried
+apples, and soda biscuit made up what Mary found to be an unexpectedly
+palatable breakfast. As camp did not include a cow, no milk or butter was
+served with meals. Nevertheless, the hungry tenderfoot was quite content,
+and missed none of the appurtenances she had been brought up to believe
+essential to a civilized meal, not even the little silver jug that Aunt
+Martha always insisted came over with William the Conqueror--Aunt Martha
+scorned the _May-flower_ contingent as parvenus.
+
+The family sat on the grass, tailor fashion, and every one helped himself
+to what appetite prompted, in a fashion that suggested brilliant gymnastic
+powers. To pass a dish to any one, the governess discovered, was construed
+as an evidence of mental weakness and eccentricity. The family satisfied
+its appetite without assistance or amenities, but with the skill of a
+troupe of jugglers.
+
+Breakfast was half over when Mrs. Yellett laid down her knife, which she
+had handled throughout the meal with masterly efficiency. Mary watched her
+in hopeless embarrassment, and wondered if her own timid use of a tin fork
+could be construed as an unfriendly comment upon the Yelletts' more simple
+and direct code of table etiquette.
+
+"Land's sakes! I just felt, all the time we've been eating, we was
+forgettin' something. You children ought to remember, I got so much on my
+mind."
+
+All eyes turned anxiously to the cooking-stove, while an expression of
+frank regret began to settle over the different faces. The backbone of
+their appetites had been broken, and there was something else, perhaps
+something even more appetizing, to come.
+
+Interpreting the trend of their glance and expression, up flared Mrs.
+Yellett, with as great a show of indignation as if some one had set a
+match to her petticoats.
+
+"I declare, I never see such children; no more nacheral feelin's than a
+herd of coyotes; never thinks of a plumb thing but grub. No, make no
+mistake about the character of the objec' we've forgot. 'Tain't sweet
+pertaters, 'tain't molasses, 'tain't corn-bread--it's paw! It's your pore
+old paw--him settin' in the tent, forsook and neglected by his own
+children."
+
+All started up to remedy their filial neglect without loss of time, but
+Mrs. Yellett waved them back to their places.
+
+"Don't the whole posse of you go after him, like he'd done something and
+was to be apprehended. Ben, you go after your father."
+
+Ben strode over to the little white tent that Mary had noticed glimmering
+in the moonlight the preceding evening, and presently emerged, supporting
+on his arm a partially paralyzed old man, who might have been Rip Van
+Winkle in the worst of tempers. His white hair and beard encircled a
+shrivelled, hawklike face, the mouth was sucked back in a toothless eddy
+that brought tip of nose and tip of chin into whispering distance, the
+eyes glittered from behind the overhanging, ragged brows like those of a
+hungry animal searching through the brush for its prey.
+
+"If you've done eatin'," whispered Mrs. Yellett to Miss Carmichael, "you'd
+better run on. Paw's langwidge is simply awful when we forget to bring him
+to meals." Mary ran on.
+
+When, after the lapse of some thirty minutes or so, the stentorian voice
+of Mrs. Yellett recalled Mary to camp, she found that the tin breakfast
+service had been washed and returned to the mess-box, the beds had been
+neatly folded and piled in one of the wagons--in fact, the extremely simple
+tent-hold, to coin a word, was in absolute order. It was just 6 A.M., and
+Mrs. Yellett thought it high time to begin school. Mary tried to convey to
+her that the hour was somewhat unusual, but she seemed to think that for
+pupils who were beginning their tasks comparatively late in life it would
+be impossible to start sufficiently early in the morning. So at this young
+and tender hour, with many misgivings, Mary set about preparing her _al
+fresco_ class-room.
+
+She chose a nice, flat little piece of the United States, situated in the
+shade of the clump of willows that bordered a trickling creek not far from
+her sylvan bath-room of the early morning. How she was to sit on the
+ground all day and yet preserve a properly pedagogical demeanor was the
+first question to be settled. That there was nothing even remotely
+resembling a chair in camp she felt reasonably assured, as "paw" was
+sitting on an inverted soap-box under a pine-tree, and "paw," by reason of
+age and infirmity, appropriated all luxuries. Mrs. Yellett, with her usual
+acumen, grasped the situation.
+
+"I'm figgerin'," she commented, "that there must be easier ways of
+governin' than sittin' up like a prairie-dog while you're at it."
+
+Mrs. Yellett took a hurried survey of the camp, lessening the distance
+between herself and one of the light wagons with a gait in which grace was
+entirely subservient to speed; then, with one capacious wrench of the
+arms, she loosened the spring seat from the wagon and bore it to the
+governess with an artless air of triumph. It was difficult, under these
+circumstances, to explain to Mrs. Yellett that without that symbol of
+scholastic authority, a desk, the wagon seat was useless. Nevertheless,
+Mary set forth, with all her eloquence, the mission of a desk. Mrs.
+Yellett was genuinely depressed. Had she imported the magician without his
+wand--Aladdin without his lamp? She proposed a bewildering choice--an
+inverted wash-tub, two buckets sustaining the relation of caryatides to a
+board, the sheet-iron cooking-stove. In an excess of solicitude she even
+suggested robbing "paw" of his soap-box.
+
+Mary chose the wash-tub on condition that Mrs. Yellett consented to
+sacrifice the handles in the cause of lower education. She felt that an
+inverted tub that was likely to see-saw during class hours would tend
+rather to develop a sense of humor in her pupils than to contribute to her
+pedagogical dignity.
+
+The camp, as may already have been inferred, enjoyed a matriarchal form of
+government. Its feminine dictator was no exception to the race of
+autocrats in that she was not an absolute stranger to the rosy byways of
+self-indulgence. There was a strenuous quality in her pleasuring perhaps
+not inconsistent in one whose daily tasks included sheep-herding,
+ditch-digging, varied by irrigating and shearing in their proper seasons.
+Under the circumstances, it was not surprising that her wash-tub bore
+about the same relationship to her real duties as does the crochet needle
+or embroidery hoop to the lives of less arduously engaged women. It was at
+once her fad and her relaxation, the dainty feminine accomplishment with
+which she whiled away the hours after a busy day spent with pick and
+shovel. Of all this Mary was ignorant when she proposed that Mrs. Yellett
+saw off the tub-handles in the cause of culture. However, Mrs. Yellett
+procured a saw, yet the hand that held it lingered in its descent on the
+handles. She contemplated the tub as affectionately as Hamlet regarding
+the skull of "Alas, poor Yorick!"
+
+"This," she observed, "is the only thing about camp that reminds me I'm a
+woman. I'd plumb forget it many a time if it warn't for this little tub.
+The identity of a woman is mighty apt to get mislaid when dooty compels
+her to assoome the pants cast aside by the nacheral head of the house in
+sickness or death. It's ben six years now since paw's done a thing but set
+'round and wait for meals." Mrs. Yellett sighed laboriously. "Not that I'm
+holdin' it agin him none. When a man sees eighty, it's time he bedded
+himself down comfortable and waited for the nacheral course of events to
+weed him out. But when the boys get old enough to tend to herdin',
+irrigatin', and the work that God A'mighty provided that man might get the
+chance to sweat hisself for bread, accordin' to the Scriptures, I aim to
+indulge myself by doin' a wash of clothes every day, even if I have to
+take clean clothes and do 'em over again."
+
+The poor "gov'ment's" tender heart could not resist this presentation of
+the case.
+
+"We won't touch the handles, Mrs. Yellett," she laughed. "I'm glad you
+told me you had a personal sentiment for the tub. There are some things I
+should feel the same way about--my hoe and rake, for instance, that I care
+for my garden with, at home. And that suggests to me, why not dig two
+little trenches for the handles and plant the tub? Then I shall have an
+even firmer foundation on which to arrange the--the--the educational
+miscellany."
+
+The suggestion of this harmless expedient was gratefully received, and the
+"desk" duly implanted, whereupon Mary pathetically sought to embellish her
+"class-room" from such scanty materials as happened to be at hand. A
+hemstitched bureau scarf that she had tucked in her trunk, in
+unquestioning faith in the bureau that was to be part of the ranch
+equipment, took the "raw edge," as it were, off the desk. A bunch of
+prairie flowers, flaming cactus blossoms in scarlet and yellow, ox-eyed
+daisies, white clematis from the creek, seemed none the less decorative
+for the tin cup that held them. Mary grimly told herself that her school
+was to have refining influences, even if it had no furniture.
+
+The books, pencils, and paper arranged in decorous little piles, Miss
+Carmichael announced to her patroness that school was ready to open. Mrs.
+Yellett, who had never heard that "a soft voice is an excellent thing in
+woman," and whose chest-notes were not unlike those of a Durham in
+sustained volume of sound, made the valley of the Wind River echo with the
+summons of the pupils to school, upon which the teacher herself was
+overcome by the absurdity of the situation and had barely time to escape
+back of the willows, where she laughed till she cried.
+
+As the pupils trooped obediently to school, Mary noted that they carried
+no flowers to their dear teacher, but that Ben, the oldest pupil,
+twenty-one years old, six feet four inches in height and deeply saturnine
+in manner, carried a six-shooter in his cartridge-belt. The teacher felt
+that she was the last to deny a pupil any reasonable palliative of the
+tedium of class-hours--the nearness of her own school-days inclined her to
+leniency in this particular--but she was hardly prepared to condone a
+six-shooter, and confided her fears to Mrs. Yellett, who received them
+with the indulgent tolerance a strong-minded woman might extend to the
+feminine flutter aroused by a mouse. She explained that Ben did not shoot
+for "glory," but to defend the herd from the casual calls of
+mountain-lions, bears, and coyotes. Jack and Ned, who were very nearly as
+tall as their older brother, carried similar weapons. Mary prayed that a
+fraternal spirit might dwell among her pupils.
+
+The Misses Yellett were hardly less terrifying than their brothers. They
+had their father's fierce, hawklike profile, softened by youth, and the
+appalling height and robustness due to the freedom and fresh air of a
+nomadic existence. Their costumes might, Mary thought, have been fashioned
+out of gunny-sacks by the simple expedient of cutting holes for the head
+and arms. The description of the dress worn by the charcoal-burner's
+daughter in any mediaeval novel of modern construction would approximate
+fairly well the school toilets of these young lady pupils. The boys wore
+overalls and flannel shirts, which, in contrast to the sketchy effects of
+their sisters' costumes, seemed almost modish. Mrs. Yellett then left the
+"class-room," saying she must take Ben's place with the sheep.
+
+The Brobdingnags, huge of stature, sinister of aspect, deeply distrustful
+of the rites in which they were about to participate, closed in about
+their teacher. From the pigeon-holes of memory Mary drew forth the
+academic smile with which a certain teacher of hers had invariably opened
+school. The pupils greeted the academic smile with obvious suspicion. No
+one smiled in camp. When anything according with their conception of the
+humorous happened, they laughed uproariously. Thus, early in the morning,
+on his way to breakfast, Ned had stumbled over an ax and severely cut his
+head. Every one but Ned saw the point of this joke immediately, and hearty
+guffaws testified to their appreciation.
+
+Miss Carmichael took her place behind the upturned tub.
+
+"Will you please be seated?" she said.
+
+The class complied with the instantaneous precision of automata newly
+greased and in excellent working order. Their abrupt obedience was
+disconcerting. Some one must have been drilling them, thought their
+anxious teacher, in the art of simultaneous squatting. The temper of the
+class respecting scholastic deportment leaned towards rigidity bordering
+on self-torture.
+
+Mary made out a roll-call, and by unanimous consent it was agreed to
+arrange the class as it then stood, or rather squatted, with the Herculean
+Ben at the top, and gradually diminishing in size till it reached the
+vanishing point with Cacta, who was ten and the least terrifying of all.
+
+"And now," ventured the teacher, with the courage of a white rabbit, "what
+have you been in the habit of studying?"
+
+Absolute silence on the part of the class, which confronted its questioner
+straight as a row of bottles, presenting faces imperturbable as so many
+sphinxes.
+
+Other questions met with an equally disheartening response. Miss
+Carmichael sat up straight, pushed back the persistent curls from her
+face, and bent every energy towards the achievement of a "firm" demeanor.
+
+"Clematis," said she, wisely selecting perhaps the least formidable of the
+class, "I want you to give me some idea of the kind of work you have been
+doing, so that we may all be able to understand each other. Now, in your
+mathematics, for instance, which of you have finished with your
+arithmetic, and which--"
+
+"What do you mean?" begged Clematis, somewhat tearful.
+
+"Where are you in your arithmetic?
+
+"Nowhere, ma'am."
+
+"Do you mean you have never learned any?" Mary Carmichael shuddered as she
+icily put the question.
+
+"Yes, ma'am."
+
+"Is that the case with all of you?"
+
+Emphatic nods left no room for doubt.
+
+"Then we'll leave that for the present. If you will tell me, Clematis,
+what kind of work you have been doing in your history and English, we will
+get to work on those to-day. What books have you been using?"
+
+Not unnaturally, Clematis, who was emotional and easily impressed, began
+to feel as though she were a criminal. She sobbed in a helpless, feminine
+way. Ben spoke up, fearsomely, from the top of the class.
+
+"We 'ain't got no books," said he, in grim rebuke, as though to put an end
+to a profitless discussion.
+
+"Do you wish me to understand," quavered Mary, "that you have had no
+studies--that you--can't read?--that you--don't know--anything?"
+
+"That's it," said Ben, with the nearest approach to cheerfulness he had
+yet manifested.
+
+Meanwhile there lay on the teacher's "desk" copies of Clodd's _Childhood
+of the World_, two of that excellent series of _History Primers_, and _The
+Young Geologist_, all carefully selected, in the fulness of Mary's
+ignorance, for the little pupils of her imagination. She had brought no
+primer, as Mrs. Yellett's letter had distinctly said that the youngest
+child was ten and that all were comparatively advanced in their studies.
+More than ever Mary longed to penetrate the mystery of that Irish linen
+decoy, for without doubt it was to be her melancholy fate to conduct this
+giant band through the alphabet!
+
+Accordingly she wrote out the letters of the alphabet with large
+simplicity and a sublime renunciation of flourish. The class received it
+tepidly. Mary grew eloquent over its unswerving verities. The class
+remained lukewarm. The difference between a and b was a matter of
+indifference to the house of Yellett. They regarded their teacher's
+strenuous efforts to furnish a key to the acquirement of the alphabet with
+the amused superiority of "grown-ups" watching infant antics with pencil
+and paper. Meanwhile her fear of the class increased in proportion as her
+ability to hold its attention diminished. The backbone of the school was
+plainly wilting. The little scholars, armed to the teeth, no longer sat up
+straight as tenpins. After twenty-five minutes of educational experience,
+satiety bowled them over.
+
+A single glance had convinced Ben that the alphabet was beneath contempt.
+He yawned automatically at regular intervals--long, dismal yawns that
+threatened to terminate in a howl, the unchecked, primitive type of yawn
+that one hears in the cages of the zoological gardens on a dull day. Miss
+Carmichael raised interrogatory eyebrows, but she might as well have
+looked reproof at a Bengal tiger.
+
+The class was rapidly promoted to c-a-t, cat; but these dizzy intellectual
+heights left them cold and dull. Ben began to clean his revolver, and on
+being asked why he did not pay attention to his lessons, answered,
+briefly:
+
+"It's all d----d foolishness."
+
+Cacta and Clem were pulling each other's hair. Mary affected not to see
+this sisterly exchange of torture. Ned whittled a stick; and, in chorus,
+when their teacher told them that d-o-g spelled dog, they shouted
+derision, and affirmed that they had no difficulty in compelling the
+obedience of Stump even without this particular bit of erudition. Though
+Mary had always abhorred corporal punishment, she began to see arguments
+in its favor.
+
+With the handleless tub as an elbow-rest the teacher took counsel with
+herself. Strategy must be employed with the intellectual conquest of the
+Brobdingnags. Summoning all the pedagogical dignity of which she was
+capable, she asked:
+
+"Boys, don't you want to know how to read?"
+
+"Noap," responded the head of the class.
+
+"Don't you want to know how to write?"
+
+"Noap."
+
+"But, my dear boy, what would you do if you left here and went out into
+the world, where every one knows these things and your ignorance would be
+evident at every turn. What would you do?"
+
+"Slug the whole blamed outfit!"
+
+Mary looked at her watch. School had lasted just forty-five minutes. Had
+time become petrified?
+
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+
+                       Judith Adjusts The Situation
+
+
+Mary had been a member of the Yellett household for something over a week,
+and the intellectual conquest of her Brobdingnag pupils seemed as hopeless
+as on that first day. School seemed to be regarded by them as a sort of
+neutral territory, admirably adapted for the settlement of long-standing
+grudges, the pleasant exchange of practical jokes, peace and war
+conferences; also as a mart of trade, where fire-arms, knives, bear and
+elk teeth might be swapped with a greater expenditure of time and
+conversation than under the maternal eye. "Teacher," as she was understood
+and accepted by the house of Yellett, undoubtedly filled a long-felt want.
+Presiding over a school of six-imp power for a week, however, had humbled
+Mary to the point of seriously considering a letter to the home
+government, meekly asking for return transportation. But this was before
+feminine wile had struggled with feminine vanity, and feminine wile won
+the day. School still continued to open at six, from which early and
+unusual hour it continued, without recess or interruption, till noon, when
+dinner pleasantly invaded the scholastic monotony, to the infinite relief
+of all parties concerned.
+
+Mary had dismissed her pupils a few minutes before the usual hour, on a
+particularly bad day, that she might rally her scattered faculties and
+present something of a countenance to the watchful eye of Mrs. Yellett.
+Every element of humor had vanished from the situation. The inverted tub
+was no longer a theme for merriment in her diary; home-life without a
+house was no longer a diverting epigram; she had closed her eyes that she
+might not see the mountains in all their grandeur. In her present mood of
+abject homesickness the white-capped peaks were part and parcel of the
+affront. With head sunk in the palms of her hands, and elbows resting on
+the inverted tub, Mary presented a picture of woe, in which the wicked
+element of comedy was not wholly lacking. Looking up suddenly, she saw
+Judith Rodney advancing. The first glimpse of her put Mary in a more
+rational mood.
+
+"I'm so glad to see you! Behold my class-room appointments! They may seem
+a trifle novel, but, for that matter, so are my pupils," began Mary,
+determining to present the same front to Judith that she had to Mrs.
+Yellett. But Judith was not to be put off. She looked into Mary's eyes and
+did not relax her gaze until she was rewarded with an answering twinkle.
+Then Mary laughed long and merrily, the first good, hearty laugh since the
+beginning of her teaching.
+
+"Tell me," Mary broke out, suddenly, "or the suspense will kill me, who
+wrote that lovely letter--on such good quality Irish linen, too? Snob that
+I was, it was the letter that did it."
+
+"So you have your suspicions that it was not a home product?"
+
+"You didn't do it, did you?"
+
+"Oh no; though I was asked, and so was Miss Wetmore, I believe. Of course
+poor Mrs. Yellett had no other recourse, as I suppose you know. I chose to
+be disobliging that time, and was sorry for it afterwards--sorry when I
+heard about the letter that really went! Do you find the sheep-wagon so
+very dreadful?"
+
+"I thought," laughed Mary, "that it was going to be like a picture I saw
+in a magazine, Mexican hammocks, grass cushions, and a lady pouring tea
+from a samovar; instead it was the sheep-wagon and 'Do you sleep light or
+dark?' There is Mrs. Yellett calling us to dinner. Shall I have a chance
+to talk to you alone afterwards?"
+
+"I've come all the way from Dax's to see you," explained Judith, with
+characteristic directness. "We have all the afternoon."
+
+"Really!" Mary displayed a flash of school-girl enthusiasm. "I feel as if
+I could almost bear the scenery."
+
+Presumably Judith was a favorite guest of the Yellett household, and not
+without reason. She took her place in the circle about the homely,
+steaming fare, with an ease and grace that suggested that dining off the
+ground was an every-day affair with her, and chairs and tables
+undreamed-of luxuries. Mary envied her ready tact. Why could she not meet
+these people with Judith's poise--bring out the best of them, as she did?
+The boys talked readily and naturally--there was even a flavor to what they
+said. As for herself, try never so conscientiously and she would be
+confronted by frank amusement or shy distrust. Even "paw" beamed at Judith
+appreciatively as he consumed his meal with infinite, toothless labor. The
+Spartan family became almost sprightly under the pleasantly stimulating
+influence of its guest.
+
+"What kind of basques are they wearing this summer, Judy?" inquired Mrs.
+Yellett, regarding her guest's trim shirt-waist judicially. "I reckon them
+loose, meal-sack things must be all the go since you and Miss Mary both
+have 'em; but give me a good, tight-fittin' basque, every time. How's any
+one to know whether you got a figure or not, in a thing that never hits
+you anywhere?" questioned the matriarch, not without a touch of pride
+anent her own fine proportions.
+
+"You really ought to have a shirt-waist, Mrs. Yellett. You've no idea of
+the comfort of them, till you've worn them."
+
+"I don't see but I'll have to come to it." Her tone was frankly regretful,
+as one who feels obliged to follow the behests of fashion, yet, in so
+doing, sacrifices a cherished ideal. Mary Carmichael choked over her
+coffee in an abortive attempt to restrain her audible hilarity. Judith,
+without a trace of amusement, was discussing materials, cut, and buttons;
+the plainswoman had proved herself the better gentlewoman of the two.
+
+"Get me a spotty calico, white, with a red dot, will you, the next time
+you're over to Ervay? Buttons accordin' to your judgment; but if you could
+get some white chiny with a red ring, I think they'd match it handsome."
+She frowned reflectively. "You're sure one of them loose, hangy things 'd
+become me? Then you can bring it over Tuesday, when you come to the hunt."
+
+"What hunt?" asked Judith, in all simplicity.
+
+"Why, the wolf-hunt. Peter Hamilton come here three days ago and made
+arrangements for 'em all to have supper here after it was done. 'Lowed
+there was a young Eastern lady in the party, Miss Colebrooke, who couldn't
+wait to meet me. Course you're goin', Judy? You've plumb forgot it, or
+somethin' happened to the messenger. Who ever hyeard tell of anythin'
+happenin' in this yere county 'thout you bein' the very axle of it?"
+
+Judith had not betrayed her chagrin by the least change of countenance. To
+the most searching glance every faculty was intent on the shirt-waist with
+the ringed buttons. Yet both women felt--by a species of telepathy wholly
+feminine--that Judith was deeply wounded. Loyal Sarah Yellett decided that
+Hamilton's guests would get but a scant supper from her if her friend
+Judith was to be unfavored with an invitation, while Judith, in her own
+warm heart, resented as deeply as Peter's slight of herself, his tale of
+Miss Colebrooke's impatience to meet Mrs. Yellett. The matriarch's
+dominant personality evoked many a smile even from those most deeply
+conscious of her worth; but it wasn't like Peter to make a spectacle of
+his ruggedly honest neighbor. Nevertheless she remarked, coolly:
+
+"I sha'n't be able to bring your shirt-waist things up Tuesday, I'm
+afraid, Mrs. Yellett, but I'll try to bring them towards the end of the
+week." Then, with a swift change of subject, "How are the boys getting on
+with their education, Miss Carmichael?"
+
+The boys looked at Mary out of the corners of their eyes. Their prowess in
+the field of letters had not been publicly discussed before. Mary
+Carmichael, emboldened by Judith's presence, looked at her tormentors with
+a judicious glance.
+
+"The girls are doing fairly well," she replied, suppressing the mischief
+in her eyes, "but the boys, poor fellows, I think something must be the
+matter with them. Did they ever fall on their heads when they were babies,
+Mrs. Yellett?"
+
+"Not more than common. All babies fall on their heads; it's as common as
+colic."
+
+"Poor boys!" said Mary, with a manner that suggested they were miles away,
+rather than within a few feet of her. "Poor boys! I've never seen anything
+like it. They try so hard, too, yet they can make nothing of work that
+would be play for a child of three. They must have fallen on their heads
+harder than you supposed, Mrs. Yellett."
+
+"Perhaps their skulls were a heap frailer than I allowed for at the time,"
+said Mrs. Yellett, with similar remoteness, yet with a twinkle that showed
+Mary she understood the situation.
+
+"An infant's skull doesn't stand much knocking about, I suppose, Mrs.
+Yellett?"
+
+"Not a great deal, if there ain't plenty of vinegar and brown paper handy,
+and I seldom had such fancy fixings in camp. It's too bad my boys should
+be dumb 'n account of a little thing like vinegar and brown paper."
+
+"Maw, they be dumb as Injuns," declared Cacta, preening herself, while the
+Messrs. Yellett reapplied themselves to their dinner with ostentatious
+interest.
+
+"Well, well!" said Mrs. Yellett; "it be a hard blow to me to know that my
+sons are lackings; there's mothers I know as would give vent to their
+disapp'inted ambition in ways I'd consider crool to the absent-minded. Now
+hearken, the whole outfit of you! Any offspring of mine now present and
+forever after holding his peace, who proves feebleminded by the end of the
+coming week, takes over all the work, labor, and chores of such offspring
+as demonstrates himself in full possession of his faculties, the matter to
+be reported on by the gov'ment."
+
+No sovereign, issuing a proclamation of war, could have assumed a more
+formidable mien than Mrs. Yellett, squatting erect on the prairie, crowned
+by her rabbit-skin cap. Mary and Judith, with bland, impassive
+expressions, noted the effect of the mandate. There was not the faintest
+symptom of rebellion; each Brobdingnag accepted the matriarch's edict
+without a murmur.
+
+With an air of further meditation on the efficacy of brown paper and
+vinegar at the crucial moment, Mrs. Yellett suddenly observed:
+
+"The lacking, like the dog, may be taught to fetch and carry a book; but
+to learn it he is unable."
+
+"Maw, does it say that in the Book of Hiram?" asked Clematis.
+
+"It says that, an' more, too. It says, 'The words of the wise are an
+expense, but the lovin' parent don't grudge 'em.'"
+
+Mary Carmichael had noticed, as her alien presence came to be less of a
+check on Mrs. Yellett's natural medium of expression, that she was much
+addicted to a species of quotation with which she impartially adorned her
+conversation, pointed family morals, or administered an occasional
+reproof. These family aphorisms were sometimes semi-legal, sometimes
+semi-scriptural in turn of phrase, and built on a foundation of homely
+philosophy. They were ascribed to the "Book of Hiram" and never failed of
+salutary effect in the family circle. But the apt quotations that she had
+just heard piqued Mary's curiosity more than before.
+
+"Do you happen to have a copy of the Book of Hiram, Mrs. Yellett?" she
+asked, in all innocence, supposing that the 'homely apothegms were to be
+found at the back of some patent-medicine almanac. Judith Rodney listened
+in wonder. The question had never before been asked in her hearing.
+
+"I lost mine." Mrs. Yellett folded her arms and looked at her questioner
+with something of a challenging mien.
+
+"What a pity! I've been so interested in the quotations I've heard you
+make from it."
+
+"What's the matter with 'em?" she demanded, pride and apprehension equally
+commingled.
+
+Judith Rodney rushed to the rescue:
+
+"Nothing is the matter with them, Mrs. Yellett," she said, with her
+disarming smile, "except that there is not quite enough to go around."
+
+The matriarch had the air of gathering herself together for something
+really worth while. Then she tossed off:
+
+"''Tain't always the quality of the grub that confers the flavor, but
+sometimes the scarcity thereof.'"
+
+Perhaps it has been the good-fortune of some of us to say a word of praise
+to an author, while unconscious of his relationship to the book praised.
+Mark the genial glow radiating from every feature of our auditor! How we
+feel ourselves anointed with his approval, our good taste and critical
+faculty how commended! It is a luxury that goes a long way towards
+mitigating the discomfitures caused by the reverse of this unctuous
+blunder.
+
+"The Book of Hiram," said Mrs. Yellett, angling for time, "is a book--it do
+surprise me that it escapes your notice back East. You ever heard tell of
+the Book of Mormon?"
+
+Mary assented.
+
+"Well, the Book of Hiram is like the Book of Mormon, only a heap more
+undefiled. The youngest child can read it without asking a single
+embarrassing question of its elder, and the oldest sinner can read it
+without having any fleshly meditations intrudin' on his piety."
+
+The Yellett family had by this time dispersed itself for the afternoon,
+and the matriarch and the two girls started in to clear away the meal and
+wash the dishes.
+
+"That's the kind of book for me," continued Mrs. Yellett, vigorously
+swishing about in the soapy water. "Story-books don't count none with me
+these days. It's my opinion that things are snarled up a whole lot too
+much in real life without pestering over the anguish of print folks. Flesh
+and blood suffering goes without a groan of sympathy from the on-lookers,
+while novel characters wade to the neck in compassion. I've pondered on
+that a whole lot, seem' a heap of indifference to every-day calamity, and
+the way I assay it is like this: print folks has terrible fanciful layouts
+given to their griefs and worriments by the authors of their being. The
+trimmings to their troubles is mighty attractive. Don't you reckon I'd be
+willin' to have a spell of trouble if I had a sweeping black velvet dress
+to do it in? Yes, indeed, I'd be willin' to turn a few of them shades of
+anguish, 'gray's ashes,' 'pale as death,' and so on, if they'd give me the
+dress novel ladies seems to have for them special occasions."
+
+"But you used to like novels, you know you did, Mrs. Yellett," observed
+Judith Rodney.
+
+"Yes, I didn't always entertain these views concernin' romance. You
+wouldn't believe it, but there was a time when I just nacherally went
+careerin' round enveloped in fantasies. I was young then--just about the
+time I married paw. Every novel that was read to me, I mean that I
+read"--Mrs. Yellett blushed a deep copper color through her many coats of
+tan--"convinced me that I was the heroine thereof. And, nacherally, I
+turned over to paw the feachers and characteristics of the hero in said
+book I happened to be enjoyin' at the time. Paw never knew it, but
+sometimes he was a dook, and it was plumb hard work. Just about as hard as
+ropin' a mountain-lion an' sayin', 'remember, you are a sheep from this
+time henceforth, and trim your action accordin'.' I'd say to paw, 'Let's
+walk together in the gloaming, here in this deserted garden'; and paw
+would say, 'Name o' Gawd, woman, have you lost your mind? It's plumb three
+hundred and fifty miles to the Tivoli beer-garden in Cheyenne, and it
+ain't deserted, either!'
+
+"Then I'd wring my hands in anguish, same as the Lady Mary, an' paw would
+declare I was locoed. He seemed a heap more nacheral when I pretended he
+was 'Black Ranger, the Pirate King.' His language came in handy, and his
+cartridge-belt and pistol all came in Black Ranger's outfit. Yes, it was a
+heap easier playing he was a pirate than a dook. All this happened back to
+Salt Lake, where me an' paw was married."
+
+Mrs. Yellett looked towards the mountain-range that separated her from the
+Mormon country, and her listeners realized that she was verging perilously
+close to confidences. Mary Carmichael, who dreaded missing any detail of
+the chronicle that dealt with paw in the rôle of apocryphal duke, hastened
+to say:
+
+"And you lost your taste for romance, finally?"
+
+"In Salt Lake I was left to myself a whole lot-there was reasons why I
+didn't mingle with the Mormon herd. Paw was mighty attentive to me, but
+them was troublous times for paw. I pastures myself with the fleetin'
+figures of romance the endoorin' time and enjoys myself a heap. When paw
+wasn't a dook or a pirate king, unbeknownst to himself, like as not he was
+Sir Marmaduke Trevelyun, or somebody entitled to the same amount of dog.
+
+"'Bout this time a little stranger was due in our midst, and the woman who
+came to take care of me was plumb locoed over novels, same as me, only
+worse. She just hungered for 'em, same as if she had a longin' for
+something out of season. She brought a batch of them with her in her
+trunk, we borrowed her a lot more, some I don't know how she come by. But
+they didn't have no effect; it was like feedin' an' Injun--you couldn't
+strike bottom. She read out of 'em to me with disastrous results
+happenin', an' that cured me. The brand on this here book that effected my
+change of heart was _The Bride of the Tomb_. I forget the name of the girl
+in that romance, but she was in hard luck from the start. She couldn't
+head off the man pursooin' her, any way she turned. She'd wheel out of his
+way cl'ar across country, but he'd land thar fust an' wait for her, a
+smile on his satanine feachers.
+
+"I got so wrought up along o' that book, an' worried as to the outcome,
+'most as bad as the girl. Think of it! An' me with only three baby-shirts
+an' a flannel petticoat made at the time! Seemed 's if I couldn't hustle
+my meals fast enough, I just hankered so to know what was goin' to happen
+next! I plumb detested the man with the handsome feachers, same as the
+girl. Me an' her felt precisely alike about him. And when he shut her up
+in the family vault I just giv' up an' was took then an' there, an' me
+without so much as finishin' the flannel petticoat! I never could endure
+the sight of a novel since. Perhaps that's why Ben is so dumb about his
+books--just holds a nacheral grudge against 'em along of my havin' to
+borrow slips for him."
+
+"Has the Book of Hiram anything to say against the habit of novel reading,
+Mrs. Yellett?" inquired Judith, demurely.
+
+She paused for a moment. "It's mighty inconvenient that I should have
+mislaid that book, but rounding up my recollections of it, I recall
+something like this: 'Romance is the loco-weed of humanity.'"
+
+"So you don't approve of the Mormon Bible?" ventured Mary.
+
+"I jest nacherally execrates Mormonism, spoken, printed, or in action,"
+she said, with an emphasis that suggested the subject had a strong
+personal bearing. "I recall a text from the Book of Hiram touching on
+Mormon deportment in particklar an' human nature at large. It says, 'Where
+several women and one man are gathered together for the purpose of serving
+the Lord, the man gets the bulk of the service."
+
+She broke off suddenly, as if she feared she had said too much. "Judy,"
+she demanded, "is Mis' Dax busy with Leander now?"
+
+"Not more than usual," smiled Judith.
+
+"Jest tell her for me, will you, that I want to hire her husband to do
+some herdin'; Leander's handy, 'n' can work good an' sharp, if he is an
+infidel. An' I like to have him over now an' then, as you know, Judy. As
+the Book of Hiram says, 'It's neighborly to ease the check-rein of a
+gentled husband.' But you tell him I don't want to hear any of his
+ever-lastin' fool argufyin' 'bout religion. Leander 'd stop in the middle
+of shearin' a sheep to argue that Jonah never came out o' the whale's
+belly. I ain't no use for infidels, 'less they're muzzled, which Leander
+mos' generally is."
+
+With the feeling that there was an excellent though unspoken understanding
+between them, the two girls walked together to the top of the path that
+wandered away from camp towards a bluff overlooking wave after wave of
+foot-hills, lying blue and still like a petrified sea.
+
+"I'm still dying to know who wrote that letter," begged Mary.
+
+"It was written by a lady who is very anxious to return to Washington, and
+she took that means of getting one more vote. Her husband is going to run
+for the Senate next term. We hear a good deal of that side of politics,
+you know."
+
+"It was certainly convincing," remarked the victim of the letter. "My
+aunts detected many virtues in the handwriting."
+
+"But now that you are really here, isn't it splendid? Mountains are such
+good neighbors. They give you their great company and yet leave you your
+own little reservations."
+
+"But I fear I can never feel at home out-of-doors," Mary announced, with
+such a rueful expression that they both smiled.
+
+"Perhaps, then, it depends on the frame of mind. I've had longer than you
+to cultivate it."
+
+Mary looked towards the mountains, serene in their strength. "Awesome as
+they are," she laughed, "they don't frighten me nearly as much as Ben and
+Ned. They are really very difficile, my pupils, and I feel so ridiculous
+sitting up back of that tub, teaching them letters and the spelling of
+foolish words, when they know things I've never dreamed of. The other day,
+out of a few scratches in the dust that I should never have given a second
+glance, one of them made out that some one's horses had broken the corral
+and one was trailing a rope. Whereupon my pupil got on a horse, went in
+search of the strays, and returned them to men going to a round-up. After
+that, the spelling of cat didn't seem quite so much of an achievement as
+it had before."
+
+"But they need the spelling of cat so much more than you need to
+understand trail-marks. Why don't you try a little strategy with them?
+Perhaps a bribe, even? It seems to me I remember something in history
+about the part played in colonization by the bright-colored bead."
+
+Sundry wood-cuts from a long-forgotten primer history of the United States
+came back to Mary. In that tear-stained, dog-eared volume, all explorers,
+from Columbus down to Lewis and Clarke, were unfailingly depicted in the
+attitude of salesmen displaying squares of cloth to savages apparently in
+urgent need of them.
+
+"How stupid of me not to remember Father Marquette concluding negotiations
+with a necklace!"
+
+"Frankly plagiarize the terms of your treaty from Pčre Marquette, and
+there you are!"
+
+"You are so splendid!" said Mary, impulsively, remembering Judith's own
+sorrows and the smiling fortitude with which she kept them hidden. "You
+make me feel like a horrid little girl that has been whining."
+
+Judith looked towards the mountains a long time without speaking.
+
+"When you know them well, they whisper great things that little folk can't
+take away."
+
+She turned back towards camp, walking lightly, with head thrown back. Mary
+watched her. Yes, the mountains might have admitted her to their company.
+
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+
+                              The Wolf-hunt
+
+
+Judith awakened with all the starry infinitude of sky for a canopy. In the
+distance loomed the foot-hills, watchful sentinels of her slumbers; and,
+sloping gently away from them, rolled the plain, like some smooth, dark
+sea flowing deep and silently. Judith, a solitary figure adrift in that
+still ocean of space, sat up and watched the stars fade and saw the young
+day peer timorously at the world that lay before it. Her mind, refreshed
+by long hours of dreamless sleep, turned to the problem of impending
+things, serenely contemplative. The passing of many mornings and many
+peoples had the mountains seen as the wreathed mists came and went about
+their brows, and to all who knew the value of the gift they gave their
+great company, and to such as could hear, they told their great secrets.
+Judith's prayer was an outflowing of soul to the great forces about her, a
+wish to be in harmony with them, to remember her kinship, to keep some
+measure of their serenity in the press of burdens. The way of the Indian
+was ever her way when circumstance raised no barriers; the four walls of a
+house were a prison to her after the days lengthened and the summer nights
+grew warm. To the infinite disapproval of that custodian of propriety,
+Mrs. Dax, she would make her bed beneath the stars, night after night, and
+bathe in the cold, clear waters of the stream that purled from the
+white-capped crest of the mountains.
+
+"Nasty Injun ways!" scoffed Leander's masterful lady, consciously superior
+from the intrenchment of her stuffy bedroom, that boasted crochet-work on
+the backs of the chairs and a scant lace curtain at its solitary window.
+
+Judith, going to her favorite pool to bathe, saw that it had shrunk till
+it seemed but a fairy well hid among the willows. A quarter of a mile
+above was another pool, hidden like a jewel in its case of green,
+broidered with scarlet roseberries and white clematis; and towards this
+she bent her steps, as time was a-plenty that morning. She kept to the
+stones of the creek for a pathway, jumping lightly from those that were
+moss-grown to those that hid their nakedness in the dark, velvet shadows
+of early morning, her white feet touching the shallow stream like pale
+gulls that dipped and skimmed. "Diana's Pool," as she called it, was
+always clear. It lay half hid beneath a shelving rock, a fount for the
+tiny, white fall that crooned and sang as it fell. And here she bathed, as
+the east flamed where the mountains blackened against it. Gold halos
+tipped the clouds, that melted presently into fiery waves, then burst into
+one great aureole through which the sun rode triumphant, and it was day.
+
+She had kept post-office the day before, and it would not be till day
+after to-morrow that the squires of the lariat would come again to offer
+their hearts, their worldly goods, their complete reformation, if she
+would only change her mind. It was all such an old story that she had
+grown to regard them with a tenderness almost maternal. But to-day was all
+her own, and the spirit of adventure swelled high in her bosom as she
+thought of what she had planned. It was warm and close and still in the
+Dax house as Judith made her way softly to her own room and began her
+preparations for the long journey she was to take afoot. To walk in the
+abominations devised by the white man for the purpose of cramping his feet
+would have been a serious handicap to Judith. The twenty miles that she
+would walk before nightfall was no very great undertaking to her, but it
+was part of her primitive directness to accomplish it with as little
+expenditure of fatigue and comfort as possible. Moreover, who could steal
+through the forest in those heeled things without announcing his coming
+and frightening the forest folk, and sending them skurrying? And Judith
+loved to surprise them and see them busy with their affairs--to creep along
+in her soft, elk-hide moccasins and catch their watchful eyes and see the
+things that were not for the heavy-booted white man.
+
+She might have inspired Kitty Colebrooke to a sonnet as she stepped out
+into the glad morning light, in short skirt and jacket, green-clad as the
+pines that girdled the mountains, with a knapsack with rations of bread
+and meat and the wherewithal to build a fire should she wander belated.
+She softly closed the door, not to awaken Leander and his slumbering lady,
+and broke into the running gait that the Indians use on their all-day
+journeys, the elk-hide moccasins falling soft as snow-flakes on the trail.
+Dolly she missed chiefly for her companionship, for Judith had not the
+white man's utter helplessness without a horse in this country of high
+altitudes. When she walked she breathed, carried herself, covered ground
+like her mother's people, and loved the inspiration of it.
+
+The eerie shadows of the desert drew back and hid themselves in the
+mountains. The day began with splendid promise--the day of the wolf-hunt,
+of which no word had been spoken to her by Peter. She, too, was going
+hunting, but silently and unbidden she would steal through the forest and
+see this mysterious woman who played fast and loose with Peter, who loved
+her apparently all the better for the game she played. What manner of
+woman could do these things? What manner of woman could be indifferent to
+Peter? Judith was consumingly curious to see. And, apart from this naked
+and unashamed curiosity, there was the possibility that at sight of Miss
+Colebrooke there might come a relaxation of Peter's tyrannous hold upon
+her thoughts, her life, her very heart's blood. Would her loyalty bear the
+test of seeing Peter made a fool of by a woman she could dismiss with a
+shrug--a softly speaking shrew, perhaps, who played a waiting game with her
+finger on the pulse of Peter's prospects? For there was talk of a
+partnership with the Wetmores. Or a fool, perhaps, for all her sonneting,
+for there are men who relish a weak headpiece as the chiefest ornament of
+women, especially when its indeterminate vagaries boast an escape-valve
+remotely connected with the fine arts. Or a devil-woman, perhaps--an
+upright wanton who could think no wrong from very poverty of temperament,
+yet kept him dangling. The possibility of Kitty's honesty, Judith in her
+jealousy would not admit. Had she gone to the devil for him, stood and
+faced the drift of opinion for his sake, that Judith could have
+understood. But what was the spinning of verses to a woman's portion of
+loving and being loved? Even Alida, through all her distracting anxieties,
+had in her heart the thrice-blessed leaven, reasoned the woman of the
+plains, who might, according to modern standards, be reckoned a trifle
+primitive in her psychological deductions. And, withal, Judith was forced
+to admit that there was something simple and true about a man who would
+let a woman make a fool of him, whoever the woman was.
+
+Perhaps with this hunting would end the long reign of Peter as a divinity.
+Judith was tired, not in her vigorous young body, because that was strong
+and healthful as the hill wind, but tired in heart and mind and life. Her
+destiny had not been beautiful or happy before he invaded it, but it had
+been calm, and now serenity seemed the worthiest gift of the gods. It was
+not that she loved him less, but that she had so long reflected upon him
+that her imagination was numb; her thoughts, arid, unfruitful as the
+desert, turned from him to the problems that beset her, and from them back
+to him again, in dull, subconscious yearning. She could no longer project
+an anguished consciousness to those scenes wherein he walked and talked
+with Kitty. Her Indian fatalism had intervened. "Life was life," to be
+lived or left. And yet she felt herself a poor creature, one who had lived
+long on illusion, who had bent her neck to the yoke of arid unrealities.
+The pale-haired woman who kept him with her miserliness of self, who
+intruded no sombre tragedy of loving, was well worth a trip across the
+foot-hills to see. And yet, Judith reflected, it was the portion of her
+mother's daughter to make of loving the whole business of life, even if
+she rebelled and fought against it as an accursed destiny. It was in her
+inheritance to know and live for the wild thrill of ecstasy in her pulses,
+to feel trembling joy and despair and frantic hope, that exacted its
+tribute hardly less poignant; as it was, also, to feel a shivering
+sensitiveness in regard to the loneliness and bitterness of her life, to
+have the same measureless capacity for sorrow that she had for loving, to
+have a soul attuned to the tragedy of things, to love the mighty forces
+about her, to feel the reflection of all their moods in her heart, and,
+lastly, it was her destiny to be the daughter of a half-Sioux and a border
+adventurer, and to feel the counter influences of the two races make
+forever of her heart a battleground.
+
+Her light feet scarcely touched the ground as she sped swiftly through all
+the network of the hills; and more than once her woman's heart asked the
+question, "And, prithee, Judith, if from henceforth you are only to hold
+fellowship with the stars and have no part in the ways of men, why do you
+walk a day's journey to catch a glimpse of a pale-haired woman?"
+
+She knew the probable course of the wolf-hunt. She had been on scores of
+them, galloped with Peter after the fleeing gray thing that swept along
+the ground like the nucleus of a whirling dust-devil. At least she was
+sure of the place of their nooning--a limpid stream that ran close to many
+young pine-trees. Here was a pause in the rugged ascent, a level space of
+open green, thick with buffalo grass. Many times had she been here with
+Peter, sometimes with many other people on the chase--sometimes, and these
+occasions were enshrined in her memory, each with its own particular halo,
+with Peter alone; and they had fished for trout and cooked their supper on
+the grassy levels. It was in Judith's planning to arrive before the
+hunting-party, to hide among the thickets of scrub pine that grew along
+the steep cliffs and overlooked the grassy level, to take her fill of
+looking at the pale-haired girl and the hunters at their merrymaking, and,
+when she had seen, to steal back across the trail to the Daxes'. They
+would not penetrate the thickets where she meant to hide, and, should
+they, she was prepared for that contingency, too. She had brought with her
+a bright-colored shawl that she would throw over her head, and with the
+start of them she could outrun them all, even Peter. Had she not
+outdistanced him easily, many times, in fun? Through the tangle of
+tree-trunks that grew not far from the thicket, they would think she was
+but a poor Shoshone squaw lying in wait for the broken meat of the
+revellers.
+
+By crossing and recrossing the tiny creeks that trickled slow and
+obstructed through the gaunt levels of plain and foot-hill, she had come
+by a direct route to the fringes of the pine country. And here she found a
+world dim, green, and mysterious. It was wellnigh inconceivable that the
+land of sage-brush and silence could, within walking distance of
+desolation, show such wealth of young timber, such shade and beauty. Her
+noiseless footfalls scarce startled a sage-hen that, realizing too late
+her presence, froze to the dead stump--a ruffled gray excrescence with
+glittering bead eyes that stared at her furtively, the one live thing in
+the tense body.
+
+The sun wanted an hour of noon when Judith rested by the stream, bathed
+her face and hands, flushed from the long walk, ate the bread and meat,
+then lay on the bed of pine-needles, brown and soft from the weathering of
+many suns and snows. She had been all day in the company she loved
+best--the earth, the sky, the sun and wind--and in her heart at last was a
+deep tranquillity. Thus she could face life and ask nothing but to watch
+the cloud fleeces as they are spun and heaped high in the long days of
+summer; in soberer moods to watch the thoughts of the Great Mystery as He
+reveals them in the shifting cloud shapes; to penetrate further and
+further into the councils of the great forces. Thus did she dream the
+moments away till the sun was high in the blue and threw long, yellow
+splashes of light on her still body, on the soft pine-needles, beneath the
+boughs. But there was no time for further day-dreams if she intended to
+forestall the hunters at the place of nooning. She followed a game trail
+that lay along the stream, ascending through the dense growths till she
+reached the top of the jutting rocks. Her hair was loosened, her skirt
+awry, and the pine-needles stood out from it as from a cushion. Much of
+the way she gained by creeping beneath the low branches on her hands and
+knees. No white woman would be likely to follow her reasoned the daughter
+of the plains. It would be a little too hard on her appearance. And here,
+by lying flat and hanging over the jutting knob of rock, with a pine
+branch in her hand, she could see this mysterious woman and Peter and the
+hunters.
+
+She broke a branch to shade her face, she looked down on the grassy level.
+She waited, but there was no sound of hoofs falling muffled on the soft
+ground. The shadows of the pines contended with the splashes of sunlight
+for the little world beneath the trees. They trembled in mimic battle,
+then the shadows stole the sunlight, bit by bit, till all was pale-green
+twilight, and there was no sound of the hunters.
+
+
+
+The hunters, meanwhile, had not been altogether successful in the chase.
+The necessary wolf had been coy, and they, perforce, had to compromise
+with his poor relation, the coyote--a poor relation, indeed, whose shabby
+coat, thinned by the process of summer shedding, made it an unworthy
+souvenir to Miss Colebrooke. But it was not the lack of a wolf that robbed
+the hunting-party of its zest for Kitty. She could not tell what it was,
+but something seemed to have gone wrong with the day from the beginning.
+She rode beside her cavalier in a habit the like of which the country had
+never before seen, and Peter, usually the most observant of men, had no
+word for its multitude of perfections. In the first realization of
+disappointment with the day, the hunt, the hardships of the long ride, her
+perturbed consciousness took up the problem of this missing element and
+tried to adjust itself to the irritating absence. Kitty wondered if it
+were something she had forgotten. No, there were her two little cambric
+pocket-handkerchiefs, remotely suggestive of orris, and bearing her
+monogram delicately wrought and characteristic. It was not her watch, the
+ribbon fob of which fluttered now and then in the breeze. It was not veil
+nor scarf-pin nor any of the paraphernalia of the properly garbed
+horsewoman. And yet there was something missing, something she should have
+had with her, something the absence of which was taking the savor from the
+day's hunting.
+
+It must be the very bigness of this great, splendid world that gave her
+the sense of being alone at sea. Intuitively she turned and looked at
+Peter riding beside her. There was something in his face that made her
+look again before accepting the realization at first incredulously, then
+with frank amusement. Peter had scarcely spoken since they left the ranch.
+She had come down to breakfast so sure of her new riding-habit. The
+Wetmore girls had been moved to hyperboles about its cut and fit and the
+trim shortness of the skirt--short riding-skirts were something of a
+novelty then. The fine gold hair, twisted tight at the back of the shapely
+head, was like a coiled mass of burnished metal, some safe-keeping device
+of mint or gold-worker till the season of coining or fashioning should
+come round. The translucent flesh-tints, pearl-white flushing into
+pink--"Bouguereau realized at last," as Nannie Wetmore was in the habit of
+summing up her cousin's complexion--was as marvellous as ever. The delicate
+firmness of profile gave to the face the artificial perfection of an old
+miniature, rather than of a flesh-and-blood countenance, and all these
+were there as of yore, but the marvel of them failed of the customary
+tribute. Kitty, on scanty reflection, was at no loss to translate Peter's
+reserve into a language at once flattering and retributive. In her scheme
+of life he was always to be her devoted cavalier, as indeed he had been
+from the beginning. She loved her own small eminence too well to imperil
+her tenure of it by sharing its pretty view of men and things with any
+one. In country house parties she loved the mild wonder that the
+successful _littérateuse_ could fight and play and win her social triumphs
+so well. She loved the star part, and next to playing it she enjoyed
+wresting it from other women or eclipsing them completely in some
+conspicuously minor rôle, while, in the matter of dress, Miss Colebrooke
+went beyond the point decreed by the most exigent mandates of fashion.
+When hats were worn over the face, her admirers had to content themselves
+with a glimpse of her charming mouth and chin. When they flared, hers
+fairly challenged the laws of equilibrium. She danced with the same
+facility with which she rode, swam, and played tennis. In doing these
+things supremely well she felt that she vindicated the position of the
+woman of letters. Why should one be a frump because one wrote?
+
+Her friendship with Peter was to endure to greenest old age, more
+platonic, perhaps, than that of Madame Récamier and Chateaubriand. It was
+to be fruitful in letters that would compare favorably with the best of
+the seventeenth century series. Even now her own letters to Peter were no
+sprightly scrawl of passing events, but efforts whose seriousness
+suggested, at least in their carefully elaborated stages of structure, the
+letters of the ladies of Cranford.
+
+But in the course of these Western wanderings, undertaken not wholly
+without consideration of Peter, there had appeared in the maplike
+exactness of her plans an indefinite territory that threatened
+undreamed-of proportions. It menaced the scheme of the letters, it shook
+the foundations of the Chateaubriand-Récamier friendship. The unknown
+quantity was none other than the frequent and irritating mention of one
+Judith Rodney, who, from all accounts, appeared a half-breed. Her name,
+her beauty, some intrinsic charm of personality made her an all too
+frequent topic, except in the case of Peter. He had been singularly keen
+in scenting any interrogatory venue that led to the mysterious half-breed;
+when questioned he persistently refused to exhibit her as a type.
+
+Kitty knew that she had treated her long-suffering cavalier with scant
+consideration the day he had spurred across the desert to see her. True,
+she had written him on her arrival, but, with feminine perversity of
+logic, thought it a trifle inconsiderate of him to come so soon after that
+trying railroad journey. An ardent resumption of his suit--and Peter could
+be depended on for renewing it early and often--was farthest from her
+inclination at that particular time. She intended to salve her conscience
+at the wolf-hunt for her casual reception of his impetuous visit. But
+apparently Peter did not intend to be prodigal of opportunity.
+
+"How garrulous you people are this morning!" Nannie Wetmore challenged
+them. Peter came out of his brown study with the look of one who has again
+returned to earth.
+
+"You don't find it like the drop-curtain of a theatre, now that you've
+seen it?" he questioned Kitty. For she had doubted her pleasure in the
+mountains, in the conviction that they would be too dramatic for her
+simple taste.
+
+Kitty closed her eyes and sighted the peaks as if she were getting the
+color scheme for an afternoon toilet.
+
+"Mass, bulk, rather than line--no, it's not like a drop-curtain, but it's
+distinctly 'hand-painted.' All it needs is a stag surveying the prospect
+from that great cliff. It's the kind of thing that would sound well in a
+description. Oh, I assure you I intend to make lavish use of it, but it
+leaves nothing to one's poor imagination!"
+
+Peter had a distinct feeling of being annoyed. No, she could not
+appreciate the mountains any more than they could appreciate her. They
+were incongruous, antipathetic, antipodal. Kitty, in her pink and white
+and flaxen prettiness and her trim habit, was in harmony with the
+bridle-path of a city park; in this great, lonely country she was an
+alien. He thought of Judith and the night they had climbed Horse-Thief
+Trail, of her quiet endurance, her keen pleasure in the wild beauty of the
+night, her quality of companionship, her loyalty, her silent bearing of
+many burdens. Yet until he had seen them both against the same relentless
+background, he had never been conscious of comparing the two women.
+
+Nannie Wetmore had fallen behind. She was riding with a bronzed young
+lieutenant from Fort Washakie. The two ahead rode long without speaking.
+Then Peter broke the silence impatiently:
+
+"You did not really mean that, did you?" He was boyishly hurt at her
+flippant summing up of his beloved blue country. And Kitty, tired with the
+long, hard ride, and missing that something in Peter that had always been
+hers, turned on him a pair of blue eyes in which the tears were brimming
+suspiciously. They were well out of sight of the others, and had come to
+the heavy fringes of a pine wood. Was it the psychological moment at last?
+Then suddenly their horses, that had been sniffing the air suspiciously,
+stopped. Kitty's horse, which was in advance of Peter's, rushed towards
+the thicker growth of pines as if all Bedlam were in pursuit. Peter's
+horse, swerving from the cause of alarm, bolted back across the trail over
+which they had just made their way. A large brown bear, feeding with her
+cub, and hidden by the trees till they were directly in front of her, had
+caused the alarm.
+
+And presently the hush of the shadowy green world in which Judith lay was
+broken by a light, sobbing sound. It had been so still that, lying on her
+bed of pine-needles, she had likened it to great waves of silence, rolling
+up from the valley, breaking over her and sweeping back again, noiseless,
+green from the billowing ocean of pine branches, and sunlit. Judith bent
+over the rocky ledge and saw a girl making her way down the game trail,
+dishevelled and tearful. Her hat was gone, her pale-yellow hair, that in
+shadow had the greenish tinge of corn-silk, blew about her shoulders, her
+trim skirt was torn and dusty, and she looked about, bewildered, hardly
+realizing that through the unexpected course of things she had been
+stranded in this great world of sunlit splendor and loneliness. She closed
+her eyes. The awful vastness and solitude oppressed her with a deepening
+sense of calamity. Suppose they never found her? How could she find her
+way in this endless wilderness, afoot? She sank to the turf and began to
+cry hysterically.
+
+Judith knew in a flash of instant cognition that this was Miss Colebrooke.
+Amazement seemed to have dulled her powers of action--amazement that she,
+who had stolen to this place and crouched close to earth that she might
+see the triumph of this preferred woman, and, having seen and paid her
+grievous dole, steal away and take up the thread of endless little things
+that spun for her the web of life, was forced instead to be an unwilling
+witness of the other's distress. Judith had risen with her first impulse,
+which had been to go to Kitty, but half-way through the thicket she
+hesitated and reconsidered. Undoubtedly Peter would come soon, and Peter's
+consolation would be more potent than any she could offer. She shrank in
+shuddering self-consciousness at the thought of her presence at their
+meeting, the uninvited guest, the outgrown friend and confidante,
+blundering in at such a time, pitifully full of good intentions. She
+recoiled from the picture as from a precipice that all unwittingly she had
+escaped. What madness had induced her to come on this expedition? A sudden
+panic at the possibility of discovery possessed her; suppose Peter should
+find her skulking like a beggar, waiting for broken meats? She looked at
+the image of herself that she carried in her heart. It was that of a proud
+woman who made no moan at the scourge of the inevitable. Many burdens had
+she carried in her proud, lonely heart, but of them her lips gave no sign.
+In her contemplative stoicism she felt with pride that she was no unworthy
+daughter of her mother's people, and catching a glimpse through the trees
+of the abjectly waiting woman who, though safe and sound, could but wait,
+wretched and dispirited, for some one to come and adjust her to the
+situation, Judith felt for her a wondering pity at her helplessness. She
+waited, expectant, for the sound of Peter's horse. Surely he must come at
+any moment, overcome with apologies, and she--Judith hid her face in her
+hands at the thought--she would steal away through the thicket at the first
+sound of hoofs. But as the minutes slipped by and still no sign of Peter,
+a sickening anxiety began to gnaw at her heart. Had something happened to
+him?
+
+She did not wait to ask herself the question twice. She crawled the length
+of the thicket with incredible rapidity, gained the pine forest, and made
+her way beneath the low-hanging boughs; without stopping to protect
+herself from them she gained the open space and ran quickly to Kitty.
+
+"Are you hurt? What has happened?"
+
+Kitty looked up, startled at the voice. She had not heard the sound of the
+moccasined feet. Her wandering, forlorn thoughts crystallized at sight of
+the woman before her. A new lightning leaped into her eyes as she
+recognized Judith. There was between them a thrilling consciousness that
+gave to their mutual perception a something sharp and fine, that grasped
+the drama of the moment with the precision and fidelity of a camera. And
+through all the wonder of the meeting there was in the heart of each an
+outflowing that met and mingled and understood the potential tragedy
+element of the situation.
+
+"You are Miss Rodney, I believe?"
+
+Kitty was conscious of something strange in her voice as she looked into
+the dark eyes, wide with questioning fear. Ah, but she had amazing beauty,
+and a something that seemed of the very essence of deep-souled
+womanliness! The two women presented a fine bit of antithesis, Kitty,
+flower-like, small, delicately wrought, the finished product of the town,
+exotic as some rare transplanted orchid growth. And in Judith there was a
+gemlike quality: it was in the bloom of her skin, the iridescent radiance
+of her hair, that was bluish, like a plum in sunlight; it was in the warm,
+red life in her lips, in the pulsing vitality of the slim, brown throat;
+in every line was sensuous force restrained by spiritual passion.
+
+Kitty told of the accident in which her horse had thrown her and
+disappeared in the pine fringes, leaving her stunned for a moment or two;
+and how she had finally pulled herself together and followed what appeared
+to be a trail, in the hope of finding some one. She dwelt long on the
+details of the accident.
+
+"Yes, but Peter, what has happened him?" Judith chose her words
+impatiently. She was racked with anxiety at his long delay, and now she
+hung over Kitty, waiting for her answer, without the semblance of a cloak
+for her alarm.
+
+There was reproof in Kitty's amendment. "I don't know which way Mr.
+Hamilton's horse went. It started back over the trail, I think."
+
+Judith clasped her hands. "Let us go and look for him. Why do we waste
+time?" But Kitty hung back. She was shaken from her fall, and upset by the
+events of the morning. Besides, her faith in Peter's ability to cope with
+all the exigencies of this country was supreme. And chiefest reason of all
+for her not going was a something within her that winced at the thought of
+this fellowship that had for its object the quest of Peter.
+
+"Oh, don't you see," pleaded Judith, "that if something had not happened
+to him he would have been here long ago?"
+
+Judith's anxiety awoke in Kitty a new consciousness. What was she to him,
+that at the possibility of harm, a fear not shared by Kitty, she should
+throw off a reserve that every line of her face pronounced habitual? In
+her very energy of attitude, an energy that all unconsciously communicated
+itself to Kitty, there was the power that belongs to all elemental human
+emotion--the power that compels. Kitty rose to follow Judith, then
+hesitated.
+
+"I'm sure nothing has happened him. No, I'm really too unstrung by my fall
+to walk." She sank again to the bowlder on which she had been sitting.
+
+To the woman of the world, Judith's ingenuous display of feeling had in
+its very sincerity a something pitiable. How could she strip from her soul
+every fold of reserve and stand unloved and unashamed, sanctified, as it
+were, by the very hopelessness of her passion? How could women make of
+their whole existence a thing to be rejected, reflected Kitty, who, giving
+nothing, could not understand. She looked again at the bronzed face beside
+her, so bold in outline, so expressive in detail. Yes, she was beautiful,
+and yet, what had her beauty availed her? The thought that she herself was
+the preferred woman throbbed through her for a moment with a sense of
+exaltation. The next moment a haunting doubt laid hold of her heart, held
+up mockingly the little that she and Peter had lived through together, the
+lofty plane of friendship along which she had tried to lead his unwilling
+feet sedately, his protests, his frank amusement at her serious
+pretensions to a career. How much fuller might not have been the
+intercourse between him and this woman, who, in all probability, had been
+his comrade for years? And she had been idealizing him, and his love for
+her, and his loneliness! Kitty stood with eyes cast down, while images
+crowded upon her, leaving her cold and smiling.
+
+"But think," pleaded Judith; "if you don't come it will take me longer to
+search the trail-marks. You could show me just where the horses ran--"
+
+Kitty's eyes were still on the ground. She did not lift them, and Judith,
+realizing that further appeal was but a waste of time, turned and ran
+swiftly down the trail.
+
+"He is her lover," said Kitty; and all the wilderness before her was no
+lonelier than her heart.
+
+Swift, intent, Judith traced Kitty's footprints. They followed the game
+trail, the one she herself had taken earlier in the day. She traced them
+back through the pine wood about a hundred rods, and then the trail-marks
+grew confused. This was unquestionably the place where the horses had
+taken fright, circled, reared, then dashed in different directions. She
+traced the other horse, whose tracks led under low-hanging boughs. It
+would have been a difficult matter for a horse with a rider to clear; and
+now the impression of the horse's shoes grew fainter, from the lighter
+footfalls of a horse at full gallop.
+
+"Ah!" A cry broke from her as she saw the marks had become almost
+eliminated by something that had dragged, something heavy. Those
+long-drawn lines were finger-prints, where a hand had dragged in its vain
+endeavor to grasp at something. A sickening image came persistently before
+her eyes--Peter's upturned face, blood-smeared and disfigured.
+
+"Sh-sh-sh!" She put her hand to her breast to still the beating of her
+heart. She could hear the sound of hoofs falling muffled on the soft
+ground, and a man's voice speaking in a soothing sing-song. She listened.
+It was Peter's voice, reassuring the horse, asking him what kind of a bag
+of nerves he was for a cow pony, to get frightened at a bear? Judith stood
+tall and straight among the pines. Surely he could not blindly pass her
+by. He must feel the joy in her heart that all was well with him. The
+hoofs came nearer, the man's voice sounded but intermittently, as he got
+his horse under better control. She felt as if he must come to her, as if
+some overpowering consciousness of her presence would speak from her heart
+to his; but his eyes scanned the distant trail for a glimpse of Kitty or
+Kitty's horse. Judith saw that his head was bound in something white and
+that it bore a red stain, but he held himself well in the saddle. He was
+not the man to heed a tumble. He urged the horse forward, never looking
+towards the tree-trunks, his face white and strained with anxiety as he
+scoured the trail for evidences of Kitty. The horse, with a keener sense
+than his master, shied slightly as he passed the group of pines where
+Judith stood; but Peter's glance was for the open trail, and as she heard
+him canter by, so close that she could have touched his stirrup with her
+hand, it seemed as if he must hear the beating of her heart.
+
+"Oh, blind eyes, and ears that will not hear, and heart that has forgotten
+how to beat! Yes, go to that pale, cold girl! You speak one language, and
+life for you is the way of little things!"
+
+She waited till the last sound of the horse's hoofs had died away and all
+was still in the tremulous green of the forest. Judith's mind was busy
+with the image of their meeting, the man bringing the joy of his youth to
+the calm divinity who could feel no thrill of fear in his absence. She
+broke into the running gait and hurried through the forest to the Daxes'.
+
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+
+                      In The Land Of The Red Silence
+
+
+The beef-herd, that had been the pivotal point of the round-up and had
+made the mighty plain echo to its stampings and bellowings, beating up
+simooms that choked it with thirst, blinded it with dust, confounding
+itself on every side by the very fury of its blind force, had trailed for
+a week, tractable as toys in the hands of children. Little had happened to
+vary the monotony for the cow-punchers that handled the herd--they grazed,
+guarded, watered, night-herded the cattle day after day, night after
+night. Pasturage had been sufficient, if not abundant. The creeks were
+running low and slimy with the advance of summer, but there had been
+sufficient water to let the herd drink its fill at least once a day.
+
+The outfit ate its "sow-belly," soda-biscuit, and coffee three times a
+day, and smoked its pipes, but was a little shy on yarns round the
+camp-fire.
+
+"This yere outfit don't lather none," commented the cook to the
+horse-wrangler, over the smoke of an early morning fire.
+
+"Don't lather no more than a chunk of wood," agreed the horse-wrangler.
+"That's the trouble with a picked-up outfit like this. Catch 'W-square'
+men kowtowing to a 'XXX' boss, even if he is only acting foreman."
+
+Simpson, the origin of whose connection with the "XXX" was rather a
+sensitive subject with that outfit, had begun to take his duties as a
+cattle-man with grim seriousness; he was untiring in his labors; he spent
+long hours in the saddle, he took his turn at night herding, though he was
+old for this kind of work. He condemned the sheep-men with foul-mouthed
+denunciations, scoffed at their range-rights, said the sheep question
+should be dealt with in the business-like manner in which the Indian
+question had been settled. He was an advocate of violence--in short, a
+swaggering, bombastic wind-bag. He talked much of "his outfit" and "his
+men." "What was good enough for them was good enough for him," he would
+announce at meal-time, in a snivelling tone, when the food happened to be
+particularly bad. He split the temporary outfit, brought together for the
+purpose of handling the beef-herd, into factions. He put the "XXX" in
+worse repute than it already enjoyed--he was, in fact, the discordant
+spirit of the expedition. The men attended to their work sullenly. Discord
+was rife. The one thought they shared in common was that of the wages that
+would come to them at the end of the drive; of the feverish joy of
+"blowing in," in a single night; perchance, of forgetting, in one long,
+riotous evening, the monotony, the hardship, the lack of comradery that
+made this particular drive one long to be remembered in the mind of every
+man who had taken part in it.
+
+Meanwhile the herd trailed its half-mile length to the slaughtering pens
+day after day, all unconscious of its power. When the steers had trailed
+for about a fortnight, the question of finding sufficient water for them
+began to be a serious one. The preceding winter had been unusually mild,
+the snow-fall on the mountains averaging less than in the recollection of
+the oldest plains-man. Summer had begun early and waxed hot and dry. The
+earth began to wrinkle, and cracked into trenches, like gaping mouths,
+thirsty for the water that came not. Such streams as had not dried shrank
+and crawled among the willows like slimy things, that the herd, thirsty
+though it was from the long drives, had to be coaxed to drink from.
+
+Discontent grew. The acting foreman, who was a "XXX" man, and a
+comparative stranger to that part of the country, refused to consult with
+the "W-square" men in the outfit, who knew every inch of the ground. The
+acting foreman thought the Wetmore men looked down on him, "put on dog";
+and, to flaunt his authority, he ordered the herd driven due west instead
+of skirting to the north by the longer route, where they would have had
+the advantage of drinking at several creeks before crossing Green River.
+Moreover, the acting foreman was drinking hard, and he insisted upon his
+order in spite of the Wetmore men's protestations.
+
+The character of the country began to change, the soil took on the color
+of blood, even the omnipresent sage-brush began to fail the landscape;
+sun-bleached bones glistened on the red soil, white as ulcers. All the
+animal trails led back from the country into which they were proceeding.
+The sky, a vivid, cloudless blue, paled as it dipped earthward. The sun
+looked down, a flaming copper shield. There was no sign of life in all the
+land. Even the grasshoppers had left it to the sun, the silence, and the
+desolation. To ears accustomed to the incessant shrilling of the insects,
+the cessation was ominous, like the sudden stopping of a clock in a
+chamber of death. Above the angry bellow of the thirsty herd the men
+strained their ears again and again for this familiar sound of life, but
+there was nothing but the bellowing of the cattle, the trampling of their
+hoofs, and sometimes the long, squealing whinny of a horse as he threw
+back his head in seeming demand to know the justice of this thing.
+
+Across the red plain snailed the herd, like a many-jointed, prehistoric
+reptile wandering over the limitless spaces of some primeval world. A
+cloud of red dust hung over them in a dense haze, trailed after them a
+weary length, then all was featureless monotony as before. What were a
+thousand steers, a handful of men and horses, in the land of the red
+silence? It had seen the comings and goings of many peoples, and once it
+had flowed with streams; but that was before the curse of God came upon
+it, and in its harsh, dry barrenness it grew to be a menace to living
+things.
+
+The saddle-stock had been watered at some fetid alkali holes that had
+scarce given enough to slake their thirst. The effect of the water had
+weakened them, and the steers that had been without water for thirty-six
+hours were being pushed on a course slightly northwest as rapidly as the
+enfeebled condition of the saddle-horses would permit. Creek after creek
+that they had made for proved to be but a dry bed.
+
+The glare of the red earth, under the scourge of the flaming sun,
+tormented the eyes of the men into strange illusions. The naked red plain
+stretched flat like the colossal background of a screen, over which
+writhed a huge dragon, spined with many horns, headless, trailing its
+tortuous way over the red world. Sometimes it was as unreal as a
+fever-haunted dream, a drug-inspired nightmare, when a Chinese screen,
+perchance, has stood at the foot of the sleeper's bed. Sometimes the
+dragon curled itself into a ball, and the foreman sung out that they were
+milling, and the men turned and rode away from it, then dashed back at it,
+after getting the necessary momentum, entered like a flying wedge, fought
+their way into the rocking sea of surging bodies, shouted from their
+thirst-parched throats imprecations that were lost in the dull, sullen
+roar. Then the dragon would uncoil and again trail its way over the red
+waste-lands.
+
+A red sun had begun to set over a red earth, and the men who had been out
+since noon-scouring the country for water, returned to say that none had
+been found, and they began to look into each other's faces for the answer
+that none could give. At sunset they made a dry camp; there was but enough
+water left to cook with. Each man received, as a thirst-quenching ration,
+a can of tomatoes. After supper they consulted, and it was agreed to trail
+the herd till midnight, taking advantage of the coolness to hurry them on
+as fast as possible to Green River. The grave nature of their plight was
+indicated by the fact that no one smoked after supper. Silent, sullen,
+they sat round, waiting for the foreman to give the order to advance. He
+waited for the moon to come up. Slowly it rose over the Bad Land Hills and
+hung round and full like a gigantic lantern. The watches were arranged for
+the night with a double guard. Every man in the outfit was beginning to
+have a feeling of panic that communicated itself to every other man, and
+as they looked at the herd, tractable now no longer, but a blind force
+that they must take chances with through the long watches of the night,
+while the thirst grew in the beasts' parched throats, they foresaw what
+would in all probability happen; they thought of their women, of all that
+most strongly bound them to life, and they sat and waited dumbly.
+
+The moon that night was too brilliant for benisons; the gaunt, red world
+lay naked and unshriven for the sin that long ago had brought upon it the
+wrath of God. The picture was still that of the grotesque Chinese screen,
+with the headless dragon crawling endlessly; but the dream was long,
+centuries long, it seemed to the men listening to the bellowing of the
+herd. And while they waited, the red grew dull and the dragon dingy, and
+its fury made its contortions the more horrible; and that was all the
+difference between day and night in the land of the red silence. Sometimes
+the dragon split, and joints of it tried to turn back to the last water it
+had drunk; for cattle, though blinded with thirst, never forget the last
+stream at which they have quenched thirst, and will turn back to it,
+though they drop on the way. But the men pressed them farther and farther,
+and for yet a little while the cattle yielded.
+
+At midnight the saddle-stock was incapable of moving farther. One horse
+had fallen and lay too weak to rise. The others, limping and foot-sore, no
+longer responded to quirt and rowel. The foreman ordered the herd thrown
+on the bed ground for the night. The herders for the first watch began to
+circle. The rest of the outfit took to its blankets to snatch a little
+rest for the double duty that awaited every man that night. Now it is a
+time-honored belief among cow-men that the herd must be sung to,
+particularly when it is restless, and to-night they tried all the old
+favorites, the "Cow-boy's Lament" being chief among them. But the herd
+refused to be soothed, and round and round it circled; not once would it
+lie down.
+
+The moon gleamed almost brazen, showing the cruel scars, the trenches torn
+by cloud-bursts, the lines wrought by the long, patient waiting of the
+earth for the lifting of the wrath of God. Imperishable grief was writ on
+the land as on a human face. The night wore on, the watches changed, the
+herd continued restless; not more than a third of it had bedded down. The
+third watch was from one o'clock to half-past three in the morning.
+Simpson and another "XXX" man, with two of the Wetmore outfit, made up a
+double watch, and rode, singing, about the herd, as the long, dreary watch
+wore away. The cattle's lowing had taken on a gasping, cracked sound that
+was more frightful than the maddened bellow of the early evening. Simpson,
+who was past the age when men live the life of the saddle, felt the
+hardship keenly. He had ridden since sunrise, but for the respite at noon
+and the scant time at the dry camp while the evening meal was being eaten.
+He was more than half asleep now, as he lurched heavily in the saddle,
+crossing and recrossing his partner in the half-circle they completed
+about the herd. Suddenly the sharp yelp of a coyote rang out; it seemed to
+come from no farther than twenty yards away. The cattle heard it, too, and
+a wave of panic swept through them. Simpson stiffened in his saddle. The
+sound, which was repeated, was an exact reproduction of a coyote's yelp,
+yet he knew that it was not a coyote.
+
+The herd rose to its feet as a single steer, and for a second stood
+undetermined. From a clump of sage-brush not more than two feet high
+fluttered something long and white like a sheet. It waved in the wind as
+the cry was repeated. The herd crashed forward in a stampede, Simpson in
+the lead on a tired horse, but a scant length ahead of a thousand maddened
+steers bolting in a panic of thirst and fear.
+
+"Hell's loose!" yelled the men in their blankets, making for the temporary
+rope corral to secure horses. Simpson, tallow-colored with fear, clung
+like a cat to his horse, and dug the rowels in the beast's flanks till
+they were bloody and dripping. He had seen Jim Rodney's face above the
+white cloth as it fluttered in the face of the herd that came pounding
+behind him with the rumble of nearing thunder. He was too close to them to
+attempt to fire his revolver in the air in the hope of turning them, but
+the boys had evidently got into their saddles, to judge by the volley of
+shots that rang out and were answered. Simpson alone rode ahead of the
+herd that tore after him, ripping up the earth as it came, bellowing in
+its blind fury. His horse, a thoroughly seasoned cow-pony, sniffed the
+bedlam and responded to the goading spur. She had been in cattle stampedes
+before, and, though every fibre ached with fatigue, she flattened out her
+lean body and covered ground to the length of her stride at each gallop.
+The herd was so close that Simpson could smell the stench of their
+sweating bodies, taste their dust, and feel the scorch of their breath.
+The sound of their hoofs was like the pounding of a thousand propellers.
+From above looked the moon, round and serene; she had watched the passing
+of many peoples in the land of the red silence. The horse seemed to be
+gaining. A few more lengths ahead and Simpson could turn her to one side
+and let the maddened cattle race to their own destruction. All he asked of
+God was to escape their trampling hoofs, and though he gained he dug the
+rowel and plied the quirt, unmindful of what he did. On they came; the
+chorus of their fear swelled like the voice of a mighty cataract, the
+pound, pound, pound of their hoofs ringing like mighty sledge-hammers.
+
+Suddenly he felt himself sinking, horribly, irresistibly. "God! What is
+it?" as his horse went down with her foreleg in a gopher-hole. "Up, up,
+you damned brute!" but the mare's leg had cracked like a pipe-stem. In his
+fury at the beast Simpson began kicking her, then started to run as the
+cattle swept forward like a black storm-cloud.
+
+The next second the great sea of cattle had broken over horse and rider.
+When it had passed there was not enough left of either to warrant burial
+or to furnish a feast for the buzzards. A few shreds of clothes, that had
+once been a man, lay scattered there; a something that had been a horse.
+
+
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+
+                 Mrs. Yellett Contends With A Cloudburst
+
+
+The matriarch had delayed longer in moving camp than was consistent with
+her habitual watchfulness where the interests of the sheep were involved.
+Mary Carmichael, who had already become inured to the experience of
+moving, was even conscious of a certain impatience at the delay, and could
+only explain the apathy with which Mrs. Yellett received reports of the
+dearth of pasturage on the ground that she wished each fresh educational
+germ to take as deep root as possible before transplantation. So that when
+Mrs. Yellett, shortly after Leander Dax's arrival at camp in the capacity
+of herder, announced that she and Leander were to make a trip to the
+dipping-vat that had kept Ben from his classes for the past ten days, and
+invited the "gov'ment" to join the expedition, Mary accepted with fervor.
+
+The Yelletts' "bunch" of sheep did not exceed three thousand head, and the
+matriarch had wisely decreed that it should be restricted to that number,
+as she wished always to give the flock her personal supervision.
+
+"'The hen that's the surest of her chicks is the one that does her own
+settin','" was the adage from the Book of Hiram with which Mrs. Yellett
+succinctly summed up the case.
+
+Each autumn, therefore, the wethers and the dry-bag ewes were sent to the
+market, and as the result of continual weeding of the stock the matriarch
+had as promising a herd of its size as could be found in Wyoming. Often
+she had explained to Mary, who was learning of the wonders of this new
+world with remarkable aptness, that she had constantly to fight against
+the inclination to increase her business of sheep-raising, but that as
+soon as she should begin to hire herders or depend on strangers things
+would go wrong. With the assistance of her sons, she therefore managed the
+entire details of the herd, with the exception of those occasions on which
+Leander lent his semi-professional co-operation.
+
+As a workman Leander was, considering his size and apparent weakness,
+surprisingly efficient. It was as a dispenser of anti-theological doctrine
+that Mrs. Dax's husband annoyed his temporary employer. Freed from his
+wife's masterful presence, Leander dared to be an "agnostic," as he called
+himself, of an unprecedentedly violent order. His iconoclasm was not of a
+pattern with paw's gusty protests against life in general, but it was
+Leander's way of asserting himself, on the rare occasions when he got a
+chance, to deny clamorously every tenet advanced by every religion. The
+mere use of certain familiar expletives drove him, ordinarily mild and
+submissive though he was, to frantic gesticulation and diatribe. Mary
+Carmichael could not make out, as she watched the comedy with growing
+amusement, whether poor Leander really believed that he was the first of
+doubting Thomases, or whether he took an unfair advantage of the lack of
+general information in his casual audiences to set forth well-known
+opinions as his own. Whatever its basis may have been, Leander sustained
+the rôle of doubter with passionate zeal, wearing himself to tatters of
+rage and hoarseness over arguments maliciously contrived beforehand by
+cow-punchers and sheep-herders in need of amusement; and yet he never saw
+the traps, going out of his way, apparently, to fall into them, tumbling
+headlong into the identical pits time after time. Jonah and the whale
+constituted one bait by means of which Leander could be lured from food,
+sleep, or work of the most pressing nature.
+
+"The poor fool would stop in the middle of shearing a sheep to argue that
+Jonah never come out of the whale's belly," the matriarch had told Mary
+Carmichael, in summing up Leander's disadvantages as a herder. And the
+first remark she had addressed to him on his arrival was: "Leander Dax,
+you'd have to be made over, and made different, to keep you from bein' a
+infidel, but there's one p'int on which you are particularly locoed, and
+that's Jonah and the whale. Now at this particular time in the hist'ry of
+the United States, nobody in his faculties has got no call to fret hisself
+over Jonah and his whereabouts--none whatever. There's a lot of business
+round this here camp that's a heap more pressin'. Now, Leander Dax, if I
+do hereby undertake to hire, engage, and employ you to herd sheep, do you
+agree to renounce discussions, arguments, and debates on the late Jonah
+and his whereabouts durin' them three days? God A'mighty, man, any one
+would think you was Jonah's wife, the interest you have in his absence!"
+
+"I come here to herd sheep," Leander had brazenly retaliated. "I 'ain't
+come to try to make you think."
+
+Nevertheless, he appeared docile enough as the time came for the journey
+to the dipping-vat, and did his part in making ready. The wagon was the
+rudest of structures; it consisted merely of one long, stout pole. Though
+she saw the horses being harnessed to this pole, Mary Carmichael,
+discreetly exercising her newly acquired wisdom, forbore to ask where she
+was going to sit, and listened with interest to a discussion between Mrs.
+Yellett and Leander as to the number of horses it would take to get the
+dip up the mountain. Leander, who loved pomp and splendor, was for taking
+six, but Mrs. Yellett, who carried simplicity to a fault, was in favor of
+only two. They finally compromised on four, and Leander went to fetch the
+extra two.
+
+Mrs. Yellett, ever economical of the flitting moment, took advantage of
+the delay to give Mr. Yellett a dose of "Brainard's Beneficial
+Blackthorn."
+
+"Paw's as hard to manage as a bent pin," she remarked, in an aside to
+Mary, while he protested and fought her off with his stick. But she, with
+the agility of an acrobat, got directly back of him, took his head under
+her arm, pried open his mouth, and poured down the unwelcome, if
+beneficial, dose.
+
+"There, there, paw," she said, wiping his mouth as if he had been a baby,
+"don't take on so! It's all gone, and I can't have you sick on my hands."
+
+But Mr. Yellett continued to splutter and flare and use violent language,
+whereupon the matriarch went into the tent and returned with a drink of
+condensed-milk and water, "to wash down the nasty taste," she told him,
+soothingly.
+
+A moment afterwards she and Leander were engaged in rolling the barrels of
+sheep-dip to the wagon, Mary Carmichael helplessly looking on while Mrs.
+Yellett looked doubtfully at a "gov'ment" who could not handle barrels.
+Finally, under the skilful manipulation of Mrs. Yellett and Leander, the
+long pole took on the aspect of a colossal vertebral column, from which
+huge barrel-ribs projected horizontally, leaving at the rear a foot or so
+of bare pole as a smart caudal appendage, bearing about the same
+proportion to the wagon as the neatly bitten tail of a fox-terrier does to
+the dog.
+
+Mrs. Yellett kissed "paw" good-bye, explaining to Mary, in extenuation of
+her weakness, that she would never forgive herself if she neglected it and
+anything happened to him during her absence. She then climbed to the front
+barrel and secured the ribbons. Leander had brought out three rolls of
+bedding of the inevitable bed-quilt variety, but Mrs. Yellett scorned such
+luxury while driving, and accordingly gave hers to the "gov'ment" for a
+back-rest. Mary sat on the lower row of barrels, with her feet dangling,
+using one roll of bedding for a seat and the other comfortably arranged at
+her back as a cushion.
+
+Madam called sharply to the horses, "Hi-hi-hi-kerat! hi-kerat-kerat!" and
+they started off at a rattling pace, the barrels of dip creaking and
+squeaking as they swayed under their rope lashings. Mary bounced about
+like a bean in a bag, working loose from between the bed-quilt rolls at
+each gulley, clinging frantically to barrel ends, shaken back and forth
+like a shuttle. Indeed, the drive seemed to combine every known form of
+physical exercise. Mrs. Yellett herself was in fine fettle; she drove
+sitting for a while, then rose, standing on a narrow ledge while she held
+the four ribbons lightly in one hand and tickled the leaders with a long
+whip carried in the other. She drove her four horses over the rough road
+with the skill of a circus equestrienne, balancing easily on the crazy
+ledge, shifting her weight from side to side as the wagon rattled down
+gullies and up ridges, the horses responding gallantly to the shrill
+"Hi-hi-kerat! hi-kerat! hi-kerat!" Her costume on this occasion
+represented joint concessions to her sex and the work that was before her,
+as the head of a family at the dipping-vat. She still wore the drum-shaped
+rabbit-skin cap pulled well down over her forehead for driving. The great,
+cable-like braids of hair stood out well below the cap, giving her head an
+appearance of denseness and solidity, but the rambling curls were still
+blowing about her face, perhaps adding to the sum total of grotesqueness.
+She wore a man's shirt of gray flannel, well open at the neck, from which
+the bronzed column of the throat rose in austere dignity. A pair of Mr.
+Yellett's trousers, stuffed into high, cow-puncher's boots, that met the
+hem of a skirt coming barely to the knees, contributed to the originality
+of her dress.
+
+The wagon had been pitching like a ship at sea through the desert
+dreariness for about an hour, when Mary Carmichael suddenly became
+conscious that the prods she had been receiving from time to time in her
+back were not due either to their manner of locomotion or to the freight
+carried. Clinging to two barrels, she waited for the next lurch of the
+wagon to shake her free from the rolls of bedding, and, at the peril of
+life and limb, looked round. Leander hung over the top row of barrels,
+gesticulating wildly. The change in the man, since leaving camp some two
+hours previous, was appalling. He seemed to have shrivelled away to a
+wraith of his former self. His cheeks, his chin, had waned to the
+vanishing point. He opened his lips and mouthed horribly, yet his
+frightful grimacings conveyed no meaning. Mary called to Mrs. Yellett, but
+her voice was drowned in the rattle of the wagon, the clatter of four
+horses' hoofs, and the continual "Hi-hi-hi-kerat! hi-kerat!" of the
+driver. In the mean time Leander pointed to his mouth and back to the road
+in indescribably pathetic pantomime. "Perhaps the poor creature wants to
+turn back and die in his bed, like a Christian, even if he isn't one,"
+thought Mary, as she called and called, Leander still emitting the most
+inhuman of cries, like the sounds made by deaf mutes in distress.
+Presently Mrs. Yellett drew up, and asked in the name of many profane
+things what was the matter with her companions.
+
+Leander resumed his mouthings and his dumb show, but Mrs. Yellett proved a
+better interpreter than Mary Carmichael.
+
+"God A'mighty!" she said, "he's lost his false teeth!" And without another
+word she turned the four horses and the wagon with a skill that fell
+little short of sleight-of-hand.
+
+The dialogue that followed between Mrs. Yellett and Leander as to how far
+back he had dropped his teeth, cannot be given, owing to the inadequacy of
+the English language to reproduce his toothless enunciation. Catching, as
+Mary did, the meaning of Mrs. Yellett's remarks only, she received
+something of the one-sided impression given by overhearing a telephone
+conversation:
+
+"What did you have 'em out for?... You didn't have 'em out?... I just
+shook 'em out? Then what made you have your mouth open? Ef your mouth had
+been shut, you couldn't have lost 'em.... You was a-yawnin', eh? Well, you
+are a plumb fool to yawn on this kind of a waggin, with your mouth full o'
+china teeth. Your yawnin' 'll put us back a good hour an' we won't reach
+camp before sundown."
+
+At this point of the diatribe the Infidel left the wagon and began to
+search along the road. He said he had noticed a buffalo skull near the
+place where he had dropped the teeth, and thought he could trace them by
+this landmark. Mrs. Yellett held the ribbons and suggested that Mary get
+down "and help to prospect for them teeth." As Mary clambered down she
+heard a fragment of the matriarch's monologue, which, being duly
+expurgated for polite ears, was to the effect that she would rather take
+ten babies anywhere than one grown man, and that as for getting in the
+way, hindering, obstructing, and being a nuisance, generally speaking, man
+had not his counterpart in the scheme of creation.
+
+"Talk about a woman bein' at the bottom of everything!" sniffed Mrs.
+Yellett; "I be so sick of always hearin' about 'the woman in the case!'
+Half the time the case would be a blame sight worse if it was left
+exclusive to the men. The Book of Hiram says: 'A skunk may have his good
+p'ints, but few folks is takin' the risk of waitin' round to get
+acquainted with 'em.'"
+
+While Mary was still "prospecting," a glad cry roused her attention, and
+Leander came up smiling, with his dental treasures nicely adjusted.
+
+"Quit smilin' like a rattlesnake, you plumb fool!" called out Mrs.
+Yellett. "Do you want to lose 'em again?"
+
+So, curtailing the muscular contraction indicative of his pleasure, the
+Infidel again took his place among the bed-quilts and the journey was
+resumed.
+
+It was now about five in the afternoon. The heat, which had been
+oppressive all day, suddenly relaxed its blistering grip, and a keenly
+penetrating dampness, not unlike that of a sea-fog, came from some unknown
+quarter of the arid wastes and chilled the three travellers to the marrow.
+The horses flung up their heads and sniffed it, rearing and plunging as if
+they had scent of something menacing. Across the horizon a dark cloud
+scudded, no bigger than your hand.
+
+"Cloud-burst!" announced Mrs. Yellett.
+
+"Cloud-burst, all right enough," agreed Leander, and he turned up his
+coat-collar in simple preparation for the deluge.
+
+There flashed into Mary Carmichael's mind a sentence from her physical
+geography that she had been obliged to commit to heart in her school-days:
+"A cloud-burst is a sudden, capricious rainfall, as if the whole cloud had
+been precipitated at once." She wanted to question her companions as to
+the accuracy of this definition, but before she had time to frame a
+sentence the real cloud-burst came, with a splitting crack of thunder;
+then the lightning flashed out its message in the short-hand of the storm,
+across the inky blackness, and the water fell as if the ocean had been
+inverted. In the fraction of a second all three were drenched to the skin,
+the water pouring from them in sheets, as if they had been some slight
+obstruction in the path of a waterfall. The wagon was soon in a deep
+gully, with frothing, foaming, yellow water up to the hubs of the wheels.
+Mrs. Yellett, like some goddess of the storm, lashed her horses forward to
+keep them from foundering in the mud, and the wagon creaked and groaned in
+all its timbers as it lurched and jolted through the angry torrents.
+
+Each moment Mary expected to be flung from the barrels, and clung till her
+finger-tips were white and aching. From the drenched red bedquilts a
+sticky crimson trail ran over the barrel heads, as well as over Mary's
+hands, face, and dress. Still they forged on through the deluge, Mrs.
+Yellett shouting and lashing the horses, holding them erect and safe with
+the skill she never lost. The fur on her rabbit-skin cap was beaten flat.
+The great, wet braids had fallen from the force of the water and hung
+straight and black, like huge snakes uncoiled. She was far from losing her
+grip on either the horses or the situation, and from the inspiring ring of
+her voice as she urged them forward it was plain that she took a fierce
+joy in this conflict of the elements.
+
+It was bitterly cold, and Mary reflected that if Leander's teeth chattered
+half as hard as hers did, without breaking, they must, indeed, be of
+excellent quality. The storm began to abate, and the sky became lighter,
+though the water still poured in torrents. As soon as her responsibility
+as driver left her time to speak, Mrs. Yellett lost no time in fastening
+the cloud-burst to Leander.
+
+"This here is what comes of settin' up your back against God A'mighty and
+encouragin' the heathen and the infidel in his idolatry. I might 'a'
+knowed somethin' would happen, takin' you along! 'And the heathen and the
+infidel went out, and the Lord God sent a cloud-burst to wet him,'" quoted
+Mrs. Yellett from the apocryphal Scriptures that never yet failed to
+furnish her with verse and text.
+
+The infidel, from his side of the wagon, began to display agitation. His
+jaws worked, but he said nothing.
+
+"You 'ain't lost them teeth again, have you?"
+
+He nodded his head wretchedly.
+
+"'And the Lord took away the teeth of his enemy, so that he could neither
+bite nor talk,'" quoted Mrs. Yellett to the miserable man, who could make
+no reply.
+
+"Wonder you wouldn't see the foolishness o' being a heathen and a infidel,
+and turn to the Lord! You 'ain't got no teeth, and it takes your wife to
+herd you. 'And the Lord multiplied the tribulations of his enemy.' You got
+no more show standin' up agin the Lord than an insect would have standin'
+up agin me."
+
+She had Leander, at last, just where she wanted him. He was forced to
+listen, and he could make no reply. She alternately abused him for his
+lack of faith and urged him to repentance. Leander raged, gesticulated,
+turned his back on her, mouthed, and finally put his fingers in his ears.
+But nothing stemmed the tide of Mrs. Yellett's eloquence; it was as
+inexhaustible and as remorseless as the cloud-burst.
+
+It continued bitterly cold, even after the rain had stopped falling, and
+the heap of sodden bedclothes furnished no protection against the chilling
+dampness. It was growing dark; there was no red in the sunset, only a
+streak of vivid orange along the horizon, chill and clear as the empty,
+soulless flame of burning paper. There were no deep, glowing coals, no
+amethystine opalescence, fading into gold and violet. All was cold and
+subdued, and the scrub pines on the mountain-tops stood out sharply
+against this cold background like an etching on yellow paper.
+
+Mrs. Yellett's self-inspired scriptural maxims were discontinued after a
+while, either because she could think of no more, or because the
+rain-soaked, shivering, chattering object towards which they were directed
+was too abject to inspire further efforts. Leander huddled on the barrel
+that was farthest from Mrs. Yellett, and wrapped himself in the soaked red
+bedquilt. The dye smeared his face till he looked like an Indian brave
+ready for battle, but there was no further suggestion of the fighting red
+man in the utter desolation of his attitude. Mary Carmichael, on her
+barrel, shivered with grim patience and longed for a cup of tea. Only Mrs.
+Yellett gave no sign of anxiety or discomfort; she drove along, sometimes
+whistling, sometimes swearing, erect as an Indian, and to all appearances
+as oblivious of cold and wet as if she were in her own home.
+
+The gathering darkness into which the horses were plunging was mysterious
+and appalling. Objects stood out enormously magnified, or distorted
+grotesquely, in the uncertain light. It was like penetrating into the real
+Inferno, like stumbling across the inspiration of Dante in all its
+sinister splendor. It was the Inferno of his dream rather than the Inferno
+of his poem; it had the ghastly reality of the unreal.
+
+"It wouldn't surprise me if we had a smash-up in Clear Creek," said Mrs.
+Yellett, just by way of adding her quota of cheerful speculation. She
+ducked her head and whispered in Mary's ear:
+
+"It's all along of me hirin' _him_! I wouldn't be surprised if paw died.
+I'm thinkin' of shakin' him out after his teeth. 'Take not up with the
+enemy of the Lord, lest he make of you also an enemy.'"
+
+But there was no accent of apprehension in Mrs. Yellett's dismal
+prognostications of the evil that might befall her for employing Leander.
+She spoke more with the air of one who produces incidents to prove an
+argument than of one who anticipates a calamity.
+
+Leander, toothless and wretched, sitting on the side of the wagon, began
+to show symptoms of joy comparable to that of the vanguard of the
+Israelites, catching their first glimpse of the Promised Land. Touching
+Mary Carmichael on the shoulder, he pointed to a white tent and the
+remains of a camp-fire. Already Mrs. Yellett had begun to "Hallo, Ben!"
+But Ben was at work at the vat, which was still a quarter of a mile
+further up the mountain; so Mrs. Yellett, throwing the reins to Leander
+and bidding him turn out the horses, lost no time in building a fire,
+putting on coffee, and making her little party comfortable. So various was
+her efficiency that she seemed no less at home in these simple domestic
+tasks than when guiding her horses, goddess-like, through the cloud-burst.
+And Mary Carmichael, succumbing gradually to the revivifying influence of
+the fire and the hot coffee, acknowledged honestly to herself a warmth of
+affection for her hostess and for the atmosphere Mrs. Yellett created
+about her that made even Virginia and her aunts seem less the only pivot
+of rational existence. She felt that she had come West with but one eye,
+as it were, and countless prejudices, whereas her powers of vision were
+fast becoming increased a hundredfold. How very tame life must be, she
+reflected, as she sat smiling to herself, to those who did not know Mrs.
+Yellett, how over-serious to those who did not know Leander! Yet, after
+all, she knew that the real basis of her readjusted vision was her brief
+but illuminating acquaintance with Judith Rodney. To Mary, freed for the
+first time in her life from the most elegantly provincial of surroundings,
+Judith seemed the incarnation of all the splendor and heroism of the West.
+And in the glow of her enthusiasm she decided then and there not to
+abandon the Yellett educational problem till she should have solved it
+successfully. She might not be born to valiant achievement, like these
+sturdy folk about her, but she might as well prove to them that an Eastern
+tenderfoot was not all feebleness and inefficiency.
+
+"Leander!" called Mrs. Yellett. "Just act as if you was to home and wash
+up these dishes."
+
+
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+
+                               Foreshadowed
+
+
+Alida awoke, knowing what was to happen. She had dreamed of it, just
+before daylight, and lay in bed stupefied by the horror of it, living,
+again and again, through each frightful detail. It had happened--there, in
+the very room, and before the children; the noise of it had startled them;
+and then she woke and knew she had been dreaming. In the dream the noise
+had wakened the children--when it really happened they must never know. It
+wouldn't be fair to them; they needed a "clean start."
+
+What had she done to keep them quiet? There had been a thunderous knocking
+at the door. She had expected it and was prepared; because the lock was
+feeble, she had shoved the old brown bureau against the door.
+
+Nothing had happened. What a fool she was to lie there and think of it!
+There was the brown bureau against the wall; she could hear the deep
+breathing of Jim in the room beyond. Jim had been unequal to the task of
+conventionally going to bed the night before, and she had put a pillow
+under his head and a quilt over him. She was the last woman in the world
+to worry about Jim, drunk, or to nag him for it when sober. But she didn't
+like the children to see him that way.
+
+What was it that she had done to quiet the children when "they" rode up?
+She had done something and they had gone to sleep again, and she--and
+she--oh no, it hadn't happened. What a fool she was to lie there thinking!
+There were the children to rouse and dress, and breakfast to cook, and
+Jim--Jim would be feeling pretty mean this morning; he'd like a good cup of
+coffee. She was glad he was alive to make coffee for.
+
+She got up and, in the uncertainty bred of the dream, felt the brown
+bureau, felt it hungrily, almost incredulously. The brown bureau had been
+pushed against the door when they had come, and knocked and knocked. Then
+they had thundered with the butts of their six-shooters, and the children
+had wakened, and she had called out to them:
+
+"Sh-sh! It's only a bad dream. Mammy will give you some dough to bake
+to-morrow."
+
+And she had gone to press her face flat to the thin wall, and call, "For
+God's sake, don't wake the children!"
+
+And they had called out, "Let him come out quiet, then."
+
+And then she could feel that they put their shoulders to the door--the
+weather-beaten door--with its crazy lock that didn't half catch. The brown
+bureau had spun across the floor like a top, and they had crowded in. Then
+she had done something to quiet the children--it was queer that she could
+not remember what it was, when everything else in the dream still lived
+within her, horribly distinct and real.
+
+What a fool she was, with Jim asleep in the next room; she would not think
+about it another minute. She began to dress, but her fingers were heavy,
+and the vague oppression of nightmare blocked her efficiency. Repeatedly
+she would detect herself subconsciously brooding over some one of the
+links in that pitiless memory--what they had said to Jim; his undaunted
+replies; how she had left him and gone into the next room because Jim had
+told her to.
+
+She called the children, but the sight of them, happy and flushed with
+sleep, did not reassure her.
+
+"Mammy," said Topeka, eldest of the family, and lately on the invalid
+list, the victim of a cactus thorn, "my toe's all well; can I go
+barefoot?"
+
+"Topeka Rodney, what kind of feet do you expect to have when you are a
+young lady, if you run barefoot now?"
+
+Topeka, sitting on the side of the bed, with tousled hair, put her small
+feet together and contemplated them. The toe was still suspiciously
+inflamed for perfect convalescence, although Topeka, with a Spartan
+courage that won her a place in the annals of household valor, had the day
+before allowed her mother to pick out with a needle the torturing cactus
+thorn, scorning to shed a tear during the operation, though afterwards she
+had taken the piece of dried apple that was offered her and devoured it to
+the last bite, as only just compensation for her sufferings.
+
+"Dimmy dot a tore toe, too." But Jimmy showed a strange reticence about
+offering proofs of his affliction. At the peril of his equilibrium, he
+clasped the allegedly injured member in his chubby hand and rolled over on
+the bed in apparent anguish.
+
+"Less see, Jimmy," asked his mother, anxiously.
+
+"Don't bleeve him, mammy. He 'ain't ever cried. He'd a cried, for sure, if
+his toe was sore." At the age of five, little Judith, namesake of her
+aunt, was something of a doubting Thomas.
+
+"Let mammy see, Jimmy," and Alida bent over her son and heir.
+
+"Doth Dimmy det any apple?" The wee man sometimes succeeded in making
+terms with his mother, when the other children were not present. Though
+feeling himself a trifle over-confident, he held the disputed toe with the
+air of one keeping back a trump card, and looked his mother squarely in
+the eyes.
+
+She struggled with the temptation to give him the apple. He had lifted the
+horrors of her dream as nothing else could have done, but she answered him
+with quiet firmness.
+
+"Jimmy must not tell stories."
+
+"Less see," insisted Topeka.
+
+"He dassent," affirmed Judith, junior, of little faith.
+
+"It hurths me," and Jimmy tried to squeeze out a tear. "It hurths me, my
+tore toe!"
+
+His mother tipped him over on his fat little back and opened the chubby
+hand that held the trump toe. It was white from the pressure applied by
+the infant dissembler, but there was no trace of the treacherous cactus
+thorn. She gave him an affectionate spank and went into the kitchen to
+make coffee.
+
+"I with I had a tore toe," he crooned, quite unabashed at the discovery of
+his deception. "I with I toud det a tore toe 'thout the hurt."
+
+But the horror of the dream gripped her when she found herself alone in
+the kitchen; and she remembered she had not told the children not to go
+into the room where their father was sleeping. She went back and found
+that Jimmy had not left his post on the side of the bed, where he still
+regretted that his perfectly well toe did not entitle him to gastronomic
+consideration. Topeka, who had arrived at an age where little girls, in
+the first subconscious attempt at adornment, know no keener delight than
+plastering their heads with a wet hairbrush, till they present an
+appearance of slippery rotundity equalled only by a peeled onion, put down
+the brush with guilty haste at sight of her mother.
+
+"I'm goin' to dress him soon as I've done my hair."
+
+"Any one think you was goin' to be married, the time you've took to it."
+
+"It's gettin' so long," urged Topeka.
+
+"I wouldn't give it a chance to grow no longer while Jimmy was waitin' to
+get dressed. And don't go into the front room. Your father's gettin' his
+sleep out."
+
+Topeka opened her round eyes. There was always something suspicious about
+that sleep her father had to get out, but she felt it was something she
+must not ask questions about. Her mother lingered; she dreaded to be alone
+in the kitchen. The little, familiar intimacies between herself and her
+children scattered the horrors of the dream which would come back to her
+when she was again at the mercy of her thoughts.
+
+"Judy, s'pose you dress Jimmy this morning! I want Topeka to help me get
+breakfast."
+
+"Yessum," said Judith, dutifully. "Is he to have his face washed?"
+
+"He certainly is, Judy. I's ashamed to have you ask such a question.
+'Ain't you all been brought up to have your faces washed?"
+
+But young Judith seemed disinclined to take up this phase of family
+superiority. She merely inquired further:
+
+"Is he to have it washed with soap, maw?"
+
+"He shore is. Any one would think you had been born and raised in Arizony
+or Nebrasky, to hear you talk. I'm plumb ashamed of you, Judy."
+
+"But, 'deed, maw, I ain't big enough to wash his face with soap. It takes
+Topeka to hold his head."
+
+The subject of the discussion still sat on the edge of the bed, a small
+lord of creation, letting his women folk arrange among themselves who
+should minister to his wants. As an instrument of torture the washcloth,
+in the hands of his sister Judy, was no ignoble rival of the cactus thorn.
+The question of making terms for his sufferings again appealed to him in
+the light of a feasible business proposition.
+
+"Muvvy, tan't I have the apple? Judy hurts me a lot when she wathes my
+face wis soap."
+
+"Yes, you can have the apple, honey; and, Judy, you be gentle with him.
+Don't rub his features up, and be careful and don't get soap in his eyes."
+
+"No'm." And Judy heroically stifled the longing to slick her hair, like
+Topeka's, with the wet hairbrush. There were easier tasks than washing the
+face of her younger brother.
+
+When Topeka and her mother were alone in the kitchen, Topeka grinding the
+coffee and all unconsciously working her jaw in an accompaniment to the
+coffee-mill, her mother bent over her and said:
+
+"Did you dream of anything last night?"
+
+Topeka simultaneously stopped working the coffee-mill and her jaw, and
+regarded her mother solemnly. She did not remember having been thus
+questioned about her dreams before.
+
+"No'm," she answered, after laborious consideration. But something in her
+mother's face held her.
+
+"You're sure you didn't dream nothing?"
+
+"Yes, maw."
+
+"Did Judy or Jim say that they dreamed anything?"
+
+"Jim said he dreamed he had a pup."
+
+"Was that all? Think hard, Topeka!"
+
+Topeka held the handle of the coffee-mill in her hand; her jaw continued
+to work with the labor of her mental process. "I've thought hard, maw, and
+all he told was about the pup."
+
+Alida went back to her bedroom and again felt the brown bureau. "What's
+the matter with me, anyhow? It's the lonesomeness, and they bein' agin Jim
+the way they are. God, this country's hard on women and horses!"
+
+When breakfast was over, and young Jim had received the reward of his
+valor in presenting a brave face to his ablution, and Judith the reward of
+her skill, the evidence of which almost prevented the young martyr from
+smiling while he enjoyed his treat, their mother sent them all to play in
+the caņon. She told them not to come home till she should come for them,
+and if any one should ask about their father, to say that he was away from
+home. And this, as well as the mystery of her father's "getting his sleep
+out," roused some slight apprehension in Topeka, who was old for her age.
+They were seldom sent to the caņon to play. Topeka looked at her mother as
+she had when questioned about the dream, but there was no further
+confidence between them.
+
+"You do as your sister Topeka tells you, and remember what I said about
+your papa," Alida said to the younger children. Jim and Judy clasped each
+other's hands in mute compact at the edict. Their sister Topeka had a real
+genius for authority; they were minded all too well when she swayed the
+maternal sceptre vicariously.
+
+Alida made fresh coffee for Jim when the children had gone. She made it
+carefully; there was this morning, unconsciously, about each little thing
+that she did for him, the solemnity of a funeral rite. Struggle as she
+would, she could not divest her mind of the conviction that what she did
+this day she did for the dead. She would go to the door and listen to his
+breathing, and tell herself that she was a fool, then wring her hands at
+the remembrance of the dream.
+
+As he tossed, half waking, she heard him groan and curse the cattle-men
+with oaths that made her glad she had sent the children from home. Then
+she bent over him and woke him from his uneasy slumber.
+
+"Jim, don't you want me to bathe your head? And here's some nice, hot
+coffee all ready for you."
+
+Jim woke slowly to a realization of his troubles and his blessings. His
+wife was bathing his head with hands that trembled. Not always had she
+greeted his indiscretions with such loving forbearance. He noticed, though
+his waking faculties were not over-keen, that her face was pale and
+frightened, and that her eyes, meeting his, held a dumb, measureless
+affection.
+
+"What th' hell are you babying me for?" But his roughness did not deceive
+her woman's wits. He was not getting the lecture he anticipated, and this
+was his way of showing that he was not embarrassed by her kindness. The
+morning sunlight was pitilessly frank in its exposure of the grim pinch of
+poverty in the mean little room, but the woman was unconscious of these
+things; what she saw was that Jim, the reckless, Jim, the dare-devil
+terror of the country, Jim, who had married and settled with her into
+home-keeping respectability, Jim, who had struggled with misfortune and
+fallen, had, young as he was, lost every look of youth; that hope had gone
+from his dull eyes, and that his face had become drawn until the
+death's-head grinned beneath the scant padding of flesh. But he was
+to-day, as always, the one man in the world for her. In making a world of
+their own and reducing their parents to supplementary consideration, their
+children, whom she had sent away that she might be alone with him, had
+given a different quality to the love of this pair that had known so many
+curious vicissitudes. The responsibilities of parenthood had placed them
+on a tenderer, as well as a securer footing; and as she saw his age and
+weariness, he recognized hers, and both felt a self-accusing twinge.
+
+"That's a blamed good cup of coffee," he said, by way of relieving the
+tension that had crept into the situation. "Any one would think you was
+settin' your cap for me 'stead of us being married for years."
+
+Alida sighed. "It's better to end than to begin like this," she said, in
+the far-away voice of one who thinks aloud. The word "end" had slipped out
+before she realized what she was saying, and the knowledge haunted her as
+an omen. She glanced at him quickly, to see if he had noticed it.
+
+"Why did you say end?" He saw that her eyes were full of tears and chafed
+her. "You ain't thinking of divorcing me, like Mountain Pink done Bosky?"
+
+"Oh, Jim," she said, and her face was all aquiver, "I never could divorce
+you, no matter what you done." And then the grim philosophy of the
+plains-woman asserted itself. "I never can understand why women feed their
+pride on their heart's blood; it never was my way."
+
+He did not like to remember that he had given her cause for a way.
+"There's a lot of women as wouldn't exactly regard me as a Merino, or a
+Southdown, either;" he gulped the coffee to ease the tightness in his
+throat.
+
+"They'd be women of no judgment, then," she said, with conviction.
+
+Jim's head was tilted back, resting in the palm of his hand. His profile,
+sharpened by anxiety, more than suggested his quarter-strain of Sioux
+blood. He might almost have been old Chief Flying Hawk himself, as he
+looked steadily at the woman who had been a young girl and reckless, when
+he had been a boy and reckless; who had paid her woman's penalty and come
+into her woman's kingdom; who had made a man of him by the mystery of her
+motherhood, and who had uncomplainingly gone with him into the wilderness
+and become an alien and an outcast.
+
+These things unmanned him as the sight of the gallows and the rope for his
+hanging could not have done. Shielding himself with an affected roughness,
+he asked:
+
+"What the hell's the matter with you? I've been drinking like a beast of
+an Indian, and you give me coffee instead of a tongue-lashing."
+
+The color had all gone out of her face. She gasped the words:
+
+"Jim, I dreamed it last night--they came for you!"
+
+She cowered at the recollection.
+
+"Did they get me?" he asked. There was no surprise in his tone. He spoke
+as one who knew the answer.
+
+"Yes, the children saw. The noise woke them."
+
+"You mustn't let 'em see, when--they come. They've a right to a fair start;
+we didn't get it, old girl."
+
+"The children gave it to us," and she faced him.
+
+"Yes, yes, but we want them to have it from the start, like good folks."
+
+They looked into each other's eyes. The memory of dead and gone madness
+twinkled there a moment, then each remembered:
+
+"You must hurry, Jim. You haven't a moment to lose. I dreamed it was to be
+to-night--they'll come to-night!"
+
+"The game's all up, old girl! If I had a month I couldn't get away.
+Morrison's been looking for me over to the Owl Creek Range; he's
+back--Stevens told me yesterday. He'll be heading here soon. The price on
+my head is a strain on friendship."
+
+"Have the sheep-men gone back on you?"
+
+"Yes, damn them! A thousand dollars is big money, and they've had hard
+luck!"
+
+"They deserve it; I hope every herd in the State dies of scab."
+
+"There wasn't a scabby sheep in our bunch. What a sight they were, loaded
+with tallow! There wasn't one of them that couldn't have weathered a
+blizzard; they could have lived on their own tallow for a month."
+
+She tried to divert his attention from his lost flock. When he began to
+talk about them the despair of his loss drove him to drink. She was ground
+between the millstones of his going or staying. If he stayed they would
+come for him; if he went, they would apprehend him before he was ten miles
+from the house.
+
+"Jim, we got to think. If there's a chance in a thousand that you can get
+away, you got to take it; if there ain't, the children mustn't know. We
+got to think it out!"
+
+"There ain't a chance in a thousand, old girl. There ain't one in a
+million. They're circling round in the hills out here now, waitin' for me,
+like buzzards waitin' for the eyes of a dyin' horse."
+
+She rocked herself, and the clutching fingers left white marks on her
+face, but the eyes that met his glittered tearless:
+
+"Then there ain't nothing left but to face it like a man?"
+
+"That's all there be." He might have been giving an opinion on a matter in
+which he had no interest.
+
+"Then there ain't no use in our having any more talk about it?"
+
+"'Tain't just what you'd call an agreeable subject," he answered, with the
+sinister humor of the frontiersman who has learned to make a crony of
+death.
+
+She was tempted to kiss him--they were not given to demonstrations, this
+pair--then decided it were kinder to him, less suggestive of what they
+anticipated, not to deviate from their undemonstrative marital routine.
+
+"Do you want your breakfast now?"
+
+"I guess you might bring it along."
+
+And for the same reason that she refrained from kissing him, she repressed
+a desire to wring the neck of a young broiler and cook it for his
+breakfast, remembering that she had heard they gave folks pretty much what
+they wanted when they wouldn't want it long. So Jim got his usual
+breakfast of bacon, uncooked canned tomatoes, soda-biscuit, and coffee.
+She sat with him while he ate, but they spoke no more of "them" or of how
+soon "they" might be expected. She told him that young Jim had pretended
+that morning that he had a cactus thorn in his foot, so that he might have
+a piece of dried apple. And old Jim, in an excess of parental fondness and
+pride, said: "The damned little liar, he'll get to Congress yet!"
+
+But the children were a dangerous topic for overstrained nerves at this
+particular time, so Alida told Jim that she had put the black hen to set
+and she thought they'd have some chickens at last. Jim smoked while Alida
+washed the dishes, and when Jim's back was turned she examined the lock on
+the door--a good push would open it. Then she looked at the brown bureau,
+and the recklessness of despair came into her eyes. In the room beyond,
+Jim was reading a two weeks' old newspaper and smoking. He looked like a
+lazy ranchman taking his ease.
+
+As she went about her household tasks that morning, Alida noticed things
+as she had never noticed them before. A sunbeam came through the
+shutterless window of the house and writhed and quivered on the wall as if
+it were a live thing. She read a warning in this, and in the color of the
+sun, that was red, like blood, and in the whirr of the grasshoppers, that
+was sinister and threatening. The creeks had dried, and their slimy beds
+crept along the willows like sluggish snakes. Gaunt range-cattle bellowed
+in their thirst, and the parched earth crackled beneath the sun that hung
+above the house like a flaming disk. Sometimes she sank beneath the burden
+of it; then she would wring her hands and call on God to help them; they
+were beyond human power. She and Jim were alone all the morning; they did
+not again refer to what they knew would happen. He read his old paper and
+she put her house in order. She did it with especial care. It was meet to
+have things seemly in the house of the dead. And every time she glanced at
+Jim she repressed the desire to fling herself on his breast and cry out
+the anguish that consumed her.
+
+At noon she brought the children home to dinner, and afterwards Jim taught
+them to throw the lasso and played buffalo with them. Alida did not trust
+herself to watch them; she stayed in the kitchen and saw the sunbeam grow
+pale with the waning of the day, the day whose minutes dragged like lead,
+yet had rushed from her, leaving her the night to face. At sundown she
+cooked supper, but she no longer knew what she did. A crazy agility had
+taken possession of her and she spun about the kitchen, doing the same
+errand many times, finding herself doing always something different from
+that she had set about doing. The molten day was burning itself out like a
+fever; hot gusts of air beat up from the earth, but the woman who waited
+felt chilled to the marrow, and took a cloak down from a peg and wrapped
+it about her while she waited for the biscuit to bake. At supper they sat
+down together, the man and his wife and their three children. The children
+were in fine spirits from the fun they had had that afternoon. Never had
+daddy been so nice to them. He had taught Topeka to throw the lasso so
+well that she had caught the cat once and little Jim twice; and daddy had
+played he was a buffalo and had charged them all with his head down, till
+they screamed in terror. But daddy seemed more quiet through the meal, and
+once mother started up and cried:
+
+"What's that?"
+
+She ran to the door with her hand pressed to her side, but daddy called
+after her:
+
+"Don't you know the cowards better than that? They'll wait for nightfall."
+
+But these things had not worried the children, with their heads full of
+playing buffalo and throwing the lariat.
+
+"Jim," said his father, before they went to bed, "remember you are the man
+of the family." But young Jim was already nodding with sleep. Topeka and
+Judith were sleepy, too; they kissed their father and were glad to go to
+bed.
+
+The night began menacingly to close over the wilderness. Where the sun had
+hung above the mountain a moment before there glowed a great pool of red
+that dripped across the blackness in faint tricklings. The outlines of the
+foot-hills loomed huge, formless, uncouth. In the half-light it seemed a
+world struggling in the birth-throes. All day the dry, burning heat had
+quivered over the desert, like hot-air waves flickering over a bed of live
+coals, and now the very earth seemed to palpitate with the intensity of
+its fever. The bellowing of the thirst-maddened cattle had not stopped
+with the twilight that brought no dew to slake their parched throats. In
+the hills the coyotes wailed like lost souls. It was night bereft of
+benisons, day made frightful by darkness. All the heat of a cycle of
+desert summers seemed concentrated in that house in the valley where the
+man and his wife waited. Each sound of the desert night Alida translated
+into the trampling of horses' feet; then, as the sound would die away, or
+prove to be but some night noise of the wilderness, the pallor would lose
+its pinch on her features, and she would stare into her husband's face
+with eyes that did not see. Jim smoked his pipe and refilled it, smoked
+and filled again, but gave no sign of the object of his waiting.
+
+"Jim," she said, when the clock had struck ten, then eleven, "I am going
+to fasten up the house."
+
+"Do you hear them?" he asked, without emotion, but as one who deferred to
+the finer senses of women.
+
+She shook her head, not trusting herself to speak.
+
+He looked at the door that was shrunken and warped from the heat till it
+barely held together, and there was no measure to the tenderness he put
+into:
+
+"Oh, you poor little fool, do you think you could keep them out by
+fastening that?"
+
+"Jim, I must," and her voice broke. "They may think you are not here, that
+it's only me and the children, and that's why the house is fastened." She
+got up and began to move about as though her thoughts scourged her to
+action, even if futile. He shook the ashes from his pipe.
+
+"Do anything you blame please," he said, more by way of humoring her than
+from faith in her stratagem. He felt strong enough to face his destiny, to
+meet it in a way worthy of his mother's people.
+
+Alida seemed under a spell in her preparations for the night. Each thing
+she did as she had done it in her dream the night before; it was as if she
+were constrained by a power greater than her will to fulfil a sinister
+prophecy. Yet now and then she would stop and wonder if she might not
+break the spell by doing things differently from the way she had dreamed
+them. Her hand grasped the knob of the door uncertainly, and she swung it
+to and fro on its creaking hinges, while her mind seemed likewise to sway
+hither and thither. Should she fasten the door and push the bureau against
+it, as it had been in the dream, or should she leave door and windows
+gaping wide for them? And then, as one who walks and does familiar things
+in sleep, she shut the door and turned the key. Jim smiled at her, but she
+could no longer look at him. One of the children wailed fretfully from the
+room beyond. Sleep had become a scourge in the stifling heat. One by one
+she lowered the windows and nailed them down; then she dragged the brown
+bureau against the door, took the brace of six-shooters from the wall, and
+sat down with Jim to wait.
+
+"What are you going to do with them toys?" he asked, as he saw her examine
+the chambers of one of the six-shooters.
+
+"You ain't going to let yourself be caught like a rat in a hole, are you?"
+she reproached him.
+
+"'Ain't we agreed that it's best to keep onpleasant family matters from
+the kids?" He smiled at her bravely. "The remembrance of what we're
+anticipatin' ain't going to help young Jim to get to Congress when his
+time comes, nor it ain't going to help the girls get good husbands,
+either. This here country ain't what it was in the way of liberality since
+it's got to be a State."
+
+"Sh-sh-sh!" she said. "Is that the range-cattle stampedin' after water, or
+is it--" They listened. The furniture in the room crackled; there was not a
+fibre of it to which the resistless heat had not penetrated. On the range
+the cattle bellowed in their thirst-torture; in the intervals of their
+cries sounded something far off, but regular as the thumping of a ship's
+screw. The woman did not need an answer to her question. The steady
+trampling of hoofs came muffled through the dead air, but the sound was
+unmistakable. She put her arms about the man's neck and crushed him to her
+with all her woman strength. "Oh, Jim, you've been a good man to me!"
+
+"Steady--steady." He strained her close to him. "They'd be, by the sound of
+them, on the straight bit of road now, before the turn. Soon we'll hear
+their hoofs ring hollow as they cross the plank bridge."
+
+His plainsman's faculty was as keen as ever; his calculation of the
+horsemen's distance was made as though he were the least concerned. All
+Alida's courage had gone, with the dread thing at hand. She clung to him,
+dazed.
+
+"They're sober, all right enough."
+
+"How do you know?"
+
+"They'd be cursing and bellowing if they were drunk."
+
+The hoofs rang hollow on the little plank bridge that crossed the ditch
+about a stone's-throw from the door. Not a word was said either within or
+without. The lynchers seemed to have drilled for their part; there was no
+whispering, no deferring to a leader. On they came, so close that Jim and
+Alida could hear the creaking of their saddles. There was the clank of
+spurs and the straining of leather as they dismounted, then some one
+knocked at the door till the warped boards rattled.
+
+Jim could feel the thudding of Alida's heart as she clung to him, but when
+the knock was repeated a new courage came to her, and she left Jim and
+went on her knees close to the outer wall.
+
+"Jim, is that you?" she called, and now every sense was trained to battle;
+her voice had even a sleepy cadence, as if she had been suddenly roused.
+
+"That won't do at all, Miz Rodney. We know you got Jim in there, just as
+certain as we're out here, and we want him to come out and we'll do the
+thing square, otherwise he can take the consequences."
+
+Jim opened his mouth to speak, but she, still on her knees beside the
+wall, gained his silence by one supplicating gesture. There was a sleepy,
+fretful cry from the room beyond--the noise had roused one of the children.
+
+"Sh-sh, dear," she called. "It's only a bad dream. Go to sleep again;
+mother is here."
+
+Through the warped door came sounds of the whispering voices without,
+drowned by the shrieking bellow of the cattle. There was not a breath of
+air in the suffocating room. Jim bent towards Alida:
+
+"I'm goin out to 'em. They'll do it square, over on the cotton-woods; this
+rumpus'll only wake the kids."
+
+But she shook her head imploringly, putting her finger to her lips as a
+sign that he was not to speak, and he had not the heart to refuse, though
+knowing that she made a desperate situation worse.
+
+"Gentlemen"--she spoke in a low, distinct voice--"Jim ain't here. He's been
+away from home five days. There's no one here but me and the children;
+you've woke them up and frightened them by pounding on the door. I ask you
+to go away."
+
+"If he ain't in there, will you let us search the house?" It was Henderson
+that spoke, Henderson, foreman of the "XXX" outfit.
+
+"I can't have them frightened; please take my word and go away."
+
+"Whas er matter, muvvy?" called Judith, sleepily. Young Jim was by this
+time crying lustily. Only Topeka said nothing. With the precocity of a
+frontier child, she half realized the truth. She tried to comfort little
+Jim, though her teeth chattered in fear and she felt cold in the hot,
+still room. Then Judith called out, "Make papa send them away."
+
+"Your papa ain't here, Judith." But the fight had all gone out of Alida's
+voice; it was the groan of an animal in a trap.
+
+"Where's papa gone to?"
+
+"Sh-sh, Judith! Topeka, keep your sister quiet."
+
+It was absolutely still, within and without, for a full minute. Then Alida
+heard the shoving of shoulders against the door. Once, twice, thrice the
+lock resisted them. The brown bureau spun across the room like a child's
+toy. The lynchers, bursting in, saw Alida with her arms around Jim. When
+the last hope had gone it was instinct with her to protect him with her
+own body.
+
+"Go into the kids, old girl, this is no place for you." And there was that
+in his voice that made her obey.
+
+Something of the glory of old Chief Flying Hawk, riding to battle, was in
+the face of his grandson.
+
+"Remember, the children ain't to know," he said to his wife; and to the
+lynchers, "Gentlemen, I'm ready."
+
+
+
+
+
+XIX
+
+
+                       "Rocked By A Hempen String"
+
+
+Alida heard the mingled sounds of footsteps and hoofs grow fainter on the
+trail. The children looked at her to tell them why this night was
+different from all others--what was happening. But she could only cower
+among them, more terrified than they. She seemed to be shrunken from the
+happenings of that day. They hardly knew the little, shrivelled, gray
+woman who looked at them with unfamiliar eyes. Alida gazed at the little
+Judith, and there was something in her mother's glance that made the
+little one hide her face in her sister's shoulder. Young Judith it was who
+all unwittingly had told the lynchers that her father was at home, and in
+Alida's heart there was towards this child a blind, unreasoning hate.
+Better had she never been born than live to do this thing!
+
+It was the wee man, Jim, who first began to reflect resentfully on this
+intrusion on his slumbers. He had been sleeping well and comfortably when
+some grown-ups came with a lot of noise, and his father had gone away with
+them. It had frightened him, but his mother was here, and why should she
+not put him to sleep again?
+
+"Muvvy, sing 'Dway Wolf.'" And as she paid no heed, but looked at him,
+white-faced and strange, he again repeated, with his most insinuating and
+beguiling tricks of eye and smile:
+
+"Muvvy, sing 'Dway Wolf' for Dimmy."
+
+The child put his head in his mother's lap, and Alida began, scarce
+knowing what she did:
+
+  "'The gray wolves are coming fast over the hill,
+    Run fast, little lamb, do not baa, do not bleat,
+  For the gray wolves are hungry, they come here to kill,
+    And the lambs shall be scattered--'
+
+"No, no, Jimmy, muvvy cannot sing. Oh, can't you feel, child? Judith,
+Judith, why were you ever born?"
+
+It was still in the valley. Had they come to the dead cotton-woods yet?
+Had they begun it? The children shrank from this gray-faced woman whom
+they did not know and but yet a little while had been their mother. An
+awful silence had fallen on the night. The range-cattle no longer bellowed
+in their thirst; the hot wind no longer blew from the desert. A hush not
+of earth nor air nor the things that were of her ken seemed to have fallen
+about them, muffing the dark loneliness as by invisible flakes. The
+children had crouched close together for comfort. They feared the little,
+gray-faced woman who seemed to have stolen into their mother's place and
+looked at them with strange eyes.
+
+Jimmy looked at the woman who held him, hoping his mother would come, and
+he could see them both. And while he waited he dropped off to sleep; and
+little Judith, hiding her head on Topeka's shoulder, that she might not
+see the look in those accusing eyes, presently dreamed that all was well
+with her again; and Topeka reflected that if her mother should ask her in
+the morning whether she had dreamed last night, she would have a fine tale
+to tell of men riding up, and loud voices, and trying of the door, and
+father going away with them. Her mother had questioned her this morning
+when nothing had happened to warrant it. Surely she would ask again
+to-morrow, and Topeka could tell--she could tell--all.
+
+Alida looked at her three sleeping children--his children, and yet they
+could sleep. Into her mind came that cry of utter desolation, "Could ye
+not watch with me one hour?" And God had been deaf to Him, His son, even
+as He was deaf to her.
+
+The children were sleeping easily. The hush that had hung like a pall over
+the valley had not lifted. Had they done it? Was it over yet? She went to
+the door and listened. Surely the silence that wrapped the valley was a
+thing apart. It was as no other silence that she could remember. It was
+still, still, and yet there was vibration to it, like the muffled roar
+within a shell. She strained her ears--was that the sound of horsemen going
+down the trail? No, no, it was only the beating of her foolish heart that
+would not be still, but beat and fluttered and would not let her hear.
+Yes, surely, that was the sound of hoofs. It was over then--they were
+going.
+
+She would go and look for him. Perhaps it would not be too late--she had
+heard of such things. A dynamic force consumed her. She had no
+consciousness of her body. Her feet and hands did things with incredible
+swiftness--lighted a lantern, selected a knife, ran to the corral for an
+old ladder that had been there when they took possession of the deserted
+house; and through all her frantic haste she could feel this new force, as
+it were, lick up the red blood in her veins, burn her body to ashes as it
+gave her new power. She felt that never again would she have need of meat
+and drink and sleep. This force would abide with her till all was over,
+then leave her, like the whitened bones of the desert.
+
+It was dark in the valley, but the menacing stillness seemed to be
+lifting. The range-cattle had again taken up their plaint, the sounds of
+the desert night swept across the stony walls of the caņon. Alida knew
+that it must have happened at the dead cotton-woods. There were no other
+high trees about for miles. Again she listened before advancing. There was
+no sound of hoof or champing bit or men moving quickly. They had gone
+their way into the valley. She ran swiftly, her lantern throwing its beam
+across the scrubby inequalities of ground, but for her there was no need
+of its beacon. To-night she was beyond the halting, stumbling
+uncertainties of tread to which man is subject. There was magic in her
+feet and in her hands and brain. Like the wind she ran, the wind on the
+great plain where there are no foot-hills to hinder its course. The black,
+dead trees stood out distinctly against the starry sky, and from a
+cross-limb of one of them dangled something with head awry, like a broken
+jumping-jack, something that had once been a man--and her husband. She
+could touch the feet of this frightful thing and feel its human warmth. A
+wind came up from the desert and blew across the caņon's rocky walls into
+the valley, and the parody of a man swayed to it.
+
+She had been expecting this thing. For weeks the image of it had been
+graven on her heart. Sleeping or waking, she had seen nothing but his
+dangling body from the cross-limb. Yet with the actual consummation before
+her, she felt its hideous novelty as though it were unexpected. At sight
+of it the force that had borne her up through the happenings of that day
+went out of her, and as she stood with the knife and the rope, that she
+had brought in the hope of cheating the lynchers, dangling from her
+nerveless hand her helplessness overcame her. Again and again she called
+to the dead man for help, called to him as she had been accustomed to call
+when her woman's strength had been unequal to some heavy household task.
+
+Far down the trail she could hear the gallop of a horse coming closer, and
+mingled with the sounds of its flying feet was a voice urging the horse to
+greater speed in the shrill cabalistic "Hi-hi-hi-ki!" of the plains-man.
+What was it--one of them returning to see that she did not cheat the rope
+of its due?--to hang her beside him, as an after-thought, as they hanged
+Kate Watson beside her man? Let them. She was standing near the swaying
+thing when horse and rider gained the ground beside her, and what was left
+to her of consciousness made out that the rider was Judith. She pointed to
+it, and stood helpless with the dangling rope in her hand.
+
+"Are we too late?" Judith almost whispered, as she caught Alida's cold,
+inert hands. "I dreamed it all and came. If I could have dreamed it
+sooner!"
+
+Alida did not seem to hear, neither could she speak. She only pointed
+again to the thing beside her.
+
+Judith understood. The women had a task to share, and in silence they
+began it. The lynchers had done their work all too well. Again and again
+the women strove with all their strength to take down the dangling parody
+of a man, which in its dead-weight resistance seemed in league with the
+forces against them. At last the thing was done. Down to a pale world,
+that in the haggard gray of morning seemed to bear in its countenance
+something of the pinch of death, Judith lowered the thing that had so
+lately been a man. She cut the rope away from the neck, she straightened
+the wry neck that seemed to wag in pantomimic representation of the last
+word to the lynchers. They'd have to reckon with him on dark nights, and
+when the wind wailed like a famished wolf and when things not to be
+explained lurked in the shadows of the desert.
+
+The morning stillness came flooding into the cup-shaped valley like a
+soft, resistless wave. Something had come to the gray, old earth--another
+day, with all its human gift of joy and woe, and the earth welcomed it
+though it had known so many. The sun burst through the gold-tipped aureole
+of cloud, scattering far and wide lavish promises of a perfect day. The
+earth seemed to respond with a thrill. No longer was the pinch of death in
+her countenance. The valley, the mountains, the invisible wind, even the
+dead cotton-woods, seemed endowed with throbbing life that contrasted
+fearsomely with the terrible nullity of this thing that once had been Jim
+Rodney.
+
+Alida had ceased to take any part in the hideous drama. She sat on the
+ground, a crouching thing with glittering eyes. It was past comprehension
+that the sun could shine and the world go on with her man dead before her.
+Judith had become the force that planned and did to save the family pride.
+While her hands were busy with preparations for the dead, she rehearsed
+what she would say to this and that one to account for Jim's absence. The
+silence of the men who had done this thing would be as steadfast as their
+own.
+
+And there were the children. Through all her frantic search for things in
+the house, Judith remembered that she must step softly and not waken the
+children. With each turn of the screw, as her numbed consciousness rallied
+and responded afresh to the hideous realization of this thing, there came
+no release from the tyrannous hold of petty detail. She remembered that
+she must be back at noon to hold post-office, and there would be the
+endless comedy to be played once more with her cavaliers. They must never
+suspect from word or look of hers. And there was the dance to-night at the
+Benton ranch--she hid her face in her hands. Ah, no, she could not do this
+thing! And yet they must not suspect. She must contrive to give the
+impression that Jim had cheated the rope. Yes, she must go and dance, and,
+if need be, dance with his very murderers. Jim's children were to have the
+"clean start" that he intended, and they would have to get it here. There
+was no money for an exodus and a beginning elsewhere.
+
+Alida still crouched beside the long, even tarpaulin roll that Judith had
+prepared with hands that knew not what they did. But now Judith gently
+roused her and put in her hand a spade; already she herself had begun. But
+Alida stared at it dully, as if she did not understand. Then Judith
+pointed to something black that had begun to wheel in the sky, wheel, and
+with each circular swoop come closer to the roll of tarpaulin. Then Alida
+knew, and, taking the spade, she and Judith began to dig the grave.
+
+
+
+
+
+XX
+
+
+                                 The Ball
+
+
+The dance in the Benton ranch was the great social event of the midsummer
+season. The Bentons had begun to give dances in the days of plenty, when
+the cattle industry had been at its dizziest height; and they had
+continued to give dances through all the depressing fluctuations of the
+trade, perhaps in much the same spirit as one whistles in the dark to keep
+up his courage. Thus, though cattle fell and continued to fall in the
+scale of prices till the end no man dared surmise, the Benton "boys"--they
+were two brothers, aged respectively forty-five and fifty years--continued
+to hold out facilities to dance and be merry.
+
+All day strange wagons--ludicrous, makeshift things--had been discharging
+loads of women and children at the Benton ranch, tired mothers and their
+insistent offspring. To the women this strenuous relaxation came as manna
+in the wilderness. What was the dreary round of washing, ironing, baking,
+and the chain of household tasks that must be done as primitively as in
+Genesis, if only they might dance and forget? So the mothers came early
+and stayed late, and the primary sessions of the dances fulfilled all the
+functions of the latter-day mothers' congresses--there were infant ailments
+to be discussed, there were the questions of food and of teething, of
+paregoric and of flannel bands, which, strange heresy, seemed to be "going
+out," according to the latest advices from those compendiums of all
+domestic information, the "Woman's Pages" of the daily papers.
+
+Inasmuch as these more than punctual debaters must be cooked for, there
+was, to speak plainly, "feeling" on the part of the housekeeper at the
+Bentons'. Wasn't it enough for folks to come to a dance and get a good
+supper, and go away like Christians when the thing was over, instead of
+coming a day before it began and lingering on as if they had no home to go
+to? This, at least, was the housekeeper's point of view, a crochety one,
+be it said, not shared by the brothers Benton, whose hospitality was as
+genuine as it was primitive. To this same difficult lady the infants, who
+were too tender in years to be separated from their mothers, were as
+productive of anxiety as their elders. A room had been set apart for their
+especial accommodation, the floor of which, carefully spread with
+bed-quilts and pillows, prevented any great damage from happening to the
+more tender of the guests; and they rolled and crooned and dug their small
+fists into each other's faces while their mothers danced in the room
+beyond.
+
+By nightfall the Benton ranch gleamed on the dark prairie like a
+constellation. Lights burned at every window; a broad beam issued from the
+door and threw a welcoming beacon across the darkness and silence of the
+night. The scraping of fiddles mingled with the rhythmic scuffle of feet
+and the singsong of the words that the dancers sung as they whirled
+through the figures of the quadrille and lancers. About the walls of the
+room where the dancing was in progress stood a fringe of gallants, their
+heads newly oiled, and proclaiming the fact in a bewildering variety of
+strong perfumes. Red silk neckerchiefs knotted with elaborate carelessness
+displayed to advantage bronzed throats; new overalls, and of the shaggiest
+species, amply testified to the social importance of the Benton dance.
+
+As yet the dancing was but intermittent and was engaged in chiefly by the
+mothers with large progeny, who felt that after the arrival of a greater
+number of guests, and among them the unmarried girls, their opportunities
+might not be as plentiful as at present. One or two cow-punchers, in an
+excess of civility at the presence of the fair, had insisted on giving up
+their six-shooters, mumbling something about "there being ladies present
+and a man being hasty at times." In the "bunk-room," which did duty as a
+gentleman's cloak-room, things were really warming up. There was much
+drinking of healths, as the brothers Benton had thoughtfully provided the
+wherewithal, and that in excellent quality.
+
+Costigan was there, and Texas Tyler, who had ridden sixty miles to "swing
+a petticoat," or, if there were not enough to go round, to dance with a
+handkerchief tied to some fellow's sleeve. By "swinging a petticoat" it
+was perfectly understood among all his friends that he meant a chance to
+dance with Judith Rodney. Year in and year out Texas never failed to
+present himself at the post-office on mail-days, if his work took him
+within a radius of fifty miles of the Daxes. No dance where the
+possibility of seeing Judith was even remote was too long a ride for him
+to undertake, even when it took him across the dreariest wastes of the
+desert. Texas had been devoted to Judith since she had left the convent,
+and sometimes, perhaps twice a year, she told him that she valued his
+friendship. On all other occasions she rejected his suit as if his
+continual pressing of it were something in the nature of an affront. Yet
+Texas persevered.
+
+"Well, here's lukin' at you, since in the way of a frind there's nothing
+better to look at!" and Costigan drained a tin cup at Texas Tyler.
+
+"Your very good health," said Texas, who was somewhat embarrassed by what
+was regarded as Costigan's "floweriness."
+
+"Begorra, is that Hinderson or the ghost av the b'y?" Costigan's roving
+eye was arrested by the foreman of the "XXX," who stood drinking with two
+or three men of his outfit. He was pale and ill-looking. He drank several
+times in succession, as if he needed the stimulant, and without the
+formality of drinking to any one. The two or three "XXX" men who were with
+him seemed to be equally in need of restoratives.
+
+They talked of the cattle stampede in which several of the outfits had
+been heavy losers. Some nine hundred head of cattle had been recovered,
+and members of the different outfits were still scouring the Red Desert
+for strays.
+
+Something in the nature of a sensation was created by the arrival of the
+Wetmore party. The women were frankly interested in the clothes, bearing,
+and general deportment of the New-Yorkers. Rumors of Miss Colebrooke's
+beauty were rife, and there was a general inclination to compare her with
+local belles. Such exotic types--they had seen these city beauties
+before--were as a rule too colorless for their appreciation. They liked
+faces that had "more go to them," was the verdict passed upon one famous
+beauty who had visited the Wetmores the year before. In arrangement of the
+hair, perhaps, in matters of dress, the judges were willing to concede the
+laurels to city damsels, but there concession stopped. But evidently
+Kitty, to judge from the elaboration of her toilet, did not intend to be
+dismissed thus cursorily. She herself was delicately, palely pretty, as
+always, but her hair was tortured to a fashionable fluffiness, and the
+simplicity of her green muslin gown was only in the name. It was muslin
+disguised, elaborated, beribboned, lace-trimmed till its identity was all
+but lost in the multitude of pretty complications.
+
+"Did you know that old Ma'am Yellett had a school-marm up to her place?"
+asked one of the men, apropos of Eastern prettiness.
+
+"Well, well," Costigan reminisced, "'tis some av thim Yillitt lambs thot's
+six fut in their shtockings, if Oi be rimimbering right. Sure, the tacher
+ought to be something av a pugilist, Oi'm thinkin'."
+
+"I seen her the other day, and a neater little heifer never turned out to
+pasture. Lord, I'd like to be gnawing the corners of the primer right now,
+if she was there to whale the ruler."
+
+"Arrah," bayed Costigan, "but the women question is gittin' complicated
+ontoirely, wid Miss Rodney--an' herself lukin' loike a saint in a church
+window--dalin' the mails an' th' other wan tachin' in the mountains. Sure,
+this place is gittin' to be but a sorry shpot for bachelors loike mesilf."
+
+"I ain't mentionin' no names, but there's a man here ain't treatin' a
+mighty fine woman square and accordin' to the way she ought to be
+treated."
+
+The information ran through the circle like an electric shock. Men stopped
+in the act of pledging each other's healths to listen. Loungers
+straightened up; every topic was dropped. The man who had made the
+statement was the loose-lipped busybody who had suggested to his host that
+he give up his six-shooter since there were "ladies present."
+
+"What the hell are you waiting for?" queried Texas Tyler, savagely.
+"You've cracked your whip, made your bow, and got our attention; why the
+hell don't you go on?"
+
+The man looked about nervously. He was rather alarmed at the interest he
+had excited. The next moment Peter Hamilton had walked into the room.
+There was something crucial in his entrance at this particular time; it
+crystallized suspicion. The gossip took advantage of the greetings to
+Hamilton to make his escape. Texas Tyler left the bunk-room immediately
+and looked for him in the room with the dancers. The fiddles, in the hands
+of a couple of Mexicans, had set the whole room whirling as if by magic.
+As they danced they sang, joining with the "caller-out," who held his
+vociferous post between the rooms, till the room was full of singing,
+dancing men and women, who spun and pirouetted as if they had not a care
+in the world. But Texas Tyler was not of these, as he looked through the
+dancers for his man. There was a red flash in the pupils of his eyes, and
+he told himself that he was going to do things the way they did them in
+Texas, for, of course, he knew that the loose-lipped idiot had meant
+Judith Rodney and Peter Hamilton. Never before had such an idea occurred
+to him, and now that it had been presented to his mind's eye, he wondered
+why he had been such a blind fool. Never had the singing to these dances
+seemed so absurd.
+
+  "Hawk hop out and the crow hop in,
+  Three hands round and go it ag'in.
+  Allemane left, back to the missus,
+  Grande right and left and sneak a few kisses."
+
+He rushed from the room and down to the stable. At sight of him some one
+leaped on a horse and rode out into the darkness.
+
+"Who was that?" asked Texas of a man lounging by the corral.
+
+"That was--" and he gave the name of the loose-lipped man.
+
+Texas cursed long and picturesquely. Then he went back to the bunk-room
+and tried to pick a quarrel with Peter Hamilton, who good-naturedly
+assumed that his old friend had been drinking and refused to take offence.
+
+Peter went in to ask Kitty to dance with him. All that evening he had been
+waiting anxiously for Judith. Meanwhile he had used all his influence as a
+newly appointed member of the Wetmore outfit to soothe the ruffled
+feelings of the cattle-men. Of the tragedy in the valley he had heard no
+rumor.
+
+Kitty had come to the point where she was willing to waive the
+Récamier-Chateaubriand friendship in favor of one more personal and
+ordinary. In fact, as Peter showed a disposition to regard as final her
+answer to him on the day he had spurred across the desert, Kitty, with
+true feminine perversity, inclined to permit him to resume his suit. His
+acquiescence in her refusal she had at first regarded as the turning of
+the worm; after the wolf-hunt, however, her meditations were more
+disturbing. She had never told Peter of that strange woodland meeting with
+Judith, yet Judith's beauty, her probable hold over Peter, the degree of
+his affection for her were rankling questions in Kitty's consciousness. In
+the stress of these considerations Kitty lost her head completely for so
+old a campaigner. She drew the apron-string tight--attempted force instead
+of strategy.
+
+Kitty and Peter finished their waltz, one of the few round dances of the
+evening.
+
+"How perfectly you dance, Kitty! It's a long time since we've had a waltz
+together."
+
+The cow-punchers looked at Kitty as if she were not quite flesh and blood.
+Such flaxen daintiness, femininty etherealized to angelic perfection, was
+new to them, but their admiration was like that given to a delicate exotic
+which, wonderful as it is, one is well pleased to view through the glass
+of the florist's window.
+
+Peter was deferentially attentive and zealous to make the Wetmore party
+have a thoroughly good time, yet he did all these things, as it were, with
+his eye on the door. He was not obviously distrait; he was the man of the
+world, talking, making himself agreeable, "doing his duty," while his
+subconsciousness was busy with other matters. It was rather through
+telepathy than through any lack of attention paid to her that Kitty
+realized the state of things, and in proportion to her realization came a
+feeling of helplessness; it was so new, so unexpected, so cruel. He seemed
+drifting away from her on some tide of affairs of the very existence of
+which she had been unconscious. Further and further he had drifted, till
+intelligible speech no longer seemed possible between them. They said the
+foolish, empty things that people call out as the boat glides away from
+the shore, the things that all the world may hear, and in his eyes there
+was only that smiling kindness. How had it come about after all these
+years? What was it that had first cut the cable that sent him drifting?
+What was it? She must think. Oh, who could think with that noise! How
+silly was their singing as they danced, how uncouth!
+
+  "All dance as pretty as you can,
+  Turn your toes and left alleman;
+    First gent sashay to the right,
+  Now swing the girl you last swung about,
+  And now the one that's cut her out,
+    And now the one that's dressed in white,
+  And now the belle of the ball."
+
+The dancers seemed bitten to the quick with the tarantula of an ecstatic
+hilarity; their bodies swayed in perfect harmony to the swing of the
+fiddles and the swell of the chorus. The most uncouth of them came under
+the spell of that mad magic. Their movements, that in the beginning of the
+dance had been shy and awkward, became almost beautiful; they forgot arms,
+hands, feet; their bodies had become like the strings of some skilfully
+played instrument, obediently responsive to rhythm, and in that composite
+blending of races each in his dancing brought some of the poetry of his
+own far land. The scene was amazing in its beauty and simplicity, like the
+strong, inspirational power and rugged rhythm of some old border minstrel.
+One by one the dancers glowed with better understanding; discordant
+elements, alien nations were fused to harmony in this vivid picture.
+
+Peter turned to Kitty, expecting to see her face aglow with the warmth of
+it. She stood beside him, the one unresponsive soul in the room, on her
+lips a pale, tolerant smile.
+
+"Aren't they splendid, Kitty, these women? More than half of them work
+like beavers all day, and they have young children and dozens of worries,
+but would you suspect it? They're just the women for this country."
+
+Now in the present state of affairs almost any other subject would have
+been better calculated to promote good feeling than the one on which Peter
+had alighted. Kitty's thoughts had perversely lingered about one who,
+though not one with these women, had yet their sturdy self-reliance, their
+acquiescence in grim conditions, their pleasure in simple things. Kitty's
+apprehension, slow to kindle, had taken fire like a forest, and by its
+blaze she saw things in a distorted light; her present vision magnified
+the relations of Peter and Judith to a degree that a month ago she would
+have regarded as impossible. "He is her lover!" was the accusation that
+suddenly flashed through her mind, and with the thought an overwhelming
+desire to say something unkind, something that should hurt him, supplanted
+all judgment and reason.
+
+"Oh, it's a decidedly remarkable scene, pictorially, I agree with you. And
+an artist, of course--but isn't it a trifle quixotic, Peter, to idealize
+them because they are having a good time? There's no virtue in it. It is
+conceivable that they might have to work just as hard and have just as
+many little children to look after, and yet not have these dances you
+praise them for coming to."
+
+"I'm afraid you find us and our amusements a little crude. Evidently the
+spirit of our dances does not appeal to you; but I did not suppose it
+necessary to remind you that they should not be judged by the standard of
+conventional evening parties," said Peter, hurt and angry in his turn.
+
+"Us, our amusements, our dances? So you are quite identified with these
+people, my dear Peter, and I had thought you an ornament of cotillions and
+country clubs. I can only infer that it is somebody in particular who has
+brought about your change of heart."
+
+Peter flushed a little, and Kitty kept on: "Some of the native belles are
+quite wonderful, I believe. Nannie Wetmore tells of a half-breed who is
+very handsome."
+
+Peter set his lips. "At the expense of spoiling Nannie's pretty romance, I
+must tell you that the lady she refers to is not only the most beautiful
+of women, but she would be at ease in any drawing-room. It would be as
+ridiculous to apply the petty standards of ladyhood to her as it would
+to--well, imagine some foolish girl bringing up the question at a woman's
+club--'Was Joan of Arc a lady?'" Peter spoke without calculating the
+conviction that his words carried. He was angry, and his manner, voice,
+intonation showed it.
+
+Kitty, now that her most unworthy suspicions had been confirmed by Peter's
+ardent championing of Judith, lost her discretion in the pang that gnawed
+her little soul: "I beg your pardon, Peter. When I spoke I did not, of
+course, know that this young woman was anything to you."
+
+"Anything to me? My dear Kitty, I've never had a better friend than Judith
+Rodney."
+
+The dance was at its flood-tide. The exhilaration had grown with each
+sweep of the fiddle-bow, with the sorcery of sinuous, swaying bodies, with
+the song of the dancers as they joined in the calling out of the figures,
+with the rhythmic shuffle of feet, with the hum of the pulses, with the
+leaping of blood to cheek and heart till the dancers whirled as leaves
+circling towards the eddies of a whirlpool. The dancing Mrs. Dax split her
+favors into infinitesimal fragments, for each measure of which her long
+list of waiting gallants stood ready to pick a quarrel if need be. Her
+dancing, in the splendor of its spontaneity, had something of the surge of
+the west wind sweeping over a field of grain. Sometimes she waved back her
+partner and alone danced a figure, putting to the music her own
+interpretation--barbaric, passionate, rude, but magnificently vivid. And
+the dancers would stop and crowd about her, clapping hands and stamping
+feet to the rhyming movement of her body, while against the wall her
+hostile sister-in-law, Mrs. Leander, stood and glared in a fury of
+disapproval, Leander himself smiling broadly meanwhile and exercising the
+utmost restraint to keep from joining Mrs. Johnnie's train.
+
+The "XXX" men, who had remained aloof from the dancers and the merriment,
+keeping a faithful vigil in the bunk-room, where the hospitable bottles
+were to be found, seemed to awaken from the spell that had bound them all
+day. Henderson, the foreman, whose face had not lost its tallow paleness
+despite the number of his potations, put his head through the door to have
+a look at the dancing Mrs. Dax, was caught in the outermost eddy of the
+whirling throng, and was soon dancing as madly as the others. The rest of
+the "XXX" party still hugged the bunk-room, where the bottles gleamed
+hospitable. They were still dusty from their long ride of the early
+morning, and more than once their fear-quickened imaginations had been
+haunted by the spectre of the dead cotton-woods, from which something
+heavy and limp and warm had been swaying when they left it. Henderson had
+secured the dancing Mrs. Dax for a partner. The "caller-out," stationed
+between the two rooms, warmed to his genial task. He improvised, he put a
+wealth of imagination and personality into his work, he showered
+compliments on the nimbleness of Mrs. Dax's feet, he joked Henderson on
+his pallor, he attempted a florid venture at Kitty. Miguel put fresh magic
+into his bowing, José's fiddle rioted with the madness of it.
+
+Judith stood for a moment in the kindly enveloping darkness, and her heart
+cried out in protest at the thing she must do. It was the utmost cruelty
+of fate that forced her here to dance on the evening of the day that they
+had killed him. But she must do it, that his children might evade the
+stigma of "cattle-thief," that the shadow of the gallows-tree might not
+fall across their young lives, that the neighbors might give credence to
+the tale of Jim's escape from his enemies, that Alida and she might earn
+the pittance that would give the children the "clean start" that Jim had
+set his heart on so confidently. And she must dance and be the merriest of
+them all that these things might happen, but again and again she deferred
+the dread moment. The light, the music, the voices, the shuffle of the
+feet came to her as she stood forlorn in the grateful darkness. On the
+wall the shadows of the dancers, magnified and grotesque, parodied their
+movements, as they contended there, monstrous, uncouth shapes, like
+prehistoric monsters gripping, clinching in some mighty struggle; and
+above it all sang out the wild rhythm of Miguel's fiddle, and young José's
+bow capered madly.
+
+Judith drew close to the window, and the merriment struck chill at her
+heart like the tolling of a knell. She saw the pale face of Henderson
+gleam yellow-white among the dancers, and, watching him, the blood-lust of
+the Indian woke in her heart. The rest of the room was but a blur; the
+dancers faded into swaying shadows; she saw nothing but Henderson as he
+danced that he might forget the gray of morning, the black, dead trees,
+and the grotesque thing with head awry that swayed in the breeze like a
+pendulum. He dreaded the long, black ride that would bring him to his
+camp, for he alone of the lynchers remained. Something was drawing his
+gaze out into the blackness of the night. He struggled against the
+temptation to look towards the window. He whirled the Dax woman till her
+twinkling feet cleared the floor. He sang to the accompaniment of Miguel's
+fiddle. He was outwitting the thing that dangled before his eyes, having
+the incontrovertible last word with a vengeance. And as he danced and
+swayed, all unwittingly his glance fell on the window opposite, and Jim
+Rodney's face looked in at him, beautiful in its ecstasy of hate--Rodney's
+face, refined, sharpened, tried in some bitter crucible, but Rodney's
+face! Henderson could not withdraw his fascinated gaze. He stood in the
+midst of the dancers like a man turned to stone. He put up his hand to his
+eyes as if to brush away a cloud of swarming gnats, then threw up his arms
+and rushed from the room. The dancers paused in their mad whirl. Miguel's
+bow stopped with a wailing shriek. Every eye turned towards the window for
+an explanation of Henderson's sudden panic, but all was dark without on
+the prairie. The magic had gone from the dance, the whirlwind of drapery
+that had swung like flags in a breeze dropped in dead air. "What was it?"
+the dancers asked one another in whispers.
+
+And for answer Judith entered, but a Judith that was strange to them.
+There was about her a white radiance that kept the dancers back, and in
+her eyes something of Mary's look, as she turned from Calvary. The dancers
+still kept the position of the figures, the men with their arms about
+their partners' waists, the women stepping forward; they were like the
+painted figures of dancers in a fresco. And among them stood Judith,
+waiting to play her part, waiting to show her world that she could dance
+and be merry because all was well with her and hers. But the bronzed sons
+of the saddle hung back, they who a day before would have quarrelled for
+the honor of a dance. They were afraid of her; it would be like dancing
+with the death angel. She looked from face to face. Surely some one would
+ask her to dance, and her eyes fell on Henderson, returning from the
+bottled courage in the bunk-room. Some word was due from him to explain
+his terror of a moment ago.
+
+"Oh, Miss Judith, I thought you was a ghost when I seen you at the
+window."
+
+"A ghost that's ready to dance." She held out her hand to him. In her
+gesture there was something of royal command, and Henderson, reading the
+meaning in her eyes, stepped forward. Her face, almost a perfect replica
+of the dead man's, looked at him.
+
+"I bring you greeting from my brother," she said. "He has gone on a long
+journey."
+
+Henderson started. Through the still room ran the murmur, "Rodney's
+outwitted them; he's played a joke on the rope!" And Judith, his
+dare-devil sister, had come with his greetings to Henderson, leader of the
+faction against him! The tide had turned. The applause that is ever the
+meed of the winner was hers to command. The cattle faction were ready to
+sing the praises of her splendid audacity. In their hearts they were glad
+in the thought that Jim had outwitted them.
+
+Miguel's bow dashed across the strings, and he drew from the little brown
+fiddle music that again made them merry and glowing. The magic came back
+to the dance, the blood leaped again with the merry madness, and they
+swept to the bowing like leaves when the first faint wail of winter cries
+in the trees.
+
+Hamilton, standing apart with Kitty Colebrooke, had been a dazed witness
+of the scene. With the rest he had watched the entrance of Judith, had
+been stunned by the change in her appearance, had seen her triumph and
+heard the rumor of Jim's escape, and his heart had warmed with the good
+word. She had probably managed the plan, and had come to-night, in the joy
+of her triumph, to hurl in their faces that she had outwitted them. And
+she had paid the penalty of her courage--her face told that. What a woman
+she was! Her heart would pay the penalty to the last throb, and yet she
+could dance with the merriest of them. And as she danced she seemed to
+Peter Hamilton, in her white draperies, like a cloud of whirling
+snow-flakes drifting across the silence of the desert night. She was the
+one woman in all the world for him, though his blind eyes had faced the
+light for years and had not known it. He had squandered the strength of
+his youth in the pursuit of a little wax light, and had not marked the
+serene shining of the moon.
+
+"And a man there was and he made his prayer--" he quoted to himself. Well,
+thank God that it had not been answered. He would take her away from here.
+She could take her place in his family and reflect credit on his choice.
+His family, his friends--he winced at the thought of their possible
+reception of the news. But Judith's presence would adjust these
+difficulties. He would present her to Kitty now, that his old friend might
+see what manner of woman she was. Kitty, he felt, would be kind in memory
+of the old days. She would give to them both in friendship what she had
+denied him in love. And as he warmed to the thought he turned to the woman
+of his youth. And she read a look in his face that had not been there in a
+long time. Had he, then, come back to her? Was the distance from bark to
+shore lessening as the sea of misunderstanding diminished?
+
+"Kitty, we were speaking a moment ago of Miss Rodney. You would like to
+know her, I'm sure. We've been such good friends all these years while you
+were deciding that what I wanted was not good for us--and deciding wisely,
+as I know now. Look at her! You'll understand how she has helped me keep
+the balance of things. When she's finished dancing you'll let me bring her
+to you, won't you?"
+
+And Kitty, who had expected much different words, struggled with the
+meaning of these unexpected ones. The strangeness of the pain bewildered
+her. Her dazed consciousness refused to accept that Peter was asking
+permission to present to her a woman whom she thought should not have been
+permitted to enter her presence. There was about her a white flame of
+anger that seemed to lick up the red blood in her veins as she turned to
+answer:
+
+"She is undeniably handsome, Peter, but I do not care to meet your
+mistress."
+
+He bowed low to her as Lieutenant Swift, of Fort Washakie, who was of the
+Wetmore party, came to claim Kitty's hand for the next dance. Judith and
+Henderson were leading the last figure, their hands clasped high in an
+arch through which the dancers trooped in couples. Again and again he
+tried to catch Judith's eye, but her glance never once met his. Her great,
+wide eyes had a far-away look as if they saw some tragedy, the shadow of
+which would never fall from her. She was, indeed, the tragic muse in her
+floating white drapery, the tragic muse whose grief is too deep for tears.
+He watched her as she swept towards him in the figure of the dance, the
+head thrown back, slightly foreshortened, the mouth smiling with the smile
+that knows all things, the eyes holy wells of truth. He saw in her
+something of the tenderness of Eve, for all the blending of the calm
+modern woman, capable in affairs, equal to emergency. It was like her to
+contrive her brother's escape and then to dance with the very men who had
+knotted the noose for his hanging. Henderson was bowing to her, the dance
+was over, and the next moment she was alone.
+
+"Is it you, Peter?" She thrust a strand of hair back from her temple. Her
+eyes rested on him for a moment, then wandered, till in their absent look
+was the rapt expression of the sleep-walker. The dark-rimmed eyes had in
+their depths the quiet of a conflagration, and Peter, seeing these things,
+and knowing the gamut of all her moods, saw that he had been mistaken. She
+had not come, to dance in triumph, in the face of her brother's enemies.
+There was no triumph in her face, but white, consuming despair.
+
+"Did you ask me to dance?" Again she put back the strand of hair. "Forgive
+me for being so stupid, but I've kept post-office to-day, and had a long
+ride, and I danced with Henderson."
+
+He drew her arm within his and led the way out through the crowd of
+dancers to the star-strewn night. She did not speak again, nor did she
+seem to notice that they had left the room with the dancers. She turned
+her face towards the lonely valley, where the drama of her brother's
+passing had been consummated, and something there was in her look as it
+turned towards the hills that told Peter.
+
+"Tell me, Judith, 'what has happened?"
+
+For answer she pointed towards the valley. "They did it last night at the
+dead cotton-woods. Henderson led them. I could not stay with Alida. I had
+to come here to dance that no one might suspect."
+
+Her voice was steady, but low and thrilling. In its deep resonance was the
+echo of all human sorrow. There was no hint of accusation, yet Peter felt
+accused. He felt, now when it was too late, that his position had been one
+of almost pusillanimous negligence. From the beginning he had taken a firm
+stand against violent measures. He had talked, argued, reasoned, inveighed
+against violence; no later than a week ago he had ridden across the desert
+to tell Henderson that the Wetmore outfit would take no part in violence
+of any sort, and that the cattle outfit that did resort to extreme
+measures would miss the support of the "W-Square" in any future range
+business. But it had not been enough. He should have made plain his
+position in regard to Judith. With her as his future wife the tragedy of
+the valley would not have been possible.
+
+From the ranch-house came the swell of the fiddles, the rhythmic shuffle
+of feet, the song of the dancers, dulled by distance. Beside him was
+Judith, a white spirit, the woman in her dead of grief. And yet, through
+all the grim horror of the tragedy she remembered the part that had been
+allotted to her, threw all the weight of her personality on the side of
+the game she was playing.
+
+"You must be on our side, Peter, and when there is talk of Jim's absence
+you must imply that he is East somewhere. You will know how to meet such
+inquiries better than we women. Henderson will be only too glad. You
+should have seen the wretch when I held out my hand to him and told him to
+dance with me. He came, white and shambling; we have nothing to fear from
+Henderson. Alida has no money to go away with. She and I must stay here
+and make a beginning for the children, and, Peter, we want you to help
+us."
+
+He had no voice to answer her brave words for a minute, and then his
+sentences came uncertain and halting.
+
+"You must think me a poor sort of friend, Judith, one who has been blind
+till the eleventh hour and is then found wanting. I feel so guilty to you,
+to your brother's wife, to that little child who put out his arms so
+trustfully to me that night, but I never imagined that things would come
+to such a pass as this. The smaller cattle outfits have been doing a good
+deal of blustering, but the more conservative element supposed that they
+had them in check, and did not for a moment think that they would take the
+law into their own hands. Believe me, this lawlessness has been in the
+face of every influence that could be brought to bear, and it shall not go
+unpunished."
+
+She spoke to him from the darkness, as the spirit of grief might speak.
+"An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, that is the justice of the
+plains. But, Peter, it is but poor justice. What's done is done, and fresh
+violence will not give back Alida her husband nor the little ones their
+father. What we need is friends, one or two loyal souls who, though
+knowing the hideous truth of this thing, will stand by us in our pitiful
+falsehood. I have told no one, nor shall I, but you and--Peter, you must
+not laugh at your fellow-conspirator--Leander."
+
+He took her hands in his and pressed them; big hands they were, and
+hardened by many a homely task, but withal tender and with the healing
+quality of womanliness in the touch of their warm, supple fingers. But
+to-night she did not seem to know that he held them, nor to be conscious
+of his presence. The woman in her was dead of grief. The white spirit in
+her place, that plotted and planned that Jim's children and Jim's wife
+might not from henceforth walk in the shadow of the gallows, was beyond
+the prompting of the flesh. And again she spoke to him in the same
+far-away voice, with the same far-away look in her eyes.
+
+"You must know, Peter, that Leander is at heart of the salt of the earth.
+I told him about it all, and he asked to be given the commission to deal
+with the men. He has risen to his post magnificently. I heard him swear
+the wretches to secrecy, hint to them that he had a great story to tell
+them. They were frightened, and listened. And the poor little man that we
+have so despised told them convincingly how Jim had made good his
+escape--even Henderson half believes we saved him."
+
+Peter hoped that she would accuse him of his half-heartedness indirectly,
+if not openly. It would have made his conscience more comfortable, and his
+conscience troubled him sorely to-night. It was that fatal habit of
+procrastination that had brought this thing about. He had hesitated all
+these weeks about Judith, and while he had threshed out the pro and con of
+her disadvantageous family connection, this hideous tragedy had happened.
+
+"Peter"--and now her eyes seemed to come back to earth again, to lose
+something of the far-away look of the sleep-walker--"Peter, I'm cruel to
+speak to you of these things now. When your heart is full of your own
+happiness, I come to you like a dark shadow with this tragedy. But I am
+glad for the good that has come to you, Peter. Perhaps Miss Colebrooke
+told you of the day I met her in the wood, the day of the wolf-hunt. She
+was so beautiful, I understood--"
+
+"Judith, I hardly know how to say what I am going to, I feel that I have
+been such a bad friend to you, but you must hear me patiently. Together,
+if you are willing, after knowing all of me that you do, we must look
+after your brother's children. That night in the little house in the
+valley, when the little chap came to me, don't you remember, there was
+something fine and fearless in the way he did it. 'You may belong to the
+cattle side of the argument,' he seemed to say, 'but I trust you.' Now,
+Judith dear, that boy's faith in me is not going to be shaken. We must
+look after them together. It is a very little thing you have asked of me,
+my dearest, but a very big one that I am asking of you. Do you understand,
+my Judith, it is _you_ that I want? Don't think of me as I have been,
+Judith, but as you are going to make me. I want you to give me the right
+now, this evening, to share all this trouble with you. Do we understand
+each other, Judith? Is it to be? And will you come back with me now, into
+the room where they are dancing, and let me present you to them, to the
+Wetmores, as _my_ Judith, my betrothed?"
+
+"But, Peter, I don't understand. I--I thought you and Miss Colebrooke
+were--"
+
+"That's all over, Judith. I did love her once. Oh, you dear, brave woman,
+I'm not a hero from any point of view, and you know it. It's but a sorry
+lover that's making his prayer to you, my dearest; but you won't judge, I
+know, beloved, you will love me instead?"
+
+Judith turned towards the valley. Her whole being throbbed with a
+passionate response to the man who stood so humbly before her, but there
+were duties that came first. Her mind was full of Alida and her children,
+and her eyes still sought Peter's imploringly.
+
+"You will be a good friend to them, Peter--to Jim's people? I cannot talk
+to you of anything else to-night. Your heart is big, Peter, but you cannot
+feel, perhaps--"
+
+"Listen, Judith. Whatever friendship and protection I can give your family
+you may count upon from now till the end of time. I will be theirs as I am
+yours. I feel your grief, but I want to soothe it, too. And if you love
+me, and I feel, Judith, that you do, you must let them all see to-night,
+these people who know us both, that we stand together before all the world
+for better or worse. Think, Judith, and you will see that you owe it to
+yourself, to me, to all these men, who reverence you as the one woman, the
+one ideal in their lonely lives."
+
+She could not speak. The moment was too full, the strain had been too
+great; but she smiled surrender, and Peter caught her tenderly in his arms
+and kissed her once--his Judith she was now, his heroine. Then, without
+another word, he drew her arm through his and led her back to the lights,
+where the dancers still held high carnival.
+
+Judith's half-sister, Eudora, was making a pretty quarrel by perversely
+forgetting the order in which she had given her dances. The girl was so
+undeniably happy that Judith dreaded the grim news she must tell her.
+Eudora blushed as she encountered Judith's eye. Her half-sister ever
+offered a check on Eudora's exuberant coquetry, with its precipitation of
+discussions that often ended in bullets. Leander stood on the outermost
+fringe of Eudora's potential partners. He would not have dared to maintain
+it openly, yet he was sure the pretty minx had promised that dance to him.
+
+"Dance with Leander, dear, and don't let those men begin quarrelling. I've
+something to tell you, presently," said Judith.
+
+Texas Tyler stood glowering at them from the doorway. He would not catch
+Judith's eye as she tried to speak to him. Kitty sat alone for the moment.
+She had sent the young lieutenant to fetch her a cup of coffee, but as
+Peter approached with Judith she averted her eyes.
+
+"Kitty, may I present to you my fiancée, Miss Rodney?"
+
+Kitty rose superbly to the situation. She might, indeed, have made the
+match she was so overjoyed in the good-fortune of her old friend Peter.
+She made no reference to the woodland meeting--she hoped for the happiness
+of seeing them in town. And she bade Peter tell the good news to Nannie
+Wetmore, they would be so glad. Nannie swallowed a grimace and proffered a
+cousinly hand. She had suspected some such news as this when she saw that
+things were not going well with Kitty and Peter.
+
+"Better one dance with a good partner that can swing ye than several with
+a feeble partner that leaves ye to swing your own corners!"
+
+Judith looked up, smiling. She recognized the characteristic utterance of
+her old friend Mrs. Yellett. The matriarch had sustained a breakdown, and
+arrived, in consequence, when the dance was half over, but she was
+philosophical, as always, in the face of misfortune, and loudly attested
+her pleasure in the renowned pedal feats of her partner, Costigan.
+
+Behind came Mary Carmichael, looking brown and happy. From the attitude of
+the group around Judith and Peter Mary divined what had happened, and came
+to add her congratulations. Even Mrs. Yellett forgot to choose an axiom as
+her medium of expression, and kissed Judith publicly, with affectionate
+unction. Henderson had effaced himself, and Leander, proud of his triumph
+and Judith's commendation, sat in a corner and smiled contentedly.
+Ignorant of the drama to which they had played chorus, the dancers still
+riotously swung one another up and down the length of the room, and from
+the little brown fiddles came the gay music of Judith's betrothal.
+
+                                *THE END*
+
+
+
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JUDITH OF THE PLAINS***
+
+
+
+CREDITS
+
+
+April 2005
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+            Project Gutenberg Edition
+            David Garcia Josephine Paolucci Joshua Hutchinson Online
+            Distributed Proofreading Team
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+            Joshua Hutchinson
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+            Joshua Hutchinson
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Judith Of The Plains by Marie Manning

+

+

+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 http://www.gutenberg.org/license

+

+

+

+

+Title: Judith Of The Plains

+

+Author: Marie Manning

+

+Release Date: April 2005 [EBook #15573]

+

+Language: American English

+

+Character set encoding: UTF-8
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+        <date value="2005-4">April 2005</date>

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+      <date value="2005-4">April 2005</date>

+      <idno type="etext-no">15573</idno>

+      <availability>

+        <p>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

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+        <title>Judith Of The Plains</title>

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+<front>

+
+<div>
+<divGen type="pgheader" rend="page-break-before: always" />
+</div>
+

+<titlePage rend="page-break-before: right">

+<docTitle><titlePart type="main" rend="font-size: x-large">Judith Of The Plains</titlePart></docTitle>

+

+<lb /><byline>By <docAuthor>Marie Manning</docAuthor><lb /><lb /></byline>

+

+<docImprint>Harper &amp; Brothers Publishers<lb />

+New York And London<lb />

+<lb />

+Copyright, 1903. By Harper &amp; Brothers<lb />

+<lb/>

+Printed In The United States Of America</docImprint>

+</titlePage>

+

+<div rend="page-break-before: always">

+<p rend="text-align: center">

+<figure rend="w95" url="images/image01.png">

+<head>Peter's Hand Sought Hers, And All Her Woman's Fear Of

+The Vague Terrors Of The Dreadful Night Spoke

+In Her Answering Pressure&mdash;See p. <ref target="Pg154">154</ref>.</head>

+<figDesc>Image #1</figDesc></figure></p>

+</div>

+
+<div rend="page-break-before: right">

+<index index="pdf" />
+<head>Contents</head>
+<divGen type="toc" />
+</div>
+

+</front>

+

+<body>

+<div rend="page-break-before: right">

+

+<head>Judith Of The Plains</head>

+

+<p></p>

+</div>

+

+<div>

+<pb n="001" />

+<anchor id="Pg001" />

+

+<head>I</head>

+<index index="pdf" /><index index="toc" level1="&quot;Town&quot;" />

+<head type="sub">"Town"</head>

+

+<p>It was June, and a little past sunrise, but there

+was no hint of early summer freshness in the

+noxious air of the sleeping-car as it toiled like a snail

+over the infinity of prairie. From behind the green-striped

+curtains of the berths, now the sound of

+restless turning and now a long-drawn sigh signified

+the uneasy slumber due to stifling air and discomfort.</p>

+

+<p>The only passenger stirring was a girl whose youth

+drooped under the unfavorable influences of foul

+air, fatigue, and a strained anxiety to come to the

+end of this fateful journey. She had been up while

+it was yet dark, and her hand&mdash;luggage, locked,

+strapped, and as pitifully new at the art of travelling

+as the girl herself, clustered about the hem of her

+blue serge skirt like chicks about a hen. The engine

+shrieked, but its voice sounded weak and far off in

+that still ocean of space; the girl tightened her grasp

+on the largest of the satchels and looked at the

+approaching porter tentatively.</p>

+<pb n="002" />

+<anchor id="Pg002" />

+

+<p>"We're late twenty-fi'e minutes," he reassured

+her, with the hopeless patience of one who has lost

+heart in curbing travellers' enthusiasms.</p>

+

+<p>She turned towards the window a pair of shoulders

+plainly significant of the burdensome last straw.</p>

+

+<p>"Four days and nights in this train"&mdash;they were

+slower in those days&mdash;"and now this extra twenty-five

+minutes!"</p>

+

+<p>Miss Carmichael's famous dimple hid itself in

+disgust. The demure lines of mouth and chin, that

+could always be relied upon for special pleading

+when sentence was about to be passed on the dimple

+by those who disapproved of dimples, drooped with

+disappointment. But the light-brown hair continued

+to curl facetiously&mdash;it was the sort of hair

+whose spontaneous rippling conveys to the seeing

+eye a sense of humor.</p>

+

+<p>The train plodded across the spacious vacancy

+that unrolled itself farther and farther in quest of

+the fugitive horizon. The scrap of view that came

+within a closer range of vision spun past the car

+windows like a bit of stage mechanism, a gigantic

+panorama rotating to simulate a race at breakneck

+speed. But Miss Carmichael looked with unseeing

+eyes; the whirling prairie with its golden flecks of

+cactus bloom was but part of the universal strangeness,

+and the dull ache of homesickness was in it

+all.</p>

+

+<p>"My dear! my dear!"&mdash;a head in crimpers was

+thrust from between the curtains of the section opposite&mdash;"I've

+been awake half the night. I was so

+afraid I wouldn't see you before you got off."</p>

+<pb n="003" />

+<anchor id="Pg003" />

+

+<p>The head was followed, almost instinctively, by a

+hand travelling furtively to the crimpers that gripped

+the lady's brow like barnacles clinging to a keel.</p>

+

+<p>Mary expressed a grieved appreciation at the loss

+of rest in behalf of her early departure, and conspicuously

+forbore to glance in the direction of the

+barnacles, that being a first principle as between

+woman and woman.</p>

+

+<p>"And, oh, my dear, it gets worse and worse. I've

+looked at it this morning, and it's worse in Wyoming

+than it was in Colorado. What it 'll be before I

+reach California, I shudder to think."</p>

+

+<p>"It's bound to improve," suggested Mary, with

+the easy optimism of one who was leaving it. "It

+couldn't be any worse than this, could it?"</p>

+

+<p>The neuter pronoun, it might be well to state,

+signified the prairie; its melancholy personality

+having penetrated the very marrow of their train

+existence, they had come to refer to it by the

+monosyllable, as in certain nether circles the head

+of the house receives his superlative distinction in

+"He."</p>

+

+<p>Again the locomotive shrieked, again the girl

+mechanically clutched the suit-case, as presenting

+the most difficult item in the problem of transportation,

+and this time the shriek was not an idle

+formality. The train slowed down; the uneasy

+sleepers behind the green-striped curtains stirred

+restlessly with the lessening motion of their uncouth

+cradle. The porter came to help her, with the

+chastened mien of one whose hopes of largess are

+small, the lady with the barnacles called after her

+<pb n="004" />

+<anchor id="Pg004" />

+redundant farewells, and a moment later Miss

+Carmichael was standing on the station platform

+looking helplessly after the train that toiled and

+puffed, yet seemed, in that crystalline atmosphere,

+still within arm's-reach. She watched it till its

+floating pennant of smoke was nothing but a gray

+feather blowing farther and farther out of sight on

+the flat prairie.</p>

+

+<p>The town&mdash;it would be unkind to mention its

+name&mdash;had made merry the night before at the

+comprehensive invitation of a sheepman who had

+just disposed of his wool-clip, and who said, by way

+of general summons, "What's the use of temptin'

+the bank?" "Town," therefore, when Mary Carmichael

+first made its acquaintance, was still sleeping

+the sleep of the unjust. Those among last

+night's roisterers who had had to make an early

+start for their camps were well into the foot-hills by

+this time, and would remember with exhilaration

+the cracked tinkle of the dance-hall piano as inspiring

+music when the lonesomeness of the desert

+menaced and the young blood again clamored for

+its own.</p>

+

+<p>"Town"&mdash;it contained in all some two dozen

+buildings&mdash;was very unlovely in slumber. It

+sprawled in the lap of the prairies, a grimy-faced

+urchin, with the lines of dismal sophistication writ

+deep. Yet where in all the "health resorts" of the

+East did air sweep from the clean hill-country with

+such revivifying power? It seemed a glad world

+of abiding youth. Surely "Town" was but a

+dreary illusion, a mirage that hung in the unmapped

+<pb n="005" />

+<anchor id="Pg005" />

+spaces of this new world that God had made and

+called good; an omen of the abominations that men

+would make when they grew blind to the beauty of

+God's world.</p>

+

+<p>Mary Carmichael, with much the feelings of a

+cat in a strange garret, wandered about the sluggard

+town; and presently the blue-and-white sign of a

+telegraph office, with the mythological figure of a

+hastening messenger, suggested to her that a reassuring

+telegram was only Aunt Adelaide's due.

+Whereupon she began to rap on the door of the

+office, a scared pianissimo which naturally had

+little effect on the operator, who was at home and

+asleep some three blocks distant. But the West is

+the place for woman if she would be waited upon.

+No seven-to-one ratio of the sexes has tempered the

+chivalry of her sons of the saddle. A loitering something

+in a sombrero saw rather than heard the

+rapping, and, at the sight, went in quest of the

+dreaming operator without so much as embarrassing

+Miss Carmichael with an offer of his services. And

+presently the operator, whose official day did not

+begin for some two hours yet, appeared, much dishevelled

+from running and the cursory nature of his

+toilet, prepared to receive a message of life and death.</p>

+

+<p>The wire to Aunt Adelaide ran:</p>

+

+<quote rend="display">

+<p>"Practically at end of journey. Take stage to Lost Trail

+this morning. Am well. Don't worry about me.</p>

+

+<p rend="text-align: right">"MARY."</p>

+</quote>

+

+<p>And the telegraph operator, dimly remembering

+that he had heard Lost Trail was a "pizen mean

+<pb n="006" />

+<anchor id="Pg006" />

+country," and that it was tucked some two hundred

+miles back in the foot-hills, did not find it very hard

+to forgive the girl, who was "practically at end of

+journey," particularly as the dimple had come out

+of hiding, and he had never been called upon to

+telegraph the word "practically" before. He was a

+progressive man and liked to extend his experiences.</p>

+

+<p>After sending the telegram, Miss Carmichael, quite

+herself by reason of the hill air, felt that she was

+getting along famously as a traveller, but that it

+was an expensive business, and she was glad to be

+"practically" at the end of her journey. And,

+drawing from her pocket a square envelope of heavy

+Irish linen, a little worn from much reading, but

+primarily an envelope that bespoke elegance of

+taste on the part of her correspondent, she read:</p>

+

+<quote rend="display">

+<p rend="text-align: right">"LOST TRAIL, WYOMING.</p>

+

+<p>"My Dear Miss Carmichael,&mdash;Pray let me assure you

+of my gratification that the preliminaries have been so

+satisfactorily arranged, and that we are to have you with us

+by the end of June. The children are profiting from the

+very anticipation of it, and it will be most refreshing to all

+us isolated ones to be able to welcome an Eastern girl as a

+member of our family.</p>

+

+<p>"Although the long journey across the continent is trying,

+particularly to one who has not made it before, I hope

+you may not find it utterly fatiguing. Please remember

+that after leaving the train, it will be necessary to take

+a stage to Lost Trail. If it is possible, I shall meet you

+with the buckboard at one of the stage stations; otherwise,

+keep to the stage route, being careful to change at Dax's

+Ranch.</p>

+

+<p>"Unfortunately, the children vary so in their accomplishments

+<pb n="007" />

+<anchor id="Pg007" />

+that I fear I can make no suggestions as to what you

+may need to bring with you in the way of text-books. But

+I think you will find them fairly well grounded.</p>

+

+<p>"I had a charming letter from Mrs. Kirkland, who said

+the pleasantest things possible of you. I am glad the wife

+of our Senator was able conscientiously to commend us.</p>

+

+<p>"With our most cordial good wishes for a safe journey,

+believe me, dear Miss Carmichael,</p>

+

+<p rend="text-align: right">"Sincerely yours,</p>

+

+<p rend="text-align: right">"SARAH YELLETT."</p>

+</quote>

+

+<p>In the mean time, "Town" came yawning to

+breakfast. It was not so prankish as it had been

+the night before, when it accepted the sheepman's

+broad-gauge hospitality and made merry till the

+sun winked from behind the mountains. It made

+its way to the low, shedlike eating-house with a

+pre-breakfast solemnity bordering on sulkiness. Not

+a petticoat was in sight to offset the spurs and

+sombreros that filed into breakfast from every point

+in the compass, prepared to eat primitively, joke

+broadly, and quarrel speedily if that sensitive and

+often inconsistent something they called honor

+should be brushed however lightly.</p>

+

+<p>But the eternal feminine was within, and, discovering

+it, the temper of "Town" was changed;

+it ate self-consciously, made jokes meet for the ears

+of ladies, and was more interested in the girl in the

+sailor-hat than it was in remembering old feuds or

+laying the foundations of new.</p>

+

+<p>In its interior aspect, the eating-house conveyed

+no subtle invitation to eat, drink, and be merry. On

+the contrary, its mission seemed to be that of confounding

+appetite at every turn. A long, shedlike

+<pb n="008" />

+<anchor id="Pg008" />

+room it was, with walls of unpainted pine, still sweating

+from the axe. Festoons of scalloped paper, in

+conflicting shades, hung from the ceiling, a menace

+to the taller of the guests. On the rough walls some

+one, either prompted by a latent spirit of ÃĶstheticism

+or with an idea of abetting the town towards merrymaking&mdash;an

+encouragement it hardly required&mdash;had

+tacked posters of shows, mainly representing the

+tank-and-sawmill school of drama.</p>

+

+<p>Miss Carmichael sat at the extreme end of the

+long, oilcloth-covered table, on which a straggling

+army of salt and pepper shakers, catsup bottles,

+and divers commercial condiments seemed to pause

+in a discouraged march. A plague of flies was on

+everything, and the food was a threat to the hardiest

+appetite. One man summed up the steak with,

+"You got to work your jaw so hard to eat it that it

+ain't fair to the next meal."</p>

+

+<p>His neighbor heaved a sigh. "This here formation,

+whatever it be"&mdash;and he turned the meat over

+for better inspection&mdash;"do shore remind me of an

+indestructible doll that an old maid aunt of mine

+giv' my sister when we was kids. That doll sort

+of challenged me, settin' round oncapable o' bein'

+destroyed, and one day I ups an' has a chaw at her.

+She war ondestructible, all right; 'fore that I concluded

+my speriments I had left a couple o' teeth in

+her."</p>

+

+<p>"Well, I discyards the steak and draw to a pair

+of aces," and the first man helped himself to a

+couple of biscuits.</p>

+

+<p>Miss Carmichael knew, by the continual scraping

+<pb n="009" />

+<anchor id="Pg009" />

+of chairs across the gritty floor, that the places at

+the table must be nearly all taken; and while she

+anticipated, with an utterly unreasonable terror,

+any further invasion of her seclusion at the end of

+the table, still she could not persuade herself to

+raise her eyes to detect the progress of the enemy,

+even in the interest of the diary she had kept so

+conscientiously for the past three days; which was

+something of a loss to the diary, as those untamed,

+manly faces were well worth looking at. Reckless

+they were in many instances, and sometimes the

+lines of hardship were cruelly writ across young

+faces that had not yet lost the down of adolescence,

+but there were humor and endurance and the

+courage that knows how to make a crony of death

+and get right good sport from the comradeship.

+Their faults were the faults of lusty, red-blooded

+youth, and their virtues the open-handed generosity,

+the ready sympathy of those uncertain tilters at

+life who ride or fall in the tourney of a new country.</p>

+

+<p>At present, "the yearling," drinking her execrable

+coffee in an agony of embarrassment, weighed

+heavily on their minds. They would have liked to

+rise as a man and ask if there was anything they

+could do for her. But as a glance towards the end

+of the table seemed to increase her discomfiture

+tenfold, they did the kindest and for them the most

+difficult thing and looked in every direction but Miss

+Carmichael's. With a delicacy of perception that

+the casual observer might not have given them

+credit for, they had refrained from taking seats

+directly opposite her, or those immediately on her

+<pb n="010" />

+<anchor id="Pg010" />

+right, which, as she occupied the last seat at the

+table, gave her at least a small degree of seclusion.</p>

+

+<p>As one after another of them came filing in,

+bronzed, rugged, radiating a beauty of youth and

+health that no sketchy exigence of apparel could

+obscure, some one already seated at the table would

+put a foot on a chair opposite him and send it

+spinning out into the middle of the floor as a hint

+to the new-comer that that was his reserved seat.

+And the cow-puncher, sheep-herder, prospector, or

+man about "Town," as the case might be, would

+take the hint and the chair, leaving the petticoat

+separated from the sombreros by a table-land of

+oilcloth and a range of four chairs.</p>

+

+<p>But now entered a man who failed to take the

+hint of the spinning chair. In fact, he entered the

+eating-house with the air of one who has dropped

+in casually to look for a friend and, incidentally,

+to eat his breakfast. He stopped in the doorway,

+scanned the table with deliberation, and started

+to make his way towards Mary Carmichael with

+something of a swagger. Some one kicked a chair

+towards him at the head of the table. Some one

+else nearly upset him with one before he reached

+the middle, and the Texan remarked, quite audibly,

+as he passed:</p>

+

+<p>"The damned razor-back!"</p>

+

+<p>But the man made his way to the end of the table

+and drew out the chair opposite Miss Carmichael

+with a degree of assurance that precipitated the

+rest of the table into a pretty pother.</p>

+

+<p>Suppose she should countenance his audacity?

+<pb n="011" />

+<anchor id="Pg011" />

+The fair have been known to succumb to the headlong

+force of a charge, when the persistence of a

+long siege has failed signally. What figures they

+would cut if she did!&mdash;and Simpson, of all men! A

+growing tension had crept into the atmosphere of

+the eating-house; knives and forks played but intermittently,

+and Mary, sitting at the end of the

+oilcloth-covered table, felt intuitively that she was

+the centre of the brewing storm. Oh, why hadn't

+she been contented to stay at home and make over

+her clothes and share the dwindling fortunes of her

+aunts, instead of coming to this savage place?</p>

+

+<p>"From the look of the yearling's chin, I think

+he'll get all that's coming to him," whispered the

+man who had nearly upset him with the second

+chair.</p>

+

+<p>"You're right, pard. If I'm any good at reading

+brands, she is as self-protective as the McKinley

+bill."</p>

+

+<p>The man Simpson was not a pleasant vis-à-vis.

+He wore the same picturesque ruffianliness of apparel

+as his fellows, but the resemblance stopped there.

+He lacked their dusky bloom, their clearness of eye,

+the suppleness and easy flow of muscle that is the

+hall-mark of these frontiersmen. He was fat and

+squat and had not the rich bronzing of wind, sun,

+and rain. His small, black eyes twinkled from his

+puffy, white face, like raisins in a dough-pudding.</p>

+

+<p>He was ogling Mary amiably when the woman

+who kept the eating-house brought him his breakfast.

+Mrs. Clark was a potent antidote for the prevailing

+spirit of romance, even in this woman-forsaken

+<pb n="012" />

+<anchor id="Pg012" />

+country. A good creature, all limp calico,

+Roman nose, and sharp elbows, she brought him his

+breakfast with an ill grace that she had not shown

+to the others. The men about the table gave him

+scant greeting, but the absence of enthusiasm didn't

+embarrass Simpson.</p>

+

+<p>He lounged expansively on the table, regarding

+Miss Carmichael attentively meanwhile; then favored

+her with the result of his observations, "From

+the East, I take it." And the dumpling face

+screwed into a smile whose mission was pacific.</p>

+

+<p>Every knife and fork in the room suspended

+action in anxiety to know how the "yearling"

+would take it. Would their chivalry, which strained

+at a gnat, be compelled to swallow such a conspicuous

+camel as the success of Simpson? With the

+attitude he had taken towards the girl, there had

+crept into the company an imperceptible change;

+deep-buried impulses sprang to the surface. If a

+scoundrel like Simpson was going to try his luck,

+why shouldn't they? They didn't see a pretty girl

+once in a blue moon. With the advent of the

+green-eyed monster at the board, each man unconsciously

+became the rival of his neighbor.</p>

+

+<p>But Miss Carmichael merely continued her breakfast,

+and if she heard the amiable deductions of

+Simpson regarding her, she gave no sign. But a

+rebuff to him was in the nature of an appetizer, a

+fillip to press the acquaintance. He encroached a

+bit farther on the narrow limits of the table and

+continued, "Nice weather we're having."</p>

+

+<p>Miss Carmichael gave her undivided attention to

+<pb n="013" />

+<anchor id="Pg013" />

+her coffee. The spurs and sombreros, that had not

+relaxed a muscle in their strained observation of the

+little drama, breathed reflectively. Perhaps it was

+just as well that they had not emulated Simpson in

+his brazen charge; the "yearling" was not to be surprised

+into talking, that was certain.</p>

+

+<p>"He shore is showing hisself to be a friendly

+native," commented the man who had sacrificed

+milk-teeth investigating the indestructible doll.</p>

+

+<p>"Seems to me that the system he's playing lacks

+a heap of science. My money's on the yearling."

+And the man who had "discarded the steak and

+drawn to the biscuits" leaned a little forward that

+he might better watch developments.</p>

+

+<p>Simpson by this time fully realized his error, but

+failure before all these bantering youngsters was

+a contingency not to be accepted lightly. As he

+phrased it to himself, it was worth "another throw."

+"Seems kind o' lonesome not having any one to talk

+to while you're eatin', don't it?"</p>

+

+<p>Miss Carmichael's air of perfect composure seemed

+a trifle out of tune with her surroundings; the nice

+elevation of eyebrow, the slightly questioning curl

+of the lip as she, for the first time apparently, became

+aware of the man opposite, seemed to demand

+a prim drawing-room rather than the atmosphere

+of the slouching eating-house.</p>

+

+<p>"Well, really, I've hardly had a chance of finding

+out." And her eyes were again on her coffee-cup.

+And there was joy among the men at table that

+they had not rushed in after the manner of those

+who have a greater courage than the angels.</p>

+<pb n="014" />

+<anchor id="Pg014" />

+

+<p>"No offence meant," deprecated Simpson, with

+an uneasy glance towards the other end of the table,

+where the men sat with necks craned forward in an

+attitude uncomfortably suggestive of hounds straining

+at the leash. Simpson felt rather than saw that

+something was afoot among the sombreros. There

+was a crowding together in whispered colloquy, and

+in a flash some half-dozen of them were on their feet

+as a man. Descending upon Simpson, they lifted

+him, chair and all, to the other end of the table, as

+far removed as possible from Miss Carmichael.</p>

+

+<p>The man who thought Simpson's system lacked

+science rubbed his hands in delight. "She took the

+trick all right; swept his hand clean off the board!"</p>

+<pb n="015" />

+<anchor id="Pg015" />

+</div>

+

+<div rend="page-break-before: always">

+<head>II</head>

+<index index="pdf" /><index index="toc" level1="The Encounter" />

+<head type="sub">The Encounter</head>

+

+<p>Simpson, from the seat to which he had been

+so rapidly transplanted, looked about him with

+blinking anxiety. It was more than probable that

+the boys intended "to have fun with him," though

+his talking, or rather trying to talk, to a girl that

+sat opposite him at an eating-house table was, according

+to his ethics, plainly none of their business.

+He knew he wasn't popular since he had done for

+Jim Rodney's sheep, though the crime had never

+been laid at his door, officially. He had his way to

+make, the same as the next one; and, all said and

+done, the cattle-men were glad to get Jim Rodney's

+sheep off the range, even if they treated him as a

+felon for the part he had played in their extermination.</p>

+

+<p>Thus reasoned Simpson, while he marked with

+an uneasy eye that the temper of the company had

+grown decidedly prankish with the exit of the girl,

+who, after having caused all the trouble, had, with

+an irritating quality peculiar to her sex, vanished

+through the kitchen door.</p>

+

+<p>Some three or four of the boys now ran to Simpson's

+former seat at the table and rushed towards

+<pb n="016" />

+<anchor id="Pg016" />

+him with his half-eaten breakfast, as if the errand

+had been one of life and death. They showered

+him with mock attentions, waiting on him with an

+exaggerated deference, and the pale, fat man, remembering

+the hideousness of some of their manifestations

+of a sense of humor, breathed hard and

+felt a falling-off of appetite.</p>

+

+<p>Costigan, the cattle-man, a strapping Irish giant,

+was clearing his throat with ominous sounds that

+suggested the tuning-up of a bass fiddle.</p>

+

+<p>"Sure, Simpson, me lad, if ye happen to have

+a matther av fifty dollars, 'tis mesilf that can tell

+ye av an illegint invistmint."</p>

+

+<p>Simpson looked up warily, but Costigan's broad

+countenance did not harbor the wraith of a smile.

+"What kin I git for fifty chips? 'Tain't much,"

+mused the pariah, with the prompt inclination to

+spend that stamps the comparative stranger to

+ready money.</p>

+

+<p>"Ye can git a parrut, man&mdash;a grane parrut&mdash;to

+kape ye coompany while ye're aiting&mdash;"</p>

+

+<p>Simpson interrupted with an oath.</p>

+

+<p>"Don't be hard on old Simmy; remember he's

+studied for the ministry! How did I savey that

+Simpson aimed to be a sharp on doctrine?" A cow-puncher

+with a squint addressed the table in general.

+"I scents the aroma of dogma about Simpson

+in the way he throwed his conversational lariat at

+the yearling. He urbanes at her, and then comes his

+'firstly,' it being a speculation as to her late grazing-ground,

+which he concludes to be the East. His

+'secondly' ain't nothing startling, words familiar to

+<pb n="017" />

+<anchor id="Pg017" />

+us all from our mother's knee&mdash;'nice weather'&mdash;the

+congregation ain't visibly moved. His 'thirdly'

+is insinuating. In it he hints that it ain't good for

+man to be alone at meals&mdash;"</p>

+

+<p>"'Twas the congregation that added the 'foinelly,'

+though, before hastily leaving be the back door!"

+and Costigan slapped his thigh.</p>

+

+<p>"The gentleman in question don't seem to be

+makin' much use of his present conversational

+opportunities. I'm feelin' kinder turned down myself";

+and the Texan began to look over his six-shooter.</p>

+

+<p>The man with the squint looked up and down the

+board.</p>

+

+<p>"Gentlemen, I believe the foregoing expresses the

+sentiment of this company, which, while it incloodes

+many foreign and frequent-warring elements, is at

+present held together by the natchral tie of eating."</p>

+

+<p>Thumping with knife and fork handles, stamping

+of feet, cries of "Hear! hear!" with at least three

+cow-boy yells, argued well for a resumption of last

+night's festivities. Simpson glowered, but said nothing.</p>

+

+<p>"Seems to me you-all goin' the wrong way 'bout

+drawin' Mistu' Simpson out. He is shy an' has to

+be played fo' like a trout, an' heah you-all come at

+him like a cattle stampede." The big Texan leaned

+towards Simpson. "Now you-all watch my methods.

+Mistu' Simpson, seh, what du think of the

+prospects of rain?"</p>

+

+<p>There was a general recommendation from Simpson

+<pb n="018" />

+<anchor id="Pg018" />

+that the entire company go to a locality below

+the rain-belt.</p>

+

+<p>A boy, plainly "from the East," and looking

+as if the ink on his graduating thesis had scarce had

+time to dry, was on his feet, swaggering; he would

+not have swapped his newly acquired <hi rend="font-style: italic">camaraderie</hi>

+with these bronzed Westerners for the Presidency.</p>

+

+<p>"Gentlemen, you have all heard Simpson say it

+is lonesome having no one to talk to during meals.

+We sympathized with him and offered him a choice

+of subjects. He greets our remarks by a conspicuous

+silence, varied by profanity. This, gentlemen,

+reflects on us, and is a matter demanding public

+satisfaction. All who feel that their powers as

+conversationalists have been impugned by the silence

+of Simpson, please say 'Ay.'"</p>

+

+<p>"Ay" was howled, sung, and roared in every note

+of the gamut.</p>

+

+<p>"If me yoong frind here an me roight"&mdash;and

+Costigan jerked a shoulder towards the boy&mdash;"will

+be afther closin' that silf-feeding automatic dictionary

+av his for a moment, I shud be glad to call the

+attintion av the coomp'ny to somethin' in the nature

+av an ixtinuatin' circoomsthance in the case av

+Simpson."</p>

+

+<p>"Hear! hear!" they shouted. The broad countenance

+of Costigan beamed with joy at what he was

+about to say. "Gintlemin, the silence av Mr.

+Simpson is jew in all probabilitee to a certain ivint

+recalled by many here prisint, an' more that's

+absent, an' amicablee settled out av coort&mdash;"</p>

+

+<p>Up to this time the unhappy Simpson had shown

+<pb n="019" />

+<anchor id="Pg019" />

+an almost superhuman endurance. Now he bristled&mdash;and

+after looking up and down the board for a

+sympathetic face, and not finding one, he declared,

+loudly and generally, "'Tain't so!"</p>

+

+<p>"Ye may have noticed that frind Simpson do be

+t'reatened wid lockjaw in the societee av min, but

+in the prisince av a female ye can't count on him.

+Now, talk wid a female is an agreeable, if not a

+profitable, way av passin' the toime, but sure ye

+niver know where it will ind&mdash;as witness Simpson.

+This lady I'm recallin'&mdash;'tis a matther av two years

+ago&mdash;followed the ancient and honorable profission

+av biscuit shootin' not far from Caspar. Siz Simpson

+to the lady some such passin' civilitee as, 'Good-marnin';

+plisent weather we're havin'.' Whereupon

+the lady filt a damage to her affictions an'

+sued him for breach av promise."</p>

+

+<p>"'Twan't that way, at all!" screamed Simpson.

+"'Sall a lie!"</p>

+

+<p>"Yu ought er said 'Good-evenin'' to the lady,

+Mistu Simpson; hit make a diffunce," drawled the

+man from Texas, pleasantly.</p>

+

+<p>"But 'twas 'Good-marnin'' Simpson made chyce

+av," resumed Costigan. "An' the lady replied,

+'You've broke my heart.' Whereupon Simpson,

+havin' a matther av t'ree thousand dollars to pay

+for his passin' civilitee, learned thot silince was

+goolden."</p>

+

+<p>They all remembered the incident in question,

+and thundered applause at the reappearance of an

+old favorite. Without warning, a shadow fell across

+the sunlight-flooded room, and, as one after another

+<pb n="020" />

+<anchor id="Pg020" />

+of the men glanced up from the table, they saw

+standing in the doorway a man of such malignant

+aspect that his look fell across the company like a

+menace. The swing of their banter slowed suddenly;

+it was as if the cold of a new-turned grave had

+struck across the June sunshine checking their roughshod

+fun. None of them had the hardihood to joke

+with a man that stood in the shadow of death; and

+hate and murder looked from the eyes of the man

+in the doorway and looked towards Simpson. One

+by one they perceived the man of the shadow, all

+but Simpson, eating steak drowned in Worcestershire.</p>

+

+<p>The man in the doorway was tall and lean, and

+the prison blench upon his face was in unpleasant

+contrast to the ruddy tan of the faces about the

+table. His sombrero was tipped back and the hair

+hung dank about the pale, sweating forehead,

+suggestive of sickness. But weak health did not

+imply weak purpose; every feature in that hawk-like

+face was sharp with hatred, and in the narrowing

+eye was vengeance that is sweet.</p>

+

+<p>He stood still; there was in his hatred a something

+hypnotic that grew imperceptibly and imperceptibly

+communicated itself to the men at table.

+He gloated over the eating fat man as if he had

+dwelt much in imagination on the sight and was in

+no hurry to curtail his joy at the reality. The men

+began to get restless, shuffle their feet, moisten their

+lips; only the college boy spoke, and then from a

+wealth of ignorance, knowing nothing of the rugged,

+give-and-take justice of the plains&mdash;an eye for an

+<pb n="021" />

+<anchor id="Pg021" />

+eye, a tooth for a tooth, and the law and the courts

+go hang while a man's got a right arm to pull a trigger.

+Not one in all that company, even the cattle-men

+whose interests were opposed to Rodney's, but

+felt the justice of his errand.</p>

+

+<p>"When did they let him out?" whispered the

+college boy; and then, "Oughtn't we to do something?"</p>

+

+<p>"Yis, me son," whispered Costigan. "We ought

+to sit still and learn a thing or two."</p>

+

+<p>The fat man cleaned his plate with a crust of bread

+stuck on the point of a knife. There was nothing

+more to eat in the way of substantials, and he

+debated pouring a little more of the sauce on his

+plate and mopping it with a bit of bread still uneaten.

+Considering the pro and con of this extra

+tid-bit, he glanced up and saw the gaunt man

+standing in the doorway.</p>

+

+<p>Simpson dropped the knife from his shaking hand

+and started up with a cry that died away in a gurgle,

+an inhuman, nightmare croak. He looked about

+wildly, like a rat in a trap, then backed towards the

+wall. The men about the table got up, then cleared

+away in a circle, leaving the fat man. It was all

+like a dream to the college boy, who had never seen

+a thing of the kind before and could not realize now

+that it was happening. Rodney advanced, never

+once relaxing the look in which he seemed to hold

+his enemy as in a vise. Simpson was like a man

+bewitched. Once, twice, he made a grab for his

+revolver, but his right hand seemed to have lost

+power to heed the bidding of his will. Rodney,

+<pb n="022" />

+<anchor id="Pg022" />

+now well towards the centre of the room, waited,

+with a suggestion of ceremony, for Simpson to get

+his six-shooter.</p>

+

+<p>It was one of those moments in which time seems

+to have become petrified. The limp-clad proprietress

+of the eating-house, made curious by the

+sudden silence, looked in from the kitchen. Simpson,

+his eyes wandering like a trapped rat, saw, and

+called, through teeth that chattered in an ague of

+fear, "Ree&mdash;memm&mdash;her thth&mdash;there's la&mdash;dies

+p&mdash;present! For Gawd's sake, remember t&mdash;there's

+ladies p&mdash;present!"</p>

+

+<p>The pale man looked towards the kitchen, and,

+seeing the woman, he gave Simpson a look in which

+there was only contempt. "You've hid behind the

+law once, and this time it's petticoats. The open

+don't seem to have no charm for you. But&mdash;" He

+didn't finish, there was no need to. Every one

+knew and understood. He put up his revolver and

+walked into the street.</p>

+

+<p>The men broke into shouts of laughter, loud and

+ringing, then doubled up and had it out all over

+again. And their noisy merriment was as clear an

+indication of the suddenly lifted strain, at the

+averted shooting, as it was of their enjoyment of the

+farce. Simpson, relieved of the fear of sudden

+death, now sought to put a better face on his

+cowardice. Now that his enemy was well out of

+sight, Simpson handled his revolver with easy

+assurance.</p>

+

+<p>"Put ut up," shouted Costigan, above the general

+uproar. "'Tis toime to fear a revolver in

+<pb n="023" />

+<anchor id="Pg023" />

+the hands av Simpson whin he's no intinsions av

+shootin'."</p>

+

+<p>Simpson still attempted to harangue the crowd,

+but his voice was lost in the general thigh-slapping

+and the shouts and roars that showed no signs of

+abating. But when he caught a man by the coat

+lapel in his efforts to secure a hearing, that was

+another matter, and the man shook him off as if his

+touch were contagion. Simpson, craving mercy on

+account of petticoats, evading a meeting that was

+"up to him," they were willing to stand as a laughing-stock,

+but Simpson as an equal, grasping the

+lapels of their coats, they would have none of.</p>

+

+<p>He slunk away from them to a corner of the

+eating-house, feeling the stigma of their contempt,

+yet afraid to go out into the street where his enemy

+might be waiting for him. Much of death and

+blood and recklessness "Town" had seen and condoned,

+but cowardice was the unforgivable sin. It

+balked the rude justice of these frontiersmen and

+tampered with their code, and Simpson knew that

+the game had gone against him.</p>

+

+<p>"What was it all about? Were they in earnest,

+or was it only their way of amusing themselves?"

+inquired Mary Carmichael, who had slipped into

+Mrs. Clark's kitchen after the men at the table had

+taken things in hand.</p>

+

+<p>"Jim Rodney was in earnest, an' he had reason to

+be. That man Simpson was paid by a cattle outfit&mdash;now,

+mind, I ain't sayin' which&mdash;to get Jim

+Rodney's sheep off the range. They had threatened

+him and cut the throats of two hundred of his herd

+<pb n="024" />

+<anchor id="Pg024" />

+as a warning, but Jim went right on grazin' 'em,

+same as he had always been in the habit of doing.

+Well, I'm told they up and makes Simpson an offer

+to get rid of the sheep. Jim has over five thousand,

+an' it's just before lambing, and them pore ewes, all

+heavy, is being druv' down to Watson's shearing-pens,

+that Jim always shears at. Jim an' two herders

+and a couple of dawgs&mdash;least, this is the way

+I heard it&mdash;is drivin' 'em easy, 'cause, as I said

+before, it's just before lambing. It does now seem

+awful cruel to me to shear just before lambing, but

+that's their way out here.</p>

+

+<p>"Well, nothing happens, and Jim ain't more'n

+two hours from the pens an' he comes to that place

+on the road that branches out over the top of a

+caÃąon, and there some one springs out of a clump of

+willows an' dashes into the herd and drives the

+wether that's leading right over the cliff. The

+leaders begin to follow that wether, and they go

+right over the cliff like the pore fools they are. The

+herder fired and tried to drive 'em back, they tell me,

+an' he an' the dawg were shot at from the clump of

+willows by some one else who was there. Three

+hundred sheep had gone over the cliff before Jim

+knew what was happening. He rode like mad right

+through the herd to try and head 'em off; but you

+know what sheep is like&mdash;they're like lost souls

+headin' for damnation. Nothing can stop 'em when

+they're once started. And Jim lost every head&mdash;started

+for the shearing-pens a rich man&mdash;rich for

+Jim&mdash;an' seen everything he had swept away before

+his eyes, his wife an' children made paupers. My

+<pb n="025" />

+<anchor id="Pg025" />

+son he come by and found him. He said that Jim

+was sittin' huddled up in a heap, his knees drawed

+up under his chin, starin' straight up into the noonday

+sky, same as if he was askin' God how He could be

+so cruel. His dead dawg, that they had shot, was

+by the side of him. The herder that was with Jim

+had taken the one that was shot into Watson's, so

+when my son found Jim he was alone, sittin' on the

+edge of the cliff with his dead dawg, an' the sky

+about was black with buzzards; an' Jim he just sat

+an' stared up at 'em, and when my son spoke to him

+he never answered any more than a dead man. He

+shuck him by the arm, but Jim just sat there, watchin'

+the sun, the buzzards, and the dead sheep."</p>

+

+<p>"Was nothing done to this man Simpson?"</p>

+

+<p>"The cattle outfit that he done the dirty work

+for swore an alibi for him. Jim has been in hard

+luck ever since. He's been rustlin' cattle right

+along; but Lord, who can blame him? He got into

+some trouble down to Rawlins&mdash;shot a man he

+thought was with Simpson, but who wasn't&mdash;and

+he's been in jail ever since. Course now that he's

+out Simpson's bound to get peppered. Glad it

+didn't happen here, though. 'Twould be a kind of

+unpleasant thing to have connected with a eating-house,

+don't you think so?" she inquired, with the

+grim philosophy of the country.</p>

+

+<p>The eating-house patrons had gone their several

+ways, and the quiet of the dining-room was oppressive

+by contrast with its late boisterousness. Mrs.

+Clark, her hands imprisoned in bread-dough, begged

+Mary to look over the screen door and see if anything

+<pb n="026" />

+<anchor id="Pg026" />

+was happening. "I'm always suspicious when

+it's quiet. I know they're in deviltry of some sort."</p>

+

+<p>Mary tiptoed to the door and peeped over, but

+the room was deserted, save for Simpson, huddled

+in a corner, biting his finger-nails. "The nasty

+thing!" exploded Mrs. Clark, when she had received

+the bulletin. "I'd turn him out if it wasn't for the

+notoriety he might bring my place in gettin' killed

+in front of it."</p>

+

+<p>"I dare say I'd better go and see after my trunk;

+it's still on the station platform." Mary wondered

+what her prim aunts would think of her for sitting

+in Mrs. Clark's kitchen, but it had seemed so much

+more of a refuge than the sordid streets of the

+hideous little town, with its droves of men and

+never a glimpse of a woman that she had been only

+too glad to avail herself of the invitation of the

+proprietress to "make herself at home till the stage

+left."</p>

+

+<p>"Well, good luck to you," said Mrs. Clark, wiping

+her hand only partially free from dough and presenting

+it to Miss Carmichael. She had not inquired

+where the girl was going, nor even hinted to discover

+where she came from, but she gave her the godspeed

+that the West knows how to give, and the girl felt

+better for it.</p>

+

+<p>At the station, where Mary shortly presented

+herself, in the interest of that old man of the sea

+of all travellers, luggage, she learned that the stage

+did not leave town for some three-quarters of an

+hour yet. A young man, manipulating many sheets

+of flimsy, yellow paper covered with large, flourishing

+<pb n="027" />

+<anchor id="Pg027" />

+handwriting, looked up in answer to her inquiries

+about Lost Trail. This young man, whose

+accent, clothes, and manner proclaimed him "from

+the East," whither, in all probability, he would

+shortly return if he did not mend his ways, disclaimed

+all knowledge of the place as if it were an

+undesirable acquaintance. But before he could

+deny it thrice, a man who had heard the cabalistic

+name was making his way towards the desk, the

+pride of the traveller radiating from every feature.</p>

+

+<p>The cosmopolite who knew Lost Trail was the

+type of man who is born to be a Kentucky colonel,

+and perhaps may have achieved his destiny before

+coming to this "No Man's Land," for reasons into

+which no one inquired, and which were obviously

+no one's business. They knew him here by the

+name of "Lone Tooth Hank," and he wore what had

+been, in the days of his colonelcy&mdash;or its equivalent&mdash;a

+frock-coat, restrained by the lower button, and

+thus establishing a waist-line long after nature had

+had the last word to say on the subject. With this

+he wore the sombrero of the country, and the combination

+carried a rakish effect that was positively

+sinister.</p>

+

+<p>The scornful clerk introduced Mary as a young

+lady inquiring about some place in the bad-lands.

+Off came the sombrero with a sweep, and Lone

+Tooth smiled in a way that accented the dental

+solitaire to which he owed his name. Miss Carmichael,

+concealing her terror of this casual cavalier,

+inquired if he could tell her the distance to Lost

+Trail.</p>

+<pb n="028" />

+<anchor id="Pg028" />

+

+<p>"I sho'ly can, and with, consid'able pleasure."

+The sombrero completed a semicircular sweep and

+arrived in the neighborhood of Mr. Hank's heart in

+significance of his vassalage to the fair sex. He

+proceeded:</p>

+

+<p>"Lost Trail sutney is right lonesome. A friend

+of mine gets a little too playful fo' the evah-increasin'

+meetropolitan spirit of this yere camp, and tries

+a little tahget practice on the main bullyvard, an'

+finds the atmospheah onhealthful in consequence.

+Hearin' that the quiet solitude of Lost Trail is what

+he needs, he lit out with the following circumstance

+thereof happenin'. One day something in his harness

+giv' way&mdash;and he recollects seein' a boot

+sunnin' itself back in the road 'bout a quartah of a

+mile. An' he figgahs he'll borry a strip of leather

+off the boot to mend his harness. Back he goes and

+finds it has a kind of loaded feelin'. So my friend

+investigates&mdash;and I be blanked if there wasn't a

+foot and leg inside of it."</p>

+

+<p>Miss Carmichael had always exercised a super-feminine

+self-restraint in the case of casual mice,

+and it served her in the present instance. Instead

+of screaming, she said, after the suppression of a

+gasp or two:</p>

+

+<p>"Thank you so much, but I won't detain you

+any longer. Your information makes Lost Trail

+even more interesting than I had expected."</p>

+

+<p>Besides, Miss Carmichael had a faint suspicion

+that this might be a preconcerted plan to terrify

+the "lady tenderfoot," and she prided herself on

+being equal to the situation. The time at her

+<pb n="029" />

+<anchor id="Pg029" />

+disposal before the stage would embark on that

+unknown sea of prairies she spent in the delectable

+pastime of shopping. The financial and social interests

+of the town seemed to converge in Hugous

+&amp; Co.'s "trading store," where Miss Carmichael

+invested in an extra package of needles for the

+mere excitement of being one of the shoppers,

+though her aunt Adelaide had stocked the little

+plaid-silk work-bag to repletion with every variety

+of needle known to woman. She pricked up her

+ears, meanwhile, at some of the purchases made

+by the cow-boys for their camp-larders&mdash;devilled

+ham, sardines, canned tomatoes heading the list

+as prime favorites. Did these strapping border

+lads live by the fruit of the tin alone? Apparently

+yes, with the sophisticated accompaniment of soda

+biscuit, to judge by the quantity of baking-powder

+they invested in&mdash;literally pounds of it. Men in

+any other condition of life would have died of slow

+poisoning as the result of it.</p>

+

+<p>There were other customers at Hugous' that

+morning besides the spurred and booted cow-puncher

+and his despised compeer, the sheep-herder.

+That restless emigrant class, whose origin, as

+a class, lay in the community of its own uncertain

+schemes of fortune; the West, with her splendid,

+lavish promises, called them from their thriftless

+farms in the South and their gray cabins in New

+England. They began their journeying towards

+the land of promise long before the Indians had

+ever seen the shrieking "fire-wagon." All day they

+would toil over the infinitude of prairie, the sun that

+<pb n="030" />

+<anchor id="Pg030" />

+hid nightly behind that maddeningly elusive vanishing-point,

+the horizon, their only guide. But the

+makeshifts of the wagon life were not without charm.

+They began to wander in quest of they knew not

+precisely what, and from these vague beginnings

+there had sprung into existence that nomadic

+population that was once such a feature of the far

+West, but is now going the way of the Indians and

+the cow-boys.</p>

+

+<p>This breathing-space in the long journey had

+for them the stimulus of a holiday-making. They

+bought their sides of bacon and their pounds of

+coffee as merrily as if they were playing a game of

+forfeits, the women fingering the calico they did

+not want for the joy of pricing and making shoppers'

+talk.</p>

+

+<p>The scene had a scriptural flavor that not even

+the blue overalls of the men nor the calico gowns

+of the women could altogether eliminate. Their

+wagons, bulging with household goods and trailing

+with kitchen utensils secured by bits of rope, were

+drawn up in front of the trading-store. From a

+pump, at some little distance, the pilgrims filled

+their stone water-bottles, for the wise traveller does

+not trust to the chance springs of the desert.

+Baskets of chickens were strapped to many of the

+wagons, but whether the unhappy fowls were designed

+to supply fresh eggs and an occasional fricassÃĐe,

+or were taken for the pleasure of their company,

+there was no means of determining short of

+impertinent cross-questioning. Sometimes a cow,

+and invariably a dog, formed one of the family

+<pb n="031" />

+<anchor id="Pg031" />

+party, and an edifying <hi rend="font-style: italic">esprit de corps</hi> seemed to

+dwell among them all.</p>

+

+<p>Lone Tooth Hank, in his capacity of man about

+town, stood on the steps of Hugous' watching the

+preparations; and, seeing Miss Carmichael, approached

+with the air of an old and tried family friend.</p>

+

+<p>"Do I obsehve yu regyarding oweh 'settleahs,'

+called settleahs 'cause they nevah settle?" Hank

+laughed gently, as one who has made a joke meet

+for ladies. "I've known whole famblies to bohn an'

+raise right in one of them wagons; and tuhn out a

+mighty fine, endurin' lot, too, this hyeh prospectin'

+round afteh somethin' they wouldn't reco'nize if

+they met. Gits to be a habit same as drink. They

+couldn't live in a house same as humans, not if yu

+filled their gyarden with nuggets an' their well

+with apple-jack."</p>

+

+<p>Miss Carmichael looked attentive but said nothing.

+In truth, she was more afraid of Hank, his

+obvious gallantry, and his grewsome tales of boots

+with legs in them than she was of the unknown

+terrors of Lost Trail.</p>

+

+<p>"I believe that is my stage," she said, as a red

+conveyance not unlike a circus wagon halted at

+some little distance from the trading-store. And

+as she spoke she saw four of her companions of the

+breakfast-table heading towards the stage, each with

+a piece of her precious luggage. Mary Carmichael

+was precipitated in a sudden panic; she had heard

+tales of the pranks of these playful Western squires&mdash;a

+little gun-play to induce the terrified tenderfoot

+to put a little more spirit into his Highland fling,

+<pb n="032" />

+<anchor id="Pg032" />

+"by request." She remembered their merrymaking

+with Simpson at breakfast. What did they intend

+to do with her belongings? And as she remembered

+the little plaid sewing-bag that Aunt Adelaide had

+made for her&mdash;surreptitiously drying her tears in the

+mean time&mdash;when she remembered that bag and the

+possibility of its being submitted to ignominy, she

+could have cried or done murder, she wasn't sure

+which.</p>

+

+<p>"Well, 'pon my wohd, heah ah the boys with

+yo' baggage. How time du fly!"</p>

+

+<p>"Oh!" she gasped, "what are they going to do

+with it?"</p>

+

+<p>"Place it on the stage, awaitin' yo' ohdahs."

+And to her expression of infinite relief&mdash;"Yo' didn't

+think any disrepec' would be shown the baggage of

+a lady honorin' this hyeh metropolis with her presence?"</p>

+

+<p>She thanked the knights of the lariat the more

+warmly for her unjust suspicions. They stowed

+away the luggage with the deft capacity of men who

+have returned to the primitive art of using their

+hands. She climbed beside the driver on the box

+of the stage. Lone Tooth Hank and the cow-punchers

+chivalrously raised their sombreros with

+a simultaneous spontaneity that suggested a flight

+of rockets. The driver cracked his whip and turned

+the horses' heads towards the billowing sea of foot-hills,

+and the last cable that bound Mary Carmichael

+to civilization was cut.</p>

+<pb n="033" />

+<anchor id="Pg033" />

+</div>

+

+<div rend="page-break-before: always">

+<head>III</head>

+<index index="pdf" /><index index="toc" level1="Leander And His Lady" />

+<head type="sub">Leander And His Lady</head>

+

+<p>The only stage passenger besides Miss Carmichael

+was a fat lady, whose entire luggage

+seemed to consist of luncheon&mdash;pasteboard boxes

+of sandwiches, baskets of fruit, napkins of cake.

+These she began to dispose of, before the stage had

+fairly started, with an industry almost automatic,

+continuing faithful to her post as long as the supplies

+lasted. Then she dozed, sleeping the sleep of the

+just and those who keep their mouths open. From

+time to time the stage-driver invoked his team in

+cabalistic words, and each time the horses toiled

+forward with fresh energy; but progress became a

+mockery in that ocean of space, their driving seemed

+as futile as the sport of children who crack a whip

+and play at stage-coach with a couple of chairs;

+the mountains still mocked in the distance.</p>

+

+<p>A flat, unbroken sweep of country, a tangle of

+straggling sage-brush, a glimpse of foot-hills in the

+distance, was the outlook mile after mile. The day

+grew pitilessly hot. Clouds of alkaline dust swept

+aimlessly over the desert or whirled into spirals till

+lost in space. From horizon to horizon the sky

+was one cloudless span of blue that paled as it

+<pb n="034" />

+<anchor id="Pg034" />

+dipped earthward. Mary Carmichael dozed and

+wakened, but the prospect was always the same&mdash;the

+red stage crawling over the wilderness, making

+no evident progress, and always the sun, the sage-brush,

+and the silence.</p>

+

+<p>It was all so overwhelmingly different from the

+peaceful atmosphere of things at home. The mellow

+Virginia country, with its winding, red roads, wealth

+of woodland, and its grave old houses that were the

+more haughtily aloof for the poverty that gnawed at

+their vitals. This wilderness was so gaunt, so parched;

+she closed her eyes and thought of a bit of landscape

+at home. A young forest of silver beeches

+growing straight and fine as the threads on a loom;

+and through the gray perspective of their satin-smooth

+trunks you caught the white gleam of a fairy

+cascade as it tumbled over the moss-grown stones

+to the brook below. It was like a bit from a Japanese

+garden in its delicate artificiality.</p>

+

+<p>And harder to leave than these cherished bits

+of landscape had been the old house Runnymede,

+that always seemed dozing in the peaceful comatose

+of senility. It was beyond the worry of debt; the

+succession of mortgages that sapped its vitality and

+wrote anxious lines on the faces of Aunt Adelaide

+and Aunt Martha was nothing to the old house. Had

+it not sheltered Carmichaels for over a century?&mdash;it

+had faith in the name. But Mary could never

+remember when the need of money to pay the

+mortgage had not invaded the gentle routine of

+their home-life, robbing the sangaree of its delicate

+flavor in the long, sleepy summer afternoons, invading

+<pb n="035" />

+<anchor id="Pg035" />

+the very dining-room, an unwelcome guest at

+the old mahogany table, prompting Aunt Adelaide

+to cast anxious glances at the worn silver&mdash;would it

+go to pay that blood-sucking mortgage next?</p>

+

+<p>But hardest of all to leave had been Archie, best

+and most promising of young brothers&mdash;Archie, who

+had come out ahead of his class in the high-school,

+all ready to go to The University&mdash;the University

+of Virginia is always "The University"; but who,

+it had seemed at a certain dark season, must give

+up this long-cherished hope for lack of the wherewithal.

+Mary, being four years older than her

+brother and quite twenty, had long felt a maternal

+obligation to administer his affairs. If he did

+not go to the university, like his father and grandfather

+before him, it would be because she had failed

+in her duty. At this particular phase of the domestic

+problem there had appeared, in a certain

+churchly periodical, a carefully worded advertisement

+for a governess, and the subsequent business

+of references, salary, and information to be imparted

+and received proving eminently satisfactory,

+Mary had finally received a tearful permission from

+her aunts to depart for some place in Wyoming, the

+name of which was not even to be found on the map.

+She was to consider herself quite one of the family,

+and the compensation was to be fifty dollars a month.

+Archie would now be able to go to "The University."</p>

+

+<p>As the day wore on the sage-brush became

+scarcer and grayer, there were fewer flowering cacti,

+and the great white patches of alkali grew more and

+more frequent. In the distance there was a riot

+<pb n="036" />

+<anchor id="Pg036" />

+of rainbow tints&mdash;violet, pink, and pale orange. It

+seemed inconceivable that such barrenness could

+produce such wealth of color; nothing could have

+been more beautiful&mdash;not even the changing colors

+on a pigeon's neck&mdash;than the coppery iridescence,

+shading to cobalt and blue on some of the buttes.</p>

+

+<p>Night had fallen before they made the first break

+in their journey. The low, beetle-browed cabin that

+faced them in the wilderness carried in its rude

+completeness a hint of the prestidigitateur's art&mdash;a

+world of desolation, and behold a log cabin with

+smoke issuing from the chimney and curtains at the

+windows! The interior was unplastered, but this

+shortcoming was surmounted by tacking cheesecloth

+neatly over the logs, a device at once simple and

+strategic, as in the lamplight the effect was that of

+plaster. Miss Carmichael, suddenly released from

+the actual rumbling of the stage, felt its confused

+motion the more strongly in imagination, and hardly

+knew whether she was eating canned tomatoes,

+served uncooked directly from the tin, fried steak,

+black coffee, and soda biscuit, in company with the

+fat lady, the stage-driver, and the woman who kept

+the road ranch, or if it was all some Alice in Wonderland

+delusion.</p>

+

+<p>The fat lady had brought her own bedding&mdash;an

+apoplectic roll of bedquilts&mdash;and these she insisted

+on making a bed of, despite the protests of the

+ranch-woman, who seemed to detect a covert insinuation

+against her accommodations in the precedent.

+Miss Carmichael profited by the controversy.

+The landlady, touched no doubt by the simple faith

+<pb n="037" />

+<anchor id="Pg037" />

+of a traveller who trusted to the beds of a road-ranch,

+or because she was young or a girl, led the

+way in triumph to her own bedroom, and indicating

+an imposing affair with pillow-shams, she defied Miss

+Carmichael to find a more comfortable bed "in the

+East."</p>

+

+<p>In the unaccountable manner of these desert

+conveyances, that creak and groan across the arid

+wastes with an apparently lumbering inconsequence,

+the stage that brought the travellers to the Dax

+ranch left at sunrise to pursue a seemingly erratic

+career along the North Platte, while Miss Carmichael

+and the fat lady were to continue their journey with

+one Lemuel Chugg, who drove a stage northward

+towards the Red Desert, when he was sober enough

+to handle the ribbons.</p>

+

+<p>Breakfast was largely devoted to speculation regarding

+the approximate condition of Mr. Chugg&mdash;would

+he be wholly or partially incapacitated for

+his job? Mrs. Dax, flirting a feather-duster in the

+neighborhood of Miss Carmichael in a futile effort

+to beguile her into giving a reason for her solitary

+journey across the desert, took a gloomy view of the

+situation.</p>

+

+<p>But Miss Carmichael kept her own counsel. Not

+so the fat lady. Falling into the snare ingenuously

+set for another, she divulged her name, place of

+residence, and the object of her travels, which was to

+visit a son on Sweetwater. Furthermore, she stated

+the probable cause of every death in her family for

+the past thirty-five years. Miss Carmichael felt

+an especial interest in an Uncle Henry who "died

+<pb n="038" />

+<anchor id="Pg038" />

+of a Friday along of eating clams." He stood out

+with such refreshing vividness against a background

+of neutralities who succumbed to consumption,

+bile colic, and other more familiar ailments

+of the patent-medicine litany. But loquacity, apparently,

+like virtue, is its own reward, for the landlady

+scarce vouchsafed a comment on this dismal

+recitative, while Miss Carmichael remained the object

+of her persistent attentions.</p>

+

+<p>But there seemed to be no topic of universal

+interest but Chugg's condition, Mrs. Dax finally

+asserting, "Before I'd trust my precious neck to

+him, I'd get Mr. Dax to shoot me."</p>

+

+<p>Meditating on this Spartan statement, Mary and

+the fat lady became aware for the first time of a

+subtle, silent force in the domestic economy. But

+so unobtrusive was this influence that one had to

+scrutinize very closely, indeed, to detect the evanescent

+personality of Mrs. Dax's husband. Leander

+was his name, but it is safe to say that he swam no

+Hellesponts for the masterful wife of his bosom.

+Otherwise he was slender, willowy, bald; if he ever

+stood straight enough to get the habitually apologetic

+crooks out of his knees, he would be tall;

+but so in the habit was he of repressing himself

+in the marital presence that Leander passed for

+middle height. He waited on the table at breakfast

+with the dumb submissiveness of a trained dog

+that has been taught to give pathetic imitations of

+human servility. But no sooner had his lady left

+the room than Leander began quite brazenly to call

+attention to himself as a man and an individual,

+<pb n="039" />

+<anchor id="Pg039" />

+coughing, rattling his dishes, and clearing his throat.

+Mary and the fat lady, out of very pity, responded

+to these crude signals with overtures equally frank,

+and Leander ventured finally to inquire if they

+aimed to spend the night at his brother's ranch, it

+being the next mess-box between here and nowhere.

+They admitted that his brother's ranch was their

+next stopping-place, and Leander went through

+perfect contortions of apology and self-effacement

+before he could bring himself to ask them to do him

+a favor. It would have taken a very stern order of

+womankind to refuse anything so abject, and they

+blindly committed themselves to the pledge.</p>

+

+<p>"Tell him I send my compliments," he whispered,

+and, looking about him furtively, he repeated the

+blood-curdling request.</p>

+

+<p>"Is that all?" sniffed the fat lady, at no pains to

+conceal her disappointment.</p>

+

+<p>"It's enough, if it was known, to raise a war-whoop

+and stampede this yere family." His glance

+at the door through which his wife had disappeared

+was pregnant with meaning.</p>

+

+<p>"Family troubles?" asked the fat lady, as a

+gourmet might say "Truffles."</p>

+

+<p>"Looks like it," said Leander, dismally. "Me

+and Johnnie don't ask for nothin' better than to

+bask in each other's company; but our wives insists

+on keepin' up the manoeuvres of a war-dance

+the whole endoorin' time."</p>

+

+<p>"So," said the fat lady, as a gourmet might tell

+of a favorite way of preparing truffles, "it's a case

+of wives?"</p>

+<pb n="040" />

+<anchor id="Pg040" />

+

+<p>"Yes, marm, an' teeth an' nails an' husbands

+thrown in, when they get a sight of each other's

+petticoats."</p>

+

+<p>"I've known sisters-in-law not to agree," helped

+on the fat lady, by way of an encouraging parallel.</p>

+

+<p>"While I deplores usin' such a comparison to the

+refinin' and softenin' inflooance of wimmen, the

+meetin' of the Dax ladies by chanst anywheres has

+all the elements of danger and excitement that accompanies

+an Injun uprisin'."</p>

+

+<p>The travellers looked all manner of encouragement.</p>

+

+<p>"You see, my wife's a great housekeeper; her

+talent lies"&mdash;and here Leander winked knowingly&mdash;"in

+managin' the help."</p>

+

+<p>"Land's sake!" interrupted the fat lady. "Why

+don't you kick?"</p>

+

+<p>Leander sighed softly. "I tried to once. As an

+experiment it partook of the trustfulness of a mule

+kickin' against the stony walls of Badger CaÃąon.

+But to resoom about the difficulties that split the

+Dax family. Before Johnnie got mislaid in that

+matrimonial landslide o' his, he herds with us.

+Me an' him does the work of this yere shack, and

+my wife just roominates and gives her accomplishments

+as manager full play. She never put her

+hand in dirty water any more than Mrs. Cleveland

+sittin' up in the White House parlor. Johnnie

+done the fancy cookin'; he could make a pie like

+any one's maw, and while you was lost to the world

+in the delights of masticatin' it, he'd have all his

+greasy dishes washed up and put away&mdash;"</p>

+<pb n="041" />

+<anchor id="Pg041" />

+

+<p>"No wonder she hated to lose a man like that,"

+interrupted the fat lady, feelingly.</p>

+

+<p>"But he took to pinin' and proclaimin' that he

+shore was a lone maverick, and he just stampeded

+round lookin' for trouble and bleatin' a song that

+went:</p>

+

+<lg>

+<l rend="margin-left: 2">"'No one to love,</l>

+<l rend="margin-left: 2">None to caress.'</l>

+</lg>

+

+<p>"Well, the lady that answers his signal of distress

+don't bear none of the brands of this yere range.

+She lives back East, and him and her took up

+their claims in each other's affections through a

+matrimonial paper known as <hi rend="font-style: italic">The Heart and Hand</hi>.

+So they takes their pens in hand and gets through

+a hard spell of courtin' on paper. Love plumb

+locoes Johnnie. His spellin' don't suit him, his

+handwritin' don't suit him, his natchral letters don't

+suit him. So off he sends to Denver for all the

+letter-writin' books he can buy&mdash;<hi rend="font-style: italic">Handbook of

+Correspondence, The Epistolary Guide, The Ready

+Letter-Writer</hi>, and a stack more. There's no denyin'

+it, Johnnie certainly did sweat hisself over them

+letters."</p>

+

+<p>"Land's sakes!" said the fat lady.</p>

+

+<p>"Yes, marm; he used to read 'em to me, beginnin'

+how he had just seized five minutes to write to her,

+when he'd worked the whole day like a mule over it.

+She seemed to like the brand, an' when he sent her

+the money to come out here an' get married, she

+come as straight as if she had been mailed with a

+postage-stamp."</p>

+<pb n="042" />

+<anchor id="Pg042" />

+

+<p>"The brazen thing!" said the fat lady.</p>

+

+<p>"They stopped here, goin' home to their place.

+My Lord! warn't she a high-flyer! She done her

+hair like a tied-up horse-tail&mdash;my wife called it a

+Sikey knot&mdash;and it stood out a foot from her head.

+Some of the boys, kinder playful, wanted to throw

+a hat at it and see if it wouldn't hang, but they

+refrained, out of respect to the feelin's of the groom.</p>

+

+<p>"From the start," continued Leander, "the two

+Mrs. Daxes just hankered to get at each other; an'

+while I, as a slave to the fair sex"&mdash;here he bowed to

+the fat lady and to Miss Carmichael&mdash;"hesitates to

+use such langwidge in their presence, the attitood

+of them two female wimmin shorely reminds me of

+a couple of unfriendly dawgs just hankerin' to chaw

+each other.</p>

+

+<p>"At first, Johnnie waited on her hand an' foot,

+and she just read novels and played stylish all the

+time and danced. She was the hardest dancer that

+ever struck this yere trail, and she could give lessons

+to any old war-dancin' chief up to the reservation.

+No dance she ever heard of was too far for her to go

+to. She just went and danced till broad daylight.

+Many a man would have took to dissipation, in his

+circumstances, but Johnnie just lost heart and grew

+slatterly. Why, he'd leave his dishes go from one

+day till the next&mdash;"</p>

+

+<p>"There's more as would leave their dishes from

+one day till the next if they wasn't looked after."

+And the wife of his bosom stood in the door like a

+vengeful household goddess. Mr. Dax made a grab

+for the nearest plates.</p>

+<pb n="043" />

+<anchor id="Pg043" />

+</div>

+

+<div rend="page-break-before: always">

+<head>IV</head>

+<index index="pdf" /><index index="toc" level1="Judith, The Postmistress" />

+<head type="sub">Judith, The Postmistress</head>

+

+<p>The arrival of Chugg's stage with the mail

+should have been coincident with the departure

+of the stage that brought the travellers

+from "Town," but Chugg was late&mdash;a tardiness

+ascribed to indulgence in local lethe waters, for

+Lemuel Chugg had survived a romance and drank

+to forget that woman is a variable and a changeable

+thing. In consequence of which the sober stage-driver

+departed without the mails, leaving Mary

+Carmichael and the fat lady to scan the horizon

+for the delinquent Chugg, and incidentally to hear

+a chapter of prairie romance.</p>

+

+<p>Some sort of revolution seemed to be in progress

+in the room in which the travellers had breakfasted.

+Mrs. Dax had assumed the office of dictator, with

+absolute sway. Leander, as aide-de-camp, courier,

+and staff, executed marvellous feats of domestic

+engineering. The late breakfast-table, swept and

+garnished with pigeon-holes, became a United States

+post-office, prepared to transact postal business, and

+for the time being to become the social centre of

+the surrounding country.</p>

+

+<p>Down the yellow road that climbed and dipped

+<pb n="044" />

+<anchor id="Pg044" />

+and climbed and dipped again over foot-hills and

+sprawling space till it was lost in a world without

+end, Mary Carmichael, standing in the doorway,

+watched an atom, so small that it might have been a

+leaf blowing along in the wind, turn into a horseman.</p>

+

+<p>There was inspiration for a hundred pictures in

+the way that horse was ridden. No flashes of daylight

+between saddle and rider in the jolting, Eastern

+fashion, but the long, easy sweep that covers ground

+imperceptibly and is a delight to the eye. It needed

+but the solitary figure to signify the infinitude of

+space in the background. In all that great, wide

+world the only hint of life was the galloping horseman,

+the only sound the rhythmical ring of the nearing

+hoofs. The rider, now close enough for Miss Carmichael

+to distinguish the features, was a thorough

+dandy of the saddle. No slouching garb of exigence

+and comfort this, but a pretty display of doeskin

+gaiter, varnished boot, and smart riding-breeches.

+The lad&mdash;he could not have been, Miss Carmichael

+thought, more than twenty&mdash;was tanned a splendid

+color not unlike the bloomy shading on a nasturtium.

+And when the doughty horseman made out the girl

+standing in the doorway, he smiled with a lack of

+formality not suggested by the town-cut of his

+trappings. Throwing the reins over the neck of the

+horse with the real Western fling, he slid from the

+saddle in a trice, and&mdash;Mary Carmichael experienced

+something of the gasping horror of a shocked old

+lady as she made out two splendid braids of thick,

+black hair. Her doughty cavalier was no cavalier

+at all, but a surprisingly handsome young woman.</p>

+<pb n="045" />

+<anchor id="Pg045" />

+

+<p>Miss Carmichael gasped a little even as she extended

+her hand, for the masquerader had pulled

+off her gauntlet and held out hers as if she was conferring

+the freedom of the wilderness. It was

+impossible for a homesick girl not to respond to

+such heartiness, though it was with difficulty at first

+that Mary kept her eyes on the girl's face. Curiosity,

+agreeably piqued, urged her to take another glimpse

+of the riding clothes that this young woman wore

+with such supreme unconcern.</p>

+

+<p>Now, "in the East" Mary Carmichael had not been

+in the habit of meeting black-haired goddesses who

+rode astride and whose assurance of the pleasure

+of meeting her made her as self-conscious as on her

+first day at dancing-school; and though she tried

+to prove her cosmopolitanism by not betraying this,

+the attempt was rather a failure.</p>

+

+<p>"Are you surprised that I did not wait for an

+introduction?" the girl in the riding clothes asked,

+noticing Mary's evident uneasiness; "but you don't

+know how good it is to see a girl. I'm so tired of

+spurs and sombreros and cattle and dust and distance,

+and there's nothing else here."</p>

+

+<p>"Where I come from it's just the other way&mdash;too

+many petticoats and hat-pins."</p>

+

+<p>The horseman who was no horseman dropped

+Miss Carmichael's hand and went into the house.

+Mary wondered if she ought to have been more

+cordial.</p>

+

+<p>From the back door came Leander, with dishcloths,

+which he began to hang on the line in a dumb,

+driven sort of way.</p>

+<pb n="046" />

+<anchor id="Pg046" />

+

+<p>"Who is she?" asked Mary.</p>

+

+<p>"Her?" he interrogated, jerking his head in the

+direction of the house. "The postmistress, Judith

+Rodney; yes, that's her name." He dropped his

+voice in the manner of one imparting momentous

+things. "She never wears a skirt ridin', any more

+than a man."</p>

+

+<p>Mary felt that she was tempting Leander into the

+paths of gossip, undoubtedly his besetting sin, but

+she could not resist the temptation to linger. He

+had disposed of his last dish-cloth, and he withdrew

+the remaining clothes-pin from his mouth in a way

+that was pathetically feminine.</p>

+

+<p>"She keeps the post-office here, since Mrs. Dax

+lost the job, and boards with us; p'r'aps it's because

+she is my wife's successor in office, or p'a'ps it's jest

+the natural grudge that wimmin seem to harbor

+agin each other, I dunno, but they don't sandwich

+none."</p>

+

+<p>Leander having disposed of his last dish-towel,

+squinted at it through his half-closed eyes, like an

+artist "sighting" a landscape, saw apparently that

+it was in drawing, and next brought his vision to

+bear on the back premises of his own dwelling,

+where he saw there was no wifely figure in evidence.</p>

+

+<p>"Sh-sh-h!" he said, creeping towards Mary, his

+dull face transfigured with the consciousness that he

+had news to tell. "Sh-sh&mdash;her brother's a rustler.

+If 'twan't for her"&mdash;Leander went through the

+grewsome pantomime of tying an imaginary rope

+round his neck and throwing it over the limb of an

+imaginary tree. "They're goin' to get him for shore

+<pb n="047" />

+<anchor id="Pg047" />

+this time, soon as he comes out of jail; but would

+you guess it from her bluff?"</p>

+

+<p>There was no mistaking the fate of a rustler after

+Mr. Dax's grisly demonstration, but of the quality

+of his calling Mary was as ignorant as before.</p>

+

+<p>"And why should they do that?" she inquired,

+with tenderfoot simplicity.</p>

+

+<p>"Stealin' cattle ain't good for the health hereabouts,"

+said Leander, as one who spoke with

+authority. "It's apt to bring on throat trouble."</p>

+

+<p>But Mary did not find Leander's joke amusing.

+She had suddenly remembered the pale, gaunt man

+who had walked into the eating-house the previous

+morning and walked out again, his errand turned

+into farce-comedy by the cowardice of an unworthy

+antagonist. The pale man's grievance had had to

+do with sheep and cattle. His name had been

+Rodney, too. She understood now. He was Judith

+Rodney's brother, and he was in danger of being

+hanged. Mary Carmichael felt first the admiration

+of a girl, then the pity of a woman, for the brave

+young creature who so stoutly carried so unspeakable

+a burden. But she could not speak of

+her new knowledge to Leander.</p>

+

+<p>She glanced towards this childlike person and

+saw from his stealthy manner that he had more to

+impart. He walked towards the kitchen door, saw

+no one, and came back to Mary.</p>

+

+<p>"There ain't a man in this Gawd-forsaken country

+wouldn't lope at the chance to die for her&mdash;but the

+women!" Leander's pantomimic indication of absolute

+feminine antagonism was conclusive.</p>

+<pb n="048" />

+<anchor id="Pg048" />

+

+<p>"The wimmin treats her scabby&mdash;just scabby.

+Don't you go to thinkin' she ain't a good girl on

+that account"; and something like an attitude of

+chivalrous protection straightened the apologetic

+crook in his craven outline.</p>

+

+<p>"She's good, just good, and when a woman's that

+there's no use in sayin' it any more fanciful. As I

+says to my wife, every time she give me a chance,

+'If Judy wasn't a good girl these boys about here

+would just natchrally become extinct shootin' each

+other upon account of her.' But she don't favor

+none enough to cause trouble."</p>

+

+<p>"Are the women jealous of her?"</p>

+

+<p>"It's her independence that riles 'em. They take

+on awful about her ridin' in pants, an' it certainly

+is a heap more modest than ridin' straddle in a

+hitched up caliker skirt, same as some of them do."</p>

+

+<p>"And do all the women out here ride astride?"

+Mary gasped.</p>

+

+<p>"A good many does, when you ain't watchin';

+horses in these parts ain't broke for no such lopsided

+foolishness as side-saddles. But you see she

+does it becomin', and that's where the grudge

+comes in. You can't stir about these foot-hills without

+coming across a woman, like as not, holdin' on

+to a posse of kids, and ridin' clothes-pin fashion in a

+looped-up skirt; when she sees you comin' she'll

+p'r'aps upset a kid or two assoomin' a decorous

+attitood. That's feemi<hi rend="font-style: italic">nine</hi>, and as such is approved

+by the ladies, but"&mdash;and here Leander put his head

+on one side and gave a grotesque impression of outraged

+decorum&mdash;"pants is considered unwomanly."</p>

+<pb n="049" />

+<anchor id="Pg049" />

+

+<p>"Leander! Leander!" came in accusing accents

+from the kitchen.</p>

+

+<p>"Run!" gasped Mrs. Dax's handmaiden; "don't

+let her catch us chinnin'."</p>

+

+<p>Mary Carmichael ran round one side of the house

+as she was bidden, but, like Lot's wife, could not

+resist the temptation of looking back. Leander,

+with incredible rapidity, grabbed two clothes-pins

+off the line, clutched a dish-towel, shook it. "Comin'!

+comin'!" he called, as he went through the farce of

+rehanging it.</p>

+

+<p>The lonesomeness of plain and foot-hill, the utter

+lack of the human element that gives to this country

+its character of penetrating desolation, had been

+changed while Mary Carmichael forgathered with

+Leander by the clothes-line. From the four quarters

+of the compass, men in sombreros, flannel

+shirts, and all manner of strange habiliments came

+galloping over the roads as if their horses were as

+keen on reaching Dax's as their riders. They came

+towards the house at full tilt, their horses stretching

+flat with ears laid back viciously, and Mary, who

+was unused to the tricks of cow-ponies, expected to

+see them ride through the front door, merely by way

+of demonstrating their sense of humor. Not so; the

+little pintos, buckskins, bays, and chestnuts dashed

+to the door and stopped short in a full gallop; as a

+bit of staccato equestrianism it was superb.</p>

+

+<p>And then the wherefore of all this dashing horsemanship,

+this curveting, prancing, galloping revival

+of knightly tourney effects was apparent&mdash;Judith

+Rodney had opened post-office. She had changed

+<pb n="050" />

+<anchor id="Pg050" />

+her riding clothes; or, rather, that portion of them to

+which the ladies took exception was now concealed

+by a long, black skirt. Her wonderful braids of

+black hair had been twisted high on her head. She

+was well worth a trip across the alkali wastes to

+see. The room was packed with men. One unconsciously

+got the impression that a fire, a fight, or

+some crowd-collecting casualty had happened.

+Above the continual clinking of spurs there arose

+every idiom and peculiarity of speech of which these

+United States are capable. There is no Western

+dialect, properly speaking. Men bring their modes

+of expression with them from Maine or Minnesota,

+as the case may be, but their figures of speech, which

+give an essential picturesqueness to their language,

+are almost entirely local&mdash;the cattle and sheep

+industries, prospecting, the Indians, poker, faro,

+the dance-halls, all contribute their printable or unprintable

+embellishment.</p>

+

+<p>Judith managed them all&mdash;cow-punchers, sheep-herders,

+prospectors, freighters&mdash;with an impersonal

+skill that suggested a little solitary exercise in the

+bowling-alley. The ten-pins took their tumbles in

+good part&mdash;no one could congratulate himself on

+escaping the levelling ball&mdash;and where there's a

+universal lack of luck, doubtless also there will be

+found a sort of grim fellowship.</p>

+

+<p>That they were all more or less in love with her

+there could be no doubt. As a matter of fact,

+Judith Rodney did not depend on the scarcity of

+women in the desert for her pre-eminence in the interests

+of this hot-headed group. Her personality&mdash;and

+<pb n="051" />

+<anchor id="Pg051" />

+through no conscious effort of hers&mdash;would have

+been pre-eminent anywhere. As it was, in this

+woman-forsaken wilderness she might have stirred

+up a modern edition of the Trojan war at any

+moment. That she did not, despite the lurking

+suggestion of temptation written all over her,

+brought back the words of Leander: "If Judy

+wasn't a good girl, these boys would just nacherally

+become extinct shooting each other upon account

+of her."</p>

+

+<p>And yet what a woman she was! It struck Miss

+Carmichael, as she watched Judith hold these warring

+elements in the hollow of her hand, that her

+interest might be due to a certain temperamental

+fusion; that there might lie, at the essence of her

+being, a subtle combination of saint and devil. One

+could fancy her leading an army on a crusade or

+provoking a bar-room brawl. The challenging

+quality of her beauty, the vividness of color, the

+suggestion of endurance and radiating health in

+every line, were comparable to the great primeval

+forces about her. She was cast to be the mother

+of men of brawn and muscle, who would make this

+vast, unclaimed wilderness subject to them.</p>

+

+<p>At present neither pole of her character, as it

+had been hastily estimated, was even remotely

+suggested. The atmosphere in the post-office was,

+considering the potential violence of its visitors,

+singularly calm. And Judith, feeding these wild

+border lads on scraps of chaff and banter, and retaining

+their absolute loyalty, was a sight worth

+seeing. She had the alertness of a lion-tamer

+<pb n="052" />

+<anchor id="Pg052" />

+locked in a cage with the lords of the jungle; the

+rashly confident she humbled, the meek she exalted,

+and all with such genuine good-fellowship, such

+an absence of coquetry in the genial game of give

+and take, that one ceased to wonder at even the

+devotion of Leander. And since they were to her,

+on her own confession, but "spurs and sombreros,"

+one wondered at the elaboration of the comedy, the

+endless wire-pulling in the manipulation of these

+most picturesque marionettes&mdash;until one remembered

+the outlaw brother and felt that what she did

+she did for him.</p>

+

+<p>"You right shore there ain't a letter for me,

+Miss Judith. My creditors are pretty faithful 'bout

+bearing me in mind." It was the third time that

+the big, shambling Texan who had been one of the

+company at Mrs. Clark's eating-house had inquired

+for mail, and seemed so embarrassed by his own

+bulk that he moved cautiously, as if he might step

+on a fellow-creature and maim him. Each time he

+had asked for a letter he took his place at the end

+of the waiting-line and patiently bided his time for

+the chance of an extra word with the postmistress.</p>

+

+<p>"They've begun to lose hope, Texas."</p>

+

+<p>She shuffled the letters impartially, as a goddess

+dispensing fate, and barely glanced at the man who

+had ridden a hundred and fifty miles across sand and

+cactus to see her.</p>

+

+<p>"That's the difference between them and me."

+There was a grim finality in his tone.</p>

+

+<p>"What, you're going to take your place at the end

+of that line again! I'll try and find you a circular."</p>

+<pb n="053" />

+<anchor id="Pg053" />

+

+<p>He tried to look at her angrily, but she smiled

+at him with such good-fellowship that he went off

+singing significantly that universal anthem of the

+cow-puncher the West over:</p>

+

+<lg>

+<l rend="margin-left: 2">"Oh, bury me not on the lone prairie,</l>

+<l rend="margin-left: 4">In a narrow grave just six by three,</l>

+<l rend="margin-left: 4">Where the wild coyotes will howl o'er me.</l>

+<l rend="margin-left: 2">Oh, bury me not on the lone prairie."</l>

+</lg>

+

+<p>"Ain't there a love letter for me?" The young

+man who inquired seemed to belong to a different

+race from these bronzed squires of the saddle. He

+suggested over-crowded excursion boats on Sunday

+afternoons in swarming Eastern cities. He buttonholed

+every one and explained his presence in the

+West on the score of his health, as though leaving

+his native asphalt were a thing that demanded

+apology.</p>

+

+<p>"Yes," answered the postmistress, with a real

+motherly note, "here is one from Hugous &amp; Co."</p>

+

+<p>A roar went up at this, and the blushing tenderfoot

+pocketed his third bill for the most theatrical

+style of Mexican sombrero; it had a brass snake

+coiled round the crown for a hat-band, and a cow-puncher

+in good and regular standing would have

+preferred going bareheaded to wearing it.</p>

+

+<p>"She seems to be pressing her suit, son; you

+better name the day," one of the loungers suggested.</p>

+

+<p>"The blamed thing ain't worth twenty-five

+dollars," the young man from the East declared.

+A conspicuous silence followed. It seemed to

+<pb n="054" />

+<anchor id="Pg054" />

+irritate the owner of the hat that no one would

+defend it. "It ain't worth it," he repeated.</p>

+

+<p>"I think you allowed you was out here for your

+health?" the big Texan, who had returned from

+the corral, inquired.</p>

+

+<p>"Betcher life," swaggered the man with the hat,

+"N'York's good enough for me."</p>

+

+<p>"But"&mdash;and the Texan smiled sweetly&mdash;"the

+man who sold you the hat ain't out here for

+his."</p>

+

+<p>Judith hid her head and stamped letters. The

+boys were suspiciously quiet, then some one began

+to chant:</p>

+

+<lg>

+<l rend="margin-left: 2">"The devil examined the desert well,</l>

+<l rend="margin-left: 2">And made up his mind 'twas too dry for hell;</l>

+<l rend="margin-left: 2">He put up the prices his pockets to swell,</l>

+<l rend="margin-left: 2">And called it a&mdash;heal-th resort."</l>

+</lg>

+

+<p>The postmistress waited for the last note of the

+chorus to die away, and read from a package she

+held in her hand&mdash;"'Mrs. Henry Lee, Deer Lodge,

+Wyoming.' Well, Henry, here's a wedding-present,

+I guess. And my congratulations, though you've

+hardly treated us well in never saying a word."</p>

+

+<p>The unfortunate Henry, who hadn't even a sweetheart,

+and who was noted as the shyest man in the

+"Goose Creek Outfit," had to submit to the mock

+congratulations of every man in the room and

+promise to set up the drinks later.</p>

+

+<p>"I never felt we'd keep you long, son; them

+golden curls seldom gets a chance to ripen singly."</p>

+

+<p>"Shoshone squaw, did you say she was, Henry?

+<pb n="055" />

+<anchor id="Pg055" />

+They ain't much for looks, but there's a heep of

+wear to 'em."</p>

+

+<p>"Oh, go on, now; you fellows know I ain't

+married." And the boy handled the package with

+a sort of dumb wonder, as if the superscription

+were indisputable evidence of a wife's existence.</p>

+

+<p>"Open it, Henry; you shore don't harbor sentiments

+of curiosity regarding the post-office dealings

+of your lady."</p>

+

+<p>"Now, old man, this here may be grounds for

+divorce."</p>

+

+<p>"See what the other fellow's sending your wife."</p>

+

+<p>Henry, badgered, jostled, the target of many a

+homely witticism, finally opened the package, which

+proved to be a sample bottle of baby food. At

+sight of it they howled like Apaches, and Henry was

+again forced to receive their congratulations. Judith,

+who had been an interested on-looker without joining

+in the merriment, now detected in the tenor of

+their humor a tendency towards breadth. In an instant

+her manner was official; rapping the table with

+her mailing-stamp, she announced:</p>

+

+<p>"Boys, this post-office closes in ten minutes, if

+you want to buy any stamps."</p>

+

+<p>The silence following this statement on the part

+of the postmistress was instantaneous. Henry took

+his mirth-provoking package and went his way; some

+of the more hilariously inclined followed him. The

+remainder confined themselves absolutely to business,

+scrawling postal-cards or reading their mail.

+The pounce of the official stamp on the letters, as

+<pb n="056" />

+<anchor id="Pg056" />

+the postmistress checked them off for the mail-bag,

+was the only sound in the hot stillness.</p>

+

+<p>A heavily built man, older than those who had

+been keeping the post-office lively, now took advantage

+of the lull to approach Judith. He had a

+twinkling face, all circles and pouches, but it grew

+graver as he spoke to the postmistress. He was

+Major Atkins, formerly a famous cavalry officer, but

+since his retirement a cattle-man whose herds grazed

+to the pan-handle of Texas. As he took his mail,

+talking meantime of politics, of the heat, of the lack

+of water, in the loud voice for which he was famous,

+he managed, with clumsy diplomacy, to interject a

+word or two for her own ear alone.</p>

+

+<p>"Jim's out," he conveyed to her, in a successfully

+muffled tone. "He's out, and they're after him,

+hot. Get him out of the State, Judy&mdash;get him out,

+<hi rend="font-style: italic">quick</hi>. He tried to kill Simpson at Mrs. Clark's, in

+town, yesterday. The little Eastern girl that's here

+will tell you." Then the major was gone before

+Judith could perfectly realize the significance of

+what he had told her.</p>

+

+<p>She threw back her head and the pulse in her

+throat beat. Like a wild forest thing, at the first

+warning sound, she considered: Was it time for

+flight?&mdash;or was the warning but the crackling of a

+twig? Major Atkins was a cattle-man: her brother

+hated all cattle-men. How disinterested had been

+the major's warning! He had always been her

+friend. Mrs. Atkins had been one of the ladies at

+the post who had helped to send her to school to

+the nuns at Santa FÃĐ. She despised herself for

+<pb n="057" />

+<anchor id="Pg057" />

+doubting; yet these were troublous times, and all

+was fair between sheep and cattle-men. Major

+Atkins had spoken of the Eastern girl; then that

+pretty, little, curly-haired creature, whom Judith

+had found standing in the sunshine, had seen Jim&mdash;had

+heard him threaten to kill. Should she ask

+her about it&mdash;consult her? Judith's training was not

+one to impel her to give her confidence to strangers,

+still she had liked the little Eastern girl.</p>

+

+<p>These were the perplexities that beset her, sweeping

+her thoughts hither and thither, as sea-weed is

+swept by the wash of the waves. She strove to collect

+her faculties. How should she rid the house of

+her cavaliers? She had regularly to refuse some half-dozen

+of them each day that she kept post-office.</p>

+

+<p>In a few minutes more the group in the post-office

+began to disperse under the skilful manipulation

+of the postmistress. To some she sold stamps

+with an air of "God speed you," and they were

+soon but dwindling specks on the horizon. To

+others she implied such friendly farewells that there

+was nothing to do but betake themselves to their

+saddles. Others had compromised with the saloon

+opposite, and their roaring mirth came in snatches

+of song and shouts of laughter. She fastened up

+the little pile of letters that had remained uncalled

+for with what seemed a deliberate slowness. Each

+time any one entered the room she looked up&mdash;then

+the hope died hard in her face. Leander came in

+with catlike tread and removed the pigeon-holes

+from the table. The post-office was closed. Family

+life had been resumed at the Daxes'.</p>

+<pb n="058" />

+<anchor id="Pg058" />

+

+<p>Judith left the room and stood in the blinding

+sunlight, basking in it as if she were cold. The

+mercury must have stood close to a hundred, and

+she was hatless. There was no trace of her ebullient

+spirits of the morning. Her head was sunk on her

+breast and she held her hands with locked fingers

+behind her. It was hot, hot as the breaths of a

+thousand belching furnaces. A white, burning glare

+had spread itself from horizon to horizon, and the

+earth wrinkled and cracked beneath it. From

+every corner of this parched wilderness came an

+ominous whirring, like the last wheezing gasp of an

+alarm-clock before striking the hour. This menacing

+orchestration was nothing more or less than millions

+of grasshoppers rasping legs and wings together in

+hoarse appreciation of the heat and glare; but it

+had a sound that boded evil. Again and again she

+turned towards the yellow road as it dipped over

+the hills; but there was never a glimpse of a horseman

+from that direction.</p>

+<pb n="059" />

+<anchor id="Pg059" />

+</div>

+

+<div rend="page-break-before: always">

+<head>V</head>

+<index index="pdf" /><index index="toc" level1="The Trail Of Sentiment" />

+<head type="sub">The Trail Of Sentiment</head>

+

+<p>Within the house the travellers had disposed

+themselves in a repressed and melancholy

+circle that suggested the suspended animation of a

+funeral gathering. The fat lady had turned back

+her skirt to save her travelling dress. The stage

+was late, and there was no good and sufficient reason

+for wearing it out. A similar consideration of

+economy led her to flirt off flies with her second best

+pocket-handkerchief. Mrs. Dax presided over the

+gathering with awful severity. Every one truckled

+to her shamefully, receiving her lightest remarks as

+if they were to be inscribed on tablets of bronze.

+Leander, his eyes bright with excitement at being

+received in the family circle on an equal footing,

+balanced perilously on the edge of his chair, anticipating

+dismissal.</p>

+

+<p>"Chugg's never ben so late as this," said Mrs.

+Dax, rocking herself furiously. She strongly resembled

+one of those mottled chargers of the nursery

+whose flaunting nostrils seem forever on the

+point of sending forth flame. Leander, the fat

+lady, and Miss Carmichael meekly murmured assent

+and condemnation.</p>

+<pb n="060" />

+<anchor id="Pg060" />

+

+<p>"And there ain't a sign of him," said Mrs. Dax,

+returning to the house after straining the landscape

+through her all-observant eye, and not detecting him

+in any of the remote pin-pricks on the horizon, in

+which these plainsfolk invariably decipher a herd

+of antelope, an elk or two, or a horseman.</p>

+

+<p>"Bet he had a woman in the stage and upset it

+with her," said Leander, in the animated manner

+of a poor relation currying favor with a bit of news.</p>

+

+<p>Mrs. Dax regarded him severely for a moment,

+then conspicuously addressed her next remark to

+the ladies. "Bet he had a woman in the stage, the

+old scoundrel!"</p>

+

+<p>"Wonder who she was?" said Leander, with the

+sparkling triumph of a poor relation whose surmise

+had been accepted. But Mrs. Dax had evidently

+decided that Leander had gone far enough.</p>

+

+<p>"Was you expectin' any of your lady friends by

+Chugg's stage that you are so frettin' anxious?" she

+inquired, and the poor relation collapsed miserably.</p>

+

+<p>"You've heard about Chugg's goin' on since

+'Mountain Pink' jilted him?" inquired Mrs. Dax

+of the fat lady, as the only one of the party who

+might have kept abreast with the social chronicles

+of the neighborhood.</p>

+

+<p>"My land, yes," responded the fat lady, proud

+to be regarded as socially cognizant. "M' son says

+he's plumb locoed about it&mdash;didn't want me to travel

+by his stage. But I said he dassent upset a woman

+of my age&mdash;he just nacherally dassent!"</p>

+

+<p>Miss Carmichael, by dint of patient inquiry, finally

+got the story which was popularly supposed to

+<pb n="061" />

+<anchor id="Pg061" />

+account for the misdemeanors of the stage-driver,

+including his present delinquency that was delaying

+them on their journey.</p>

+

+<p>It appeared that Lemuel Chugg, then writhing

+in the coils of perverse romance, was among the

+last of those famous old stage-drivers whose talents

+combined skill at handling the ribbons with the

+diplomacy necessary to treat with a masked envoy

+on the road. His luck in these encounters was

+proverbial, and many were the hair-breadth escapes

+due to Chugg's ready wit and quick aim; and, to

+quote Leander, "while he had been shot as full of

+holes as a salt-shaker, there was a lot of fight in the

+old man yet."</p>

+

+<p>Chugg had had no loves, no hates, no virtues, no

+genial vices after the manner of these frontiersmen.

+Avarice had warmed the cockles of his heart, and the

+fetish he prayed to was an old gray woollen stocking,

+stuffed so full of twenty-dollar gold pieces that it

+presented the bulbous appearance of the "before

+treatment" view of a chiropodist's sign. This

+darling of his old age had been waxing fat since

+Chugg's earliest manhood. It had been his only

+love&mdash;till he met Mountain Pink.</p>

+

+<p>Mountain Pink's husband kept a road-ranch

+somewhere on Chugg's stage-route. She was of a

+buxom type whose red-and-white complexion had

+not yet surrendered to the winds, the biting dust,

+and the alkali water. Furthermore, she could "bring

+about a dried-apple pie" to make a man forget the

+cooking of his mother. Great was the havoc wrought

+by Mountain Pink's pies and complexion, but she

+<pb n="062" />

+<anchor id="Pg062" />

+followed the decorous precedent of CÃĶsar's wife, and,

+like her pastry, remained above suspicion.</p>

+

+<p>Her husband, whose name was Jim Bosky, seemed,

+to the self-impanelled jury that spent its time sitting

+on the case, singularly insensible to his own advantages.

+Not only did he fail to take a proper

+pride in her beauty, but there were dark hints

+abroad that he had never tasted one of her pies.

+When delicately questioned on this point, at that

+stage of liquid refreshment that makes these little

+personalities not impossible, Bosky had grimly

+quoted the dearth of shoes among shoe-makers'

+children.</p>

+

+<p>Whatever were the facts of the case, Mountain

+Pink got the sympathy that might have been expected

+in a section of the country where the ratio

+of the sexes is fifty to one. Chugg, eating her pies

+regularly once a week on his stage-route, said

+nothing, but he presented her with a red plush

+photograph album with oxidized silver clasps, and

+by this first reckless expenditure of money in the

+life of Chugg, Natrona, Johnson, Converse, and Sweetwater

+counties knew that Cupid had at last found

+a vulnerable spot in the tough and weather-tanned

+hide of the old stage-driver.</p>

+

+<p>Nor did Cupid stop here with his pranks. Having

+inoculated the stage-driver with the virus of romance,

+madness began to work in the veins of

+Chugg. He presented Mountain Pink with the

+gray woollen stocking&mdash;not extracting a single coin&mdash;and

+urged her to get a divorce from the clodlike

+man who had never appreciated her and marry him.</p>

+<pb n="063" />

+<anchor id="Pg063" />

+

+<p>Mountain Pink coyly took the stocking so

+generously given for the divorce and subsequent

+trousseau, and Chugg continued to drive his stage

+with an Apollo-like abandon, whistling love-songs

+the while.</p>

+

+<p>Coincident with Mountain Pink's disappearance

+Dakotaward, in the interests of freedom, went also

+one Bob Catlin, a mule-wrangler. Bosky, with conspicuous

+pessimism, hoped for the worst from the

+beginning, and as time went on and nothing was

+heard of either of the wanderers, some of Mountain

+Pink's most loyal adherents confessed it looked

+"romancy." But crusty old Chugg remained true

+to his ideal. "She'll write when she gets good and

+ready," and then concluded, loyally, "Maybe she

+can't write, nohow," and nothing could shake his

+faith.</p>

+

+<p>When Mountain Pink and the mule-wrangler returned

+as bride and groom and set up housekeeping

+on the remainder of Chugg's stocking, and on his

+stage-route, too, so that he had to drive right past

+the honeymoon cottage every time he completed

+the circuit, they lost caste in Carbon County. Chugg

+never spoke of the faithlessness of Mountain Pink.

+His bitterness found vent in tipping over the stage

+when his passengers were confined to members of

+the former Mrs. Bosky's sex, and, as Leander said,

+"the flask in his innerds held more." And these

+were the only traces of tragedy in the life of Lemuel

+Chugg, stage-driver.</p>

+

+<p>Judith had continued her unquiet pacing in the

+blinding glare while the group within doors, somnolent

+<pb n="064" />

+<anchor id="Pg064" />

+from the heat and the incessant shrilling of

+the locusts, droningly discussed the faithlessness of

+Mountain Pink, dozed, and took up the thread of

+the romance. Each time she turned Judith would

+stop and scan the yellow road, shading her eyes

+with her hand, and each time she had turned away

+and resumed her walk. Mary, who gave the postmistress

+no unstinted share of admiration for the

+courage with which she faced her difficulties, and

+who had been seeking an opportunity to signify her

+friendship, and now that she saw the last of the

+gallants depart, inquired of Judith if she might

+join her.</p>

+

+<p>They walked without speaking for several minutes,

+enjoying a sense of comradeship hardly in keeping

+with the brevity of their acquaintance; a freedom

+from restraint spared them the necessity of exchanging

+small-talk, that frequently irritating toll

+exacted as tribute to possible friendship.</p>

+

+<p>The desert lay white and palpitating beneath the

+noonday glare, and from the outermost rim of desolation

+came dancing "dust-devils" whirling and

+gliding through the mazes of their eerie dance. "I

+think sometimes," said Judith, "that they are the

+ghosts of those who have died of thirst in the

+desert."</p>

+

+<p>Mary shuddered imperceptibly. "How do you

+stand it with never a glimpse of the sea?"</p>

+

+<p>"You'll love it, or hate it; the desert is too jealous

+for half measures. As for the sea"&mdash;Judith

+shrugged her fine shoulders&mdash;"from all I've heard

+of it, it must be very wet."</p>

+<pb n="065" />

+<anchor id="Pg065" />

+

+<p>Each felt a reticence about broaching the subject

+uppermost in her thoughts&mdash;Judith from the instinctive

+tendency towards secretiveness that was

+part of the heritage of her Indian blood; Mary because

+the subject so closely concerned this girl for

+whom she felt such genuine admiration.</p>

+

+<p>Judith finally brought up the matter with an

+abruptness that scarce concealed her anxiety.</p>

+

+<p>"You saw my brother yesterday at Mrs. Clark's

+eating-house; will you be good enough to tell me just

+what happened?"</p>

+

+<p>Mary related the incident in detail, Judith cross-examining

+her minutely as to the temper of the

+men at table towards Jim. Did she know if any

+cattle-men were present? Did she hear where her

+brother had gone?</p>

+

+<p>Mary had heard nothing further after he had left

+the eating-house; the only one she had talked to

+had been Mrs. Clark, whose sympathy had been

+entirely with Jim. Judith thanked her, but in

+reality she knew no more now than she had heard

+from Major Atkins.</p>

+

+<p>Judith now stopped in their walk and stood

+facing the road as it rolled over the foot-hills&mdash;a

+skein of yellow silk glimmering in the sun. Then

+Mary saw that the object spinning across it in the

+distance, hardly bigger than a doll's carriage, was

+the long-delayed stage. She spoke to the postmistress,

+but apparently she did not hear&mdash;Judith

+was watching the nearing stage as if it might bring

+some message of life and death. She stood still,

+and the drooping lines of her figure straightened,

+<pb n="066" />

+<anchor id="Pg066" />

+every fibre of her beauty kindled. She was like

+a flame, paling the sunlight.</p>

+

+<p>And presently was heard the uncouth music of

+sixteen iron-shod hoofs beating hard from the earth

+rhythmic notes which presently grew hollow and

+sonorous as they came rattling over the wooden

+bridge that spanned the creek.</p>

+

+<p>"Chugg!" exclaimed Leander, rushing to the door

+in a tumult. There was something crucial in the

+arrival of the delayed stage-driver. His delinquencies

+had deflected the course of the travellers,

+left them stranded in a remote corner of the wilderness;

+but now they should again resume the thread

+of things; Chugg's coming was an event.</p>

+

+<p>"'Tain't Chugg, by God!" said Leander, impelled

+to violent language by the unexpected.</p>

+

+<p>"It's Peter Hamilton!" exclaimed Mrs. Dax.</p>

+

+<p>"Land's sakes, the New-Yorker!" said the fat

+lady. Only Judith said nothing.</p>

+

+<p>Mr. Hamilton held the ribbons of that battered

+prairie-stage as if he had been driving past the

+judges' bench at the Horse Show. Furthermore, he

+wore blue overalls, a flannel shirt, and a sombrero,

+which sartorial inventory, while it highly became

+the slim young giant, added an extra comedy touch

+to his rÃīle of whip. He was as dusty as a miller;

+close-cropped, curly head, features, and clothes were

+covered with a fine alkali powdering; but he carried

+his youth as a banner streaming in the blue. And

+he swung from the stage with the easy flow of

+muscle that is the reward of those who live in the

+saddle and make a fine art of throwing the lariat.</p>

+<pb n="067" />

+<anchor id="Pg067" />

+

+<p>They greeted him heartily, all but Judith, who did

+not trust herself to speak to him before the prying

+eyes of Mrs. Dax, and escaped to the house. Chugg's

+latest excursion into oblivion had resulted in a fall

+from the box. He was not badly hurt, and recuperation

+was largely a matter of "sleeping it off,"

+concluded Peter Hamilton's bulletin of the condition

+of the stage-driver. So the travellers were still

+marooned at Dax's, and the prospect of continuing

+their journey was as vague as ever.</p>

+

+<p>"Last I heard of you," said Mrs. Dax to Hamilton,

+with a sort of stone-age playfulness, "you was

+punching cows over to the Bitter Root."</p>

+

+<p>"That's true, Mrs. Dax"&mdash;he gave her his most

+winning smile&mdash;"but I could not stay away from

+you long."</p>

+

+<p>Leander grimaced and rubbed his hands in an

+ecstasy of delight at finding a man who had the

+temerity to bandy words with Mrs. Dax.</p>

+

+<p>"Hum-m-m-ph!" she whinnied, with equine

+coquetry. "Guess it was rustlers brought you back

+as much as me."</p>

+

+<p>Judith, who had entered the room in time to hear

+Mrs. Dax's last remark, greeted him casually, but

+her eyes, as they met his, were full of questioning

+fear. Had he come from the Bitter Root range to

+hunt down her brother? The thought was intolerable.

+Yet, when he had bade her good-bye

+some three weeks ago, he had told her that he did

+not expect to return much before the fall "round-up."

+She had heard, a day or two before, that he

+was again in the Wind River country, and her morning

+<pb n="068" />

+<anchor id="Pg068" />

+vigil beneath the glare of the desert sun had

+been for him.</p>

+

+<p>Mrs. Dax regarded them with the mercilessness

+of a death-watch; she remembered the time when

+Hamilton's excuses for his frequent presence at the

+post-office had been more voluble than logical. But

+now he no longer came, and Judith, for all her

+deliberate flow of spirits, did not quite convince

+the watchful eyes of Leander's lady&mdash;the postmistress

+was a trifle too cheerful.</p>

+

+<p>"Mrs. Dax," pleaded Peter, boyishly, "I'm

+perishing for a cup of coffee, and I've got to get

+back to my outfit before dark."</p>

+

+<p>"Oh, go on with you," whinnied the gorgon; but

+she left the room to make the coffee.</p>

+

+<p>Judith's eyes sought his. "Why don't you and

+Leander form a coalition for the overthrow of the

+enemy?" His voice had dropped a tone lower than

+in his parley with Mrs. Dax; it might have implied

+special devotion, or it might have implied but the

+passing tribute to a beautiful woman in a country

+where women were few&mdash;the generic admiration

+of all men for all women, ephemerally specialized

+by place and circumstance.</p>

+

+<p>But Judith, harassed at every turn, heart-sick

+with anxiety, had anticipated in Peter's coming, if

+not a solution of her troubles, at least some evidence

+of sustaining sympathy, and was in no mood for

+resuscitating the perennial pleasantries anent

+Leander and his masterful lady.</p>

+

+<p>The shrilling of the locusts emphasized their

+silence. She spoke to him casually of his change of

+<pb n="069" />

+<anchor id="Pg069" />

+plan, but he turned the subject, and Judith let the

+matter drop. She was too simple a woman to

+stoop to oblique measures for the gaining of her

+own ends. If he was here to hunt down her brother,

+if he was here to see the Eastern woman at the

+Wetmore ranch&mdash;well, "life was life," to be taken

+or left. Thus spoke the fatalism that was the

+heritage of her Indian blood.</p>

+

+<p>The thought of Miss Colebrooke at Wetmore's

+reminded her of a letter for Peter that had been

+brought that morning by one of the Wetmore cow-boys.</p>

+

+<p>"I forgot&mdash;there's a letter for you." She went to

+the pigeon-holes on the wall that held the flotsam

+and jetsam of unclaimed mail, and brought him a

+square, blue linen envelope&mdash;distinctly a lady's

+letter.</p>

+

+<p>Peter took it with rather a forced air of magnanimity,

+as if in neglecting to present it to him sooner

+she drew heavily on his reserve of patience. Tearing

+open the envelope, he read it voraciously, read it to

+the exclusion of his surroundings, the world at

+large, and&mdash;Judith. He strode up and down the

+floor two or three times, and called to Leander, who

+was passing:</p>

+

+<p>"Dax, I must have that gray mare of yours right

+away." He went in the direction of the stable,

+without a second glance at the postmistress, and

+presently they saw him galloping off in the opposite

+direction from which he had come. Mrs. Dax came

+in with a tray on which were a pot of coffee and

+sundry substantial delicacies.</p>

+<pb n="070" />

+<anchor id="Pg070" />

+

+<p>"Where's he gone?" she demanded, putting the

+tray down so hard that the coffee slopped.</p>

+

+<p>"I dunno," said Leander. "He said he'd got to

+have the gray mare, saddled her hisself, and rode

+off like hell."</p>

+

+<p>Mrs. Dax looked at them all savagely for the

+explanation that they could not give. In sending

+her out to make coffee she felt that Peter, whom

+she regarded in the light of a weakness, had taken

+advantage of her affections to dupe her in regard

+to his plans.</p>

+

+<p>"Take them things back to the kitchen," she

+commanded Leander.</p>

+

+<p>Mary Carmichael involuntarily glanced at Judith;

+the fall of the leaf was in her cheek.</p>

+

+<p>Peter Hamilton, bowed in his saddle and flogging

+forward inhumanely, bred rife speculation as to

+his destination among the group that watched him

+from the Daxes' front door. Mrs. Dax, who entertained

+so profound a respect for her own omniscience

+that she disdained to arrive at a conclusion

+by a logical process of deduction, was "plumb certain

+that he had gone after 'rustlers!'" Leander, who

+had held no opinions since his marriage except that

+first and all-comprehensive tenet of his creed&mdash;that

+his wife was a person to be loved, honored, and

+obeyed instantly&mdash;agreed with his lady by a process

+of reflex action. The fat lady, who had a commonplace

+for every occasion, didn't "know what we were

+all coming to." Miss Carmichael, who was beginning

+to find her capacity for amazement overstrained,

+alone accepted this last incident with apathy. Mr.

+<pb n="071" />

+<anchor id="Pg071" />

+Hamilton might have gone in swift pursuit of cattle

+thieves or he might be riding the mare to death for

+pure whimsy. Only Judith Rodney, who said nothing,

+felt that he was spurring across the wilderness

+at breakneck speed to see a girl at Wetmore's. But

+her lack of comment caused no ripple of surprise in

+the flow of loose-lipped speculation that served, for

+the time being, to inject a casual interest into the

+talk of these folk, bored to the verge of demoralization

+by long waiting for Chugg.</p>

+

+<p>Judith preferred to confirm her apprehensions regarding

+Hamilton's ride, alone. She knew&mdash;had

+not all her woman's intuitions risen in clamorous

+warning&mdash;and yet she hoped, hoped despairingly,

+even though the dread alternative to the girl at the

+Wetmore ranch threatened lynch law for her brother.

+Her very gait changed as she withdrew from the

+group about the door, covertly gaining her vantage-ground

+inch by inch. The heels of her riding-boots

+made no sound as she stole across the kitchen floor,

+toeing in like an Indian tracking an enemy through

+the forest. The small window at the back of the

+kitchen commanded a view of the road in all its

+sprawling circumlocution. Seen from this prospect,

+it had no more design than the idle scrawlings of

+a child on a bit of paper; but the choice of roads

+to Good and Evil was not fraught with more

+momentous consequences than was each prong of

+that fork towards which Hamilton was galloping.</p>

+

+<p>The right arm swung towards the Wetmore ranch,

+where at certain times during the course of the year

+a hundred cow-punchers reported on the stock that

+<pb n="072" />

+<anchor id="Pg072" />

+grazed in four States. At certain seasons, likewise,

+despite the fact that the ranch was well into the

+foot-hill country, there might be found a New York

+family playing at life primeval with the co-operation

+of porcelain bath-tubs, a French <hi rend="font-style: italic">chef</hi>, and electric

+light.</p>

+

+<p>The left fork of the road had a meaner destiny.

+It dipped straight into desolation, penetrating a naked

+wilderness where bad men skulked till the evil

+they had done was forgotten in deeds that called

+afresh to Heaven for vengeance. It was well away

+on this west fork of the road that they lynched

+Kate Watson&mdash;"Cattle Kate"&mdash;for the crime of loyalty.

+It was she, intrepid and reckless, who threatened

+the horde of masked scoundrels when they came

+to lynch her man for the iniquity of raising a few

+vegetables on a strip of ground that cut into their

+grazing country. And when she, recognizing them,

+masked though they were, threatened them with

+the vengeance of the law, they hanged her with her

+man high as Haman.</p>

+

+<p>Judith watched Hamilton with narrowing eyes.

+And now she was all Indian, the white woman in

+her dead. Only the Sioux watched, and, in the

+patient, Indian style, bided its time. "Cattle

+thieves," "the girl at Wetmore's"&mdash;the words sang

+themselves in her head like an incantation. "Cattle

+thieves" meant her brother, their recognized leader&mdash;her

+brother, who was dearer to her than the heart

+in her breast, the eye in her head, the right hand

+that held together the shambling, uncertain destiny

+of her people. Would he turn to the left, Justice,

+<pb n="073" />

+<anchor id="Pg073" />

+on a pale horse, hunting her brother gallowsward?

+Would he turn towards the right, the impetuous

+lover spurring his steed that he might come swiftly

+to the woman. A pulse in her bosom rose slowly

+until her breath was suspended, then fell again;

+she was still watching, without an outward quiver,

+long after he had turned to the right&mdash;and the

+woman.</p>

+<pb n="074" />

+<anchor id="Pg074" />

+</div>

+

+<div rend="page-break-before: always">

+<head>VI</head>

+<index index="pdf" /><index index="toc" level1="A Daughter Of The Desert" />

+<head type="sub">A Daughter Of The Desert</head>

+

+<p>Judith knew that the name of the girl whose

+letter sent Peter Hamilton vaulting to the saddle

+was Katherine Colebrooke. There had been a deal

+of letter-writing between her and the young cow-puncher

+of late, of which perforce, by a singular

+irony of fate, the postmistress had been the involuntary

+instrument. The correspondence had

+followed a recent hasty journey to New York, undertaken

+somewhat unwillingly by Hamilton in the interest

+of certain affairs connected with the settlement

+of an estate.</p>

+

+<p>The precipitancy of this latest turn of events

+bewildered Judith; but yet a little while&mdash;a matter

+of weeks and days&mdash;and her friendship with Hamilton

+had been of that pleasantly indefinite estate

+situated somewhere on the borderland of romance,

+a kingdom where there is no law but the mutual

+interest of the wayfarers. Judith and Peter had

+been pitifully new at the game of life when the gods

+vouchsafed them the equivocal blessing of propinquity.

+Judith was but lately come from the

+convent at Santa FÃĐ, and Hamilton from the

+<pb n="075" />

+<anchor id="Pg075" />

+university whose honors availed him little in the

+trailing of cattle over the range or in the sweat and

+tumult of the branding-pen. It was a strange

+election of opportunity for a man who had been

+class poet and had rather conspicuously avoided

+athletics during his entire college course. In

+pursuing fortune westward Hamilton did not lack

+for chroniclers who would not have missed a good

+story for the want of an authentic dramatic interpretation

+of his plans. His uncle, said they, who

+had put him through college, was disposed to let

+him sink or swim by his own efforts; or, again, he

+had quarrelled with this same omnipotent uncle

+and walked from his presence with no prospects but

+those within grasp of his own hand. Again, he had

+taken the negative of a fair lady more to heart than

+two-and-twenty is in the habit of taking negatives.

+Peter made no confidences. He went West to punch

+cows for the Wetmore outfit; he was a distant connection

+of the Wetmores through his mother's side

+of the family.</p>

+

+<p>In those days Peter wore his rue&mdash;whether for

+lady fair or for towering prospects stricken down&mdash;with

+a tinge of wan melancholy not unbecoming

+to a gentle aquilinity of profile, softened by the

+grace of adolescence. His instinctive aristocracy

+of manners and taste would have availed him little

+with his new associates had he been a whit less

+manly. But as he shirked no part of the universal

+hardship, they left him his reticence. He even

+came to enjoy a sort of remote popularity as one

+who was conversant with the best&mdash;a nonchalant

+<pb n="076" />

+<anchor id="Pg076" />

+social connoisseur&mdash;yet who realized the stern

+primitive beauties of the range life.</p>

+

+<p>Judith's convent upbringing had conferred on

+her the doubtful advantage of a gentlewoman's

+tastes and bearing, making of her, therefore, an

+alien in her father's house. When Mrs. Atkins,

+who was responsible for her education, realized

+the equivocal good of these things, and saw moreover

+that the girl had grown to be a beauty, she

+offered to adopt her; but Judith, with the pitiful

+heroism of youth that understands little of what it

+is renouncing, thought herself strong enough to hold

+together a family, uncertain of purpose as quicksilver.</p>

+

+<p>In those tragic days of readjustment came Peter

+Hamilton, as strange to the bald conditions of

+frontier life as the girl herself. From the beginning

+there had been between them the barrier of circumstance.

+Hamilton was poor, Judith the mainstay

+of a household whose thriftlessness had become

+a proverb. He came of a family that numbered a

+signer of the Declaration of Independence, a famous

+chief-justice, and the dean of a great university;

+Judith was uncertain of her right to the very name

+she bore. And yet they were young, he a man,

+she a woman&mdash;eternal fountain of interest. A

+precocious sense of the fitness of things was the

+compass that enabled Peter to steer through the

+deep waters in the years that followed. But the

+girl paid the penalty of her great heart; in that

+troublous sea of friendship, she was soon adrift

+without rudder, sail, or compass.</p>

+<pb n="077" />

+<anchor id="Pg077" />

+

+<p>Judith was now eight-and-twenty, and a sculptor

+would have found a hundred statues in her. Long

+of limb, deep-bosomed, youth and health radiated

+from her as sparks fly upward. In sunlight, her

+black hair had the bluish iridescence of a ripe plum.

+The eyes were deep and questioning&mdash;the eyes of

+a young seraph whose wings had not yet brushed

+the far distant heights of paradise. Again, in her

+pagan gladness of living, she might have been a

+Valkyr come down from Valhalla on a shooting-star.

+And yet, in this wilderness that was famishing for

+woman's love and tears and laughter, by a very

+perversity of fate she walked alone.</p>

+

+<p>She was a true daughter of the desert, the child

+of stark, unlovely circumstance. No well-bred romance

+of book and bells and churchly benediction

+had ushered her into being. Her maternal grandfather

+had been the famous Sioux chief, Flying

+Hawk; her grandmother, a white woman, who knew

+no word of her people's tongue, nor yet her name or

+race. The Indians found the white baby sleeping

+by her dead mother after the massacre of an emigrant

+train. They took her with them and she grew up,

+in the Black Hill country, a white-skinned Sioux,

+marrying a chief of the people that had slain her

+people. She accepted her squaw's portion uncomplainingly;

+slaved cheerfully at squaw's work while

+her brave made war on the whites, hunted, and

+smoked. She reared her half-breed children in the

+legends of their father's people, and died, a withered

+crone, cursing the pale-faces who had robbed the

+Sioux of the buffalo and their hunting-ground.</p>

+<pb n="078" />

+<anchor id="Pg078" />

+

+<p>Her daughter, Singing Stream, who knew no word

+of English, but who could do better bead-work than

+any squaw in the tribe, went to live with Warren

+Rodney when he finished his cabin on Elder Creek.

+That was before the gold fever reached the Black

+Hills, and Rodney built the cabin that he might

+fish and hunt and forget the East and why he left

+it. There were reasons why he wanted to forget his

+identity as a white man in his play at being an Indian.

+In the first flare of youth and the joy of

+having come into her woman's kingdom, the half-breed

+squaw was pretty; she was proud, too, of her

+white man, the house he had built her, and the girl

+pappoose with blue eyes. Furthermore, she had

+been taught to serve man meekly, for he was the

+lord of creation.</p>

+

+<p>Rodney talked Sioux to her. He had all but

+forgotten he was a white man. The girl pappoose

+ran about the cabin, brown and bare, but for the

+bead jacket Singing Stream had made for her in the

+pride of her maternity. Rodney called the little

+girl "Judith." Her Indian mother never guessed

+the significance of the strange name that she could

+not say, but made at least ten soft singing syllables

+of, in the Indian way. The little Judith greeted her

+father in strange lispings; Warren Rodney was far

+from unhappy in playing at primitive man. This

+recessional into conditions primeval endured for

+"seven snows," as the Indian tongue hath it. Then

+the squaw began to break, after the manner of

+the women of her father's people. She had begun

+her race with time a decade after Warren

+<pb n="079" />

+<anchor id="Pg079" />

+Rodney, and she had outdistanced him by a decade.</p>

+

+<p>And then the Tumlins came from Tennessee to

+the Black Hills. They came in an ox-cart, and the

+days of their journey were more than two years.

+They had stopped in Ohio, and again in Illinois;

+and, behold! neither was the promised land, the

+land that their excited imaginations had painted

+from the large talk of returning travellers, and that

+was further glorified through their own thriftless

+discontent with conditions at home. They had

+travelled on and on across half a continent in the

+wake of a vanishing sky-line. The vague westward

+impulse was luring them to California, but they

+waited in Dakota that their starved stock might

+fatten, and while they rested themselves from the

+long journey, Warren Rodney made the acquaintance

+of Sally Tumlin, who rallied him on being a

+"squaw man."</p>

+

+<p>Warren Rodney had almost forgotten the sorceries

+of the women of his people; he had lived so long

+with a brown woman, who spread no silken snares.

+Sally's blushes stirred a multitude of dead things&mdash;the

+wiles of pale women, all strength in weakness,

+fragile flowers for tender handling&mdash;the squaw had

+grown as withered as a raisin.</p>

+

+<p>Now, Sally Tumlin had no convictions about life

+but that the world owed her "a home of her own."

+Her mother had forged the bolt of this particular

+maxim at an early date. And Sally saw from

+precocious observation that the business of women

+was home-getting, to which end they must be neat

+<pb n="080" />

+<anchor id="Pg080" />

+and sweet and sparing of speech. After the home

+was forthcoming, then, indeed, might a woman take

+ease in slippers and wrapper, and it is surely a wife's

+privilege to speak her mind. Sally knew that she

+hated travelling westward after the crawling oxen;

+each day the sun pursued them, caught up with

+them, outdistanced them, and at night left them

+stranded in the wilderness, and rose again and

+mocked them on the morrow. Her father and

+oafish brother loved the makeshifts of the wagon

+life, with its chance shots at fleeing antelope, scurrying

+sage-hens, and bounding cotton-tails; a chance

+parley with a stray Indian but added zest to the

+game of chance. But Sally hated it all. The cabin

+on Elder Creek had a tight roof; Warren Rodney

+had money in the bank. He had had uncommon

+luck at trapping. His talk to Sally was largely of

+his prospects.</p>

+

+<p>Sally knew that the world owed her "a home of

+her own"; and why should she let a squaw keep her

+from it? Sally's mother giggled when consulted.

+She plainly regarded the squaw as a rival of her

+daughter. The ethics of the case, as far as Mrs.

+Tumlin was concerned, was merely a question of

+white skin against brown, and which should carry

+the day. Singing Stream knew not one word of

+the talk, much of which occurred in her very

+presence, that threatened to pull her home about

+her ears, but she knew that Sally was taking her

+man from her. The white-skinned woman wore

+white ruffles about her neck and calico dresses that

+were the color of the wild roses that grew among

+<pb n="081" />

+<anchor id="Pg081" />

+the willows at the creek. Sally Tumlin's pink

+calico gowns sowed a crop of nettles in the mind of

+the squaw. It was the rainbow things, she felt,

+that were robbing her of her man. All her barbaric

+craving for glowing colors asserted itself as a means

+towards the one great end of keeping him. Singing

+Stream began to scheme schemes. One day

+Rodney was splitting wood at the Tumlin camp&mdash;though

+why he should split wood where there were

+two women puzzled the squaw. But the ways of

+the pale-faces were beyond her ken. She only

+knew that she must make herself beautiful in the

+eyes of Warren Rodney, like this devil woman, and

+then perhaps the pappoose that she expected with

+the first snowfall would be a man-child; and she

+hoped great things of this happening.</p>

+

+<p>With such primitive reasoning did Singing Stream

+put the horses to the light wagon, and, taking the

+little Judith with her, drove to Deadwood, a matter

+of two hundred miles, to buy the bright calicoes that

+were to make her like a white woman. It never

+occurred to the half-breed woman to make known

+her plans to Warren Rodney. In circumventing

+Sally Tumlin the man became the spoils of war, and

+it is not the Indian way to tell plans on the war-trail.

+So the squaw left her kingdom in the hands

+of the enemy, without a word.</p>

+

+<p>Sally Tumlin and Warren Rodney looked upon

+the disappearance of the squaw in the light of a

+providential solution of the difficulties attending

+their romance. They admitted it was square of

+her to "hit the trail," and they decided to lose no

+<pb n="082" />

+<anchor id="Pg082" />

+time in going to the army post, where a chaplain,

+an Indian missionary, happened to be staying at

+the time, and have a real wedding, with a ring and

+a fee to the parson. The wedding party started

+for the post, old mother Tumlin fluttering about

+the bride as complacently as if the ceremony had

+been the culmination of the most decorous courtship.

+The oafish brother drove the bridal party, making

+crude jests by-the-way, to the frank delight of the

+prospective groom and the giggling protestations

+of the bride. The chaplain at the post was disposed

+to ask few questions. Parsons made queer marriages

+in those tumultuous days, and it was regarded

+as a patent of worthy motives that the pair should

+call in the man of the gospel at all. To the question

+whether or not he had been married before, Rodney

+answered:</p>

+

+<p>"Well, parson, this is the first time I have ever

+stood up for a life sentence." And the ceremony

+proceeded.</p>

+

+<p>Some of the ladies at the post, hearing that there

+was to be a wedding, dropped in and added their

+smiles and flutterings to the rather grim party;

+among them, Mrs. Atkins, who had just come to

+the post as a bride. They even added a trifle or two

+from their own store of pretty things, as presents to

+Sally. And Miss Tumlin left the post Mrs. Warren

+Rodney, with "a home of her own" to go to.</p>

+

+<p>Singing Stream did not hasten in her quest for

+bright fabrics with which to stay the hand of fate.

+To the half-breed woman the journey to town was

+not without a certain revivifying pleasure. The Indian

+<pb n="083" />

+<anchor id="Pg083" />

+in her stirred to the call of the open country.

+The tight roof to the cabin on Elder Creek had not

+the attractions for her that it had for Sally Tumlin.

+She had chafed sometimes at a house with four walls.

+But now the dead and gone braves rose in her as

+she followed the old trail where they had so often

+crept to battle against their old enemies, the Crows,

+before the white man's army had scattered them.

+And as she drove through the foot-hill country, she

+told the solemn-eyed little Judith the story of the

+Sioux, and what a great fighting people they had

+been before Rodney's people drove them from their

+land. Judith was holding a doll dressed exactly

+like herself, in soft buckskin shirt, little trousers, and

+moccasins, all beautifully beaded. In her turn she

+told the story to the doll.</p>

+

+<p>Singing Stream told her daughter of the making

+of the world, as the Sioux believe the story of

+creation; of the "Four who Never Die"&mdash;Sharper,

+or Bladder, Rabbit, Turtle, and Monster; likewise

+of the coming of a mighty flood on which swam the

+Turtle and a water-fowl in whose bill was the earth

+atom, from which presently the world began to

+grow, Turtle supporting the bird on his great

+back, which was hard like rock. The rest of the

+myth, that deals with the rising and setting of the

+sun, Singing Stream could not tell her daughter, as

+the old Sioux chiefs did not think it wise to let their

+women folk know too much about matters of

+theology. Nor did they relate to squaws the sun

+myth, with its account of much cutting-off of heads&mdash;thinking,

+perhaps, with wisdom, that these good

+<pb n="084" />

+<anchor id="Pg084" />

+ladies saw enough of carnage in their every-day life

+without introducing it into their catechism.</p>

+

+<p>But Singing Stream knew the story of "Sharper,"

+or "Bladder," as he is called by some of the

+people, because he is round and his grotesquely fat

+figure resembles a bladder blown to bursting. Bladder's

+province it is to make a fool of himself,

+diving into water after plums he sees reflected

+there from the branches of the trees. He dives

+again and again in his pursuit of folly, even tying

+stones to his wrists and ankles to keep himself

+down while he gathers the reflected fruit. After

+his rescue, which he fights against valiantly, as he

+lies gasping on the bank of the stream, he sees the

+fruit on the branches above his head. It is this

+same Bladder who is one of the <hi rend="font-style: italic">dramatis personÃĶ</hi>

+in the moon myth, and that is told to women as

+safely without the limits of that little learning that

+is a dangerous thing. Bladder met Rabbit hunting;

+and Bladder kept throwing his eye up into the

+tree-tops to look for game. The Rabbit watched

+him enviously, thinking what a saving of effort it

+would be if he could do the same thing. Wherefore

+Bladder promised to instruct him, telling him to

+change eyes after using one four times, but Rabbit

+did not think that the first time counted, as that

+was but a trial. So he lost his eye after throwing

+it up the fifth time. And the eye of the rabbit is

+the moon, and the face seen in the full moon is the

+reflection of the rabbit seen in his own eye as we

+see ourselves reflected in the eye of a friend if we

+look closely. The little girl was wonderfully impressed.

+<pb n="085" />

+<anchor id="Pg085" />

+She put her hand to her own eyes, but they

+were in tight, too tight to throw up to the tree-tops.</p>

+

+<p>Singing Stream also told little Judith that the

+Great Mystery had shown truths, hid to man, to the

+trees, the streams, the hills; and the clouds that

+shaped themselves, drifting hither and yon, were

+the Great Mystery's passing thoughts. But he had

+deprived all these things of speech, as he did not

+trust them fully, and they could only speak to man

+in dreams, or in some passing mood, when they

+could communicate to him the feeling of one of the

+Great Spirits, and warn man of what was about

+to befall him. Judith was not quite four when she

+took this memorable drive with her mother, but the

+impression of these things abided through all her

+years. It was to the measureless spaces of desert

+loneliness that she learned to bring her sorrows in

+the days of her arid youth, and to feel a kinship

+with all its moods and to hear in the voice of its

+silence a never-failing consolation.</p>

+

+<p>And when they had come within a mile of Warren

+Rodney's cabin on Elder Creek, Singing Stream

+halted and prepared for the great event of reinstatement.

+First she made a splendid toilet of purple

+calico torn into strips and tied about the waist to

+simulate the skirts of the devil woman. Over these

+she wore a shirt of buckskin, broidered with beads

+of many colors, and a necklace of elk teeth, wound

+twice about the throat. On her feet she wore new

+moccasins of tanned elk-hide, and these, too, were

+beaded in many colors. Her hair, now braided with

+strips of scarlet flannel, hung below the waist. And

+<pb n="086" />

+<anchor id="Pg086" />

+she walked to Rodney's cabin, not as an outgrown

+mistress, but as the daughter of a chief. The little

+Judith held up her head and clung tight to the doll.

+She knew that something of moment was about to

+happen.</p>

+

+<p>The gala trio, Singing Stream, Judith, and Judith's

+doll, presented themselves at Rodney's house, before

+which the bride was washing clothes, the day being

+fine. Sally, as usual, wore one of the rose-colored

+calicoes with the collar turned well in and the sleeves

+rolled above the elbows. She washed vigorously,

+with a steady splashing of suds. Sally enjoyed this

+home of her own and all the household duties

+appertaining to it. She was singing, and a strand

+of pale-brown hair, crinkly as sea-weed, had blown

+across the rose of her cheek, when she felt rather

+than saw a shadow fall across her path, and, glancing

+up, she saw facing her the woman whom she

+had supplanted, and the solemn-eyed little girl

+holding tight to her doll. Now, neither woman

+knew a word of the other's speech, but Sally was

+proficient in the language of femininity, and she was

+not at a loss to grasp the significance of the purple

+calico, the beaded buckskin shirt, and the necklace

+of elk teeth. The half-breed walked as a chief's

+daughter to the woman at the tub, and Sally grew

+sick and chill despite her white skin and the gold

+ring that made Warren Rodney her man in the face

+of the law. The dark woman held Judith proudly

+by the hand, as a sovereign might carry a sceptre.

+Judith was her staff of office, her emblem of authority

+in the house of Warren Rodney.</p>

+<pb n="087" />

+<anchor id="Pg087" />

+

+<p>Singing Stream held out her hands to Sally

+in a gesture of appeal&mdash;and blundered. Of the

+chief's daughter, walking proudly, Sally was afraid;

+but a supplicating half-breed in strips of purple

+calico, not even hemmed, was a matter for merriment.

+Sally put her hands on her hips, arms

+akimbo, and laughed a dry cackle. The light in

+the brown woman's eyes, as she looked at the white,

+was like prairie-fires rolling forward through darkness.

+There was no need of a common speech between

+them. The whole destiny of woman was in

+the laugh and the look that answered it.</p>

+

+<p>And the man they could have murdered for came

+from the house, an unheroic figure with suspenders

+dangling and a corncob pipe in his mouth, sullen,

+angry, and withal abjectly frightened, as mere man

+inevitably is when he sniffs a woman's battle in the

+air. The bride, at sight of her husband, took to

+hysterics. She wept, she laughed, and down tumbled

+her hair. She felt the situation demanded a scene.

+Rodney, with a marital brevity hardly to be expected

+so soon, commanded Sally to go into the

+house and to "shut up."</p>

+

+<p>Then he faced Singing Stream and said to her in

+her own language: "You must go away from here.

+The pale-faced woman is my wife by the white man's

+law&mdash;ring and Bible. No Indian marriage about

+this."</p>

+

+<p>But the brown woman only pointed to Judith.

+She asked Rodney had she not been a good squaw

+to him.</p>

+

+<p>And Rodney, who at best was but a poltroon,

+<pb n="088" />

+<anchor id="Pg088" />

+could only repeat: "You got to keep away from

+here. It's the white man's law&mdash;one squaw for

+one man."</p>

+

+<p>From within came the sound of Sally's lamentation

+as she called for her father and brother to take

+her from the squaw and contamination. Warren

+Rodney was a man of few words. It had become

+his unpleasant duty to act, and to act quickly. He

+snatched Judith from her mother and took her into

+the house, and he returned with his Winchester,

+which was not loaded, to Singing Stream.</p>

+

+<p>"You got to go," he said, and levelling the

+Winchester, he repeated the command. Singing

+Stream looked at him with the dumb wonder of a

+forest thing. "I was a good squaw to you," she

+said; and did not even curse him. And turning, she

+ran towards the foot-hills, with all the length of purple

+calico trailing.</p>

+

+<p>Now Mrs. Rodney, <hi rend="font-style: italic">nÃĐe</hi> Tumlin, was but human,

+and her cup of happiness as the wife of a "squaw

+man" was not the brimming beaker she had anticipated.

+The expulsion of her predecessor, at such

+a time, to make room for her own home-coming,

+was, it seemed, open to criticism. "The neighborhood"&mdash;it

+included perhaps five families living in a

+radius of as many hundred miles&mdash;felt that the

+Tumlins had established a bad precedent. A "squaw

+man" driving out a brown wife to make room for a

+white is not a heroic figure. It had been done before,

+but it would not hand down well in the traditions of

+the settling of this great country. Trespass of law

+and order, with their swift, red-handed reckoning,

+<pb n="089" />

+<anchor id="Pg089" />

+were but moves of the great game of colonization.

+But to shove out a brown woman for a white was

+a mean move. Few stopped at the Rodneys' ranch,

+though it marked the first break in the journey

+from town to the gold-mining country. Rodney

+had fallen from his estate as a pioneer; his political

+opinions were unsought in the conclaves that sat

+and spat at the stove, when business brought them

+to the joint saloon and post-office. The women dealt

+with the question more openly, scorning feminine

+subtlety at this pass as inadequate ammunition.

+When they met Mrs. Rodney they pulled aside their

+skirts and glared. This outrage against woman it

+was woman's work to settle.</p>

+

+<p>Mrs. Rodney, who had no more moral sense than

+a rabbit, felt that she was the victim of persecution.

+She knew she was a good woman. Hadn't she a

+husband? Had there ever been a word against her

+character? What was the use of making all that

+fuss over a squaw? It was not as if she was a white

+woman. The injustice of it preyed on the former

+Miss Tumlin. She took to the consolations of snuff-dipping

+and fell from her pink-and-white estate.</p>

+

+<p>The Tumlin family did not remain long enough

+in the Black Hill country to witness Sally's failure

+as the wife of a pioneer. The restlessness of the

+"settler," if the paradox be permissible, was in the

+marrow of their bones. The makeshifts of the

+wagon, the adventures of the road, were the only

+home they craved. The spring after Sally's marriage

+they set forth for California, the year following for

+New Mexico, and still sighed for new worlds to visit.

+<pb n="090" />

+<anchor id="Pg090" />

+They were happier now that Sally, the one element

+of discontent, had been removed from their perennial

+journeying by the merciful dispensation of marriage.

+Old Tumlin, his wife, and the son gave themselves

+up more than ever to the day-dreams of the road,

+the freedom of the open country, and the spirit of

+adventure.</p>

+

+<p>Rodney's squaw wife was taken in by some

+neighbors, good folk who were conversant with all

+phases of the romance. They stood by her in her

+hour of trial, and afterwards continued to keep her

+as a servant. Her son Jim grew up with their own

+children. When he was four years of age his

+mother, Singing Stream, died, and Sally persuaded

+her husband to take young Jim into their own

+home, partly as a sop to neighborly criticism, partly

+as a salve to her own conscience. Sally had children

+of her own, and looked at things differently now

+from the time when she fought the squaw for

+Rodney's favor.</p>

+

+<p>Jim's foster-parents were, in truth, glad to part

+with him. From his earliest babyhood he had been

+known as a "limb of Satan." He was an Ishmael

+by every instinct of his being. And Mrs. Warren

+Rodney, <hi rend="font-style: italic">nÃĐe</hi> Tumlin, felt that in dealing with him,

+in her capacity of step-mother, she daily expiated any

+offence that she might have done to his mother.</p>

+

+<p>Sally grew slatternly with increasing maternity.

+She spent her time in a rocking-chair, dipping snuff&mdash;a

+consolation imported from her former home&mdash;and

+lamenting the bad marriage she had made.

+Rodney ascribed his ill-fortune to unjust neighborly

+<pb n="091" />

+<anchor id="Pg091" />

+criticism. He farmed a little, he raised a little

+stock, and he drank a great deal of whiskey. Sally

+hated the Black Hill country. She felt that it

+knew too much about her. The neighborly inquisition

+had fallen like a blight on the family

+fortunes. A vague migratory impulse was on her.

+She wanted to go somewhere and begin all over

+again. By dint of persistent nagging she persuaded

+her husband to move to Wyoming, then in the

+golden age of the cattle industry. Those were days

+when steers, to speak in the cow language, had

+"jumped to seventy-five." The wilderness grew

+light-headed with prosperity. Wonderful are the

+tales still told about those fat years in cattle-land.

+It was in those halcyon days of the Cheyenne Club

+that the members rode from the range, white with

+the dust of the desert, to enjoy greater luxuries than

+those procurable at their clubs in New York.</p>

+

+<p>Nor was it all feasting and merrymaking. A

+heroic band it was that battled with the wilderness,

+riding the range with heat and cold, starvation and

+death, and making small pin-pricks in that empty

+blotch of the United States map that is marked

+"Great Alkali Desert" blossom into settlements.

+When the last word has been said about the pioneers

+of these United States, let the cow-boy be remembered

+in the universal toast, that bronzed son of the

+saddle who lived his little day bravely and merrily,

+and whose real heroism is too often forgotten in the

+glamour of his own picturesqueness.</p>

+

+<p>Judith was ten years old when her father, his

+wife, and their children moved from Dakota&mdash;they

+<pb n="092" />

+<anchor id="Pg092" />

+were not so particular about North and South

+Dakota, in those days&mdash;to take up a claim on

+Sweetwater, Wyoming. Judith gave scant promise

+of the beauty that in later life became at once her

+dower and her misfortune, that which was as likely

+to bring wretchedness as happiness. In Wyoming

+she was destined to find an old friend, Mrs. Atkins,

+who, as the bride of the young lieutenant, had been

+present at the marriage of Sally Tumlin and Warren

+Rodney, and who had always felt a wholly unreasonable

+sense of guilt at witnessing the ceremony

+and contributing a lace handkerchief to the bride.

+Her husband, now Major Atkins, was stationed at

+Fort Washakie, Wyoming. Mrs. Atkins happening

+again on the Rodney family, and her husband having

+increased and multiplied his army pay many

+times over by a successful venture in cattle, the

+scheme of Judith's convent education was put

+through by the major's wife, who had kept her New

+England conscience, the discomforts of frontier posts

+notwithstanding.</p>

+

+<p>So Judith went to the nuns to school, and stayed

+with them till she was eighteen. Mrs. Atkins would

+have adopted her then; but Judith by this time

+knew her family history in all its sordid ramifications,

+and felt that duty called her to her brother, who

+had not improved his unfortunate start in life,

+though his step-mother did not spoil him for the

+staying of the rod.</p>

+<pb n="093" />

+<anchor id="Pg093" />

+</div>

+

+<div rend="page-break-before: always">

+<head>VII</head>

+<index index="pdf" /><index index="toc" level1="Chugg Takes The Ribbons" />

+<head type="sub">Chugg Takes The Ribbons</head>

+

+<p>Chugg, comforted with liquids and stayed with

+a head-plaster, presented himself at the Dax

+ranch just twenty-four hours after he was due.

+His mien combined vagueness with hostility, and

+he harnessed up the stage that Peter Hamilton had

+driven over the day before, when his prospective

+passengers were looking, with a graphic pantomimic

+representation of "take it or leave it." Under the

+circumstances, Miss Carmichael and the fat lady consented

+to be passengers with much the same feeling

+of finality that one might have on embarking for

+the planet Mars in an air-ship.</p>

+

+<p>There was, furthermore, a suggestion of last rites

+in the farewells of the Daxes, each according to their

+respective personalities, that was far from reassuring.</p>

+

+<p>"Here's some bread and meat and a bottle of cold

+coffee, if you live to need it," was Mrs. Dax's grim

+prognostication of accident. Leander, being of an

+emotional nature, could scarce restrain his tears&mdash;the

+advent of the travellers had created a welcome

+variation in the monotony of his dutiful routine&mdash;he

+felt all the agitation of parting with life-long

+<pb n="094" />

+<anchor id="Pg094" />

+friends. Mary Carmichael and Judith promised

+to write&mdash;they had found a great deal to say to each

+other the preceding evening.</p>

+

+<p>Chugg cracked his whip ominously, the travellers

+got inside, not daring to trust themselves to the box.</p>

+

+<p>The journey with the misanthrope was but a

+repetition of that first day's staging&mdash;the sage-brush

+was scarcer, the mountains seemed as far off

+as ever, and the outlook was, if possible, more

+desolate. The entry in Miss Carmichael's diary,

+inscribed in malformed characters as the stage jolted

+over ruts and gullies, reads: "I do not mind telling

+you, in strictest confidence, 'Dere Diary'&mdash;as the

+little boy called you&mdash;that when I so lightly severed

+my connection with civilization, I had no idea to

+what an extent I was going in for the prairie

+primeval. How on earth does a woman who can

+write a letter like Mrs. Yellett stand it? And where

+on the map of North America is Lost Trail?"</p>

+

+<p>"Land sakes!" regretted the fat lady, "but I do

+wish I had a piece of that 'boy's favorite' cake that

+I had for my lunch the day we left town. I just

+ate and ate it 'cause I hadn't another thing to do.

+If I hadn't been so greedy I could offer him a piece,

+just to show him that some women folk have kind

+hearts, and that the whole sect ain't like that

+Pink."</p>

+

+<p>"Boy's favorite," as adequate compensation for

+shattered ideals, a broken heart, and the savings

+of a lifetime, seemed to Mary Carmichael inadequate

+compensation, but she forbore to express her sentiments.</p>

+<pb n="095" />

+<anchor id="Pg095" />

+

+<p>The fat lady had never relaxed her gaze from

+Chugg's back since the stage had started. She

+peered at that broad expanse of flannel shirt through

+the tiny round window, like a careful sailing-master

+sweeping the horizon for possible storm-clouds. At

+every portion of the road presenting a steep decline

+she would prod Chugg in the back with the handle

+of her ample umbrella, and demand that he let

+her out, as she preferred walking. The stage-driver

+at first complied with these requests, but when he

+saw they threatened to become chronic, he would

+send his team galloping down grade at a rate to

+justify her liveliest fears.</p>

+

+<p>"Do you think you are a-picnicking, that you

+crave roominating round these yere solitoodes?"

+And the misanthrope cracked his whip and adjured

+his team with cabalistic imprecations.</p>

+

+<p>"Did you notice if Mrs. Dax giv' him any cold

+coffee, same as she did us?" anxiously inquired the

+fat lady from her lookout.</p>

+

+<p>Mary hadn't noticed.</p>

+

+<p>"He's drinking something out of a brown bottle&mdash;seems

+to relish it a heep more'n he would cold

+coffee," reported the watch. "Hi there! Hi! Mr.

+Chugg!" The stage-driver, thinking it was merely

+a request to be allowed to walk, continued to drive

+with one hand and hold the brown bottle with the

+other. But even his too solid flesh was not proof

+against the continued bombardment of the umbrella

+handle.</p>

+

+<p>"Um-m-m," he grunted savagely, applying a

+watery eye to the round window.</p>

+<pb n="096" />

+<anchor id="Pg096" />

+

+<p>"Nothing," answered the fat lady, quite satisfied

+at having her worst fears confirmed.</p>

+

+<p>Chugg returned to his driving, as one not above

+the weakness of seeing and hearing things.</p>

+

+<p>"'Tain't coffee."</p>

+

+<p>"Could you smell it?" questioned Mary, anxiously.</p>

+

+<p>"You never can tell that way, when they are

+plumb pickled in it, like him."</p>

+

+<p>"Then how did you know it wasn't coffee?"</p>

+

+<p>"His eyes had fresh watered."</p>

+

+<p>Mary collapsed under this expert testimony.

+"What are we going to do about it?"</p>

+

+<p>"Appeal to him as a gentleman," said the fat

+lady, not without dramatic intonation.</p>

+

+<p>"You appeal," counselled Mary; "I saw him look

+at you admiringly when you were walking down

+that steep grade."</p>

+

+<p>"Is that so?" said the fat lady, with a conspicuous

+lack of incredulity; and she put her hand involuntarily

+to her frizzes.</p>

+

+<p>This time she did not trust to the umbrella-handle

+as a medium of communication between the stage-driver

+and herself. Putting her hand through the

+port-hole she grasped Chugg's arm&mdash;the bottle arm&mdash;with

+no uncertain grip.</p>

+

+<p>"Why, Mr. Chugg, this yere place is getting to be

+a regular summer resort; think of two ladies trusting

+themselves to your protection and travelling out

+over this great lonesome desert."</p>

+

+<p>Chugg's mind, still submerged in local Lethe

+waters, grappled in silence with the problem of the

+feminine invasion, and then he muttered to himself

+<pb n="097" />

+<anchor id="Pg097" />

+rather than to the fat lady, "Nowhere's safe

+from 'em; women and house-flies is universally prevailing."</p>

+

+<p>The fat lady dropped his arm as if it had been

+a brand. "He's no gentleman. As for Mountain

+Pink, she was drove to it."</p>

+

+<p>All that day they toiled over sand and sage-brush;

+the sun hung like a molten disk, paling the

+blue of the sky; the grasshoppers kept up their

+shrill chirping&mdash;and the loneliness of that sun-scorched

+waste became a tangible thing.</p>

+

+<p>Chugg sipped and sipped, and sometimes swore

+and sometimes muttered, and as the day wore on

+his driving not only became a challenge to the

+endurance of the horses, but to the laws of gravitation.

+He lashed them up and down grade, he drove

+perilously close to shelving declivities, and sometimes

+he sang, with maudlin mournfulness:</p>

+

+<lg>

+<l rend="margin-left: 2">"'Oh, bury me not on the lone prairie.'</l>

+<l rend="margin-left: 2">The words came low and mournfully</l>

+<l rend="margin-left: 2">From the cold, pale lips of a youth who lay</l>

+<l rend="margin-left: 2">On his dying couch at the close of day."</l>

+</lg>

+

+<p>The fat lady reminded him that he was a gentleman

+and that he was driving ladies; she threatened

+him with her son on Sweetwater, who began, in

+the maternal chronicles, by being six feet in his

+stockings, and who steadily grew, as the scale

+of threats increased, till he reached the altitude of

+six feet four, growing hourly in height and fierceness.</p>

+

+<p>But Chugg gave no heed, and once he sang the

+<pb n="098" />

+<anchor id="Pg098" />

+"Ballad of the Mule-Skinner," with what seemed

+to both terrified passengers an awful warning of

+their overthrow:</p>

+

+<lg>

+<l rend="margin-left: 2">"As I was going down the road,</l>

+<l rend="margin-left: 2">With a tired team and a heavy load,</l>

+<l rend="margin-left: 2">I cracked my whip and the leaders sprung&mdash;</l>

+<l rend="margin-left: 2">The fifth chain broke, and the wheelers hung,</l>

+<l rend="margin-left: 2">The off-horse stepped on the wagon tongue&mdash;"</l>

+</lg>

+

+<p>This harrowing ballad was repeated with accompanying

+Delsarte at intervals during the afternoon,

+but as Mary and the fat lady managed to

+escape without accident, they began to feel that

+they bore charmed lives.</p>

+

+<p>At sundown they came to the road-ranch of

+Johnnie Dax, bearing Leander's compliments as a

+secret despatch. The outward aspect of the place

+was certainly an awful warning to trustful bachelors

+who make acquaintances through the columns of

+<hi rend="font-style: italic">The Heart and Hand</hi>. The house stood solitary in

+that scourge of desolation. The windows and doors

+gaped wide like the unclosed eyes of a dead man on

+a battle-field. Chugg halloed, and an old white

+horse put his head out of the door, shook it upward

+as if in assent, then trotted off.</p>

+

+<p>"That's Jerry, and he's the intelligentest animal

+I ever see," remarked the stage-driver, sobering up

+to Jerry's good qualities, and presently Johnnie

+Dax and the white horse appeared together from

+around the corner of the house.</p>

+

+<p>This Mr. Dax was almost an exact replica of the

+other, even to the apologetic crook in the knees

+<pb n="099" />

+<anchor id="Pg099" />

+and a certain furtive way of glancing over the

+shoulder as if anticipating missiles.</p>

+

+<p>"Pshaw now, ladies! why didn't you let me know

+that you was coming? and I'd have tidied up the

+place and organized a few dried-apple pies."</p>

+

+<p>"Good house-keepers don't wait for company to

+come before they get to their work," rebukefully

+commented the fat lady.</p>

+

+<p>Mr. Dax, recognizing the voice of authority, seized

+a towel and began to beat out flies, chickens, and

+dogs, who left the premises with the ill grace of

+old residents. Two hogs, dormant, guarded either

+side of the door-step and refused so absolutely to

+be disturbed by the flicking of the towel that

+one was tempted to look twice to assure himself

+that they were not the fruits of the sculptor's

+chisel.</p>

+

+<p>"Where's your wife?" sternly demanded the fat

+lady.</p>

+

+<p>"Oh, my Lord! I presume she's dancin' a whole

+lot over to Ervay. She packed her ball-gown in a

+gripsack and lit out of here two days ago, p'inting

+that way. A locomotive couldn't stop her none

+if she got a chance to go cycloning round a dance."</p>

+

+<p>In the mean time, the two hogs having failed to

+grasp the fact that they were <hi rend="font-style: italic">de trop</hi>, continued to

+doze.</p>

+

+<p>"Come, girls, get up," coaxed Johnnie, persuasively.

+"Maude, I don't know when I see you so lazy.

+Run on, honey&mdash;run on with Ethel." For Ethel, the

+piebald hog, finally did as she was bid.</p>

+

+<p>Mary Carmichael could not resist the temptation

+<pb n="100" />

+<anchor id="Pg100" />

+of asking how the hogs happened to have such

+unusual names.</p>

+

+<p>"To tell the truth, I done it to aggravate my wife.

+When I finds myself a discard in the matrimonial

+shuffle, I figgers on a new deal that's going to

+inclood one or two anxieties for my lady partner&mdash;to

+which end&mdash;viz., namely, I calls one hawg Ethel

+and the other hawg Maude, allowing to my wife

+that they're named after lady friends in the East.

+Them lady friends might be the daughters of

+Ananias and Sapphira, for all they ever happened,

+but they answers the purpose of riling her same as

+if they were eating their three squares daily. I have

+hopes, everything else failing, that she may yet quit

+dancing and settle down to the sanctity of the home

+out of pure jealousy of them two proxy hawgs."</p>

+

+<p>"I can just tell you this," interrupted the fat

+lady: "I don't enjoy occupying premises after

+hawgs, no matter how fashionable you name 'em.

+A hawg's a hawg, with manners according, if it's

+named after the President of the United States or

+the King of England."</p>

+

+<p>"That's just what I used to think, marm, of all

+critters before I enjoyed that degree of friendliness

+that I'm now proud to own. Take Jerry now, that

+old white horse&mdash;why, me and him is just like brothers.

+When I have to leave the kid to his lonesome

+infant reflections and go off to chop wood, I just call

+Jerry in, and he assoomes the responsibility of nurse

+like he was going to draw wages for it."</p>

+

+<p>"I reckon there's faults on both sides," said

+the fat lady, impartially. "No natural woman

+<pb n="101" />

+<anchor id="Pg101" />

+would leave her baby to a horse to mind while she

+went off dancing. And no natural man would fill

+his house full of critters, and them with highfalutin

+names. Take my advice, turn 'em out."</p>

+

+<p>Mary did not wait to hear the continuation of the

+fat lady's advice. She went out on the desert to

+have one last look at the west. The sun had taken

+his plunge for the night, leaving his royal raiment of

+crimson and gold strewn above the mountain-tops.</p>

+

+<p>Her sunset reflections were presently interrupted

+by the fat lady, who proposed that they should

+walk till Mr. Dax had tidied up his house, observing,

+with logic, that it did not devolve on them to

+clean the place, since they were paying for supper

+and lodging. They had gone but a little way when

+sudden apprehension caused the fat lady to grasp

+Mary's arm. Miss Carmichael turned, expecting

+mountain-lions, rattlesnakes, or stage-robbers, but

+none of these casualties had come to pass.</p>

+

+<p>"Land sakes! Here we be parading round the

+prairie, and I never found out how that man cooked

+his coffee."</p>

+

+<p>"What difference does it make, if we can drink

+it?"</p>

+

+<p>"The ways of men cooks is a sealed book to you,

+I reckon, or you wouldn't be so unconcerned&mdash;'specially

+in the matter of coffee. All men has got the

+notion that coffee must be b'iled in a bag, and if they

+'ain't got a regular bag real handy, they take what

+they can get. Oh, I've caught 'em," went on the

+fat lady, darkly, "b'iling coffee in improvisations

+that'd turn your stomach."</p>

+<pb n="102" />

+<anchor id="Pg102" />

+

+<p>"Yes, yes," Mary hastily agreed, hoping against

+hope that she wasn't going to be more explicit.</p>

+

+<p>"And they are so cute about it, too; it's next to

+impossible to catch 'em. You ask a man if he b'iles

+his coffee loose or tight, and he'll declare he b'iles it

+loose, knowing well how suspicious and prone to investigate

+is the female mind. But you watch your

+chance and take a look in the coffee-pot, and maybe

+you'll find&mdash;"</p>

+

+<p>"Yes, yes, I've heard&mdash;"</p>

+

+<p>"I've seen&mdash;"</p>

+

+<p>"Let's hurry," implored Mary.</p>

+

+<p>"Have you made your coffee yet?" inquired the

+fat lady.</p>

+

+<p>"Yes, marm," promptly responded Johnnie.</p>

+

+<p>"I hope you b'iled it in a bag&mdash;it clears it beautiful,

+a bag does."</p>

+

+<p>Johnnie shifted uneasily. "No, marm, I b'iles it

+loose. You see, bags ain't always handy."</p>

+

+<p>The fat lady plied her eye as a weapon. No

+Dax could stand up before an accusing feminine eye.

+He quailed, made a grab for the coffee-pot, and

+rushed with it out into the night.</p>

+

+<p>"What did I tell you?" she asked, with an air of

+triumph.</p>

+

+<p>Johnnie returned with the empty coffee-pot. "To

+tell the truth, marm, I made a mistake. I 'ain't

+made the coffee. I plumb forgot it. P'raps you

+could be prevailed on to assist this yere outfit to

+coffee while I organizes a few sody-biscuits."</p>

+

+<p>After supper, when the fat lady was so busy talking

+"goo-goo" language to the baby as to be oblivious

+<pb n="103" />

+<anchor id="Pg103" />

+of everything else, Mary Carmichael took the opportunity

+to ask Johnnie if he knew anything about

+Lost Trail. The name of her destination had come

+to sound unpleasantly ominous in the ears of the

+tired young traveller, and she feared that her inquiry

+did not sound as casual as she tried to have

+it. Nor was Johnnie's candid reply reassuring.</p>

+

+<p>"It's a pizen-mean country, from all I ever heard

+tell. The citizens tharof consists mainly of coyotes

+and mountain-lions, with a few rattlers thrown in

+just to make things neighborly. This yere place"&mdash;waving

+his hand towards the arid wastes which night

+was making more desolate&mdash;"is a summer resort,

+with modern improvements, compared to it."</p>

+

+<p>Mary screwed her courage to a still more desperate

+point, and inquired if Mr. Dax knew a family named

+Yellett living in Lost Trail.</p>

+

+<p>"Never heard of no family living there, excepting

+the bluff at family life maintained by the wild beasts

+before referred to. See here, miss, I ain't makin' no

+play to inquire into your affairs, but you ain't

+thinkin' o' visitin' Lost Trail, be you?"</p>

+

+<p>"Perhaps," said Mary, faintly; and then she, too,

+talked "goo-goo" to the baby.</p>

+<pb n="104" />

+<anchor id="Pg104" />

+</div>

+

+<div rend="page-break-before: always">

+<head>VIII</head>

+<index index="pdf" /><index index="toc" level1="The Rodneys At Home" />

+<head type="sub">The Rodneys At Home</head>

+

+<p>All that long and never-to-be-forgotten night

+the stage lurched through the darkness with

+Mary Carmichael the solitary passenger. The fat

+lady had warned Johnnie Dax that he was on no

+account to replenish Chugg's flask, if he had the

+wherewithal for replenishment on the premises.

+Moreover, she threatened Dax with the fury of her

+son should he fail in this particular; and Johnnie,

+hurt to the quick by the unjust suspicion that he

+could fail so signally in his duty to a lady, not

+only refused to replenish the flask, but threatened

+Chugg with a conditional vengeance in the event

+of accident befalling the stage. It was with a

+partially sobered and much-threatened stage-driver,

+therefore, that Mary continued her journey

+after the supper at Johnnie Dax's, but the

+knowledge of it brought scant reassurance, and

+it is doubtful if the red stage ever harbored any

+one more wakeful than the pale, tired girl who

+watched all the changes from dark to dawn at

+the stage window.</p>

+

+<p>Once or twice she caught a glimpse of distant

+camp-fires burning and knew that some cattle outfit

+<pb n="105" />

+<anchor id="Pg105" />

+was camped there for the night; and once they

+drove so close that she could hear the cow-boys'

+voices, enriched and mellowed by distance, borne

+to them on the cool, evening wind. It gave a sense

+of security to know that these big-hearted, manly

+lads were within call, and she watched the dwindling

+spark of their camp-fires and strained her ears to

+catch the last note of their singing, with something

+of the feeling of severed comradeship. Range cattle,

+startled from sleep by the stage, scrambled to their

+feet and bolted headlong in the blind impulse of

+panic, their horns and the confused massing of their

+bodies showing in sharp silhouette against the

+horizon for a moment, then all would settle into

+quiet again. There was no moon that night, but

+the stars were sown broadcast&mdash;softly yellow stars,

+lighting the darkness with a shaded luster, like

+lamps veiled in pale-yellow gauze. The chill

+electric glitter of the stars, as we know it from

+between the roofs of high houses, this world of

+far-flung distance knows not. There the stars

+are big and still, like the eyes of a contented

+woman.</p>

+

+<p>The hoofs of the horses beat the night away as

+regularly as the ticking of a clock. It grew darker

+as the night wore on, and sometimes a coyote

+would yelp from the fringe of willows that bordered

+a creek in a way that made Mary recall tales of

+banshees. And once, when the first pale streak of

+dawn trembled in the east and the mountains looked

+like jagged rocks heaved against the sky and in

+danger of toppling, the whole dread picture brought

+<pb n="106" />

+<anchor id="Pg106" />

+before her one of Vedder's pictures that hung in

+the shabby old library at home.</p>

+

+<p>They breakfasted somewhere, and Chugg put

+fresh horses to the stage. She knew this from their

+difference of color; the horses that they had left the

+second Dax ranch with had been white, and these

+that now toiled over the sand and desolation were

+apparently brown. She could not be certain that

+they were brown, or that they were toiling over the

+sand and desolation, or that her name was Mary

+Carmichael, or indeed of anything. Four days in

+the train, and what seemed like four centuries in

+the stage, eliminated any certainty as to anything.

+She could only sit huddled into a heap and wait

+for things to become adjusted by time.</p>

+

+<p>Chugg was behaving in a most exemplary manner.

+He drove rigidly as an automaton, and apparently

+he looked no longer on the "lightning" when it was

+bottled. Once or twice he had applied his eye to

+the pane that separated him from his passenger,

+and asked questions relative to her comfort, but

+Mary was too utterly dejected to reply in more than

+monosyllables. As they crept along, the sun-dried

+timbers of the stage creaked and groaned in seeming

+protest at wearing its life away in endless journeyings

+over this desert waste, then settled down into

+one of those maddeningly monotonous reiterations

+to which certain inanimate things are given in

+seasons of nervous tension. This time it was:

+"All the world's&mdash;a stage&mdash;creak&mdash;screech&mdash;all&mdash;the

+world's a stage&mdash;creak&mdash;screech!" over and over

+till Mary found herself fast succumbing to the

+<pb n="107" />

+<anchor id="Pg107" />

+hypnotic effect of the constant repetition, listening

+for it, even, with the tyrannous eagerness of overwrought

+nerves, when the stage-driver broke the

+spell with, "This here stage gets to naggin' me along

+about here. She's hungry for her axle-grease&mdash;that's

+what ails her."</p>

+

+<p>"I suppose," Mary roused herself to say, "you

+have quite a feeling of comradeship for the stage."</p>

+

+<p>"Me and Clara"&mdash;the stage had this name painted

+on the side&mdash;"have been travelling together nigh

+onto four year. And while there's times that I

+would prefer a greater degree of reciprocity, these

+yere silent companions has their advantages. Why,

+compare Clara to them female blizzards&mdash;the two

+Mrs. Daxes&mdash;and you see Clara's good p'ints

+immejit. Yes, miss, the thirst-quenchers are on

+me if either one of the Dax boys wouldn't be glad

+to swap, but I'd have to be a heap more locoed than

+I am now to consent to the transaction."</p>

+

+<p>At sunset the interminable monotony of the

+wilderness was broken by a house of curious architecture,

+the like of which the tired young traveller

+had never seen before, and whose singular candor

+of design made her doubt the evidence of her own

+thoroughly exhausted faculties. The house seemed

+to consist of a series of rooms thrown, or rather

+blown, together by some force of nature rather than

+by formal design of builder or carpenter. The

+original log-cabin of this composite dwelling looked

+better built, more finished, neater of aspect than

+those they had previously stopped at in crossing

+the Desert. Springing from the main building, like

+<pb n="108" />

+<anchor id="Pg108" />

+claws from a crustacean, were a series of rooms

+minus either side walls or flooring. Indeed, they

+might easily have passed for porches of more

+than usually commodious size had it not been for

+the beds, bureaus, chairs, stove with attendant

+pots, kettles, and supper in the course of preparation.

+Seen from any vantage-point in the surrounding

+country, the effect was that of an interior on the

+stage&mdash;the background of some homely drama where

+pioneer life was being realistically depicted. The

+<hi rend="font-style: italic">dramatis persona</hi> who occupied the centre of the

+stage when Mary Carmichael drove up was an

+elderly woman in a rocking-chair. She was dressed

+in a faded pink calico gown, limp and bedraggled,

+whose color brought out the parchment-like hue

+and texture of her skin in merciless contrast. Perhaps

+because she still harbored illusions about the

+perishable quality of her complexion, which gave

+every evidence of having borne the brunt of merciless

+desert suns, snows, blizzards, and the ubiquitous

+alkali dust of all seasons, she wore a pink sun-bonnet,

+though the hour was one past sundown,

+and though she sat beneath her own roof-tree, even

+if lacking the protection of four walls. From the

+corner of her mouth protruded a snuff-brush, so constantly

+in this accustomed place that it had come

+to be regarded by members of her family as part

+and parcel of her attire&mdash;the first thing assumed

+in the morning, the last thing laid aside at night.

+Mary Carmichael had little difficulty in recognizing

+Judith Rodney's step-mother, <hi rend="font-style: italic">nÃĐe</hi> Tumlin&mdash;she who

+had been the heroine of the romance lately recorded.</p>

+<pb n="109" />

+<anchor id="Pg109" />

+

+<p>Mrs. Rodney's interest in the girl alighting from

+the stage was evinced in the palsied motion of the

+chair as it quivered slightly back and forth in place

+of the swinging seesaw with which she was wont to

+wear the hours away. The snuff-brush was brought

+into more fiercely active commission, but she said

+nothing till Mary Carmichael was within a few inches

+of her. Then, shifting the snuff-brush to a position

+more favorable to enunciation, she said: "Howdy?

+Ye be Miz Yellett's gov'ment, ain't ye?" There was

+something threatening in her aspect, as if the office

+of governess to the Yelletts carried some challenging

+quality.</p>

+

+<p>"Government?" repeated Mary, vaguely, her head

+still rumbling with the noise and motion of the

+stage; "I'm afraid I hardly understand."</p>

+

+<p>"Ain't you-uns goin' to teach the Yellett outfit

+ther spellin', writin', and about George Washington,

+an' how the Yankees kem along arter he was in his

+grave an' fit us and broke up the kentry so we had

+ter leave our home in Tennessee an' kem to this

+yere outdacious place, where nobody knows the

+diffunce between aig-bread an' corn-dodger? I war

+a Miss Tumlin from Tennessee."</p>

+

+<p>The rocking-chair now began to recover its accustomed

+momentum. This much-heralded educational

+expert was far from terrifying. Indeed, to

+Mrs. Rodney's hawklike gaze, that devoured every

+visible item of Mary's extremely modest travelling-dress,

+there was nothing so very wonderful about

+"the gov'ment from the East." With a deftness

+compatible only with long practice, Mrs. Rodney

+<pb n="110" />

+<anchor id="Pg110" />

+now put a foot on the round of an adjoining chair

+and shoved it towards Mary Carmichael in hospitable

+pantomime, never once relaxing her continual

+rocking the meantime. Mary took the chair, and

+Mrs. Rodney, after freshening up the snuff-brush

+from a small, tin box in her lap, put spurs to her

+rocking-chair, so to speak, and started off at a brisk

+canter.</p>

+

+<p>"I 'low it's mighty queer you-uns don't recognize

+the job you-uns kem out yere to take, when I call

+it by name." From the sheltering flap of the pink

+sun-bonnet she turned a pair of black eyes full of

+ill-concealed suspicion. "Miz Yellett givin' herself

+as many airs 'bout hirin' a gov'ment 's if she wuz

+goin' to Congress. Queer you don't know whether

+you be one or not!" She withdrew into the sun-bonnet,

+muttering to herself. She could not be

+more than fifty, Mary thought, but her habit of

+muttering and exhibiting her depopulated gums

+while she was in the act of revivifying the snuff-brush

+gave her a cronish aspect.</p>

+

+<p>A babel of voices came from the open-faced room

+on the opposite side of the house corresponding to

+the one in which Mary and Mrs. Rodney were sitting.

+Apparently supper was being prepared by some half-dozen

+young people, each of whom thought he or she

+was being imposed upon by the others. "Hand

+me that knife." "Git it yourself." "I'll tell maw

+how you air wolfing down the potatoes as fast as I

+can fry 'em." "Go on, tattle-tale." This was the

+repartee, mingled with the hiss of frying meat, the

+grinding of coffee, the thumping sound made by

+<pb n="111" />

+<anchor id="Pg111" />

+bread being hastily mixed in a wooden bowl standing

+on a wooden table. The babel grew in volume.

+Dogs added to it by yelping emotionally when the

+smell of the newly fried meat tempted them too

+near the platter and some one with a disengaged

+foot at his disposal would kick them out of doors.

+Personalities were exchanged more freely by members

+of the family, and the meat hissed harder as it

+was newly turned. "Laws-a-massy!" muttered Mrs.

+Rodney; and then, shoving back the sun-bonnet, she

+lifted her voice in a shrill, feminine shriek:</p>

+

+<p>"Eudory! Eu-dory! You-do-ry!"</p>

+

+<p>A Hebe-like creature, blond and pink-cheeked,

+in a blue-checked apron besmeared with grease and

+flour, came sulkily into her mother's presence. Seeing

+Mary Carmichael, she grasped the skirt of the

+greasy apron with the sleight of hand of a prestidigitateur

+and pleated it into a single handful. Her

+manner, too, was no slower of transformation. The

+family sulks were instantly replaced by a company

+bridle, aided and abetted by a company simper.

+"I didn't know the stage was in yet, maw. I

+been talking to Iry."</p>

+

+<p>"This here be Miz Yellett's gov'ment. Maybe

+she'd like to pearten up some before she eats."

+She started the rocking-chair at a gallop, to signify

+to her daughter that she washed her hands of further

+responsibility. Being proficient in the sign language

+of Mrs. Rodney's second self, as indeed was every

+member of the family, Eudora led Mary to a bench

+placed in one of the rooms enjoying the distinction

+of a side wall, and indicated a family toilet service,

+<pb n="112" />

+<anchor id="Pg112" />

+which displayed every indication of having lately

+seen active service. A roll-towel, more frankly significant

+of the multitude of the Rodneys than had

+been the babel of voices, a discouraged fragment

+of comb, a tin basin, a slippery atom of soap, these

+Eudora proffered with an unction worthy of better

+things. "I declare Mist' Chugg have scarce left any

+soap, an' I don't believe thar's 'nother bit in the

+house." Eudora's accent was but faintly reminiscent

+of her mother's strong Smoky Mountain dialect,

+as a crude feature is sometimes softened in the

+second generation. It was not unpleasing on her

+full, rosy mouth. The girl had the seductiveness of

+her half-sister, Judith, without a hint of Judith's

+spiritual quality.</p>

+

+<p>Mary told her not to mind about the soap, and

+went to fetch her hand-bag, which, consistent with

+the democratic spirit of its surroundings, was resting

+against a clump of sage-brush, whither it had

+been lifted by Chugg. Miss Carmichael's individual

+toilet service, which was neither handsome nor

+elaborate, impressed Eudora far more potently in

+ranking Mary as a personage than did her dignity

+of office as "gov'ment."</p>

+

+<p>"I reckon you-uns must have seen Sist' Judy up

+to Miz Dax's. I hope she war lookin' right well."

+There was in the inquiry an unmistakable note of

+pride. The connection was plainly one to be flaunted.

+Judith, with her gentle bearing and her simple,

+convent accomplishments, was plainly the <hi rend="font-style: italic">grande

+dame</hi> of the family. Eudora had now divested herself

+of the greasy, flour-smeared apron, flinging it

+<pb n="113" />

+<anchor id="Pg113" />

+under the wash-bench with a single all-sufficient

+movement, while Mary's look was directed towards

+her dressing-bag. In glancing up to make some

+remark about Judith, Mary was confronted by a

+radiant apparition whose lilac calico skirts looked

+fresh from the iron.</p>

+

+<p>At the side of the house languished a wretched,

+abortive garden, running over with weeds and sage-brush,

+and here a man pottered with the purposeless

+energy of old age, working with an ear cocked in

+the direction of the house, as he turned a spade of

+earth again and again in hopeless, pusillanimous

+industry. But when his strained attention was

+presently rewarded by a shouted summons to supper,

+and he stood erect but for the slouching droop of

+shoulders that was more a matter of temperament

+than of age, one saw a tall man of massive build,

+whose keen glance and slightly grizzled hair belied

+his groping, ineffectual labor. The head, and face

+were finely modelled. Unless nature had fashioned

+them in some vagrant, prankish mood, such

+elegance of line betokened prior generations in

+which gentlemen and scholars had played some part&mdash;the

+vagabond scion of a good family, perhaps. A

+multitude of such had grafted on the pioneer stock

+of the West, under names that carried no significance

+in the places whence they came.</p>

+

+<p>Weakness and self-indulgence there were, and

+those writ large and deep, on the face of Warren

+Rodney; and, in default of an expression of deeper

+significance, the wavering lines of instability produced

+a curiously ambiguous effect of a fine head

+<pb n="114" />

+<anchor id="Pg114" />

+modelled by a 'prentice hand; a lady's copy of the

+Belvidere, attempted in the ardors of the first lessons,

+might approximate it.</p>

+

+<p>A smoking kerosene lamp revealed a supper-table

+of almost institutional proportions. There

+were four sons and two daughters of the Tumlin

+union, strapping lads and lasses all of them, with

+more than a common dower of lusty health and a

+beauty that was something deeper than the perishable

+iridescence of youth. There was Fremont,

+named for the explorer-soldier; there was Orlando,

+named from his mother's vague, idle musings over

+paper-backed literature at certain "unchancy" seasons;

+there was Richards, named from pure policy,

+for a local great man of whom Warren Rodney had

+anticipated a helping hand at the time; there was

+Eudora, whose nominal origin was uncertain, unless

+it bore affiliation to that of Orlando; there was

+Sadie, thus termed to avoid the painful distinctions

+of "old Sally" and "young Sally"; and, lastly,

+like a postscript, came Dan&mdash;with him, fancy, in the

+matter of names, seemed to have failed. Dan was

+now six, a plump little caricature of a man in blue

+overalls, which, as they had descended to him from

+Richards in the nature of an heirloom, reached

+high under his armpits and shortened the function

+of his suspenders to the vanishing point.</p>

+

+<p>Eudora was now sixteen, and the woman-famine

+in all the land had gifted her with a surprising

+precocity. Eudora knew her value and meant to

+make the most of it. Unlike her mother in the old

+Black Hill days, she expected more than a "home

+<pb n="115" />

+<anchor id="Pg115" />

+of her own." To-night four suitors sat at table with

+Eudora, and she might have had forty had she

+desired it. Any one of the four would have cheerfully

+murdered the remaining three had opportunity

+presented itself. Supper was a mockery to them,

+a Barmecide feast. Each watched his rivals&mdash;and

+Eudora. This was a matter of life and death.

+There was no time for food. The girl revelled in

+the situation to the full of her untaught, unthinking,

+primitive nature. She gave the incident a tighter

+twist by languishing at them in turns. She smiled,

+she sighed, she drove them mad by taking crescent

+bites out of a slice of bread and exhibiting the havoc

+of her little, white teeth with a delectably dainty

+gluttony.</p>

+

+<p>Her mother, mumbling her supper with toothless

+impotency, renewed her youth vicariously, and,

+while she quarrelled with her daughter from the

+rising of the sun to the setting of the same, she

+added the last straw to the burden of the distracted

+suitors by announcing what a comfort Eudora was

+to her and how handy she was about the house.</p>

+

+<p>Warren Rodney supported the air of an exile at

+his own table. Beyond a preliminary greeting to

+his daughter's guests, he said nothing. His family,

+in their dealings with him, seemed to accord him the

+exemptions of extreme age. He ate with the enthusiasm

+of a man to whom meals have become the

+main business in life.</p>

+

+<p>"How's your mine up to Bad Water comin'

+along, Iry?" Orlando inquired, not from any hospitable

+interest in Ira's claim, but because he had

+<pb n="116" />

+<anchor id="Pg116" />

+sundry romantic interests in that neighborhood and

+hoped to make use of the young prospector's interest

+in his sister by securing an invitation to return

+with him. Ira regarded the inquiry in the light

+of a special providence. Here was his chance to

+impress Eudora with the splendor of his prospects

+and at the same time smite the claims of his rivals,

+and behold! a brother of his lady had led the way.</p>

+

+<p>Ira cleared his throat. "They tell me she air

+like to yield a million any day." At this Eudora

+gave him the wealth of her eyes, and her mother

+reached across two of the glowering suitors and

+dropped a hot flapjack on his plate.</p>

+

+<p>"Who sez that she air likely to yield a million

+any day?" inquired Ben Swift, openly flouting such

+prophecy. "Yes, who sez it?" inquired Hawks and

+Taylor, joining forces for the overthrow of the common

+enemy.</p>

+

+<p>"'They sez' is easy talkin', shore 'nuff," mumbled

+Mrs. Rodney, as she helped herself to butter with her

+own knife.</p>

+

+<p>"A sharp from the Smithsonian Institute at Washington,

+he said it, and he has taken back speciments

+with him."</p>

+

+<p>"Ye can't keep lackings from freightin' round

+speciments&mdash;naw, sir, ye can't, not till the fool-killer

+has finished his job." Ben Swift charged the

+table with the statement as the prosecution subtly

+appeals to the high grade of intelligence on the

+part of the jury. The point told. Eudora, wavering

+in her donation of hot flapjacks, gave them to

+Ben Swift.</p>

+<pb n="117" />

+<anchor id="Pg117" />

+

+<p>Hawks now leaned across the table with a sinuous,

+beguiling motion, and, extending his long neck towards

+the prospector, with the air of a turkey-gobbler

+about to peck, he crooned, softly: "Ira, it's a heap

+risky puttin' your faith in maverick sharps that

+trail around the country, God-a'mightying it, renaming

+little, old rocks into precious stones, seein'

+gold mines in every gopher-hole they come to.

+They names your backyard and the rocks appertainin'

+thereunto a heap fashionable, and like as

+not some sucker gives him good money to float the

+trash back East."</p>

+

+<p>Mrs. Rodney, whose partisanship in any discussion

+was analogous to the position of a hen

+perching on a fence unable to decide on which

+side to flutter, was visibly impressed by Hawks's

+presentation of the case. Looking towards her

+daughter from under the eaves of her sun-bonnet,

+she "'lowed she had hearn that Bad Water was hard

+on the skin, an' that it warn't much of a place arter

+all. Folks over thar war mostly half-livers."</p>

+

+<p>Ira, now losing all semblance of policy at being

+thus grievously put down by his possible mother-in-law,

+"reckoned that herdin' sheep over to the

+Basin was a heap easier on the skin than livin' in a

+comf'table house over to Bad Water"&mdash;this as a

+fling at Hawks, who herded a small bunch of sheep

+"over in the Basin."</p>

+

+<p>"Ai-yi," openly scoffed the former Miss Tumlin;

+"talk's cheap before&mdash;" She would have considered

+it indelicate to supply the word "marriage,"

+but by breaking off her sentence before she came

+<pb n="118" />

+<anchor id="Pg118" />

+to the pith of it she continued to maintain the proprieties,

+and at the same time conveyed to her

+audience that she was too old and experienced to

+permit any fledgling from her nest to be caught, for

+want of a warning, by such obvious ante-matrimonial

+chaff as fair promises.</p>

+

+<p>"Laws a massy!" she continued, reminiscently,

+working her toothless jaw to free it from an escaped

+splinter from the snuff-brush. "When me an' paw

+war keepin' comp'ny, satin warn't good enough for

+me. He lowed I wuz to have half creation. Sence

+we wuz married he 'ain't never found time, endurin'

+all these years, to build me a bird-house."</p>

+

+<p>The unbuilt bird-house was the Banquo's ghost

+at the Rodney board, Mrs. Rodney hearkening back

+to it in and out of season. If the family made

+merry over a chance windfall of game or fresh

+vegetables, a prospect of possible employment for

+one of the boys, a donation of money from Judith,

+Mrs. Rodney remembered the unbuilt bird-house

+and indulged herself to the full of melancholy. It is

+not improbable that, if she had been asked to name

+the chiefest disappointment of her wretched married

+life, she would have mentioned the bird-house that

+was never built.</p>

+

+<p>At mention of it Warren Rodney murmured broken,

+deprecatory excuses. His dull eyes nervously

+travelled about the table for some one to make

+excuses for him. The family broke into hearty peals

+of laughter; the tragedy of the first generation had

+grown to be the unfailing source of merriment for

+the second.</p>

+<pb n="119" />

+<anchor id="Pg119" />

+

+<p>"Maw," began Orlando, "the reason you don't

+get no bird-house built out hyear is that they ain't

+no birds. We have offered time and time again to

+build you a house fo' buzzuds, they bein' the only

+birds hyearabouts, but you 'low that you ain't

+fav'ble to tamin' 'em."</p>

+

+<p>"I wuz raised in Tennessee, an' we-uns had a house

+for martins made out'n gourds, an' it was pearty."

+The pride with which she repeated this particular

+claim to honor in an alien land never diminished with

+repetition. As she advanced further through the

+dim perspective of years, the little mountain town

+in Tennessee became more and more the centre of

+cultivation and civic importance. The desolate

+cabin that she had left for the interminable journey

+westward was recalled flatteringly through the

+hallowing mists of time. The children, by reason

+of these chronicles, had grown to regard their

+mother as a sort of princess in exile.</p>

+

+<p>"Mrs. Rodney"&mdash;Swift leaned towards her and

+whispered something in her ear. She regarded him

+tentatively, then grinned. At her time of life, why

+should she put faith in the promises of men? "You

+fix it up, an' you get your bird-house," was the

+conclusion of his sentence.</p>

+

+<p>While this discussion had been in progress the

+viands had not been neglected except by such members

+of the company as had been bereft of appetite

+by loftier emotions&mdash;in consequence of which the

+table appeared to have sustained a visitation of

+seventeen-year locusts. Eudora, ever economic in

+the value she placed not only upon herself but her

+<pb n="120" />

+<anchor id="Pg120" />

+environment, proposed to her guests that they should

+wash the dishes, an art in which they were by no

+means deficient, being no exception to the majority

+of range bachelors in their skill in homely pursuits.

+And thus it came to pass that Eudora's suitors,

+swathed in aprons, meekly washed dishes shoulder

+to shoulder, while their souls craved the performance

+of valorous deeds.</p>

+

+<p>As this was the last stage station on the way to

+Lost Trail, Mary Carmichael was perforce obliged

+to content herself till Mrs. Yellett should call or

+send for her. After supper, Chugg, with fresh

+horses to the stage, left Rodney's, apparently for

+some port in that seemingly pathless sea of foot-hills.

+That there should be trails and defined routes

+over this vast, unvaried stretch of space seemed more

+wonderful to Mary than the charted high-roads of

+the Atlantic. The foot-hills seemed to have grown

+during the long journey till they were foot-hills no

+longer; they had come to be the smaller peaks of

+the towering range that had formed the spine of the

+desert. The air, that seemed to have lost some of

+its crystalline quality on the flat stretches of the

+plains, was again sparkling and heady in the clean

+hill country. It stirred the pulses like some rare

+vintage, some subtle distillation of sun-warmed

+fruit that had been mellowing for centuries.</p>

+

+<p>Very lonely seemed the Rodney home among the

+great company of mountains. A brooding desolation

+had settled on it at close of day, and all the

+laughter and light footsteps and gayly ringing

+voices of the young folk could not dispel the feeling

+<pb n="121" />

+<anchor id="Pg121" />

+of being adrift in a tiny shell on the black waters

+of some unknown sea; or thus it seemed to the

+stranger within their gate.</p>

+

+<p>Mrs. Rodney retired within the flap of her sun-bonnet

+after the evening meal, settling herself in

+the rocking-chair as if it were some sort of conveyance.

+Her family, who might have told the

+hour of day or her passing mood by the action of

+the chair, knew by her pacific gait that she would

+lament the unbuilt bird-house no more that night.

+The snuff-brush, newly replenished from the tin

+box, kept perfect time to the motion of the chair.

+With the lady of the house it was one of the brief

+seasons of passing content vouchsafed by an ample

+meal and a good digestion.</p>

+

+<p>Warren Rodney took down a gun from the wall

+and began to clean it. His hands had the fumbling,

+indefinite movements, the obscure action, directed

+by a brain already begun to crumble. His industry

+with the gun was of a part with the impotent

+dawdling in the garden. His eyes would seek for

+the rag or the bottle of oil in a dull, glazed way, and,

+having found them, he would forget the reason of

+his quest. Not once that evening had they rested

+on his wife or any member of his family. He had

+shown no interest in any of the small happenings

+of home, the frank rivalry of Eudora's suitors, the

+bickerings of the girls and boys over the division

+of household labor. The one thing that had momentarily

+aroused his somnolent intelligence was a

+revival of his wife's plaint anent the unbuilt bird-house.

+That, and a certain furtive anxiety during

+<pb n="122" />

+<anchor id="Pg122" />

+supper lest his daughter Eudora should forget to

+keep his plate piled high, were the only signs of a

+participation in the life about him.</p>

+

+<p>From one of the rooms that opened to the world

+like a stage to the audience, Mrs. Rodney kept her

+evening vigil. The last faint amethystine haze on

+the mountains was deepening. They towered about

+the valley where the house lay, with a challenging

+immensity, mocking the pitiful grasp of these

+pygmies on the thousand hills. The snow on the

+taller of the peaks still held the high lights. But

+all the valleys and the spaces between the mountains

+were wrapped in sombre shadows; the crazy house

+invading the great company of mountains, penetrating

+brazenly to the very threshold of their

+silent councils, seemed but a pitiful ant-hill at the

+mercy of some possible giant tread. The ill-adjusted

+family, disputing every inch of ground with

+the wilderness, became invested with a dignity

+quite out of keeping with its achievements. Their

+very weaknesses and vanities, old Sally still clinging

+to her sun-bonnet and her limp rose-colored skirts,

+an eternal requiem for the dead and gone complexion,

+lost the picturesqueness of the pioneer and

+ranked as universal qualities, admissible in the

+austerest setting. Perhaps in some far distant council

+of the Daughters of the Pioneers a prospective

+member of the house of Rodney would unctuously

+announce: "My great-great-grandmother was a

+Miss Tumlin of Tennessee; great-great-grandfather's

+first wife had been a Sioux squaw. Isn't it interesting

+and romantic?"</p>

+<pb n="123" />

+<anchor id="Pg123" />

+

+<p>Eudora now came to her mother with great news.

+Hawks had taken the first opportunity of being

+alone with her to tell her of Jim's release from jail

+and of his abortive encounter with Simpson in the

+eating-house. He had not deferred the telling from

+any feeling of reticence regarding the disclosure of

+family affairs before strangers. News travels in

+the desert by some unknown agency. Twenty-four

+hours after a thing happened it would be safe

+to assume that every cow and sheep outfit in a

+radius of three hundred miles would be discussing

+it over their camp-fires; and this long before there

+was an inch of telegraph wire or a railroad tire in

+the country. Hawks had merely reserved the news

+for Eudora's private ear because he hoped thus to

+gain an advantage over his three rivals.</p>

+

+<p>"Ai-yi!" said old Sally, sharply, and the chair

+came to an abrupt stand-still. "In the name o'

+Heaven, how kem they to let him out?" Mrs.

+Rodney's knowledge of the law was of the vaguest;

+and if incarceration would keep a prisoner out of

+more grievous trouble, she could not understand

+giving him his freedom. To her the case was

+analogous to releasing a child from the duress of a

+corner and turning him loose to play with matches.

+"How kem they to let him out?" she repeated,

+the still rocking-chair conveying the impersonal

+dignity of the pulpit or the justice-seat. "I 'ain't

+hearn tell of so pearty a couple as the jail an' Jim

+in years."</p>

+

+<p>The meaning that she put into her words belied

+their harsh face-value. With Jim in jail, her mind

+<pb n="124" />

+<anchor id="Pg124" />

+was comparatively at rest about him. She knew

+he had been branding other men's cattle since the

+destruction of his sheep, and she knew the fate of

+cattle-thieves, and that Jim would be no exception

+to the rule. With her purely instinctive maternity,

+she had been fond of Jim. He had been one more

+boy to mother. She harbored no ill-feeling towards

+him that he was not her own. Moreover, she

+wanted no gallows-tree intermingled with the annals

+of her family. It suited her convenience at this

+particular time that Jim should stay in jail. That

+he had been given his freedom loosed the phials of

+her condemnation on the incompetents that released

+him.</p>

+

+<p>"I 'low they wuz grudgin' him the mouthful they

+fed to him, that they ack so outdaciously plumb

+locoed as to tu'n a man out to get hisself hanged.

+An' Jim never wuz a hearty eater. He never seemed

+to relish his food, even when he wuz a growin' kid."</p>

+

+<p>A pale, twinkling point of light, faintly glimmering

+in the vast solitudes above the billowing peaks,

+suddenly burst into a dazzling constellation before

+the girl and her mother. "It's a warning!" shivered

+the old woman. "Some'um's bound to happen."

+She began to rock herself slowly. The thing she

+dreaded had already come to pass in her imagination.

+Jim a free man was Jim a dead man. He was so

+dead that already his step-mother was going on with

+a full acceptance of the idea. She reviewed her

+relationship to him. No, she had nothing to blame

+herself for. He had been more troublesome than

+any of her own children and for that reason she had

+<pb n="125" />

+<anchor id="Pg125" />

+been more liberal with the rod. And yet&mdash;the face

+of the squaw rose before her, wraithlike, accusing!

+"Ai-yi!" she said; but this time her favorite expletive

+was hardly more than a sigh.</p>

+

+<p>"I mind Jim when he first kem to us," she said,

+more to herself than to Eudora, who sat at her feet.

+The impending tragedy in the family had robbed

+her of all the joy in her suitors. They sat on a

+bench on the opposite side of the house, divided

+by the very nature of their interests yet companions

+in misery.</p>

+

+<p>"He wuz scarce four, an' yet he had never been

+broke of the habit of sucking his thumb. Ef he'd

+ben my child, I'd a lammed it out'n him before he'd

+a seen two, but seem' he was aged for an infant

+havin' such practices, I tried to shame him out'n it.

+But, Lord a massy, men folks is hard to shame even

+at four. I hissed at him like a gyander every time

+I seen him do it. Now I'd a knowed better&mdash;I'd

+a sewed it up in a pepper rag."</p>

+

+<p>"What's suckin' his thumb as an infant got to do

+with his gettin' lynched now?" demanded Eudora,

+with the scepticism of the second generation.</p>

+

+<p>"Wait till you-uns has children of your own,"

+sniffed her mother, from the assured position of

+maternal experience, "an' see the infant that's

+allowed to suck its thumb has the makin's in him

+of a felon or a unfortunit." She rocked a slow accompaniment

+to her dismal, prophecy.</p>

+

+<p>Eudora's eyes, big with wonder, were fixed on the

+crouching flank of a distant mountain. Her mother

+broke the silence. Not often did they speak thus

+<pb n="126" />

+<anchor id="Pg126" />

+intimately. Old Sally belonged to that class of

+mothers who feel a pride in their reticent dealings

+with their daughters, and who consider the management

+of all affairs of the heart peculiarly the

+province of youth and inexperience.</p>

+

+<p>But to-night she was prompted by a force beyond

+her ken to speak to the girl. "Eudory, in pickin'

+out one of them men," she jerked her thumb towards

+the opposite side of the house, "git one tha's clar

+o' the trick o' stampedin' round other wimming.

+It's bound to kem back to ye, same as counterfeit

+money."</p>

+

+<p>Eudora giggled. She was of an age when the

+fascinations of curiosity as to the unknown male

+animal prompt lavish conjecture. "I 'lowed they

+all stampeded."</p>

+

+<p>"Yes," leered the old woman&mdash;and she grinned

+the whole horrid length of her empty gums&mdash;"the

+most of 'em does. But you must shet your eyes

+to it. The moment they know you swallow it,

+they's wuthless, like horses that has run away

+once."</p>

+

+<p>"Hark!" said Eudora. "Ain't that wheels?"</p>

+

+<p>"It be," answered her mother. "It be that old

+Ma'am Yellett after her gov'ment."</p>

+<pb n="127" />

+<anchor id="Pg127" />

+</div>

+

+<div rend="page-break-before: always">

+<head>IX</head>

+<index index="pdf" /><index index="toc" level1="Mrs. Yellett And Her &quot;Gov'ment&quot;" />

+<head type="sub">Mrs. Yellett And Her "Gov'ment"</head>

+

+<p>The buckboard drew up to the back or open-faced

+entrance of the Rodney house with a

+splendid sweep, terminating in a brilliantly staccato

+halt, as if to convey to the residents the flattering

+implication that their house was reached via a

+gravelled driveway, rather than across lumpish inequalities

+of prairie overgrown with cactus stumps

+and clumps of sage-brush. From the buckboard

+stepped a figure whose agility was compatible with

+her driving.</p>

+

+<p>No sketchy outline can do justice to Mrs. Yellett

+or her costume. Like the bee, the ant, and other

+wonders of the economy of nature, she was not to

+be disposed of with a glance. And yet there was

+no attempt at subtlety on her part; on the contrary,

+no one could have an appearance of greater candor

+than the lady whose children Mary Carmichael had

+come West to teach. Her costume was a thing apart,

+suggesting neither sex, epoch, nor personal vanity,

+but what it lacked of these more usual sartorial

+characteristics, it more than made up in a passionate

+individualism; an excessively short skirt, so innocent

+of "fit" or "hang" in its wavering, indeterminate

+<pb n="128" />

+<anchor id="Pg128" />

+outline as to suggest the possible workmanship

+of teeth rather than of scissors; and riding-boots

+coming well to the knee, displaying a well-shaped,

+ample foot, perched aloft on the usual high heel

+that cow-punchers affect as the expression of their

+chiefest vanity. But Mrs. Yellett was not wholly

+mannish in her tastes, and to offset the boots she

+wore a bodice of the type that a generation ago used

+to be known as a "basque." It fitted her ample

+form as a cover fits a pin-cushion, the row of jet

+buttons down the front looking as if a deep breath

+might cause them to shoot into space at any moment

+with the force of Mauser bullets.</p>

+

+<p>Such a garb was not, after all, incongruous with

+this original lady's weather-beaten face. Her skin

+was tanned to a fine russet, showing tiny, radiating

+lines about the eyes when they twinkled with

+laughter, which was often. No individual feature

+was especially striking, but the general impression

+of her countenance was of animation and activity,

+mingled with geniality and with native shrewdness.</p>

+

+<p>"Howdy, Miz Yellett," called out old Sally,

+hitching her rocker forward, in an excitement she

+could ill conceal. "You-uns' gov'ment come, an'

+she ain't much bigger'n a lettle green gourd. Don't

+seem to have drawed all the growth comin' to her

+yit."</p>

+

+<p>"In roundin' up the p'ints of my gov'ment, Mis'

+Rodney, you don't want to forget that green gourds

+and green grapes is mighty apt to belong to the

+sour fambly, when they hangs beyant your reach."</p>

+<pb n="129" />

+<anchor id="Pg129" />

+

+<p>"Ai-yi!" grimaced old Sally. "It's tol'able far

+to send East for green fruit. We can take our own

+pep'mint."</p>

+

+<p>The prospective advent of a governess in the

+Yellett family, moreover, one from that mysterious

+centre of culture, the East, had not only rent the

+neighborhood with bitter factions, but had submitted

+the Yelletts to the reproach of ostentation.

+In those days there were no schools in that portion

+of the Wind River country where the Yelletts

+grazed their flocks and herds. Parents anxious to

+obtain "educational advantages"&mdash;that was the

+term, irrespective of the age of the student or the

+school he attended&mdash;sent them, often, with parental

+blindness as to the equivocal nature of the blessing

+thus conferred, to visit friends in the neighboring

+towns while they "got their education." Or they

+went uneducated, or they picked up such crumbs

+of knowledge as fell from the scant parental board.

+But never, up to the present moment, had any one

+flown into the face of neighborly precedent except

+sturdy Sarah Yellett.</p>

+

+<p>Old Sally, in her eagerness to convey that she was

+in no degree impressed with the pedagogical importation,

+like many another belligerent lost the

+first round of the battle through an excess of

+personal feeling. But though down, Sally was by

+no means out, and after a brief session with the

+snuff-brush she returned to the field prepared to

+maintain that the Yellett children, for all their

+pampering in the matter of having a governess

+imported for their benefit, were no better off than

+<pb n="130" />

+<anchor id="Pg130" />

+her own brood, who had taken the learning the gods

+provided.</p>

+

+<p>"Too bad, Miz Yellett, that you-uns had to hire

+that gov'ment without lookin' over her p'ints. I've

+ben takin' her in durin' supper, and she'll never be

+able to thrash 'em past Clem. She mought be able

+to thrash Clem if she got plumb mad, these yere

+slim wimmin is tarrible wiry 'n' active at such times,

+but she'll never be able to thrash beyant her."

+And having injected the vitriolic drop in her neighbor's

+cup of happiness, Old Sally struck a gait on

+her chair which was the equivalent of a gallop.</p>

+

+<p>But Mrs. Yellett was not the sort of antagonist to

+be left gaping on the road, awed to silence by the

+action of a rocking-chair, no matter how brilliant.</p>

+

+<p>"I reckon I can thrash my own children when it's

+needed, without gettin' in help from the East, or

+hereabouts either, for that matter. If other folks

+would only take out their public-spirited reformin'

+tendencies on their own famblies, there'd be a heap

+less lynchin' likely to happen round the country in

+the course of the next ten years."</p>

+

+<p>Old Sally let the home-thrust pass. "Who ever

+hearn tell of a good teacher that wasn't a fine

+thrasher in the bargain?" She swung the chair

+about with a pivotal motion, as if she were addressing

+an assemblage instead of a single listener, and

+then, bethinking herself of a clinching illustration,

+she called aloud to her daughter to bear witness.

+"Eudory! Eu-do-ry! You-do-ry!"</p>

+

+<p>"Ye-'s ma'am," drawled the daughter, coming

+most unwillingly from the open-faced room opposite,

+<pb n="131" />

+<anchor id="Pg131" />

+where she had been inciting all four of the suitors to

+battle.</p>

+

+<p>"What was it they called that teacher down to

+Caspar that larruped the hide off'n the boys?"</p>

+

+<p>"A fine dis-a-<hi rend="font-style: italic">ply</hi>-narian, maw."</p>

+

+<p>"Yes, that's it&mdash;a dis-a-<hi rend="font-style: italic">ply</hi>-narian. What kin a

+lettle green gourd like her know 'bout dis-apply-in?"</p>

+

+<p>"Your remarks shore remind me of a sayin' that

+'the discomfort of havin' to swallow other folks' dust

+causes a heap of anxiety over their reckless driving.'"</p>

+

+<p>Mrs. Yellett flicked her riding-boot with her whip.

+Her voice dropped a couple of tones, her accent

+became one of honeyed sweetness.</p>

+

+<p>"Your consumin' anxiety regardin' my gov'ment

+and my children shore reminds me of a narrative

+appertainin' to two dawgs. Them dawgs was neighbors,

+livin' in adj'inin' yards separated by a fence,

+and one day one of them got a good meaty bone and

+settled hisself down to the enj'yment thereof. And

+his intimate friend and neighbor on the other side

+of the fence, who had no bone to engage his faculties,

+he began to fret hisself 'bout the business of his

+friend. S'pose he was to choke hisself over that

+bone. S'pose the meat disagreed with him. And

+he begins to bark warnin's, but the dawg with

+the bone he keeps right on. But the other dawg

+he dashes hisself again the fence and he scratches

+with his claws. He whines pitiful, he's that anxious

+about his friend. But the dawg with the bone he

+went right on till he gnawed it down to the last

+morsel, and, goin' to the hole in the fence whar his

+<pb n="132" />

+<anchor id="Pg132" />

+friend had kep' that anxious vigil, he says: 'Friend,

+the only thing that consoled me while having to

+endure the anguish of eatin' that bone was the

+thought of your watchful sympathy!' Which bein'

+the case, I'd thank you to tell me whar I can find

+my gov'ment."</p>

+

+<p>"Ai-yi!" said old Sally. "I ain't seein' no bone

+this deal. Just a lettle green gourd 's all I see with

+my strongest specs."</p>

+

+<p>Mary Carmichael, in one of the inner rooms, was

+writing a home letter, which was chiefly remarkable

+for what it failed to relate. It gave long accounts

+of the scenery, it waxed didactic over the future of

+the country; but the adventures of the trip, with her

+incidental acquaintance with the Daxes and Chugg,

+were not recorded. Eudora announced the arrival

+of Mrs. Yellett, and Mary, at the news, dropped the

+contents of her portfolio and started up with much

+the feeling a marooned sailor might have on hearing

+a sail has been sighted. At this particular stage of

+her career Miss Carmichael had not developed the

+philosophy that later in life was destined to become

+her most valuable asset. Her sense of humor no

+longer responded to the vagaries of pioneer life. The

+comedy element was coming a little too thick and

+fast. She was getting a bit heart-sick for a glimpse

+of her own kind, a word with some one who spoke

+her language. And here, at last, was the woman

+who had written such a charming letter, who had

+so graciously intimated that there was room for her

+at the hearth-stone. Mary was, indeed, eager to

+make the acquaintance of Mrs. Yellett.</p>

+<pb n="133" />

+<anchor id="Pg133" />

+

+<p>To the end of her life she never forgot that first

+meeting&mdash;the perfect confidence with which she

+followed Eudora to the open room, the ensuing blank

+amazement, the utter inability to reconcile the Mrs.

+Yellett of the letter with the Mrs. Yellett of fact.

+The lamp on the table, burning feebly, seemed to

+burst into a thousand shooting-stars as the girl

+struggled with her tears. Home was so far, and

+Mrs. Yellett was so different from what she had

+expected! And yet, as she felt her fingers crush

+in the grip of that hard but not unkindly hand,

+there was in the woman's rugged personality a

+sustaining quality; and, thinking again of Archie's

+prospects, Mary was not altogether sorry that she

+had come.</p>

+

+<p>"You be a right smart young maverick not to get

+lost none on this long trail, and no one to p'int you

+right if you strayed," commented Mary's patroness,

+affably. "But we won't roominate here no longer

+than we can help. It's too hard on old Ma'am

+Rodney. She's just 'bout the color of withered

+cabbage now, 'long of me havin' you."</p>

+

+<p>While she talked, Mrs. Yellett picked up Mary's

+trunk and bags and stowed them in the back of the

+buckboard with the ease with which another woman

+might handle pasteboard boxes. One or two

+of the male Rodneys offered to help, but she waved

+them aside and lashed the luggage to the buckboard,

+handling the ropes with the skill of an old

+sailor. The entire Rodney family and the suitors

+of Eudora assembled to witness the departure. "It's

+a heap friendly of you to fret so," was the parting

+<pb n="134" />

+<anchor id="Pg134" />

+stab of Sarah Yellett to Sally Rodney; and she swung

+the backboard about, cleared the cactus stumps in the

+Rodney door-yard, and gained the mountain-road.</p>

+

+<p>"Ai-yi!" said old Sally. "What's this country

+comin' to?"</p>

+

+<p>"A few more women, thank God!" remarked Ira.

+Eudora had just snubbed him, and he put a wealth

+of meaning into his look after the vanishing buckboard.</p>

+

+<p>The night was magnificent. From horizon to

+horizon the sky was sown with quivering points of

+light. Each straggling clump of sage-brush, rocky

+ledge, and bowlder borrowed a beauty not its own

+from the yellow radiance of the stars.</p>

+

+<p>They had gone a good two miles before Mary's

+patroness broke the silence with, "Nothing plumb

+stampedes my temper like that Rodney outfit&mdash;old

+Sally buckin' an' pitchin' in her rockin'-chair same

+as if she was breakin' a bronco, an' that Eudory

+always corallin', deceivin', and jiltin' one outfit of

+men after another. If she was a daughter of mine,

+I'd medjure her length across my knee, full growed

+and courted though she is. The only one of the outfit

+that's wuth while is Judith, an' she ain't old

+woman Rodney's girl, neither. You hyeard that

+already, did you? Well, this yere country may be

+lackin' in population, but it's handy as a sewin'-circle

+in distributin' news."</p>

+

+<p>Mary mentioned Leander. "Yes," answered Mrs.

+Yellett, reflectively, "Leander's mouth do run about

+eight and a half octaves. Sometimes I don't blame

+his wife for bangin' down the lid."</p>

+<pb n="135" />

+<anchor id="Pg135" />

+

+<p>They talked of Jim Rodney's troubles, and the

+growing hatred between sheep and cattle men,

+because of range rights.</p>

+

+<p>"Now that pore Jim had a heap of good citizen

+in him, before that pestiferous cattle outfit druv'

+his sheep over the cliff. Relations 'twixt sheep and

+cattle men in this yere country is strained beyant

+the goin'-back place, I can tell you. My pistol-eye

+'ain't had a wink of sleep for nigh on eighteen months,

+an' is broke to wakefulness same as a teethin' babe.</p>

+

+<p>"Jim was wild as a coyote 'fore he marries that

+girl. She come all the way from Topeka, Kansas,

+thinking she was goin' to find a respectable home,

+and when she come out hyear and found the place

+was a dance-hall, she cried all the time. She didn't

+add none to the hilarity of the place. An' one day

+Jim he strolled in, an' seem' the girl a-cryin' like

+a freshet and wishin' she was dead, he inquired the

+cause. She told him how that old harpy wrote her,

+an', bein' an orphant, she come out thinkin' she was

+goin' to a respectable place as waitress, an' Jim he

+'lowed it was a case for the law. He was a little shy

+of twenty at the time, just a young cockerel 'bout

+br'ilin' size. Some of the old hangers-on 'bout the

+place they see a heap of fun in Jim's takin' on 'bout

+the girl, he bein' that young that he had scarce

+growed a pair of spurs yet. An' one of 'em says to

+him,' Sonny, if you're afeerd that this yere corral is

+onjurious to the young lady's morals, we'll call in

+the gospel sharp, if you'll stand for the brand.' Now

+Jim hadn't a cent, nor no callin', nor a prospect to

+his back, but he struts up to the man that was doin'

+<pb n="136" />

+<anchor id="Pg136" />

+the talkin', game as a bantam, an' he says, 'The

+lady ain't rakin' in anythin' but a lettle white chip,

+in takin' me, but if she's willin', here's my hand.'</p>

+

+<p>"At which that pore young thing cried harder

+than ever. Well, Jim he up an' marries the girl

+an' it turns out fine. He gets a job herdin' sheep on

+shares, an' she stays with the Rodney outfit till he

+saves enough to build a cabin. Things is goin' with

+Jim like a prairie afire. In a few years he acquires

+a herd of his own, a fine herd, not a scabby sheep

+in the bunch. Alida she makes him the best kind

+of a wife, them kids is the pride of his life, and then,

+them cursed cattle-men do for him. Of course, he

+takes to rustlin'; I'd do more'n rustle if they'd touch

+mine."</p>

+

+<p>The pair of broncos that Mrs. Yellett was driving

+humped their backs like cats as they climbed the

+steep mountain-road. With her, driving was an

+exact science. It was a treat to see her handle the

+ribbons. Mary asked some trifling question about

+the children and it elicited the information that

+one of the girls was named Cacta. "Yes," she said,

+"I like new names for children, not old ones that is

+all frazzled out and folks has suffered an' died to.

+It seems to start 'em fair, like playin' cards with a

+new deck. Cacta's my oldest daughter, and I named

+her after the flowers that blooms all over the desert

+spite of everything, heat, cold, an' rain an' alkali

+dust&mdash;the cactus blooms right through it all. Even

+its own thorns don't seem to fret it none. I called

+her plain Cactus till she was three, and along came

+a sharp studyin' the flowers an' weeds out here, and

+<pb n="137" />

+<anchor id="Pg137" />

+he 'lowed that Cactus was a boy's name an' Cacta

+was for girls&mdash;called it a <hi rend="font-style: italic">fee</hi>minin tarnation, or

+somethin' like that, so we changed it. My second

+daughter 'ain't got quite so much of a name. She's

+called Clematis. That holds its own out here pretty

+well, 'long by the willows on the creek. Paw 'lowed

+he was terrible afraid that I'd name the youngest

+girl Sage-brush, so he spoke to call her Lessie Viola,

+an' I giv' in. The boys is all plain named, Ben,

+Jack, and Ned. Paw wouldn't hear of a fancy brand

+bein' run onto 'em."</p>

+

+<p>The temperature fell perceptibly as they climbed

+the heights, and the air had the heady quality of

+wine. It was awesome, this entering into the great

+company of the mountains. Presently Mary caught

+the glimmer of something white against the dark

+background of the hills. It gleamed like a snow-bank,

+though they were far below the snow-line on

+the mountain-side they were climbing.</p>

+

+<p>"Well, here be camp," announced Mrs. Yellett.

+What Mary had taken for a bank of snow was a

+huge, canvas-covered wagon. Several dogs ran

+down to greet the buckboard, barking a welcome.

+In the background was a shadowy group, huge of

+stature, making its way down the mountain-path.

+"And here's all the children come to meet teacher."

+Mrs. Yellett's tone was tenderly maternal, as if it

+was something of a feat for the children to walk down

+the mountain-path to meet their teacher. But

+Mary, straining her eyes to catch a glimpse of her

+little pupils, could discover nothing but a group of

+persons that seemed to be the sole survivors of some

+<pb n="138" />

+<anchor id="Pg138" />

+titanic race. Not one among them but seemed to

+have reached the high-water mark of six feet. Was

+it an optical illusion, a hallucination born of the

+wonderful starlight? Or were they as huge as they

+seemed? The young men looked giants, the girls

+as if they had wandered out of the first chapters of

+Genesis. Their mother introduced them. They all

+had huge, warm, perspiring hands, with grips like

+bears. Mary looked about for a house into which

+she could escape to gather her scattered faculties,

+but the starlight, yellow and luminous, revealed

+none. There was the huge covered wagon that she

+had taken for a snow-bank, there was a small tent,

+there were two light wagons, there were dogs innumerable,

+but there was no sign of a house.</p>

+

+<p>"What do you think of it?" inquired Mrs. Yellett,

+smilingly, anticipating a favorable answer.</p>

+

+<p>"It's almost too beautiful to leave." Mary innocently

+supposed that Mrs. Yellett referred to the

+starlit landscape. "But I'm so tired, Mrs. Yellett,

+and so glad to get to a real home at last, that I'm

+going to ask if you will not show me the way to

+the house so that I may go to bed right away."</p>

+

+<p>This apparently reasonable request was greeted

+by a fine chorus of titanic laughter from Mary's

+pupils. Mrs. Yellett waved her hand over the surrounding

+landscape in comprehensive gesture.</p>

+

+<p>"Ain't all this large enough for you?" she asked,

+gayly.</p>

+

+<p>"You mean the mountains? They're wonderful.

+But&mdash;I really think I'd like to go in the house."</p>

+

+<p>"I shore hope you ain't figgerin' on goin' into no

+<pb n="139" />

+<anchor id="Pg139" />

+house, 'cause there ain't no house to go into." She

+laughed merrily, as if the idea of such an effete

+luxury as a house were amusing. "This yere family

+'ain't ever had a house&mdash;it camps."</p>

+

+<p>Mary gasped. The real meaning of words no

+longer had the power of making an impression on

+her. If Mrs. Yellett had announced that they were

+in the habit of sleeping in the moon, it would not

+have surprised her.</p>

+

+<p>"If you are tired, an' want to go to bed, you can

+shuck off and lie down any time. Ben, Jack, Ned,

+go an' set with paw in the tent while the gov'ment

+gets ready for bed. Cacta and Clem, you help me

+with them quilts."</p>

+

+<p>Mary stood helpless in the wilderness while quilts

+and pillows were fetched somewhere from the adjacent

+scenery, and Mrs. Yellett asked her, with the

+gravity of a Pullman porter interrogating a passenger

+as to the location of head and foot, if she liked

+to sleep "light or dark." She chose "dark" at

+random, hating to display her ignorance of the

+alternatives, with the happy result that her bed

+was made up to leeward of the great sheep-wagon,

+in a nice little corner of the State of Wyoming.

+Mary was grateful that she had chosen dark.</p>

+

+<p>As she dozed off, she was reminded of a certain

+magazine illustration that Archie had pinned over

+his bed after the aunts had given a grudging consent

+to this westward journey. There was a line beneath

+the pictorial decoy which read: "Ranch Life

+in the New West." And there were piazzas with

+fringed Mexican hammocks, wild-grass cushions,

+<pb n="140" />

+<anchor id="Pg140" />

+a tea-table with a samovar, and, last, a lady in

+white muslin pouring tea. The stern reality apparently

+consisted in scorching alkali plains, with

+houses of the packing-box school of architecture

+at a distance of seventy or eighty miles apart. No

+ladies in white muslin poured tea; they garbed

+themselves in simple gunny-sacking, and their repartee

+had an acrid, personal note. But Mary was

+glad to know that Archie had that picture, and that

+he thought of her in such ideal surroundings.</p>

+<pb n="141" />

+<anchor id="Pg141" />

+</div>

+

+<div rend="page-break-before: always">

+<head>X</head>

+<index index="pdf" /><index index="toc" level1="On Horse-thief Trail" />

+<head type="sub">On Horse-thief Trail</head>

+

+<p>Judith, on her black mare, Dolly, left the

+Dax ranch after the mid-day meal to go in

+quest of her brother. He had left his comfortable

+cabin on the Bear Creek, when he had turned rustler,

+and moved into the "bad man's country," one of

+those remote mountain fastnesses that abound in

+Wyoming and furnish a natural protection to the

+fugitive from justice. Judith took the left fork

+of the road even as Peter Hamilton had chosen the

+right, the day she had watched him gallop towards

+Kitty Colebrooke with never a glance backward.

+Judith strove now to put him and the memory of

+that day from her mind by turning towards the

+open country without a glance in the direction he

+had taken. But her thoughts were weary of journeying

+over that trail that she would not look towards;

+in imagination she had travelled it with Peter a

+hundred times, saw each dip and turn of the yellow

+road, each feature of the landscape as he rode

+exultant to Kitty, to be turned, tried, taken or left

+as her mood should prompt. But Judith was more

+woman than saint, and in her heart there was a

+blending of joy and pain. For she knew&mdash;such

+<pb n="142" />

+<anchor id="Pg142" />

+skill has love in inference from detail&mdash;that the

+mysterious far-away girl, who was so powerful that

+she could have whatever she wanted, even to Peter,

+loved her own ambitions better than she did Peter

+or Peter's happiness, and that she would not marry

+him except as a makeshift. For Miss Colebrooke

+wrote verses; Peter had a white-and-gold volume of

+them that Judith fancied he said his prayers to.</p>

+

+<p>As for Peter himself, he had never been able to

+explain the magic Kitty had brewed for him. There

+was a heady quality in the very ring of her name.

+His first glimpse of her, on Class Day, in a white

+gown and a hat that to his manly indiscrimination

+looked as guileless as a sheaf of poppies nodding

+above the pale-yellow hair that had the sheen of

+corn-silk, had been a vision that stirred in him

+heroic promptings. He had no difficulty in securing

+an introduction. She was a connection of the

+Wetmores, as was he, though through opposite

+sides of the house. In the few minutes' talk that

+followed, he had the disconcerting sensation of

+being "talked down to." There was the indulgent

+tolerance of the woman of the world to the "nice

+boy" about this amazing young woman, who might

+have been eighteen. Hamilton had repudiated the

+very suggestion of being a "nice boy." But he

+felt himself blushing, groping for words, saying

+stupid things, supplying every requisite of the

+"nice boy" as if he were acting the part. Her

+chaperon bore her away presently, and he was left

+with a radiant impression of corn-silk hair and a

+complexion that justified Bouguereau's mother-of-pearl

+<pb n="143" />

+<anchor id="Pg143" />

+flesh tints. And when she had tilted the

+ruffled lace parasol over her shoulder, so that it

+framed her head like a fleecy halo, he had seen that

+her eyes were green as jade. Withal he had a sense

+of having acquitted himself stupidly.</p>

+

+<p>Later, when he ran the gamut of some friends,

+they had chaffed him on his hardihood. By Jove!

+He had nerve to look at her! Didn't he know she

+was "the" Miss Colebrooke? Now Hamilton was

+absolutely ignorant of Miss Colebrooke's right of

+way to the definite article, but it was characteristic

+of him to make no inquiries. On the whole, he

+found the situation meeting with a greater number

+of the artistic requirements than such situations

+usually presented. He was still dallying with this

+pleasant vagueness of sensation when he picked up

+a copy of a magazine, and the name Katherine

+Colebrooke caught his eye and held it like the

+flight of a comet. Her contribution was a sonnet

+entitled "The Miracle." As a naÃŊve emotional confession,

+"The Miracle" interested him; as a sonnet,

+he rent it unmercifully.</p>

+

+<p>Peter was to learn, however, that this sonnet was

+but a solitary flake in a poetic fall of more or less

+magnitude. He rather conspicuously avoided a

+reference to her poetry when they met again. To

+him it was the very least of her gifts. Her hair, that

+had the tender yellow of ripening corn, was worthy

+a cycle of sonnets, but pray leave the making of

+them to some one else! By daylight the jade-colored

+eyes seemed to shut out the world. The

+pupils shrank to pin-points. The green looked

+<pb n="144" />

+<anchor id="Pg144" />

+deep&mdash;as many fathoms as the sea. She was all

+Diana by daylight, a huntress, if you will, of the

+elusive epithet, but essentially a maiden goddess,

+who would add no sprightly romance to the chronicles

+of Olympus. By lamp-light she suggested

+quite another divinity. The pin-points expanded;

+they burned black, like coals newly breaking into

+flame.</p>

+

+<p>When Hamilton knew her better, he did not like

+to think that he had thought her eighteen at their

+first meeting. It impugned his judgment as a man

+of the world. Young ladies of eighteen could not

+possibly be contributors of several years' standing

+to the various magazines. Disconcerting scraps of

+gossip floated to him. He heard of her as bridesmaid

+at a famous wedding of six years back, when

+she had deflected the admiration from the bride and

+remained the central figure of the picture. Her

+portrait by Sargent had been the sensation of the

+Salon when he had been a grubby-faced boy with

+his nose in a Latin grammar. An unusual situation

+was abhorrent to him. That he should marry an

+older woman, one, moreover, who had gained her

+public in a field to which he had not gained admission,

+was doubly distasteful by reason of his

+deference to the conventional. If she had flirted

+with him, his midsummer madness would have

+evaporated into thin air; but she kept him at arm's-length,

+ostensibly took him seriously, and the boy

+proposed.</p>

+

+<p>Her rejection of him was a matter of such consummate

+skill that Hamilton did not realize the

+<pb n="145" />

+<anchor id="Pg145" />

+keenness of his disappointment till he was swinging

+westward over the prairies. She had confided to

+him that her work claimed her and that she must

+renounce those sweet responsibilities that made the

+happiness of other women. It was with the protective

+mien of one who sought to shield him from

+an adverse destiny that she declined his suit.</p>

+

+<p>This had all happened seven years ago. In the

+mean time he had adjusted his disappointment to

+the new life of the West. To say that he had fallen

+in love with the situation would be to misrepresent

+him. But the rÃīle of lonely cow-puncher loyally

+wedded to the thought of his first love was not without

+charm to Peter. How long his constancy would

+have survived the test of propinquity to a woman

+of Judith Rodney's compelling personality, other

+things being equal, it would be difficult to hazard

+a guess. The coming of Judith from the convent

+increased the perspective into which Kitty was retreating.

+With the vivid plainswoman in the

+foreground, the pale-haired writer of verse dwindled

+almost to reminiscence. But the reverence for the

+usual, that made up the underlying motive for so

+much of Hamilton's conduct, presented barriers

+alongside of which his previous quandary regarding

+Miss Colebrooke's seniority shrank to insignificance.

+He might marry a woman older than himself and

+swallow the grimace of it, but by no conceivable

+system of argument could he persuade himself to

+marry into a family like that of the Rodneys&mdash;the

+girl herself, for all her beauty and rare

+womanliness, a quarter Indian, her father the

+<pb n="146" />

+<anchor id="Pg146" />

+synonyme for obloquy, her brother a cattle thief.

+Hamilton preferred that other men should make the

+heroic marriages of a new country. He was prepared

+to applaud their hardihood of temperament,

+but in his own case such a thing was inconceivable.

+Similar arguments have ensnared multitudes in the

+web of caution and provided a rich feast for the

+arch-spider, convention, the shrivelled flies dangling

+in the web conveying no significance, apparently,

+beyond that of advertising the system.</p>

+

+<p>When Peter went East, he had expected to find

+Kitty worn by the pursuit of epithets, haunted by

+the phantom of a career, resigned to the slings and

+arrows of remorseful spinsterhood. An obvious

+regret, or, at least, resignation tempered with remembrance,

+was the unguent he anticipated at the

+hands of Kitty. But alas for sanctuaries built to

+refuge wounded pride! He found Kitty the pivot of

+an adoring coterie, the magazines flowing with the

+milk and honey of her verse and she looking younger,

+if possible, than when he had first known her.

+Time, experience, even the pangs of literary parturition

+had not writ a single character on that

+alabaster brow. The very atrophy of the forces

+of time which she had accomplished by unknown

+necromancy seemed to endow her with an elfin

+youth, making her seem smaller, more childlike,

+more radiantly elusive than when she had worn the

+poppy hat at Cambridge.</p>

+

+<p>The tan and hardship of the prairie had adjusted

+the blunder of their ages. Stark conditions had

+overdrawn his account perhaps a decade; she retained

+<pb n="147" />

+<anchor id="Pg147" />

+a surplus it would be rude to estimate. Her

+greeting of him was radiant, her welcome panoplied

+in words that verged close to inspiration. A woman

+would have scented warning instantly, deep feeling

+and the curled and perfumed phrase being suspicious

+cronies and sure to rouse those lightly slumbering

+watch-dogs, the feminine wits. But Peter only

+turned the other cheek. More than once, in the

+days that followed, he devoutly thanked his patron

+saint, caution, that his relations with Judith had been

+governed by characteristic prudence. Kitty admitted

+him to her coterie, but he had lost nothing

+of his attitude of grand Turk towards her verses.

+The sin be upon the heads of whomever took such

+things seriously! The irony of fate that compelled

+a class poet to punch cows may have tinctured his

+judgment.</p>

+

+<p>A telegram recalled him to the ranch and prevented

+a final leave-taking with Miss Colebrooke.

+He made his adieux by letter, and they were frankly

+regretful. Miss Colebrooke's reply mingled sorrow

+in parting from her old friend with joy in having

+found him. Her letter, a masterpiece of phrase-spinning,

+presented to Peter the one significant fact

+that she would not be averse to the renewal of his

+suit. In reading her letter he made no allowance

+for the fact that the lady had made a fine art of

+saying things, and that her joy and regret at their

+meeting and parting might have been reminiscent

+of the printed passion that was so prominent a

+feature of magazinedom. Her letters&mdash;the like of

+them he had never seen outside printed volumes of

+<pb n="148" />

+<anchor id="Pg148" />

+letters that had achieved the distinction of classics&mdash;culminated

+in the one that Judith had given him that

+morning, announcing that unexpectedly she had

+decided to join the Wetmore girls and would be

+glad to see him at the ranch.</p>

+

+<p>That he had flown at her bidding, Judith knew.

+What she would least have suspected was that

+Miss Colebrooke had received her visitor as if his

+breakneck ride across the desert had been in the

+nature of an afternoon call. If Judith, knowing

+what she did of this long-drawn-out romance, could

+have known likewise of her knight's chagrin, would

+she have pitied him?</p>

+

+<p>Ignorant of the recent anticlimax, and with a

+burden of many heavy thoughts, Judith was penetrating

+a world of unleavened desolation. Beneath

+the scourge of the noon-day sun the desert lay,

+stripped of every illusion. Vegetation had almost

+ceased, nothing but sun-scorched, dust-choked sage-brush

+could spring from such sterility. The fruit

+of desolation, it gave back to desolation a quality

+more melancholy than utter barrenness. Glittering

+in the sunlight, the beds of alkali gleamed leper

+white; above them the agitated air was like the hot

+waves that dance and quiver about iron at white

+heat. From horizon to horizon the curse of God

+seemed to have fallen on the land; it was as if,

+cursing it, He had forgotten it, and left it as the

+abomination of desolation. Judith scarce heeded,

+her thoughts straying after first one then another

+of the group that made up her little world&mdash;Peter

+Hamilton, Kitty Colebrooke, Jim, his family&mdash;thoughts

+<pb n="149" />

+<anchor id="Pg149" />

+inconsequent as the dancing dust-devils

+that whirled over that infinity of space, and, whirling,

+disappeared and reappeared at some new corner

+of the compass.</p>

+

+<p>The trail that she must take to Jim's camp in the

+mountain was known to but few honest men. Fugitives

+from justice&mdash;the grave, impersonal justice

+of the law, or the swift justice of the plains&mdash;found

+there an asylum. And while they sometimes suffered,

+in death by thirst or hunger, a sentence more

+dreadful than the law of the land or the law of the

+rope would have given them, the desert, like the sea,

+seldom gave up her own. It was more than probable

+that no woman except Alida Rodney had ever

+taken that trail before, and reasonably certain that

+no woman had ever taken it alone. Dolly, when she

+saw the beds of alkali grow more frequent, and that

+the trails of the range cattle turned back, sniffed the

+lack of water in the air, slackened her pace, and turned

+an interrogatory ear towards her mistress.</p>

+

+<p>"It's all right, old girl"; the gauntleted hand

+patted the satin neck. "We're in for"&mdash;Judith

+flung her head up and confronted the infinite

+desolation yawning to the sky-line&mdash;"God knows

+what."</p>

+

+<p>Dolly broke into a light canter; this evidently was

+not an occasion for dawdling. There was a touch

+of business about the way the reins were held that

+made the mare settle down to work. But her flying

+hoofs made little apparent progress against the

+space and silence of the desert. Five, ten, fifteen

+miles and the curving shoulder of the mountain,

+<pb n="150" />

+<anchor id="Pg150" />

+that she must cross, still mocked in the distance.

+Only the sun moved in that vast world of seemingly

+immutable forces.</p>

+

+<p>There was no stoic Sioux in Judith now. The

+girl that breasted the crests of the foot-hills shrank

+in terror from the loneliness and the suggestion of

+foes lurking in ambush. The sun dropped behind

+the mountain, leaving a blood-red pool in his wake,

+like fugitive Cain. Already night was sweeping

+over the earth from mountain shadows that flowed

+imperceptibly together like blackened pools. To

+the girl following the trail the silence was more

+dreadful than a chorus of threatening voices. She

+listened till the stillness beat at her ears like the

+stamping of ten thousand hoofs, then pulled up her

+horse, and the desert was as still as the chamber

+of death.</p>

+

+<p>"Ah, Dolly, my dear, a house is the place for

+women folk when the night comes&mdash;a house, the fire

+burning clear, the kettle singing, and&mdash;" Dolly

+whinnied an affirmative without waiting for the

+picture to be completed. The wilderness was being

+gradually swallowed by the shadows, as deliberately

+as a snake swallows its victim. They were nearing

+the mountains. The hot blasts of air from the

+desert blew more and more intermittently. The

+breeze swept keen from the hills, towering higher

+and higher, and Judith breathed deep of the piny

+fragrance and felt the tension of things loosen a

+little.</p>

+

+<p>Whitening cattle bones gleamed from the darkness,

+tragic reminders of hard winters and scant pasturage,

+<pb n="151" />

+<anchor id="Pg151" />

+and Judith, with the Indian superstition that was

+in the marrow of her bones, read ghostly warnings

+in the empty eye-sockets of the grinning skulls

+that stared up at her. She dared not think of

+the dangers that the looming darkness might conceal,

+or of what she might find at her journey's

+end, or&mdash;"Whoa, Dolly! softly, girl. Is it my

+foolish, white-blood nerves, or is some one following?"</p>

+

+<p>The mare had been trained to respond to the

+slightest touch on her mouth, and stopped instantly.

+Judith swayed slightly in the saddle with the

+heaving of the sweating horse. The blood beat at

+her temples, confusing what she actually heard with

+what her imagination pictured. She was half-way

+up a towering spur of the Wind River when she slid

+from the saddle, and putting her ear to the ground

+listened, Indian fashion. Above the throbbing stillness

+of the desert night, that came to her murmurously,

+like the imprisoned roar of the sea from a

+shell, she could hear the regular beat of horse's hoofs

+following up the steep mountain grade. She

+scrambled up with the desperate nimbleness of a

+hunted thing, but when she attempted to vault to

+the saddle her limbs failed and she sank clinging to

+the pommel. Twice she tried and twice the trembling

+of her limbs held her captive. With the loss

+of each moment the beat of the hoofs on the trail

+below became more distinct. The very desperation

+of her plight kept her clinging to the pommel, incapable

+of thought, so that when she finally flung

+herself to the saddle she was surprised to find herself

+<pb n="152" />

+<anchor id="Pg152" />

+there. To the left the trail dropped sharply

+to a precipice, choked by the close crowding of

+many scrub pines. To the right the snow-clad

+spires of the Wind River kept their eternal vigil.

+If she should call aloud for help, these white,

+still mountains would echo the anguish of her

+woman's cry and give no further heed to her

+plight.</p>

+

+<p>The trail had begun to widen. The horse behind

+her again stumbled, loosening a stone that rolled

+with crashes and echoings down to the precipice

+below. She took advantage of the widening of the

+trail to urge Dolly forward. Her impulse was to

+put spurs to the mare and run, to take chances with

+loose stones, a narrowing trail, and the possibility

+of Dolly's stumbling and breaking a leg; but discretion

+prompted the showing of a brave front, the

+pleasantries of the road, with flight as the last

+resource of desperation.</p>

+

+<p>Suddenly gaining what seemed to be a plateau,

+she wheeled and waited the coming of this possible

+friend or foe. The thudding of hoofs through the

+inferno of darkness stopped, as the rider below considered

+the latest move of the horseman above.

+They were so near that Judith could hear the

+labored breathing of the sweating horse. The blackness

+of the night had become a tangible thing. The

+towering mountains were one piece with the gaping

+precipice, the trail, the scrub pines, the gauntlet

+on her hand. The horse below resumed its stumbling

+gait. Judith crowded Dolly close to the rocky

+wall. If the chance comrade of the wilderness

+<pb n="153" />

+<anchor id="Pg153" />

+should pass her by in the darkness&mdash;God speed

+him!</p>

+

+<p>"What the devil are you blocking the trail for?"

+sung out a voice from the darkness. At sound of it

+Judith's heart stopped beating. The voice was

+Peter Hamilton's.</p>

+<pb n="154" />

+<anchor id="Pg154" />

+</div>

+

+<div rend="page-break-before: always">

+<head>XI</head>

+<index index="pdf" /><index index="toc" level1="The Cabin In The Valley" />

+<head type="sub">The Cabin In The Valley</head>

+

+<p>And Judith, taken unawares by the unexpected

+turn of things, comforted as a lost child that is

+found, told all her feeling for him in the way she

+called his name. The easy tenderness of the man

+awoke; his senses swayed to the magic of her voice,

+the mystery of the night, the shadow world in which

+they two, 'twixt earth and sky, were alone. They

+rode without speaking. Peter's hand sought hers,

+and all her woman's terror of the desolation, her

+fear of the vague terrors of the dreadful night,

+spoke in her answering pressure. It was as if the

+desert had given them to each other as they groped

+through the silent darkness. In the great company

+of earth, sky, silence, and this great-hearted woman,

+Peter grew conscious of a real thrill. There were

+depths to life&mdash;vast, still depths; this woman's unselfish

+love for him made him realize them. He

+felt his soul sweeping out on the great tide of things.

+Farther and farther it swept; his patron saint,

+caution, beckoning frantically from the receding

+shore, was miles behind. "Judith!" he said, and he

+scarce recognized his own voice. "Judith!" he

+struggled as a swimmer in a drowning clutch.

+<pb n="155" />

+<anchor id="Pg155" />

+Then his patron saint threw him a life-line and he

+saved the situation.</p>

+

+<p>"Judith!" he said, a third time, and now he knew

+his voice. It was the voice of the man who tilted

+at life picturesquely in a broad-brimmed hat, who

+loved his darling griefs and fitted them as a Rembrandt

+fits its background. And still, in the same

+voice, the voice he knew, he said: "I feel as if we

+had died and our souls were meeting. You know

+Aldrich's exquisite lines:</p>

+

+<lg>

+<l rend="margin-left: 2">"Somewhere in desolate, wind-swept space,</l>

+<l rend="margin-left: 4">In twilight land&mdash;no man's land&mdash;</l>

+<l rend="margin-left: 2">Two hurrying shapes met face to face</l>

+<l rend="margin-left: 4">And bade each other stand.</l>

+</lg>

+

+<lg>

+<l rend="margin-left: 2">"'And who are you?' cried one, agape,</l>

+<l rend="margin-left: 4">Shuddering in the gloaming light.</l>

+<l rend="margin-left: 2">I know not,' said the other shape,</l>

+<l rend="margin-left: 2">'I only died last night.'"</l>

+</lg>

+

+<p>"'I only died last night!'" she repeated the line,

+slowly, significantly. In her questioning she forgot

+the night, the desolation, the presence of the

+man. Had she died last night? Had youth, the

+joy of living, her infinite capacity for love, had they

+died when Peter, with the ugly haste of the man without

+a nice sense of the time that should elapse between

+the old and the new love, had spurred away

+cheerfully at the beck of another woman? And

+now the desert, this earth-mother as she called it,

+in the Indian way, had given him back to her,

+thrown them together as driftwood in the still

+ocean of space. She drew a long breath, the breath

+<pb n="156" />

+<anchor id="Pg156" />

+of one waking from an anguished dream. A wild,

+unreasoning gladness woke in her heart, the joy of

+living swept her back again to life. She had not

+died last night, she was riding through the wilderness

+with Peter.</p>

+

+<p>"Look!" she whispered. The sky had lost its

+forbidding blackness. The sharp notches of the

+mountains, faintly outlined in white, undulated

+through an eternity of space. Venus hung in the

+west, burning softly as a shaded lamp. The trail

+they climbed seemed to end in her pale yellow light.</p>

+

+<p>Peter had saved the situation, but the wild beauty

+of the night stirred in him that gift of silvery speech

+that was ever his tribute to the sex, rather than

+the woman. He bent towards Judith. A loosened

+strand of her hair blew across his cheek. The

+breakneck ride to Kitty was already the madness

+of a dead and gone incarnation. He pointed to the

+pale star, and told her it was the omen of their

+destiny; the formless blackness through which they

+had groped was the way of life, but for such as were

+not condemned to eternal darkness Venus held

+high her lamp and they scaled the heights.</p>

+

+<p>And Judith, listening, found her heart a battle-field

+of love and hate. "Were women dogs, that

+men should play with them in idle moods, caress

+them, and fling them out for other toys?" she demanded

+of herself, even while the tones of his voice

+melted her innermost being to thankfulness for this

+hour that he was wholly hers.</p>

+

+<p>Gayly, with ready turns of speech and snatches

+of song, trolled in his musical barytone, Peter rode

+<pb n="157" />

+<anchor id="Pg157" />

+through the night, even as he rode through life, a

+Sir Knight of the Joyous Heart, unbrushed by the

+wing of sorrow, loving his pale griefs for the values

+they gave the picture. And Judith understood by

+reason of that exquisite perception that was hers in

+all matters pertaining to him, and, knowing, only

+loved the more.</p>

+

+<p>Down the valley came the sharp yelp of a coyote,

+and in a moment the towering crags had taken it up,

+the echo repeating it and giving it back to the valley,

+where the coyote barked again at the shadow of

+his voice. The night was full of the eerie laughter.

+Peter put a restraining hand on Dolly's bridle, and,

+waiting for the coyote to stop, called Judith's name,

+and all the mountains made music of it. The echo

+sang the old Hebrew name as if it had been a psalm.

+Peter's voice gave it to the mountains joyously, but

+the mountains gave it back in the minor. And

+Judith was reminded of the soft, singing syllables

+that her mother, in the Indian way, had made of

+her daughter's Indian name. The remembrance

+tugged at her heart. In her joy at seeing Peter

+she had forgotten that the errand that had brought

+her was an errand of life and death&mdash;life and death

+for her brother!</p>

+

+<p>But Peter's ready enthusiasms pressed him hard.

+Surely love-making was the business of such a night.

+"Ah, Judith, goddess of the heights, if I could sing

+your name like the mountains, would you love me a

+little?"</p>

+

+<p>For his pains he had a flash of white teeth in a

+smile that recalled his first acquaintance with Kitty,

+<pb n="158" />

+<anchor id="Pg158" />

+the sort of smile one would give to a "nice boy"

+when his manoeuvres were a trifle obvious. "Not

+if you sang my name as the chorus of all the Himalayas

+and the Rockies and Andes, and with the fire

+of all their volcanoes and the beauty of their snows

+and the strength of all their hills, for it's not my way

+to love a little!"</p>

+

+<p>He bent towards her; to brush her cheek lightly

+as they rode was but to imply his appreciation of

+the scene as a bit of chiaroscuro, the panorama of

+the desert night, eternal romance typified by the

+man and woman scaling the heights, the goddess of

+love lighting them on their way by her flaming

+torch. But Judith, who said little because she felt

+much, was in no mood to brook such dalliance, and,

+urging the mare sharply, she cantered down the

+divide at peril of life and limb. Peter, cursing

+the heavy-footed beast he rode, came stumbling

+after.</p>

+

+<p>Judith rode wildly through the night, leaving

+Peter laps behind, to beseech, to prophesy dire

+happening if she should slip, and to scramble after,

+as best he might, on the heavy-footed beast he

+repudiated, with all his ancestors, as oxen, to the

+fourth generation. But the woman kept her pace.

+She had stern questions to put to herself, and they

+were likely to have truer answers if Peter were

+elsewhere than riding beside her. Whither was he

+going? They had met casually on a trail known

+to few honest men. It led over a spur of the Wind

+River to a sort of no man's land, the hiding-place

+of horse and cattle thieves. She had gone to warn

+<pb n="159" />

+<anchor id="Pg159" />

+her brother. Could he be going there&mdash;She could

+not bring herself to finish.</p>

+

+<p>Her heart was divided against itself. Within it

+were fought again the red and the white man's

+battles, bitterly, and to the finish. And now the

+white man, with his open warfare, won, and all

+her love rose up and scourged her little faith. She

+would wait on the trail for Peter, penitent and

+ashamed. And while she waited suspicions bred

+of her Indian blood stirred distrustfully, and she

+told herself that her mother's daughter made a

+worthy champion of the ways of white men. Did

+Hamilton hunt her brother gallowsward, making

+merry with her the meantime? He had not even

+been courteously concerned as to where she was

+going when they met on the divide. They had met

+and ridden together as casually as if it had been

+the most natural thing for them both to be taking

+the horse-thief trail as a summer evening's ride.

+And she had not thought to wonder at his possible

+destination, when the man from whom she rode in

+terror through the night proved to be Peter, because

+the lesser question of his errand had been swallowed

+up in the greater miracle of his presence.</p>

+

+<p>She was by this time well down the divide. The

+temperature had risen perceptibly on the down

+grade. The heat of the plains had already mingled

+with the cool hill air; the heights, where Venus

+kept her love vigil, were already past. Judith gave

+Dolly a breathing spell, herself lounging easily meanwhile.

+She knew how to take her ease in the saddle

+as well as any cow-puncher on the range.</p>

+<pb n="160" />

+<anchor id="Pg160" />

+

+<p>"The Hayoka has dominion over me," she mused,

+with Indian fatalism. "As well resign myself to

+sorrow with dignity. Hayoka, Hayo&mdash;ka!" and

+she began to croon softly a hymn of propitiation

+to the Hayoka, the Sioux god of contrariety. According

+to the legends, he sat naked and fanned himself

+in a Dakota blizzard and huddled, shivering,

+over a fire in the heat of summer. Likewise the

+Hayoka cried for joy and laughed for sorrow.</p>

+

+<p>She remembered how the nuns at Santa FÃĐ had

+been shocked at her for praying to Indian gods, and

+how once she had built a little mound of stones,

+which was the Sioux way of making petition, in the

+shadow of the statue of the Virgin Mary, and how

+Sister Angela had scattered the stones and told her

+to pray instead to the Blessed Lady. She still

+prayed to the Blessed Lady every day; but sometimes,

+too, she reared little mounds of stones in the

+desert when she was very sad and the kinship between

+her and the dead gods of her mother's people

+seemed the closer for their common sorrow.</p>

+

+<p>Peter, coming up with a much-blown horse, found

+her still chanting the Indian song.</p>

+

+<p>"Sing him a verse for me, Judith. Heaven knows

+I need something to straighten out my infernal luck.

+Tell the Hayoka that I'm a good fellow and need

+only half a chance. Tell him to prosper my present

+venture."</p>

+

+<p>She had begun to chant the invocation, then

+stopped suddenly. "I must not; you know I am a

+Catholic." Suspicion that had been scotched, not

+killed, raised its head. "What was his present

+<pb n="161" />

+<anchor id="Pg161" />

+venture?" Her eye had not changed in expression,

+nor a tone of her voice, but in her heart was a sickening

+distrust for all things.</p>

+

+<p>A belated moon had come up. The level plain,

+on which their horses threw grotesque, elongated

+shadows, was flooded with honey-colored light. Each

+straggling clump of sage-brush, whitening bone and

+bowlder, gleamed mysterious, ghostly in the radiant

+flood-tide. They seemed to be riding through a

+world that had no kinship with that black, formless

+void through which they had groped but yet a little

+while. Then darkness had been upon the face of the

+deep. Now there was a miracle of light such as

+only the desert, in its desolation, knows. To Judith,

+with a soul attuned to every passing expression of

+nature, there was significance in this transition from

+darkness to light. The sudden radiance was emblematic

+of her belated perception, coming as it

+did after a blindness so dense as to appear almost

+wilful. Her mind was busy with a multitude of

+schemes. Fool though she had been, she would

+not be the instrument of her brother's undoing.</p>

+

+<p>"I've come too far," she cried, in sudden dismay.

+"I should have stopped at the foot of the divide.

+I've never been over the trail before."</p>

+

+<p>"You foolish child, why should you stop in the

+middle of the wilderness?"</p>

+

+<p>She wheeled the mare about and faced him, a

+figure of graven resolution.</p>

+

+<p>"I promised to meet Tom Lorimer there&mdash;now

+you know."</p>

+

+<p>With which she cracked Dolly sharply with her

+<pb n="162" />

+<anchor id="Pg162" />

+heel and began to retrace her way over the trail.

+Peter turned his horse and followed, with the feeling

+of utter helplessness that a man has when confronted

+with the granite obstinacy of women. Judith

+had meanwhile expected that the announcement of

+her mythical appointment with Tom Lorimer would

+be received differently. Tom Lorimer's reputation

+was of the worst. An Eastern man formerly, an

+absconder from justice, rumor was busy with tales

+of ungodly merrymaking that went on at his ranch,

+where no woman went except painted wisps from

+the dance-halls. But Peter was too loyal a friend,

+despite his shortcomings as a lover, to see in Judith's

+statement anything more than a sisterly devotion

+so deeply unselfish that it failed to take into account

+the danger to which she subjected herself.</p>

+

+<p>However, it was plainly his duty to prevent an

+unprotected rendezvous with Lorimer, to reason, to

+plead, and, if he should fail to bring her to a reasonable

+frame of mind, to go with her, come what would

+of the result. There were reasons innumerable

+why he, a cattle-man, should avoid the appearance

+of dealing with the sheep faction, he reflected,

+grimly. Lorimer owned sheep, many thousand head.

+His herds had been allowed to graze unmolested,

+while smaller owners, like Jim Rodney, had been

+crowded out because his influence, politically, was a

+thing to be reckoned with. So Peter followed

+Judith, pleading Judith's cause; she did not understand,

+he told her, what she was doing; and while

+perhaps there was not another man in the country

+who would not honor her unselfishness in coming to

+<pb n="163" />

+<anchor id="Pg163" />

+him, Lorimer's chivalry was not a thing to be reckoned

+with, drunken beast that he was. And Judith,

+worn with the struggle, tried beyond measure,

+made reckless by the daily infusion of ill-fortune,

+pulled up the mare and laughed unpleasantly.</p>

+

+<p>"You think I'm going to see Lorimer about Jim?

+I'm going with him to a merrymaking. We're old

+pals, Lorimer and I."</p>

+

+<p>"Judith, dear, has it come to this, that you not

+only distrust an old friend, but that you try to

+degrade yourself to hide from him the fact that you

+are going to your brother's? You've never spoken

+to Lorimer. I heard him say, not a week ago, that

+he had never succeeded in making you recognize

+him. You deceived me at first when you spoke of

+meeting him&mdash;I thought you had a message from

+Jim&mdash;but this talk of merrymaking is beneath you."

+He shrugged his shoulders in disgust. He felt the

+torrent of grief that rent her. No sob escaped her

+lips; there was no convulsive movement of shoulder.

+She rode beside him, still as the desert before the

+sand-storm breaks, her soul seared with white-hot

+iron that knows no saving grace of sob or tear. She

+rode as Boadicea might have ridden to battle; there

+was not a yielding line in her body. But over and

+over in her woman's heart there rang the cry: "I

+am so tired! If the long night would but come!"</p>

+

+<p>Peter drew out his watch. "It's a quarter to

+eleven. We'll have a hard bit of riding to reach

+Blind Creek before midnight."</p>

+

+<p>Then he knew as well as she, perhaps better, the

+route to Jim's hiding-place; she had never been

+<pb n="164" />

+<anchor id="Pg164" />

+there as yet. And if Peter knew, doubtless every

+cattle-man in the country knew. What a fool she

+had been with her talk of meeting Tom Lorimer!

+A sense of utter defeat seemed to paralyze her

+energies. She felt like a trapped thing that after

+eluding its pursuers again and again finds that it

+has been but running about a corral. Physical

+weariness was telling on her. She had been in the

+saddle since a little past noon and it was now not far

+from midnight. And still there was the unanswered

+question of Peter's errand. It was long since either

+had broken the silence. A delicious coolness had

+crept into the air with the approach of midnight.

+Judith, breathing deep draughts of it, reminded

+herself of the stoicism that was hers by birthright.</p>

+

+<p>"Peter"&mdash;her voice lost some of its old ring, but

+it had a deeper note&mdash;"Peter, we make strange

+comrades, you and I, in a stranger world. We

+meet on Horse-Thief Trail, and there is reason to

+suppose that our errands are inimical. You've

+pierced all my little pretences; you know that I am

+going to my brother, who is an outlaw&mdash;my brother,

+the rope for whose hanging is already cut. And

+yet we have been friends these many years, and we

+meet in this world of desolation and weigh each

+other's words, and there is no trust in our hearts.

+Our little faith is more pitiful than the cruel errands

+that bring us. I take it you, too, are going to my

+brother's?"</p>

+

+<p>"I'm going there to see that you arrive safe and

+sound, but I had no intention of going when I left

+camp. You've brought me a good twenty miles out

+<pb n="165" />

+<anchor id="Pg165" />

+of my way, not to mention accusing me of ulterior

+motives. Now, aren't you penitent?" He smiled

+at her, boyish and irresistible. To Judith it was

+more reassuring than an oath. "It's like dogs

+fighting over a picked bone; the meat's all gone.

+The range is overworked; it needs a good, long

+rest." He turned towards Judith, speaking slowly.

+"What you have said is true. We're friends

+before we're partisans of either faction. I'm on

+my way to a round-up. There's been an unexpected

+order to fill a beef contract&mdash;a thousand

+steers. We're going to furnish five hundred, the

+XXX two hundred and fifty, and the "Circle-Star"

+two hundred and fifty. Men have been scouring

+the enemy's country for days rounding up stragglers.

+It will go hard with the rustlers after this round-up,

+Judith."</p>

+

+<p>She felt a great wave of penitence and shame

+sweep over her. She had not trusted him; in her

+heart she had nourished hideous suspicions of him,

+and he was telling her, quite simply, of the plans of

+his own faction, trusting her, as, indeed, he might,

+but as she never expected to be trusted.</p>

+

+<p>"Peter, do you know that sometimes I think

+Jim has gone quite mad with these range troubles.

+He's acted strangely ever since his sheep were driven

+over the cliff. He's not been home to Alida and the

+children since he has been out of jail, and you

+know how devoted to them he has always been!

+He spends all his time tracking Simpson. Alida

+wrote me that she expects him to-night, and I'm

+going there on the chance."</p>

+<pb n="166" />

+<anchor id="Pg166" />

+

+<p>"It's the devil's own hole for desolation that he's

+come to." Peter looked about the cup-shaped

+valley that was but a <hi rend="font-style: italic">cul-de-sac</hi> in the mountains.

+Its approach was between the high rock walls of a

+caÃąon. Passing between them, the rise of temperature

+was almost incredible. The great barrier of

+mountain-range, that cut it off from the rest of

+the world, seemed also to cut it off from light and

+air. The atmosphere hung lifeless, the occasional

+bellow of range-cattle sounded far-off and muffled.

+Vegetation was scant, the sage-brush grew close and

+scrubby, even the brilliant cactus flowers seemed

+to have abandoned the valley to its fate. A lone

+group of dead cotton-woods grew like sentinels close

+to the rocky walls. Their twisted branches, gaunt

+and bare, writhed upward as if in dumb supplication.

+There was about them a something that made

+Judith come closer to Peter as they passed them

+by. The night wind sang in their leafless branches

+with a long-drawn, shuddering sigh. The despair of

+a barren, deserted thing seemed to have settled on

+them.</p>

+

+<p>"Those frightful trees, how can Alida stand

+them?" She looked back. "Oh, I wish they were

+cut down!"</p>

+

+<p>Before them was the cabin, its ruined condition

+pitifully apparent even by night. It had been

+deserted ten years before Jim brought his family

+to it. Rumor said it was haunted. Grim stories

+were told of the death of a woman who had come

+there with a man, and had not lived to go away

+with him. The roof of the adjoining stable had

+<pb n="167" />

+<anchor id="Pg167" />

+fallen in, the bars of the corral were missing. The

+house was dark but for a feeble light that glimmered

+in one window, the beacon that had been lighted,

+night after night, against Jim's coming. It added

+a further note of apprehension, peering through the

+dark, still valley like a wakeful, anxious eye, keeping

+a long and unrewarded vigil. Judith felt the

+consummation of the threatening tragedy after her

+first glimpse of the sentinel trees. She could not

+explain, but her heart cried, even as the wind in

+them had sung of death. Perhaps her mother's

+spirit spoke to her, just as she had said, on that

+memorable drive, that the Great Mystery spoke to

+his people in the earth, the sky, and the frowning

+mountains.</p>

+

+<p>"Peter"&mdash;she had slid from her horse and was

+clinging to his arm&mdash;"when it happens, Peter, you

+will have no part in it?"</p>

+

+<p>"It won't happen, Judith, if I can help it."</p>

+

+<p>She kissed his hand as it held the loose reins.</p>

+

+<p>"Lord, I am not worthy!" was the thought in his

+heart. He sat graven in the saddle. Sir Knight of

+the Joyous Heart though he was, the unsought kiss

+of trust gifted him with a self-reverence that would

+not soon forsake him.</p>

+

+<p>Judith was rapping on the door and calling to

+Alida not to be frightened. And presently it was

+opened. Peter wanted to leave Judith, now that she

+was safely at the end of her journey, but she would

+not hear of it till he had eaten.</p>

+

+<p>"You would have had your comfortable supper

+five hours ago had you not been playing cavalier

+<pb n="168" />

+<anchor id="Pg168" />

+to me all over the wilderness." And Peter

+yielded.</p>

+

+<p>Judith busied herself about the kitchen. Her

+mood of racking apprehension had disappeared.

+Indian stoicism had again the guiding hand. She

+waved Peter from the fire that she was kindling, as

+if he were a blundering incompetent. But she let

+him slice the bacon and grind the coffee as one

+lets a child help. Alida came in, white-faced and

+anxious over the long absence of her husband, but

+conscientiously hospitable nevertheless. Peter noticed

+that Judith made a gallant pretence of eating,

+crumbling her bread and talking the meanwhile.

+The pale wife, who had little to say at the best of

+times, was put to the test to say anything at all.

+But, withal, their intent was so genuinely hospitable

+that Peter himself could not speak with the pity of

+it. Accustomed as he was to the roughness of these

+frontier cabins, never had he seen a human habitation

+so desolate as this. The mud plaster had

+fallen away from between the logs, showing cross

+sections of the melancholy prospect. An atmosphere

+of tragedy brooded over the place.

+Whether from its long period of emptiness, or from

+the vaguely hinted murder of the woman who had

+died there, or whether it took its character from the

+prevailing desolation, the cabin in the valley was an

+unlovely thing. Nor did the cleanliness, the conscientious

+making the best of things, soften the

+woful aspect of the place. Rather was the appeal

+the more poignant to the seeing eye, as the brave

+makeshift of the self-respecting poor strikes deeper

+<pb n="169" />

+<anchor id="Pg169" />

+than the beggar's whine. The house was bare but

+for the few things that Alida could take in the

+wagon in which they made their flight. And all

+through the pinch of poverty and grinning emptiness

+there was visible the woman-touch, the brave making

+the best of nothing, the pitiful preparation for

+the coming of the man. Wild roses from the creek

+bloomed against the gnarled and weather-warped

+logs of the walls. Sprays of clematis trailed their

+white bridal beauty from cans rescued from the

+ashes of a camp-fire. But Alida was a strategist

+when it came to adorning her home, and the rusty

+receptacle was hid beneath trailing green leaves.

+There was at the window a muslin curtain that in

+its starched and ruffled estate was strongly suggestive

+of a child's frock hastily converted into a

+window drapery. The curtain was drawn aside

+that the lamp might shed its beam farther on the

+way of the traveller who came not. There was but

+one other light in the place, a bit of candle. Alida

+apologized for the poor light by which they must

+eat, but she did not offer to take the lamp from the

+window.</p>

+

+<p>Peter was no longer Sir Knight of the Joyous

+Heart as he watched the little, white-faced woman,

+who went so often to the door to look towards the

+road that entered the valley that she was no longer

+aware of what she did. He saw her wide eyes full

+of fear, the bow of the mouth strained taut with

+anxiety, her unconscious fear of him as one of the

+alien faction, and withal her concern for his comfort.

+Judith's control was far greater, but though she

+<pb n="170" />

+<anchor id="Pg170" />

+hid it skilfully, he knew the sorrow that consumed

+her.</p>

+

+<p>There was a cry from the room beyond, and

+Judith, snatching up the candle, went in to the

+children. All three of them were sleeping cross-ways

+in one bed, their small, round arms and legs

+striking out through the land of dreams as swimmers

+breasting the waves. She gave a little cry of delight

+and appreciation, and called Peter to look.

+Little Jim, who had cried in some passing fear, sat

+up sleepily. He stretched out his small arms to

+Peter, whom he had never seen before. Peter took

+him, and again he settled to sleep, apparently assured

+that he was in friendly hands.</p>

+

+<p>The warm, small body, giving itself with perfect

+confidence, strongly affected Peter's heightened

+susceptibilities. In the very nature of the situation

+he could be no friend to Jim Rodney, yet here in

+his arms lay Jim Rodney's son, loving, trusting him

+instinctively. Judith noticed that his face paled

+beneath its many coats of tan. He was afraid of

+the little sleeping boy, afraid that his unaccustomed

+touch might hurt him, and yet loath to part with the

+small burden. Judith took the boy from Peter and

+placed him between the two little girls on the bed.</p>

+

+<p>Through the window they could see Alida's dress

+glimmering, like a phantom in the darkness, as she

+strained her eyes towards the path. Peter hated

+to leave the women and children in this desolate

+place. The night was far spent. To reach the

+round-up in season, he could at best snatch a couple

+of hours' sleep and be again in the saddle while the

+<pb n="171" />

+<anchor id="Pg171" />

+stars still shone. His saddle and saddle blanket

+were enough for him. The broad canopy of heaven,

+the bosom of mother earth, had given him sound,

+dreamless sleep these many years. He bade the

+women good-night, and made his bed where the

+caÃąon gave entrance to the valley. But sleep was

+slow to come. Now, in that vague, uncertain world

+where we fall through oceans of space, and the

+waking is the dream, the dream the waking, Peter

+caught pale flashes of Kitty's gold head as she ran

+and ran, ever in the pursuit of something, she knew

+not what. And as she ran hither and thither, she

+would turn her head and beckon to Peter, and as he

+followed he felt the burden of years come upon him.

+And then he saw Judith's eyes, still and grave. He

+turned and wakened. No, it was not Judith's eyes,

+but the stars above the mountain-tops.</p>

+<pb n="172" />

+<anchor id="Pg172" />

+</div>

+

+<div rend="page-break-before: always">

+<head>XII</head>

+<index index="pdf" /><index index="toc" level1="The Round-up" />

+<head type="sub">The Round-up</head>

+

+<p>The stars were still shining when Peter Hamilton

+looked at his watch next morning, but

+he sternly fought the temptation to lie another two

+minutes by remembering the day's work before

+him, and went in search of the horse that he had

+not picketed overnight, as the beast required a full

+belly after the hard night's ride he had given him.

+Peter had rolled out of his blankets with a keen

+anticipatory relish for the day ahead. It was well,

+he knew, that there was ample work of a definite

+nature for Peter the cow-puncher; as for Peter

+the man, he was singularly at sea. Had Judith

+Rodney been his desert comrade all these cheerful

+years for him to get his first belated insight into the

+real Judith only a few little hours back? Or was it,

+he wondered, her seeming unconsciousness of him,

+as she rode brave and sorrowful through the night,

+to avert, if might be, her brother's death&mdash;at all

+events, to comfort and inspirit the frightened woman

+and her little children&mdash;that had freshly tinged the

+friendship he had so long felt for her? Many were

+the questions that Peter vaguely put to himself as

+he started out for his long day in the saddle; and

+<pb n="173" />

+<anchor id="Pg173" />

+none of them he answered. Indeed, he could not

+satisfactorily explain to himself why he should think

+of Judith at all in this way&mdash;Judith, whom he had

+known so long, and upon whom he counted so

+securely&mdash;Judith, who understood things, and was

+as good a comrade as a man. Surely it was a

+strange thing that he should discover himself in a

+sentimental dream of Judith!</p>

+

+<p>For it was in such dreams that Katherine Colebrooke

+had figured ever since Peter could remember.

+For years, indeed&mdash;and Judith knew it!&mdash;he had

+stood, tame and tractable, waiting for Chloe to

+throw her dainty lariat. But Chloe had intimated

+that her graceful fingers were engaged with the

+inkpot and her head with schemes for further

+sonneting. Chloe was becoming famous. To Peter,

+who was unmodern, there was little to be gained in

+arguing against a state of affairs so crassly absurd

+as career-getting for women. At such seasons it

+behooved sane men to pray for patience rather

+than the gift of tongues. When the disheartened

+fair should weary of the phantom pursuit, then

+might the man of patience have his little day.

+Peter winced at the picture. To the world he

+knew that his long waiting on the brink of the bog,

+while his ambitious lady floundered after false lights,

+was, in truth, no more impressive a spectacle than

+the anguished squawking of a hen who watches a

+brood of ducklings, of her own hatching, try their

+luck in the pond.</p>

+

+<p>And there was Judith the great-hearted, Judith

+who was as inspiring as a breath of hill air, Judith

+<pb n="174" />

+<anchor id="Pg174" />

+with no thought of careers beyond the loyal doing

+of her woman's part, Judith, trusty and loyal&mdash;and

+Judith with that accursed family connection!</p>

+

+<p>Peter tightened his cinch and turned his horse

+westward. The stars had grown dim in the sky.

+The world that the night before had seemed to float

+in a silvery effulgence looked gray and old. The

+cabin in the valley flaunted its wretched squalor,

+like a beggar seeking alms on the highway. Riding

+by, Peter lifted his sombrero. "Sweet dreams,

+gentle lady!" He dug the rowel into his horse's side

+and began his day at no laggard pace. Nor did he

+spare his horse in the miles that lay between him

+and breakfast. The beast would have no more

+work to do that day, when once he reached camp,

+and Peter was not in his tenderest mood as he

+spurred through the gray of the morning. The

+pale, chastened world was all his own at this hour.

+Not a creature was stirring. The mountains, the

+valleys, the softly huddled hills slept in the deep

+hush that is just before the dawn. He looked about

+with questioning eyes. Last night this very road

+had been a pale silver thread winding from the

+mountain crests into a world of dreams. To-day

+it was but a trail across the range. "Where are the

+snows of yester year?" he quoted, with a certain

+early-morning grimness. At heart he was half inclined

+to believe Judith responsible for the vanished

+world; Judith, Judith&mdash;he was riding away from

+her as fast as his horse could gallop, and yet his

+thoughts perversely lingered about the cabin in the

+valley.</p>

+<pb n="175" />

+<anchor id="Pg175" />

+

+<p>After a couple of hours' hard riding he could

+dimly make out specks moving on that huge background

+of space, and presently his horse neighed

+and put fresh spirit into his gait, recognizing his

+fellows in moving dots on the vast perspective.

+And being a beast of some intelligence, for all his

+heavy-footed failings, he reasoned that food and

+rest would soon be his portion. Peter had no further

+use for the rowel.</p>

+

+<p>Breakfast was already well under way when he

+reached camp. The outfit, seated on saddles in a

+semicircle about the chuck wagon, ate with that

+peculiar combination of haste and skill that doubtless

+the life of the saddle counteracts, as digestive

+troubles are apparently unknown among plainsmen.

+The cook, in handing Peter his tin plate, cup,

+spoon, and black-handled fork, asked him if "he

+would take overland trout or Cincinnati chicken,

+this morning?" The cook never omitted these jocular

+inquiries regarding the various camp names for

+bacon. He seemed to think that a choice of alias

+was as good as a change of menu. There was little

+talk at breakfast, and that bearing chiefly on the

+day's work. Every one was impatient for an early

+start. The horse wrangler had his string waiting,

+the cook was scouring his iron pots, saddles were

+thrown over horses fresh from a long night's good

+grazing, cinches were tightened, slickers and blankets

+were adjusted, and camp melted away in a troup

+of horsemen winding away through the gray of early

+morning.</p>

+

+<p>The scene of the beef round-up was a mighty

+<pb n="176" />

+<anchor id="Pg176" />

+plain, affording limitless scope for handling the

+cattle of a thousand hills. In the distance rose the

+first undulations of the mountains, that might be

+likened to the surplusage of space that rolled the

+length of the sweeping levels, then heaped high to

+the blue. The specks in the far distance began to

+grow as if the screw of a field-glass were bringing

+them nearer, turning them into horsemen, bunches

+of cattle, "chuck-wagons" of the different outfits,

+reserves of horses restrained by temporary rope-corrals,

+all the equipment of a great round-up.

+Dozens of men, multitudes of horses, hordes of cattle&mdash;the

+mighty plain swallowed all the little, prancing,

+galloping, bellowing things, and still looked mighty

+in its loneliness. Fling a handful of toys from a

+Noah's Ark&mdash;if they make such simple toys now&mdash;in

+an ordinary field, and the little, wooden men,

+horses and cows, will suggest the round-up in relation

+to its background. Men darted hither and thither,

+yelling shrilly; cows&mdash;born apparently to be leaders&mdash;broke

+from the bunches to which they had been

+assigned and started at a clumsy run, followed by

+kindred susceptible to example. Cow-punchers,

+waiting for just such manifestations of individuality,

+whirled after them like comets, and soon they were

+again in the pawing, heaving, sweltering bunch to

+which they belonged.</p>

+

+<p>Peter Hamilton, whose particular skill as a cow-puncher

+lay in that branch of the profession known

+as "cutting out," found that the work of the rustlers

+had been carried on with no unsparing hand since

+the early spring round-up. Calves bearing the "H

+<pb n="177" />

+<anchor id="Pg177" />

+L" brand&mdash;that claimed by a company known to be

+made up of cattle-thieves&mdash;followed mothers bearing

+almost every brand that grazed herds in that

+part of the State. The Wetmore outfit, that used a

+"W" enclosed in a square, were apparently the

+heaviest losers. The cows and calves were herded

+at the right of the plain, convenient to the branding-pen,

+the steers well away to the opposite side. As

+Peter drove a "W-square" cow, followed by a little,

+white-faced calf, whose brand had plainly been

+tampered with, he heard one of his associates say:</p>

+

+<p>"There's nothing small about the 'H L' except

+their methods."</p>

+

+<p>"What's 'H L' stand for, anyway?" the other

+cow-puncher asked.</p>

+

+<p>"Why, Hell, or, How Long; depends whether

+you're with 'em or again 'em."</p>

+

+<p>Peter wheeled from the men and headed for the

+bunch he was cutting out. He fancied that the

+man had looked at him strangely as he offered a

+choice of meanings for the "H L"&mdash;and yet he

+could not have known that Peter had gone to

+Rodney's cabin last night. He flung himself heart

+and soul into his work, dashing full tilt at the

+snorting, stamping bedlam, enveloped in clouds of

+dust that dimmed the very daylight. Calves bleated

+piteously as they were jammed in the thickening

+pack. Peter shouted, swung the rope right and

+left, thinning the bunch about him, and a second

+later emerged, driving before him a cow, followed

+by a calf. These were turned over to cow-boys

+waiting for them. Time after time Hamilton returned

+<pb n="178" />

+<anchor id="Pg178" />

+to that mass of unconscious power, that with

+a single rush could have annihilated the little band

+of horsemen that handled them with the skill of a

+dealer shuffling, cutting, dealing a pack of cards.</p>

+

+<p>To the left were the steers, pawing and tearing up

+the earth in a very ecstasy of impotent fury. Picture

+the giant propeller of an ocean liner thrashing about

+in the sands of the desert and you will have an

+approximate knowledge of the dust raised by a

+thousand steers. Their long-drawn, shrieking bellow

+had a sinister note. Horns, hoofs, tails beat the

+air, their bloodshot eyes looked menacingly in every

+direction; but a handful of cow-boys kept them in

+check, circling round and round them on ponies who

+did their work without waiting for quirt or rowel.</p>

+

+<p>The noonday sun looked down upon a scene that

+to the eye unskilled in these things was as confusion

+worse confounded. Cow-boys dashed from nowhere

+in particular and did amazing things with a

+bit of rope, sending it through the air with snaky

+undulations after flying cattle. The rope, taking

+on lifelike coils, would pursue the flying beast like

+an aerial reptile, then the noose would fall true,

+and the thing was done. A second later a couple

+of cow-boys would be examining the disputed brand

+on the prone animal.</p>

+

+<p>The smell of burning flesh and hair rose from the

+branding-pen and mingled with the stench of the

+herds in one noisome compound. The yells of the

+cow-punchers, each having its different bearing on

+the work in hand, were all but lost in the dull,

+steady roar of the cattle, bellowing in a chorus of

+<pb n="179" />

+<anchor id="Pg179" />

+fear, rage, and pain. And still the work of sorting,

+branding, cutting-out, went steadily on. Though

+an outsider would not have perceived it, the work

+was as crisp-cut and exact in its methods as the

+work in a counting-house. One of the cow-boys, in

+hot pursuit of a fractious heifer, encountered a

+gopher-hole, and horse and rider were down in a

+heap. In a second a dozen helping hands were

+dragging him from under the horse. He limped

+painfully, but stooped to examine his horse. The

+beast had broken a leg, and turned on the man eyes

+almost human in their pain.</p>

+

+<p>"Bob, Bob!" The cow-puncher went down on

+his knees and put his arms about the neck of his

+pet. "My God!" he said, "me and Bob was just

+like brothers. Everybody knowed that." He uncinched

+the saddle with clumsy tenderness; not a man

+thought a whit less of him because he could not see

+well at the moment. He turned his head away, that

+he might not see the well-aimed shot that would

+release his pet from pain. Then he limped away

+after another horse&mdash;it was all in the day's work.</p>

+

+<p>The beef contract called for a thousand steers,

+four and five years old, and these having been well

+and duly counted, and some dozen extra head added

+in case of accident, they were immediately started

+on the trail, as they could accomplish some seven or

+eight miles before being bedded down for the night.

+Hamilton, who had crossed to the beef side of the

+round-up to have a necessary word with the "Circle-Star"

+foreman, was amazed to find Simpson making

+ready to start with the trail herd. Peter inquired,

+<pb n="180" />

+<anchor id="Pg180" />

+with a few expletives, "how long he had been a

+cow-man, in good and regular standing?"</p>

+

+<p>"As far as the regularity is concerned, that would

+be a pretty hard thing to answer, but he's had an

+interest in the 'XXX' since&mdash;since&mdash;"</p>

+

+<p>"He drove Rodney's sheep over the cliff?"</p>

+

+<p>"Ain't you a little hard on the beginning of his

+cattle career? It usually goes by a more business-like

+name, but&mdash;" he shrugged his shoulders&mdash;"it's

+up to the 'XXX.' We wouldn't have him help

+to pull bogged cattle out of a creek."</p>

+

+<p>The beeves, hidden in a simoom of their own

+stamping, were gradually being pressed forward on

+the trail, a huge pawn, ignorant of its own strength,

+manipulated by a handful of men and horses. Its

+bellowing, like the tuning of a thousand bass-fiddles,

+shook the stillness like the long, sullen roar

+of the sea, as out of the plain they thundered, to

+feed the multitude.</p>

+

+<p>"Well, there goes as pretty a bunch of porterhouses

+as I'd want to put tooth to. If I get away

+from here within the next two months, as I'm expecting,

+doubtless I'll meet some of you again with

+your personality somewhat obscured by reason of

+fried onions."</p>

+

+<p>The foreman of the "Circle-Star" waved his hand

+after the slowly moving herd that gradually pressed

+forward like an army in loose marching order. Outriders

+galloped ahead, like darting insects, and pointing

+the lumbering mass that trailed its half-mile

+length at a snail's-pace. The great column steadily

+advanced, checked, turned, led as easily as a child

+<pb n="181" />

+<anchor id="Pg181" />

+trails his little steam-cars after him on the nursery

+floor, and always by the little force of a handful of

+men and a few horses.</p>

+

+<p>After supper came general relaxation around the

+camp-fire. The men, who had all day been strung

+to a keen pitch of nervous energy, lounged in loose,

+picturesque uncouthness, while each began to unravel

+his own lively miscellany of information or

+invention. There was jest, laughter, spinning of

+yarns, singing of songs. As Peter lay in the fire-light,

+smoking his brier-wood, he noticed that the

+man next him spent a great deal of time poring

+over a letter, holding it close to the blaze, now at

+arm's-length, which was hardly surprising, considering

+the penmanship of the more common

+variety of <hi rend="font-style: italic">billet-doux</hi>. The man was plainly disappointed

+that Peter would not notice or comment.

+Finally he folded it up, and with sentimental significance

+returned it to the left side pocket of his

+flannel shirt, and remarked to Peter, "It's from

+her."</p>

+

+<p>"Indeed," said Peter, who had not the faintest

+notion who "her" could be. "Let me congratulate

+you."</p>

+

+<p>"Yes, sir," and there was conviction in the cow-puncher's

+tone; "it's from old man Kinson's girl, up

+to the Basin, and the parson's goin' to give us the

+life sentence soon. A man gets sick o' helling it all

+over creation." He rolled a cigarette, lit it, took

+a puff or two, then turned to Peter, as one whose

+acquaintance with the broader side of life entitled

+him to speak with a certain authority. "Is it that,

+<pb n="182" />

+<anchor id="Pg182" />

+or is it that we're getting on, a little long in the

+tooth, logy in our movements?"</p>

+

+<p>"I think we're just sick of helling it." Peter

+looked towards the star that last night had been

+the beacon towards which he and Judith had

+scaled the heights. "Yes, we get sick of helling it

+after we've turned thirty."</p>

+

+<p>"Then I can't be making a mistake. If I thought

+it was because I was getting on, I'd stampede this

+here range. It don't seem fair to a girl to allow

+that you're broke, tamed, and know the way to the

+corral, when it's just that you're needin' to go to an

+old man's home."</p>

+

+<p>"Now this is really love," said Peter to himself,

+with interest. "This is humility." A sympathetic

+liking for the self-distrustful lover surged hot and

+generous into Peter's heart, and he continued to

+himself: "Now that's what Judith would appreciate

+in a man, some directness, some humility!" Poor

+Judith! Poor burden-bearer! Who was to love

+her as she deserved to be loved, even as old man

+Kinson's girl, of the Basin, was loved? Yet suppose

+some one did love her in such fashion and she returned

+it? It was a picture Peter had never conjured

+up before. Nonsense! he was accustomed to

+think of Judith a great deal, and that was not the

+way to think of her. "Dear Judith!" said Peter,

+half unconsciously to himself, and looked again at

+the fellow, who had gone back to his dingy letter and

+continued to reread it in the fire-light as if he hoped

+to extract some further meaning from the now

+familiar words. Nature had fitted him out with a

+<pb n="183" />

+<anchor id="Pg183" />

+rag-bag assortment of features&mdash;the nose of a clown,

+the eyes of a ferret, the mouth that hangs agape

+like a badly hinged door, the mouth of the incessant

+talker. And withal, as he lounged in the fire-light,

+dreamily turning his love-letter, he had a sort of

+superphysical beauty, reflected of the glow that

+many waters cannot quench.</p>

+

+<p>Costigan, who had led the merriment against

+Simpson at Mrs. Clark's eating-house, was playing

+"mumbly-peg" with Texas Tyler. They had been

+working like Trojans all day at the round-up, but

+they pitched their pocket-knives with as keen a zest

+as school-boys, bickering over points in the game,

+accusing each other of cheating, calling on the

+rest of the company to umpire some disputed

+point.</p>

+

+<p>But presently, from the opposite side of the fire,

+some one began to sing, in a rich barytone, a dirgelike

+thing that caught the attention of first one then

+another of the men, making them stop their yarning

+and knife-throwing to listen. The tune, in its homely

+power to evoke the image of the ceremonial of

+death, was more or less familiar to most of them.

+There was a conscious funeral pageantry in the ring

+of its measured phrases that recalled to many

+burials of the dead that had taken place in their

+widely scattered homes. Mrs. Barbauld's hymn,

+"Flee as a Bird to the Mountain," are the words

+usually sung to the air.</p>

+

+<p>Costigan presently cut across the dirgelike refrain

+with: "Phwat th' divil is ut about that

+chune that Oi'm thinkin' of?"</p>

+<pb n="184" />

+<anchor id="Pg184" />

+

+<p>"This," said the man with the barytone voice,

+"is the tune that Nick Steele saved his neck to."</p>

+

+<p>"Begorra, that's ut. I wasn't there mesilf, but

+Oi've heard th' story told more times than Oi've

+years to me credit."</p>

+

+<p>"My father was in that necktie party," spoke up

+a young cow-puncher, "and I've heard him tell the

+story scores of times, and he always wondered why

+the devil they let Steele off. Never could understand

+it after the thing was done. He was talking

+of it once to a man who was a sharp on things like

+mesmerism, and the man called it hypnotic suggestion.

+Said that Steele got control of the whole

+outfit and mesmerized 'em so they couldn't do a

+thing to him."</p>

+

+<p>Several of the men asked for the story, echoes of

+which had come down through all the forty years

+since its happening. And the cow-puncher, lighting

+a cigarette, began:</p>

+

+<p>"It was in the good old forty-nine days in

+California, when gold was sometimes more plentiful

+than bread, and women were so scarce that one

+day when they found a girl's shoe on the trail they

+fitted a gold heel to it and put it up in camp to

+worship. But sentiment wasn't exactly their long

+suit, and any little difficulties that cropped up were

+straightened out by the vigilance committee&mdash;and

+a rope. One day a saddle, or maybe it was a gun,

+that didn't belong to him, was found among this

+man Steele's traps, and though he swore that some

+one had put it there for a grudge, the committee

+thought that a hemp necktie was the easiest way

+<pb n="185" />

+<anchor id="Pg185" />

+out of the argument. And this here Steele party

+finds himself, at the age of twenty-four, with something

+like thirty minutes of life to his credit. He

+don't take on none, nor make a play for mercy, nor

+try any fancy speech-making. He just waits round,

+kinder pale, but seemin' indifferent, considerin' it

+was his funeral that was impendin'. I've heard

+my father say that he was a tall, slim boy, with a

+kind of girlish prettiness, and the committee looked

+some for hysterics and they didn't get none. The

+noose was made ready and they told Steele he could

+have five minutes to pray, if he wanted to, or he

+could take it out in cursing, just as he chose. The

+boy said he felt that he hadn't quite all that was

+coming to him in the way of enjoyment, and that

+while he was far from criticising the vigilance

+committee, he was not altogether partial to the

+nature of his demise, and if it was just the same to

+them, instead of praying or cursing, he'd take that

+five minutes for a song.</p>

+

+<p>"They was agreeable, and he up and steps on the

+scaffold, what they was mighty proud of, it bein'

+about the only substantial structure the town could

+boast. He began to sing that thing you've all

+been listening to, and he had a voice like water

+falling light and fine in a pool below. They crowded

+up close about the scaffold and listened. The

+words he put to it were his own story, just like those

+old minstrels that you read about, and at the end

+of each verse came the chorus, slow and solemn as

+the moment after something great has happened.

+There wasn't a hangin'-face in the crowd after he

+<pb n="186" />

+<anchor id="Pg186" />

+was started. At some time or other every man had

+heard somebody he thought a heap of, buried to

+that tune, and his voice got to workin' on their

+imaginations and turned their hearts to water. I

+don't remember anything but the chorus&mdash;that went

+like this:</p>

+

+<lg>

+<l rend="margin-left: 2">"'Who'll weep for me, on the gallows tree,</l>

+<l rend="margin-left: 4">As I sway in the wind and swing?</l>

+<l rend="margin-left: 2">Is there never a tear to be shed for me,</l>

+<l rend="margin-left: 4">As I swing by a hempen string?</l>

+<l rend="margin-left: 2">Who'll weep, who'll keep</l>

+<l rend="margin-left: 2">Watch, as I'm rocked to sleep,</l>

+<l rend="margin-left: 4">Rocked by a hempen string?'"</l>

+</lg>

+

+<p>There was a long silence, broken only by the

+crackle of the logs in the camp-fire and the night

+sounds of the lonely plain. The leaping flames

+showed a group of thoughtful faces. Finally, Costigan

+broke the silence with:</p>

+

+<p>"Begorra, 'tis some av thim 'ud be doin' well to

+be lukin' to their music-lessons about here, Oi'm

+thinkin', afther th' day's wurruk."</p>

+

+<p>The Irishman, with his instinctive loquacity, had

+expressed what none of the rest would have considered

+politic to hint. It was like the giving way

+of the pebble that starts the avalanche. Soon they

+were deep in tales of lynchings. Peter knew only too

+well the trend of their talk, the "XXX" men were

+feeling the public pulse, as it were. Now, according

+to the unwritten code of the plains, lynching was

+"meet, right, just, and available" for the cattle-thief.

+And Peter felt himself false to his creed, false

+<pb n="187" />

+<anchor id="Pg187" />

+to his employer, false to himself, in seeking to evade

+the question. And yet that pitiful cabin, the white-faced

+woman running to the door so often that

+she knew not what she did, and the little rosy boy,

+who had put out his arms so trustfully! Peter

+broke into their grewsome yarning. "Lord, but

+you're like a lot of old women just come from a

+funeral!"</p>

+

+<p>"Whin the carpse died hard, and th' wake was

+a success." Costigan turned over. "Werra, werra,

+but we'll be seein' fairies the night!"</p>

+

+<p>A "XXX" man turned his head with a deliberate

+slowness and regarded Peter with narrowing eyes:

+"If the subject of cattle-thieves and their punishment

+is unpleasant to the gentleman from New

+York, perhaps he will favor us with something more

+cheerful." It was the same man who had given the

+two definitions of the "H L" brand that morning

+at the round-up.</p>

+

+<p>"Delighted," said Peter, affecting not to notice

+the significance of the man's remark. "Did you

+ever hear of the time that Tony Neville was burned

+with snow?"</p>

+

+<p>The "XXX" man yawned long and audibly.

+No one seemed especially interested in Tony Neville's

+having been burned with snow, but Peter struck

+out manfully, just in time to head off a man who

+said that he had seen Jim Rodney or some one

+who looked like him, following the trail-herd.</p>

+

+<p>"Once on a time, when it paid to be a cattle-man,"

+began Peter, "there was an outfit near Laramie that

+hailed from the United Kingdom, every mother's

+<pb n="188" />

+<anchor id="Pg188" />

+son of them. A fine, manly lot of fellows, but

+wedded to calamity along of their cooks&mdash;not the

+revered range article," and Peter waved his hand

+towards the "W-square" cook, who was one of the

+party, "but the pampered ranch article that boasts

+a real stove, planted in a real kitchen, the spoiled

+darling that never has to light a fire out of wet wood

+in the rain.</p>

+

+<p>"These unhappy Britons had every species of ill

+luck that could befall an outfit, in the way of cooks;

+they were of every nationality, age, and sex, and they

+stole, drank, quarrelled, till the outfit determined

+to sweep the house clear of them and do its own

+cooking. Every man was to have a turn at it for a

+week. There was a Scotchman, who gave them

+something called 'pease bannocks,' three times a day;

+followed by an Irishman, who breakfasted them

+on potatoes and whiskey. There was an Englishman,

+who had a beef slaughtered every time he

+fancied a tenderloin. There was a Welshman, who

+sang as he cooked. There were as many different

+kinds of indigestion as there were men in the outfit.

+They would beg to do night-herding, anything to get

+them away from that ranch. Finally, when their

+little tummies got so bad that their overcoats

+thickened, or wore through, or whatever happens to

+stomachs' overcoats that are treated unkindly, some

+one's maiden aunt sent him a tract saying that rice

+was the salvation of the human race, as witness the

+Chinese. Whosever turn it was to cook that week

+determined to try the old lady's prescription. Rice

+was procured, about a peck, I think; and the man

+<pb n="189" />

+<anchor id="Pg189" />

+who was cooking, pro tem, put the entire quantity

+on to boil in a huge ham-boiler, over a slow fire, as

+per the directions of the maiden aunt. The rice

+seemed to be doing nicely, when some one came in

+and said that a bunch of antelope was over on the

+hills and there was a good chance to get a couple.

+Every man got his gun, all but the cook, and he

+looked at the rice, that hadn't done a thing over

+the slow fire, in a way that would melt your heart.

+'Just my luck that it should be my week to pot-wrestle

+when there's good hunting right at one's

+front door.'</p>

+

+<p>"'Oh, come on,' some one said. 'Didn't Kellett's

+aunt say the rice ought to be cooked over a slow

+fire? Kellett, get your aunt's letter and read the

+directions for cooking that rice again.'</p>

+

+<p>"The cook didn't need a second invitation, and

+they got into their saddles, cook and all, and went

+for the antelope.</p>

+

+<p>"Now antelope are not like stationary wash-tubs;

+they move about. And when that particular outfit

+arrived at the spot where those antelope were

+last seen, they had moved, but the boys found

+traces of them, and continued on their trail. They

+went in the foot-hills and they searched for those

+antelope all day. They caught up with old man

+Hall's outfit at dinner-time and were invited to take

+a bite. Coming home by way of the 'Circle-Star'

+ranch, Colonel Semmes asked them in to have a

+mint-julep; the colonel was a South Carolinian, and

+he had just succeeded in raising some mint. They

+had several&mdash;I fear more than several&mdash;drinks before

+<pb n="190" />

+<anchor id="Pg190" />

+leaving for home, with never a trace of antelope nor

+a thought of the rice cooking over the slow fire.

+The colonel remembered some hard cider that he

+had, and topping off on that, they set out. The

+weather was pretty warm, and on their way home

+they experienced some remorse over the hard cider.

+Now hard cider is an accumulative drink; it piles

+up interest like debt or unpaid taxes. And by the

+time those Englishmen had turned the little lane

+leading into their home corral, they saw a sight that

+made their sombreros rise. As I have said before,

+it was hot, being somewhere in the month of August.

+Gentlemen, I hardly expect you to believe

+me when I say it was snowing on their house,

+and not on another God blessed thing in the landscape.</p>

+

+<p>"The blame thing about it was, that every man

+took the phenomenon to be his own private view

+of snakes, or their bibulous equivalent, manifested

+in another and more terrifying form. Here was the

+August sun pouring down on the plain where their

+ranch-house was situated; everything in sight hot

+and dry as a lime-kiln, grasshoppers chirping in a

+hot-wave prophecy, and snow covering the house

+and the ground, about to what seemed a depth of

+four inches. Every one of them felt sensitive about

+mentioning what he saw to the others. You see,

+gentlemen, being unfamiliar with American drinks,

+and especially old Massachusetts cider, they merely

+looked to keep their saddles and no questions

+asked.</p>

+

+<p>"But when they got a bit closer the horror increased.

+<pb n="191" />

+<anchor id="Pg191" />

+Flying right out of their windows were

+perfect drifts of snow, banks of it, gentlemen, and

+the thermometer up past a hundred. One of the

+men looked about him and noticed the pallor on the

+faces of the rest:</p>

+

+<p>"'Do you notice anything strange, old chap?

+These cursed American drinks!'</p>

+

+<p>"'Strange!'&mdash;the boy he had spoken to was about

+eighteen, a nice, red-cheeked English lad out with

+his uncle learning the cattle business. 'Good God!'

+the boy said. 'I've always tried to lead a good

+life, and here I am a paretic before I've come of

+age.'</p>

+

+<p>"They halted their horses and held a consultation.

+The boss came to the conclusion that since they

+had all seen it, there was nothing to do but continue

+the investigation and send the details to the

+'Society for Psychical Research,' when he got down

+from his horse and walked towards the door of the

+house. At his approach, as if to rebuke his wanton

+curiosity, a great blast of snow blew out of the

+window and got him full in the face. He howled&mdash;the

+snow was scalding hot.</p>

+

+<p>"Then they remembered the rice."</p>

+

+<p>"Is that all?" demanded the man who had

+wanted to talk about rustling.</p>

+

+<p>"Isn't it enough?" said Peter, who could afford

+to be magnanimous, now that he had accomplished

+his point.</p>

+

+<p>"When I first heard that story, 'bout ten years

+ago, it ended with the Britishers riding like hell

+over to the Wolcott ranch to borrow umbrellas to

+<pb n="192" />

+<anchor id="Pg192" />

+keep off the hot rice while they got into the house,"

+said the man, still sulky.</p>

+

+<p>"That's the way they tell it to tenderfeet," and

+Peter turned on his heel. The story-telling for the

+evening was over, the boys got their blankets and

+set about making their beds for the night.</p>

+<pb n="193" />

+<anchor id="Pg193" />

+</div>

+

+<div rend="page-break-before: always">

+<head>XIII</head>

+<index index="pdf" /><index index="toc" level1="Mary's First Day In Camp" />

+<head type="sub">Mary's First Day In Camp</head>

+

+<p>The first day spent as governess to the family

+of Yellett reminded Mary Carmichael of those

+days mentioned in the opening chapter of Genesis,

+days wherein whole geological ages developed and

+decayed. Any era, geological or otherwise, she felt

+might have had its rise, decline, and fall during that

+first day spent in a sheep camp.</p>

+

+<p>She awoke to the sound of faint tinklings, and

+accepted the towering peaks of the Wind River

+mountains, with their snowy mantles all shadowy

+in the whitening dawn, and the warmer grays of

+huddling foot-hills, as one receives, without question,

+the fantastic visions of sleep. The faint tinkling

+grew nearer, mingled with a light pitter patter and

+a far off baa-ing and bleating; then, as shadowy as

+the sheep in dreams, a great flock came winding

+round the hill; in and out through the sage-brush

+they went and came, elusive as the early morning

+shadows they moved among. The air was crystalline

+and sparkling; creation's first morning could

+not have promised more. It would have been inconsistent

+in such a place to waken in a house; the

+desert, that seemed a lifeless sea, the sheep moving

+<pb n="194" />

+<anchor id="Pg194" />

+like gray shadows, were all parts of a big, new world

+that had no need of houses built by hands.</p>

+

+<p>Ben, oldest of the Brobdingnag tribe, who had

+greeted Mary's request to be directed to "the house"

+as a bit of dry Eastern humor, led the herd to

+pasture. Ben's right-hand man was "Stump,"

+the collie, so named because he had no tail worth

+mentioning, but otherwise in full possession of his

+faculties. Stump was newly broken to his official

+duties and authority sat heavily on him. Keenly

+alert, he flew hither and thither, first after one

+straying member of the herd, then another, barking

+an early morning roll-call as he went. Two other

+male Brobdingnags came from some sequestered spot

+in the landscape and joined Ben&mdash;Mary recognized

+two more pupils.</p>

+

+<p>Mrs. Yellett then unrolled the pillow constructed

+the night previous of such garments as she had been

+willing to dispense with, and put them on. The

+vastness of her surroundings did not prevent her

+from locating the minutest article, and Mary gave

+her the respectful admiration of a woman who has

+spent a great deal of time searching for things in an

+infinitely smaller space. The matriarch then called

+the remaining members of her household officially&mdash;the

+Misses Yellett accomplished their early morning

+toilets with the simplicity of young robins. Only

+the new governess hung back, but finally mustered

+up enough courage to say that if such

+a thing was possible she would like to have a

+bath.</p>

+

+<p>Mrs. Yellett greeted her request with the amused

+<pb n="195" />

+<anchor id="Pg195" />

+tolerance of one who has never given such a trifle

+a thought.</p>

+

+<p>"The habit of bathing," she commented, "is

+shore like religion: them that observes it wonders

+how them that neglects it gets along." She beckoned

+Mary to follow, and led the way to a bunch of

+willows that grew about a stone's-throw from the

+camp. "Here be a whole creek full of water, if

+you don't lack the fortitood. It's cold enough to

+sell for ten cents a glass down to Texas."</p>

+

+<p>Somewhat dismayed, Mary stepped gingerly into

+the creek. Its intense cold numbed her at first,

+but a second later awoke all her young lustiness, and

+she returned to camp in a fine glow of courage to

+encounter whatever else there might be of novelty.

+Mrs. Yellett was preparing breakfast at a sheet-iron

+stove, assisted by Cacta and Clematis.</p>

+

+<p>"Your hankering after a bath like this"&mdash;she added

+another handful of flour to the biscuit dough&mdash;"do

+shore remind me of an Englishman who come

+to visit near Laramie in the days of plenty, when

+steers had jumped to forty-five. This yere Britisher

+was exhibit stock, shore enough, being what's called

+a peer of the realm, which means, in his own country,

+that he is just nacherally entitled from the start

+to h'ist his nose high.</p>

+

+<p>"The outfit he was goin' to visit wasn't in the

+habit of havin' peers drop in on them casual, but

+they aimed to make him feel that he wasn't the

+first of the herd that headed that way by a

+quart"&mdash;she cut four biscuits with a tin cup, and

+resumed&mdash;"to which end they rounded up every

+<pb n="196" />

+<anchor id="Pg196" />

+specimen of canned food that's ever come across the

+Rockies.</p>

+

+<p>"'Let him ask for "salmon esplinade," let him

+ask for "chicken marine-go," let him ask for

+plum-pudding, let him ask for hair-oil or throat

+lozengers, this yere outfit calls his bluff,' says Billy

+Ames, who owns the 'twin star' outfit and is

+anticipatin' this peer as a guest.</p>

+

+<p>"Well, just as everything is ready, the can-opener,

+sharp as a razor, waitin' to open up such effete

+luxuries as the peer may demand, Bill Ames gets

+called to California by the sickness of his wife. He

+feels mean about abandonin' the peer, but he don't

+seem to have no choice, his wife bein' one of them

+women who shares her bad health pretty impartially

+round the family. So Billy he departs. But before

+he goes he expounds to Joplin Joe, his foreman, the

+nature of a peer and how his wants is apt to be

+a heap fashionable, and that when he asks for anything

+to grasp the can-opener and run to the store-house&mdash;Cacta,

+you put on the coffee!</p>

+

+<p>"That peer arrives in the afternoon, and he never

+makes a request any more than a corpse. Beyond

+a marked disposition to herd by himself and to

+maintain the greatest possible distance between his

+own person and a six-shooter, he don't vary none

+from the bulk of tenderfeet. At night, when all

+parties retires, and Joplin Joe ponders on them

+untouched, effete luxuries in the store-room, and

+how the can-opener 'ain't once been dimmed in the

+cause of hospitality, it frets him considerable, and he

+feels he ain't doin' his duty to the absent Billy Ames.</p>

+<pb n="197" />

+<anchor id="Pg197" />

+

+<p>"At sunrise he can stand it no longer. He thunders

+on the Britisher's door with the butt of his six-shooter,

+calling out:</p>

+

+<p>"'Peer, peer, be you awake?'</p>

+

+<p>"The peer allowed he was, though his teeth was

+rattling like broken crockery.</p>

+

+<p>"'Peer, would you relish some "salmon esplinade"?'</p>

+

+<p>"The peer allowed he wouldn't.</p>

+

+<p>"'Peer, would you relish some "chicken marine-go"?'</p>

+

+<p>"The peer allowed he shore wouldn't, and the

+crockery rattled harder than ever. Joplin Joe then

+tried him on the hair-oil and the throat lozengers,

+the peer declining each with thanks.</p>

+

+<p>"'Peer,' said Joplin Joe, fair busting with hospitality,

+'is there anything in this Gawd's world that

+you do want?'</p>

+

+<p>"The crockery rattled an interlood, then Joplin

+Joe made out:</p>

+

+<p>"'Thanks, very much. I should like a ba-ath'&mdash;Clematis,

+you see if them biscuits is brownin'.</p>

+

+<p>"Joe he ran to the store-room, and his eye encountered

+a barrel of corned-beef. He calls to a

+couple of cow-punchers, and the first thing you

+know that late corned steer is piled onto the prairie

+and them cow-punchers is hustling the empty

+barrel in to the peer. Next they detaches the steps

+from the kitchen door, ropes 'em to the barrel and

+introduces the peer to his bath. He's good people

+all right, and when he sees they calls his bluff he

+steps in all right and lets 'em soak him a couple of

+<pb n="198" />

+<anchor id="Pg198" />

+buckets. This here move restores all parties to a

+mutual understanding, and the peer he bathes in

+the corned-beef barrel regular durin' his stay&mdash;you

+see the habit had cinched him."</p>

+

+<p>Ned had shot an antelope a day or two previous,

+and antelope steak, broiled over a glowing bed of

+wood coals, with black coffee, stewed dried apples,

+and soda biscuit made up what Mary found to be

+an unexpectedly palatable breakfast. As camp did

+not include a cow, no milk or butter was served

+with meals. Nevertheless, the hungry tenderfoot

+was quite content, and missed none of the appurtenances

+she had been brought up to believe essential

+to a civilized meal, not even the little silver jug that

+Aunt Martha always insisted came over with William

+the Conqueror&mdash;Aunt Martha scorned the <hi rend="font-style: italic">May-flower</hi>

+contingent as parvenus.</p>

+

+<p>The family sat on the grass, tailor fashion, and

+every one helped himself to what appetite prompted,

+in a fashion that suggested brilliant gymnastic

+powers. To pass a dish to any one, the governess

+discovered, was construed as an evidence of mental

+weakness and eccentricity. The family satisfied

+its appetite without assistance or amenities, but

+with the skill of a troupe of jugglers.</p>

+

+<p>Breakfast was half over when Mrs. Yellett laid

+down her knife, which she had handled throughout

+the meal with masterly efficiency. Mary watched

+her in hopeless embarrassment, and wondered if

+her own timid use of a tin fork could be construed

+as an unfriendly comment upon the Yelletts' more

+simple and direct code of table etiquette.</p>

+<pb n="199" />

+<anchor id="Pg199" />

+

+<p>"Land's sakes! I just felt, all the time we've been

+eating, we was forgettin' something. You children

+ought to remember, I got so much on my mind."</p>

+

+<p>All eyes turned anxiously to the cooking-stove,

+while an expression of frank regret began to settle

+over the different faces. The backbone of their appetites

+had been broken, and there was something

+else, perhaps something even more appetizing, to

+come.</p>

+

+<p>Interpreting the trend of their glance and expression,

+up flared Mrs. Yellett, with as great a show

+of indignation as if some one had set a match to her

+petticoats.</p>

+

+<p>"I declare, I never see such children; no more

+nacheral feelin's than a herd of coyotes; never

+thinks of a plumb thing but grub. No, make no

+mistake about the character of the objec' we've forgot.

+'Tain't sweet pertaters, 'tain't molasses, 'tain't

+corn-bread&mdash;it's paw! It's your pore old paw&mdash;him

+settin' in the tent, forsook and neglected by his own

+children."</p>

+

+<p>All started up to remedy their filial neglect without

+loss of time, but Mrs. Yellett waved them back

+to their places.</p>

+

+<p>"Don't the whole posse of you go after him, like

+he'd done something and was to be apprehended.

+Ben, you go after your father."</p>

+

+<p>Ben strode over to the little white tent that

+Mary had noticed glimmering in the moonlight

+the preceding evening, and presently emerged, supporting

+on his arm a partially paralyzed old man,

+who might have been Rip Van Winkle in the worst

+<pb n="200" />

+<anchor id="Pg200" />

+of tempers. His white hair and beard encircled a

+shrivelled, hawklike face, the mouth was sucked

+back in a toothless eddy that brought tip of nose

+and tip of chin into whispering distance, the eyes

+glittered from behind the overhanging, ragged brows

+like those of a hungry animal searching through the

+brush for its prey.</p>

+

+<p>"If you've done eatin'," whispered Mrs. Yellett to

+Miss Carmichael, "you'd better run on. Paw's

+langwidge is simply awful when we forget to bring

+him to meals." Mary ran on.</p>

+

+<p>When, after the lapse of some thirty minutes or so,

+the stentorian voice of Mrs. Yellett recalled Mary to

+camp, she found that the tin breakfast service had

+been washed and returned to the mess-box, the beds

+had been neatly folded and piled in one of the wagons&mdash;in

+fact, the extremely simple tent-hold, to coin

+a word, was in absolute order. It was just 6 A.M.,

+and Mrs. Yellett thought it high time to begin school.

+Mary tried to convey to her that the hour was somewhat

+unusual, but she seemed to think that for pupils

+who were beginning their tasks comparatively late in

+life it would be impossible to start sufficiently early

+in the morning. So at this young and tender hour,

+with many misgivings, Mary set about preparing her

+<hi rend="font-style: italic">al fresco</hi> class-room.</p>

+

+<p>She chose a nice, flat little piece of the United

+States, situated in the shade of the clump of willows

+that bordered a trickling creek not far from her

+sylvan bath-room of the early morning. How she

+was to sit on the ground all day and yet preserve a

+properly pedagogical demeanor was the first question

+<pb n="201" />

+<anchor id="Pg201" />

+to be settled. That there was nothing even remotely

+resembling a chair in camp she felt reasonably

+assured, as "paw" was sitting on an inverted

+soap-box under a pine-tree, and "paw," by reason

+of age and infirmity, appropriated all luxuries. Mrs.

+Yellett, with her usual acumen, grasped the situation.</p>

+

+<p>"I'm figgerin'," she commented, "that there must

+be easier ways of governin' than sittin' up like a

+prairie-dog while you're at it."</p>

+

+<p>Mrs. Yellett took a hurried survey of the camp,

+lessening the distance between herself and one of

+the light wagons with a gait in which grace was

+entirely subservient to speed; then, with one capacious

+wrench of the arms, she loosened the spring seat

+from the wagon and bore it to the governess with an

+artless air of triumph. It was difficult, under these

+circumstances, to explain to Mrs. Yellett that without

+that symbol of scholastic authority, a desk, the

+wagon seat was useless. Nevertheless, Mary set

+forth, with all her eloquence, the mission of a desk.

+Mrs. Yellett was genuinely depressed. Had she imported

+the magician without his wand&mdash;Aladdin

+without his lamp? She proposed a bewildering

+choice&mdash;an inverted wash-tub, two buckets sustaining

+the relation of caryatides to a board, the sheet-iron

+cooking-stove. In an excess of solicitude she

+even suggested robbing "paw" of his soap-box.</p>

+

+<p>Mary chose the wash-tub on condition that Mrs.

+Yellett consented to sacrifice the handles in the

+cause of lower education. She felt that an inverted

+tub that was likely to see-saw during class hours

+<pb n="202" />

+<anchor id="Pg202" />

+would tend rather to develop a sense of humor in her

+pupils than to contribute to her pedagogical dignity.</p>

+

+<p>The camp, as may already have been inferred,

+enjoyed a matriarchal form of government. Its

+feminine dictator was no exception to the race of

+autocrats in that she was not an absolute stranger

+to the rosy byways of self-indulgence. There was a

+strenuous quality in her pleasuring perhaps not inconsistent

+in one whose daily tasks included sheep-herding,

+ditch-digging, varied by irrigating and

+shearing in their proper seasons. Under the circumstances,

+it was not surprising that her wash-tub

+bore about the same relationship to her real

+duties as does the crochet needle or embroidery

+hoop to the lives of less arduously engaged women.

+It was at once her fad and her relaxation, the dainty

+feminine accomplishment with which she whiled

+away the hours after a busy day spent with pick and

+shovel. Of all this Mary was ignorant when she proposed

+that Mrs. Yellett saw off the tub-handles in

+the cause of culture. However, Mrs. Yellett procured

+a saw, yet the hand that held it lingered in

+its descent on the handles. She contemplated the

+tub as affectionately as Hamlet regarding the skull

+of "Alas, poor Yorick!"</p>

+

+<p>"This," she observed, "is the only thing about

+camp that reminds me I'm a woman. I'd plumb

+forget it many a time if it warn't for this little tub.

+The identity of a woman is mighty apt to get

+mislaid when dooty compels her to assoome the

+pants cast aside by the nacheral head of the house

+in sickness or death. It's ben six years now since

+<pb n="203" />

+<anchor id="Pg203" />

+paw's done a thing but set 'round and wait for

+meals." Mrs. Yellett sighed laboriously. "Not

+that I'm holdin' it agin him none. When a man

+sees eighty, it's time he bedded himself down comfortable

+and waited for the nacheral course of events

+to weed him out. But when the boys get old

+enough to tend to herdin', irrigatin', and the work

+that God A'mighty provided that man might get the

+chance to sweat hisself for bread, accordin' to the

+Scriptures, I aim to indulge myself by doin' a wash

+of clothes every day, even if I have to take clean

+clothes and do 'em over again."</p>

+

+<p>The poor "gov'ment's" tender heart could not

+resist this presentation of the case.</p>

+

+<p>"We won't touch the handles, Mrs. Yellett," she

+laughed. "I'm glad you told me you had a personal

+sentiment for the tub. There are some things

+I should feel the same way about&mdash;my hoe and rake,

+for instance, that I care for my garden with, at

+home. And that suggests to me, why not dig two

+little trenches for the handles and plant the tub?

+Then I shall have an even firmer foundation on

+which to arrange the&mdash;the&mdash;the educational miscellany."</p>

+

+<p>The suggestion of this harmless expedient was

+gratefully received, and the "desk" duly implanted,

+whereupon Mary pathetically sought to embellish

+her "class-room" from such scanty materials as happened

+to be at hand. A hemstitched bureau scarf

+that she had tucked in her trunk, in unquestioning

+faith in the bureau that was to be part of the

+ranch equipment, took the "raw edge," as it were,

+<pb n="204" />

+<anchor id="Pg204" />

+off the desk. A bunch of prairie flowers, flaming

+cactus blossoms in scarlet and yellow, ox-eyed

+daisies, white clematis from the creek, seemed none

+the less decorative for the tin cup that held them.

+Mary grimly told herself that her school was to

+have refining influences, even if it had no furniture.</p>

+

+<p>The books, pencils, and paper arranged in decorous

+little piles, Miss Carmichael announced to her

+patroness that school was ready to open. Mrs.

+Yellett, who had never heard that "a soft voice is

+an excellent thing in woman," and whose chest-notes

+were not unlike those of a Durham in sustained

+volume of sound, made the valley of the Wind River

+echo with the summons of the pupils to school, upon

+which the teacher herself was overcome by the absurdity

+of the situation and had barely time to escape

+back of the willows, where she laughed till she

+cried.</p>

+

+<p>As the pupils trooped obediently to school, Mary

+noted that they carried no flowers to their dear

+teacher, but that Ben, the oldest pupil, twenty-one

+years old, six feet four inches in height and deeply

+saturnine in manner, carried a six-shooter in his

+cartridge-belt. The teacher felt that she was the

+last to deny a pupil any reasonable palliative of the

+tedium of class-hours&mdash;the nearness of her own

+school-days inclined her to leniency in this particular&mdash;but

+she was hardly prepared to condone a six-shooter,

+and confided her fears to Mrs. Yellett, who

+received them with the indulgent tolerance a strong-minded

+woman might extend to the feminine flutter

+aroused by a mouse. She explained that Ben did

+<pb n="205" />

+<anchor id="Pg205" />

+not shoot for "glory," but to defend the herd from

+the casual calls of mountain-lions, bears, and coyotes.

+Jack and Ned, who were very nearly as tall as their

+older brother, carried similar weapons. Mary prayed

+that a fraternal spirit might dwell among her

+pupils.</p>

+

+<p>The Misses Yellett were hardly less terrifying than

+their brothers. They had their father's fierce, hawklike

+profile, softened by youth, and the appalling

+height and robustness due to the freedom and fresh

+air of a nomadic existence. Their costumes might,

+Mary thought, have been fashioned out of gunny-sacks

+by the simple expedient of cutting holes for

+the head and arms. The description of the dress

+worn by the charcoal-burner's daughter in any

+mediaeval novel of modern construction would approximate

+fairly well the school toilets of these

+young lady pupils. The boys wore overalls and

+flannel shirts, which, in contrast to the sketchy

+effects of their sisters' costumes, seemed almost

+modish. Mrs. Yellett then left the "class-room,"

+saying she must take Ben's place with the sheep.</p>

+

+<p>The Brobdingnags, huge of stature, sinister of

+aspect, deeply distrustful of the rites in which they

+were about to participate, closed in about their

+teacher. From the pigeon-holes of memory Mary

+drew forth the academic smile with which a certain

+teacher of hers had invariably opened school. The

+pupils greeted the academic smile with obvious

+suspicion. No one smiled in camp. When anything

+according with their conception of the humorous

+happened, they laughed uproariously. Thus,

+<pb n="206" />

+<anchor id="Pg206" />

+early in the morning, on his way to breakfast, Ned

+had stumbled over an ax and severely cut his head.

+Every one but Ned saw the point of this joke immediately,

+and hearty guffaws testified to their

+appreciation.</p>

+

+<p>Miss Carmichael took her place behind the upturned

+tub.</p>

+

+<p>"Will you please be seated?" she said.</p>

+

+<p>The class complied with the instantaneous precision

+of automata newly greased and in excellent

+working order. Their abrupt obedience was

+disconcerting. Some one must have been drilling

+them, thought their anxious teacher, in the art of

+simultaneous squatting. The temper of the class

+respecting scholastic deportment leaned towards

+rigidity bordering on self-torture.</p>

+

+<p>Mary made out a roll-call, and by unanimous

+consent it was agreed to arrange the class as it then

+stood, or rather squatted, with the Herculean Ben

+at the top, and gradually diminishing in size till it

+reached the vanishing point with Cacta, who was

+ten and the least terrifying of all.</p>

+

+<p>"And now," ventured the teacher, with the

+courage of a white rabbit, "what have you been in

+the habit of studying?"</p>

+

+<p>Absolute silence on the part of the class, which

+confronted its questioner straight as a row of

+bottles, presenting faces imperturbable as so many

+sphinxes.</p>

+

+<p>Other questions met with an equally disheartening

+response. Miss Carmichael sat up straight, pushed

+back the persistent curls from her face, and bent

+<pb n="207" />

+<anchor id="Pg207" />

+every energy towards the achievement of a "firm"

+demeanor.</p>

+

+<p>"Clematis," said she, wisely selecting perhaps the

+least formidable of the class, "I want you to give

+me some idea of the kind of work you have been

+doing, so that we may all be able to understand each

+other. Now, in your mathematics, for instance,

+which of you have finished with your arithmetic,

+and which&mdash;"</p>

+

+<p>"What do you mean?" begged Clematis, somewhat

+tearful.</p>

+

+<p>"Where are you in your arithmetic?</p>

+

+<p>"Nowhere, ma'am."</p>

+

+<p>"Do you mean you have never learned any?"

+Mary Carmichael shuddered as she icily put the

+question.</p>

+

+<p>"Yes, ma'am."</p>

+

+<p>"Is that the case with all of you?"</p>

+

+<p>Emphatic nods left no room for doubt.</p>

+

+<p>"Then we'll leave that for the present. If you

+will tell me, Clematis, what kind of work you have

+been doing in your history and English, we will get

+to work on those to-day. What books have you

+been using?"</p>

+

+<p>Not unnaturally, Clematis, who was emotional

+and easily impressed, began to feel as though she

+were a criminal. She sobbed in a helpless, feminine

+way. Ben spoke up, fearsomely, from the top of the

+class.</p>

+

+<p>"We 'ain't got no books," said he, in grim rebuke,

+as though to put an end to a profitless discussion.</p>

+

+<p>"Do you wish me to understand," quavered Mary,

+<pb n="208" />

+<anchor id="Pg208" />

+"that you have had no studies&mdash;that you&mdash;can't

+read?&mdash;that you&mdash;don't know&mdash;anything?"</p>

+

+<p>"That's it," said Ben, with the nearest approach

+to cheerfulness he had yet manifested.</p>

+

+<p>Meanwhile there lay on the teacher's "desk" copies

+of Clodd's <hi rend="font-style: italic">Childhood of the World</hi>, two of that

+excellent series of <hi rend="font-style: italic">History Primers</hi>, and <hi rend="font-style: italic">The Young

+Geologist</hi>, all carefully selected, in the fulness of

+Mary's ignorance, for the little pupils of her imagination.

+She had brought no primer, as Mrs. Yellett's

+letter had distinctly said that the youngest child

+was ten and that all were comparatively advanced

+in their studies. More than ever Mary longed to

+penetrate the mystery of that Irish linen decoy, for

+without doubt it was to be her melancholy fate to

+conduct this giant band through the alphabet!</p>

+

+<p>Accordingly she wrote out the letters of the alphabet

+with large simplicity and a sublime renunciation

+of flourish. The class received it tepidly. Mary

+grew eloquent over its unswerving verities. The

+class remained lukewarm. The difference between

+a and b was a matter of indifference to the house of

+Yellett. They regarded their teacher's strenuous efforts

+to furnish a key to the acquirement of the alphabet

+with the amused superiority of "grown-ups"

+watching infant antics with pencil and paper. Meanwhile

+her fear of the class increased in proportion as

+her ability to hold its attention diminished. The

+backbone of the school was plainly wilting. The little

+scholars, armed to the teeth, no longer sat up

+straight as tenpins. After twenty-five minutes of

+educational experience, satiety bowled them over.</p>

+<pb n="209" />

+<anchor id="Pg209" />

+

+<p>A single glance had convinced Ben that the alphabet

+was beneath contempt. He yawned automatically

+at regular intervals&mdash;long, dismal yawns

+that threatened to terminate in a howl, the unchecked,

+primitive type of yawn that one hears in

+the cages of the zoological gardens on a dull day.

+Miss Carmichael raised interrogatory eyebrows, but

+she might as well have looked reproof at a Bengal

+tiger.</p>

+

+<p>The class was rapidly promoted to c-a-t, cat; but

+these dizzy intellectual heights left them cold and

+dull. Ben began to clean his revolver, and on being

+asked why he did not pay attention to his lessons,

+answered, briefly:</p>

+

+<p>"It's all d&mdash;&mdash;d foolishness."</p>

+

+<p>Cacta and Clem were pulling each other's hair.

+Mary affected not to see this sisterly exchange of

+torture. Ned whittled a stick; and, in chorus, when

+their teacher told them that d-o-g spelled dog, they

+shouted derision, and affirmed that they had no

+difficulty in compelling the obedience of Stump even

+without this particular bit of erudition. Though

+Mary had always abhorred corporal punishment, she

+began to see arguments in its favor.</p>

+

+<p>With the handleless tub as an elbow-rest the teacher

+took counsel with herself. Strategy must be employed

+with the intellectual conquest of the Brobdingnags.

+Summoning all the pedagogical dignity

+of which she was capable, she asked:</p>

+

+<p>"Boys, don't you want to know how to read?"</p>

+

+<p>"Noap," responded the head of the class.</p>

+

+<p>"Don't you want to know how to write?"</p>

+<pb n="210" />

+<anchor id="Pg210" />

+

+<p>"Noap."</p>

+

+<p>"But, my dear boy, what would you do if you

+left here and went out into the world, where every

+one knows these things and your ignorance would

+be evident at every turn. What would you do?"</p>

+

+<p>"Slug the whole blamed outfit!"</p>

+

+<p>Mary looked at her watch. School had lasted just

+forty-five minutes. Had time become petrified?</p>

+<pb n="211" />

+<anchor id="Pg211" />

+</div>

+

+<div rend="page-break-before: always">

+<head>XIV</head>

+<index index="pdf" /><index index="toc" level1="Judith Adjusts The Situation" />

+<head type="sub">Judith Adjusts The Situation</head>

+

+<p>Mary had been a member of the Yellett household

+for something over a week, and the intellectual

+conquest of her Brobdingnag pupils seemed

+as hopeless as on that first day. School seemed

+to be regarded by them as a sort of neutral territory,

+admirably adapted for the settlement of long-standing

+grudges, the pleasant exchange of practical jokes,

+peace and war conferences; also as a mart of trade,

+where fire-arms, knives, bear and elk teeth might

+be swapped with a greater expenditure of time and

+conversation than under the maternal eye. "Teacher,"

+as she was understood and accepted by the

+house of Yellett, undoubtedly filled a long-felt want.

+Presiding over a school of six-imp power for a week,

+however, had humbled Mary to the point of seriously

+considering a letter to the home government,

+meekly asking for return transportation. But this

+was before feminine wile had struggled with feminine

+vanity, and feminine wile won the day.

+School still continued to open at six, from which

+early and unusual hour it continued, without recess

+or interruption, till noon, when dinner pleasantly

+<pb n="212" />

+<anchor id="Pg212" />

+invaded the scholastic monotony, to the infinite

+relief of all parties concerned.</p>

+

+<p>Mary had dismissed her pupils a few minutes

+before the usual hour, on a particularly bad day,

+that she might rally her scattered faculties and

+present something of a countenance to the watchful

+eye of Mrs. Yellett. Every element of humor had

+vanished from the situation. The inverted tub was

+no longer a theme for merriment in her diary; home-life

+without a house was no longer a diverting

+epigram; she had closed her eyes that she might

+not see the mountains in all their grandeur. In her

+present mood of abject homesickness the white-capped

+peaks were part and parcel of the affront.

+With head sunk in the palms of her hands, and

+elbows resting on the inverted tub, Mary presented

+a picture of woe, in which the wicked element of

+comedy was not wholly lacking. Looking up suddenly,

+she saw Judith Rodney advancing. The

+first glimpse of her put Mary in a more rational

+mood.</p>

+

+<p>"I'm so glad to see you! Behold my class-room

+appointments! They may seem a trifle novel,

+but, for that matter, so are my pupils," began Mary,

+determining to present the same front to Judith

+that she had to Mrs. Yellett. But Judith was not

+to be put off. She looked into Mary's eyes and

+did not relax her gaze until she was rewarded with

+an answering twinkle. Then Mary laughed long

+and merrily, the first good, hearty laugh since the

+beginning of her teaching.</p>

+

+<p>"Tell me," Mary broke out, suddenly, "or the

+<pb n="213" />

+<anchor id="Pg213" />

+suspense will kill me, who wrote that lovely letter&mdash;on

+such good quality Irish linen, too? Snob that

+I was, it was the letter that did it."</p>

+

+<p>"So you have your suspicions that it was not a

+home product?"</p>

+

+<p>"You didn't do it, did you?"</p>

+

+<p>"Oh no; though I was asked, and so was Miss

+Wetmore, I believe. Of course poor Mrs. Yellett

+had no other recourse, as I suppose you know. I

+chose to be disobliging that time, and was sorry

+for it afterwards&mdash;sorry when I heard about the

+letter that really went! Do you find the sheep-wagon

+so very dreadful?"</p>

+

+<p>"I thought," laughed Mary, "that it was going

+to be like a picture I saw in a magazine, Mexican

+hammocks, grass cushions, and a lady pouring tea

+from a samovar; instead it was the sheep-wagon

+and 'Do you sleep light or dark?' There is Mrs.

+Yellett calling us to dinner. Shall I have a chance

+to talk to you alone afterwards?"</p>

+

+<p>"I've come all the way from Dax's to see you,"

+explained Judith, with characteristic directness.

+"We have all the afternoon."</p>

+

+<p>"Really!" Mary displayed a flash of school-girl

+enthusiasm. "I feel as if I could almost bear the

+scenery."</p>

+

+<p>Presumably Judith was a favorite guest of the

+Yellett household, and not without reason. She

+took her place in the circle about the homely,

+steaming fare, with an ease and grace that suggested

+that dining off the ground was an every-day

+affair with her, and chairs and tables undreamed-of

+<pb n="214" />

+<anchor id="Pg214" />

+luxuries. Mary envied her ready tact. Why

+could she not meet these people with Judith's

+poise&mdash;bring out the best of them, as she did?

+The boys talked readily and naturally&mdash;there was

+even a flavor to what they said. As for herself,

+try never so conscientiously and she would be

+confronted by frank amusement or shy distrust.

+Even "paw" beamed at Judith appreciatively as

+he consumed his meal with infinite, toothless labor.

+The Spartan family became almost sprightly

+under the pleasantly stimulating influence of its

+guest.</p>

+

+<p>"What kind of basques are they wearing this

+summer, Judy?" inquired Mrs. Yellett, regarding

+her guest's trim shirt-waist judicially. "I reckon

+them loose, meal-sack things must be all the go

+since you and Miss Mary both have 'em; but give

+me a good, tight-fittin' basque, every time. How's

+any one to know whether you got a figure or not,

+in a thing that never hits you anywhere?" questioned

+the matriarch, not without a touch of pride

+anent her own fine proportions.</p>

+

+<p>"You really ought to have a shirt-waist, Mrs.

+Yellett. You've no idea of the comfort of them,

+till you've worn them."</p>

+

+<p>"I don't see but I'll have to come to it." Her

+tone was frankly regretful, as one who feels obliged

+to follow the behests of fashion, yet, in so doing,

+sacrifices a cherished ideal. Mary Carmichael choked

+over her coffee in an abortive attempt to restrain

+her audible hilarity. Judith, without a trace of

+amusement, was discussing materials, cut, and

+<pb n="215" />

+<anchor id="Pg215" />

+buttons; the plainswoman had proved herself the

+better gentlewoman of the two.</p>

+

+<p>"Get me a spotty calico, white, with a red dot,

+will you, the next time you're over to Ervay?

+Buttons accordin' to your judgment; but if you

+could get some white chiny with a red ring, I think

+they'd match it handsome." She frowned reflectively.

+"You're sure one of them loose, hangy

+things 'd become me? Then you can bring it over

+Tuesday, when you come to the hunt."</p>

+

+<p>"What hunt?" asked Judith, in all simplicity.</p>

+

+<p>"Why, the wolf-hunt. Peter Hamilton come

+here three days ago and made arrangements for 'em

+all to have supper here after it was done. 'Lowed

+there was a young Eastern lady in the party, Miss

+Colebrooke, who couldn't wait to meet me. Course

+you're goin', Judy? You've plumb forgot it, or

+somethin' happened to the messenger. Who ever

+hyeard tell of anythin' happenin' in this yere county

+'thout you bein' the very axle of it?"</p>

+

+<p>Judith had not betrayed her chagrin by the least

+change of countenance. To the most searching

+glance every faculty was intent on the shirt-waist

+with the ringed buttons. Yet both women felt&mdash;by

+a species of telepathy wholly feminine&mdash;that

+Judith was deeply wounded. Loyal Sarah Yellett

+decided that Hamilton's guests would get but a

+scant supper from her if her friend Judith was to be

+unfavored with an invitation, while Judith, in her

+own warm heart, resented as deeply as Peter's

+slight of herself, his tale of Miss Colebrooke's impatience

+to meet Mrs. Yellett. The matriarch's

+<pb n="216" />

+<anchor id="Pg216" />

+dominant personality evoked many a smile even

+from those most deeply conscious of her worth;

+but it wasn't like Peter to make a spectacle of his

+ruggedly honest neighbor. Nevertheless she remarked,

+coolly:</p>

+

+<p>"I sha'n't be able to bring your shirt-waist things

+up Tuesday, I'm afraid, Mrs. Yellett, but I'll try to

+bring them towards the end of the week." Then,

+with a swift change of subject, "How are the

+boys getting on with their education, Miss Carmichael?"</p>

+

+<p>The boys looked at Mary out of the corners of

+their eyes. Their prowess in the field of letters

+had not been publicly discussed before. Mary

+Carmichael, emboldened by Judith's presence, looked

+at her tormentors with a judicious glance.</p>

+

+<p>"The girls are doing fairly well," she replied,

+suppressing the mischief in her eyes, "but the boys,

+poor fellows, I think something must be the matter

+with them. Did they ever fall on their heads when

+they were babies, Mrs. Yellett?"</p>

+

+<p>"Not more than common. All babies fall on

+their heads; it's as common as colic."</p>

+

+<p>"Poor boys!" said Mary, with a manner that suggested

+they were miles away, rather than within a

+few feet of her. "Poor boys! I've never seen anything

+like it. They try so hard, too, yet they can

+make nothing of work that would be play for a

+child of three. They must have fallen on their

+heads harder than you supposed, Mrs. Yellett."</p>

+

+<p>"Perhaps their skulls were a heap frailer than I

+allowed for at the time," said Mrs. Yellett, with

+<pb n="217" />

+<anchor id="Pg217" />

+similar remoteness, yet with a twinkle that showed

+Mary she understood the situation.</p>

+

+<p>"An infant's skull doesn't stand much knocking

+about, I suppose, Mrs. Yellett?"</p>

+

+<p>"Not a great deal, if there ain't plenty of vinegar

+and brown paper handy, and I seldom had such

+fancy fixings in camp. It's too bad my boys should

+be dumb 'n account of a little thing like vinegar and

+brown paper."</p>

+

+<p>"Maw, they be dumb as Injuns," declared Cacta,

+preening herself, while the Messrs. Yellett reapplied

+themselves to their dinner with ostentatious interest.</p>

+

+<p>"Well, well!" said Mrs. Yellett; "it be a hard

+blow to me to know that my sons are lackings;

+there's mothers I know as would give vent to their

+disapp'inted ambition in ways I'd consider crool to

+the absent-minded. Now hearken, the whole outfit

+of you! Any offspring of mine now present and

+forever after holding his peace, who proves feebleminded

+by the end of the coming week, takes over

+all the work, labor, and chores of such offspring as

+demonstrates himself in full possession of his

+faculties, the matter to be reported on by the

+gov'ment."</p>

+

+<p>No sovereign, issuing a proclamation of war,

+could have assumed a more formidable mien than

+Mrs. Yellett, squatting erect on the prairie, crowned

+by her rabbit-skin cap. Mary and Judith, with

+bland, impassive expressions, noted the effect of the

+mandate. There was not the faintest symptom of

+rebellion; each Brobdingnag accepted the matriarch's

+edict without a murmur.</p>

+<pb n="218" />

+<anchor id="Pg218" />

+

+<p>With an air of further meditation on the efficacy

+of brown paper and vinegar at the crucial moment,

+Mrs. Yellett suddenly observed:</p>

+

+<p>"The lacking, like the dog, may be taught to

+fetch and carry a book; but to learn it he is unable."</p>

+

+<p>"Maw, does it say that in the Book of Hiram?"

+asked Clematis.</p>

+

+<p>"It says that, an' more, too. It says, 'The words

+of the wise are an expense, but the lovin' parent

+don't grudge 'em.'"</p>

+

+<p>Mary Carmichael had noticed, as her alien presence

+came to be less of a check on Mrs. Yellett's

+natural medium of expression, that she was much

+addicted to a species of quotation with which she

+impartially adorned her conversation, pointed family

+morals, or administered an occasional reproof. These

+family aphorisms were sometimes semi-legal, sometimes

+semi-scriptural in turn of phrase, and built

+on a foundation of homely philosophy. They were

+ascribed to the "Book of Hiram" and never failed

+of salutary effect in the family circle. But the apt

+quotations that she had just heard piqued Mary's

+curiosity more than before.</p>

+

+<p>"Do you happen to have a copy of the Book

+of Hiram, Mrs. Yellett?" she asked, in all innocence,

+supposing that the 'homely apothegms were to be

+found at the back of some patent-medicine almanac.

+Judith Rodney listened in wonder. The question

+had never before been asked in her hearing.</p>

+

+<p>"I lost mine." Mrs. Yellett folded her arms and

+looked at her questioner with something of a

+challenging mien.</p>

+<pb n="219" />

+<anchor id="Pg219" />

+

+<p>"What a pity! I've been so interested in the

+quotations I've heard you make from it."</p>

+

+<p>"What's the matter with 'em?" she demanded,

+pride and apprehension equally commingled.</p>

+

+<p>Judith Rodney rushed to the rescue:</p>

+

+<p>"Nothing is the matter with them, Mrs. Yellett,"

+she said, with her disarming smile, "except that

+there is not quite enough to go around."</p>

+

+<p>The matriarch had the air of gathering herself together

+for something really worth while. Then she

+tossed off:</p>

+

+<p>"''Tain't always the quality of the grub that

+confers the flavor, but sometimes the scarcity

+thereof.'"</p>

+

+<p>Perhaps it has been the good-fortune of some of

+us to say a word of praise to an author, while unconscious

+of his relationship to the book praised.

+Mark the genial glow radiating from every feature

+of our auditor! How we feel ourselves anointed

+with his approval, our good taste and critical faculty

+how commended! It is a luxury that goes a long

+way towards mitigating the discomfitures caused by

+the reverse of this unctuous blunder.</p>

+

+<p>"The Book of Hiram," said Mrs. Yellett, angling

+for time, "is a book&mdash;it do surprise me that it escapes

+your notice back East. You ever heard tell

+of the Book of Mormon?"</p>

+

+<p>Mary assented.</p>

+

+<p>"Well, the Book of Hiram is like the Book of

+Mormon, only a heap more undefiled. The youngest

+child can read it without asking a single embarrassing

+question of its elder, and the oldest sinner

+<pb n="220" />

+<anchor id="Pg220" />

+can read it without having any fleshly meditations

+intrudin' on his piety."</p>

+

+<p>The Yellett family had by this time dispersed

+itself for the afternoon, and the matriarch and the

+two girls started in to clear away the meal and wash

+the dishes.</p>

+

+<p>"That's the kind of book for me," continued

+Mrs. Yellett, vigorously swishing about in the soapy

+water. "Story-books don't count none with me

+these days. It's my opinion that things are snarled

+up a whole lot too much in real life without pestering

+over the anguish of print folks. Flesh and blood suffering

+goes without a groan of sympathy from the

+on-lookers, while novel characters wade to the neck

+in compassion. I've pondered on that a whole lot,

+seem' a heap of indifference to every-day calamity,

+and the way I assay it is like this: print folks has

+terrible fanciful layouts given to their griefs and

+worriments by the authors of their being. The trimmings

+to their troubles is mighty attractive. Don't

+you reckon I'd be willin' to have a spell of trouble

+if I had a sweeping black velvet dress to do it in?

+Yes, indeed, I'd be willin' to turn a few of them

+shades of anguish, 'gray's ashes,' 'pale as death,'

+and so on, if they'd give me the dress novel ladies

+seems to have for them special occasions."</p>

+

+<p>"But you used to like novels, you know you did,

+Mrs. Yellett," observed Judith Rodney.</p>

+

+<p>"Yes, I didn't always entertain these views concernin'

+romance. You wouldn't believe it, but there

+was a time when I just nacherally went careerin'

+round enveloped in fantasies. I was young then&mdash;just

+<pb n="221" />

+<anchor id="Pg221" />

+about the time I married paw. Every novel

+that was read to me, I mean that I read"&mdash;Mrs.

+Yellett blushed a deep copper color through her

+many coats of tan&mdash;"convinced me that I was the

+heroine thereof. And, nacherally, I turned over to

+paw the feachers and characteristics of the hero in

+said book I happened to be enjoyin' at the time.

+Paw never knew it, but sometimes he was a dook,

+and it was plumb hard work. Just about as hard

+as ropin' a mountain-lion an' sayin', 'remember,

+you are a sheep from this time henceforth, and

+trim your action accordin'.' I'd say to paw, 'Let's

+walk together in the gloaming, here in this deserted

+garden'; and paw would say, 'Name o' Gawd,

+woman, have you lost your mind? It's plumb three

+hundred and fifty miles to the Tivoli beer-garden in

+Cheyenne, and it ain't deserted, either!'</p>

+

+<p>"Then I'd wring my hands in anguish, same as

+the Lady Mary, an' paw would declare I was locoed.

+He seemed a heap more nacheral when I pretended

+he was 'Black Ranger, the Pirate King.' His language

+came in handy, and his cartridge-belt and

+pistol all came in Black Ranger's outfit. Yes, it

+was a heap easier playing he was a pirate than a

+dook. All this happened back to Salt Lake, where

+me an' paw was married."</p>

+

+<p>Mrs. Yellett looked towards the mountain-range

+that separated her from the Mormon country, and

+her listeners realized that she was verging perilously

+close to confidences. Mary Carmichael, who dreaded

+missing any detail of the chronicle that dealt with

+paw in the rÃīle of apocryphal duke, hastened to say:</p>

+<pb n="222" />

+<anchor id="Pg222" />

+

+<p>"And you lost your taste for romance, finally?"</p>

+

+<p>"In Salt Lake I was left to myself a whole lot-there

+was reasons why I didn't mingle with the Mormon

+herd. Paw was mighty attentive to me, but

+them was troublous times for paw. I pastures myself

+with the fleetin' figures of romance the endoorin'

+time and enjoys myself a heap. When paw wasn't

+a dook or a pirate king, unbeknownst to himself, like

+as not he was Sir Marmaduke Trevelyun, or somebody

+entitled to the same amount of dog.</p>

+

+<p>"'Bout this time a little stranger was due in our

+midst, and the woman who came to take care of me

+was plumb locoed over novels, same as me, only

+worse. She just hungered for 'em, same as if she

+had a longin' for something out of season. She

+brought a batch of them with her in her trunk, we

+borrowed her a lot more, some I don't know how

+she come by. But they didn't have no effect; it

+was like feedin' an' Injun&mdash;you couldn't strike

+bottom. She read out of 'em to me with disastrous

+results happenin', an' that cured me. The brand

+on this here book that effected my change of heart

+was <hi rend="font-style: italic">The Bride of the Tomb</hi>. I forget the name of

+the girl in that romance, but she was in hard luck

+from the start. She couldn't head off the man

+pursooin' her, any way she turned. She'd wheel

+out of his way cl'ar across country, but he'd land

+thar fust an' wait for her, a smile on his satanine

+feachers.</p>

+

+<p>"I got so wrought up along o' that book, an' worried

+as to the outcome, 'most as bad as the girl. Think

+of it! An' me with only three baby-shirts an' a flannel

+<pb n="223" />

+<anchor id="Pg223" />

+petticoat made at the time! Seemed 's if I couldn't

+hustle my meals fast enough, I just hankered so

+to know what was goin' to happen next! I plumb

+detested the man with the handsome feachers, same

+as the girl. Me an' her felt precisely alike about

+him. And when he shut her up in the family vault

+I just giv' up an' was took then an' there, an' me

+without so much as finishin' the flannel petticoat!

+I never could endure the sight of a novel since.

+Perhaps that's why Ben is so dumb about his books&mdash;just

+holds a nacheral grudge against 'em along of

+my havin' to borrow slips for him."</p>

+

+<p>"Has the Book of Hiram anything to say against

+the habit of novel reading, Mrs. Yellett?" inquired

+Judith, demurely.</p>

+

+<p>She paused for a moment. "It's mighty inconvenient

+that I should have mislaid that book,

+but rounding up my recollections of it, I recall

+something like this: 'Romance is the loco-weed

+of humanity.'"</p>

+

+<p>"So you don't approve of the Mormon Bible?"

+ventured Mary.</p>

+

+<p>"I jest nacherally execrates Mormonism, spoken,

+printed, or in action," she said, with an emphasis

+that suggested the subject had a strong personal

+bearing. "I recall a text from the Book of Hiram

+touching on Mormon deportment in particklar an'

+human nature at large. It says, 'Where several

+women and one man are gathered together for the

+purpose of serving the Lord, the man gets the bulk

+of the service."</p>

+

+<p>She broke off suddenly, as if she feared she had

+<pb n="224" />

+<anchor id="Pg224" />

+said too much. "Judy," she demanded, "is Mis'

+Dax busy with Leander now?"</p>

+

+<p>"Not more than usual," smiled Judith.</p>

+

+<p>"Jest tell her for me, will you, that I want to hire

+her husband to do some herdin'; Leander's handy,

+'n' can work good an' sharp, if he is an infidel. An'

+I like to have him over now an' then, as you know,

+Judy. As the Book of Hiram says, 'It's neighborly

+to ease the check-rein of a gentled husband.' But

+you tell him I don't want to hear any of his ever-lastin'

+fool argufyin' 'bout religion. Leander 'd stop

+in the middle of shearin' a sheep to argue that

+Jonah never came out o' the whale's belly. I ain't

+no use for infidels, 'less they're muzzled, which

+Leander mos' generally is."</p>

+

+<p>With the feeling that there was an excellent

+though unspoken understanding between them, the

+two girls walked together to the top of the path

+that wandered away from camp towards a bluff

+overlooking wave after wave of foot-hills, lying blue

+and still like a petrified sea.</p>

+

+<p>"I'm still dying to know who wrote that letter,"

+begged Mary.</p>

+

+<p>"It was written by a lady who is very anxious to

+return to Washington, and she took that means of

+getting one more vote. Her husband is going to run

+for the Senate next term. We hear a good deal of

+that side of politics, you know."</p>

+

+<p>"It was certainly convincing," remarked the

+victim of the letter. "My aunts detected many

+virtues in the handwriting."</p>

+

+<p>"But now that you are really here, isn't it splendid?

+<pb n="225" />

+<anchor id="Pg225" />

+Mountains are such good neighbors. They

+give you their great company and yet leave you

+your own little reservations."</p>

+

+<p>"But I fear I can never feel at home out-of-doors,"

+Mary announced, with such a rueful expression that

+they both smiled.</p>

+

+<p>"Perhaps, then, it depends on the frame of mind.

+I've had longer than you to cultivate it."</p>

+

+<p>Mary looked towards the mountains, serene in

+their strength. "Awesome as they are," she laughed,

+"they don't frighten me nearly as much as Ben

+and Ned. They are really very difficile, my pupils,

+and I feel so ridiculous sitting up back of that tub,

+teaching them letters and the spelling of foolish

+words, when they know things I've never dreamed

+of. The other day, out of a few scratches in the

+dust that I should never have given a second glance,

+one of them made out that some one's horses had

+broken the corral and one was trailing a rope.

+Whereupon my pupil got on a horse, went in search

+of the strays, and returned them to men going to a

+round-up. After that, the spelling of cat didn't

+seem quite so much of an achievement as it had

+before."</p>

+

+<p>"But they need the spelling of cat so much more

+than you need to understand trail-marks. Why

+don't you try a little strategy with them? Perhaps

+a bribe, even? It seems to me I remember something

+in history about the part played in colonization

+by the bright-colored bead."</p>

+

+<p>Sundry wood-cuts from a long-forgotten primer

+history of the United States came back to Mary.

+<pb n="226" />

+<anchor id="Pg226" />

+In that tear-stained, dog-eared volume, all explorers,

+from Columbus down to Lewis and Clarke, were

+unfailingly depicted in the attitude of salesmen displaying

+squares of cloth to savages apparently in

+urgent need of them.</p>

+

+<p>"How stupid of me not to remember Father

+Marquette concluding negotiations with a necklace!"</p>

+

+<p>"Frankly plagiarize the terms of your treaty

+from PÃĻre Marquette, and there you are!"</p>

+

+<p>"You are so splendid!" said Mary, impulsively,

+remembering Judith's own sorrows and the smiling

+fortitude with which she kept them hidden. "You

+make me feel like a horrid little girl that has been

+whining."</p>

+

+<p>Judith looked towards the mountains a long time

+without speaking.</p>

+

+<p>"When you know them well, they whisper great

+things that little folk can't take away."</p>

+

+<p>She turned back towards camp, walking lightly,

+with head thrown back. Mary watched her. Yes,

+the mountains might have admitted her to their

+company.</p>

+<pb n="227" />

+<anchor id="Pg227" />

+</div>

+

+<div rend="page-break-before: always">

+<head>XV</head>

+<index index="pdf" /><index index="toc" level1="The Wolf-hunt" />

+<head type="sub">The Wolf-hunt</head>

+

+<p>Judith awakened with all the starry infinitude

+of sky for a canopy. In the distance loomed the

+foot-hills, watchful sentinels of her slumbers; and,

+sloping gently away from them, rolled the plain, like

+some smooth, dark sea flowing deep and silently.

+Judith, a solitary figure adrift in that still ocean of

+space, sat up and watched the stars fade and saw

+the young day peer timorously at the world that lay

+before it. Her mind, refreshed by long hours of

+dreamless sleep, turned to the problem of impending

+things, serenely contemplative. The passing of

+many mornings and many peoples had the mountains

+seen as the wreathed mists came and went

+about their brows, and to all who knew the value of

+the gift they gave their great company, and to such

+as could hear, they told their great secrets. Judith's

+prayer was an outflowing of soul to the great forces

+about her, a wish to be in harmony with them, to

+remember her kinship, to keep some measure of

+their serenity in the press of burdens. The way

+of the Indian was ever her way when circumstance

+raised no barriers; the four walls of a house were

+a prison to her after the days lengthened and the

+<pb n="228" />

+<anchor id="Pg228" />

+summer nights grew warm. To the infinite disapproval

+of that custodian of propriety, Mrs. Dax, she

+would make her bed beneath the stars, night after

+night, and bathe in the cold, clear waters of the

+stream that purled from the white-capped crest of

+the mountains.</p>

+

+<p>"Nasty Injun ways!" scoffed Leander's masterful

+lady, consciously superior from the intrenchment

+of her stuffy bedroom, that boasted crochet-work

+on the backs of the chairs and a scant lace

+curtain at its solitary window.</p>

+

+<p>Judith, going to her favorite pool to bathe, saw

+that it had shrunk till it seemed but a fairy well hid

+among the willows. A quarter of a mile above was

+another pool, hidden like a jewel in its case of green,

+broidered with scarlet roseberries and white clematis;

+and towards this she bent her steps, as time was

+a-plenty that morning. She kept to the stones of the

+creek for a pathway, jumping lightly from those

+that were moss-grown to those that hid their nakedness

+in the dark, velvet shadows of early morning,

+her white feet touching the shallow stream like pale

+gulls that dipped and skimmed. "Diana's Pool,"

+as she called it, was always clear. It lay half hid

+beneath a shelving rock, a fount for the tiny, white

+fall that crooned and sang as it fell. And here

+she bathed, as the east flamed where the mountains

+blackened against it. Gold halos tipped the clouds,

+that melted presently into fiery waves, then burst

+into one great aureole through which the sun rode

+triumphant, and it was day.</p>

+

+<p>She had kept post-office the day before, and it

+<pb n="229" />

+<anchor id="Pg229" />

+would not be till day after to-morrow that the

+squires of the lariat would come again to offer their

+hearts, their worldly goods, their complete reformation,

+if she would only change her mind. It was all

+such an old story that she had grown to regard

+them with a tenderness almost maternal. But to-day

+was all her own, and the spirit of adventure

+swelled high in her bosom as she thought of what

+she had planned. It was warm and close and still

+in the Dax house as Judith made her way softly to

+her own room and began her preparations for the

+long journey she was to take afoot. To walk in

+the abominations devised by the white man for

+the purpose of cramping his feet would have been

+a serious handicap to Judith. The twenty miles

+that she would walk before nightfall was no very

+great undertaking to her, but it was part of her

+primitive directness to accomplish it with as little expenditure

+of fatigue and comfort as possible. Moreover,

+who could steal through the forest in those

+heeled things without announcing his coming and

+frightening the forest folk, and sending them skurrying?

+And Judith loved to surprise them and

+see them busy with their affairs&mdash;to creep along

+in her soft, elk-hide moccasins and catch their

+watchful eyes and see the things that were not for

+the heavy-booted white man.</p>

+

+<p>She might have inspired Kitty Colebrooke to a

+sonnet as she stepped out into the glad morning

+light, in short skirt and jacket, green-clad as the

+pines that girdled the mountains, with a knapsack

+with rations of bread and meat and the wherewithal

+<pb n="230" />

+<anchor id="Pg230" />

+to build a fire should she wander belated. She

+softly closed the door, not to awaken Leander and

+his slumbering lady, and broke into the running gait

+that the Indians use on their all-day journeys, the

+elk-hide moccasins falling soft as snow-flakes on the

+trail. Dolly she missed chiefly for her companionship,

+for Judith had not the white man's utter helplessness

+without a horse in this country of high

+altitudes. When she walked she breathed, carried

+herself, covered ground like her mother's people,

+and loved the inspiration of it.</p>

+

+<p>The eerie shadows of the desert drew back and

+hid themselves in the mountains. The day began

+with splendid promise&mdash;the day of the wolf-hunt,

+of which no word had been spoken to her by Peter.

+She, too, was going hunting, but silently and unbidden

+she would steal through the forest and see

+this mysterious woman who played fast and loose

+with Peter, who loved her apparently all the better

+for the game she played. What manner of woman

+could do these things? What manner of woman could

+be indifferent to Peter? Judith was consumingly

+curious to see. And, apart from this naked and

+unashamed curiosity, there was the possibility that

+at sight of Miss Colebrooke there might come a

+relaxation of Peter's tyrannous hold upon her

+thoughts, her life, her very heart's blood. Would

+her loyalty bear the test of seeing Peter made a fool

+of by a woman she could dismiss with a shrug&mdash;a

+softly speaking shrew, perhaps, who played a waiting

+game with her finger on the pulse of Peter's

+prospects? For there was talk of a partnership

+<pb n="231" />

+<anchor id="Pg231" />

+with the Wetmores. Or a fool, perhaps, for all her

+sonneting, for there are men who relish a weak

+headpiece as the chiefest ornament of women,

+especially when its indeterminate vagaries boast an

+escape-valve remotely connected with the fine arts.

+Or a devil-woman, perhaps&mdash;an upright wanton who

+could think no wrong from very poverty of temperament,

+yet kept him dangling. The possibility

+of Kitty's honesty, Judith in her jealousy would

+not admit. Had she gone to the devil for him,

+stood and faced the drift of opinion for his sake, that

+Judith could have understood. But what was the

+spinning of verses to a woman's portion of loving

+and being loved? Even Alida, through all her distracting

+anxieties, had in her heart the thrice-blessed

+leaven, reasoned the woman of the plains, who

+might, according to modern standards, be reckoned

+a trifle primitive in her psychological deductions.

+And, withal, Judith was forced to admit that there

+was something simple and true about a man who

+would let a woman make a fool of him, whoever

+the woman was.</p>

+

+<p>Perhaps with this hunting would end the long

+reign of Peter as a divinity. Judith was tired, not

+in her vigorous young body, because that was strong

+and healthful as the hill wind, but tired in heart and

+mind and life. Her destiny had not been beautiful

+or happy before he invaded it, but it had been calm,

+and now serenity seemed the worthiest gift of the

+gods. It was not that she loved him less, but that

+she had so long reflected upon him that her imagination

+was numb; her thoughts, arid, unfruitful

+<pb n="232" />

+<anchor id="Pg232" />

+as the desert, turned from him to the problems that

+beset her, and from them back to him again, in dull,

+subconscious yearning. She could no longer project

+an anguished consciousness to those scenes wherein

+he walked and talked with Kitty. Her Indian

+fatalism had intervened. "Life was life," to be

+lived or left. And yet she felt herself a poor creature,

+one who had lived long on illusion, who had

+bent her neck to the yoke of arid unrealities. The

+pale-haired woman who kept him with her miserliness

+of self, who intruded no sombre tragedy

+of loving, was well worth a trip across the foot-hills

+to see. And yet, Judith reflected, it was the portion

+of her mother's daughter to make of loving

+the whole business of life, even if she rebelled and

+fought against it as an accursed destiny. It was in

+her inheritance to know and live for the wild thrill

+of ecstasy in her pulses, to feel trembling joy and

+despair and frantic hope, that exacted its tribute

+hardly less poignant; as it was, also, to feel a shivering

+sensitiveness in regard to the loneliness and

+bitterness of her life, to have the same measureless

+capacity for sorrow that she had for loving, to

+have a soul attuned to the tragedy of things, to love

+the mighty forces about her, to feel the reflection

+of all their moods in her heart, and, lastly, it was her

+destiny to be the daughter of a half-Sioux and a border

+adventurer, and to feel the counter influences

+of the two races make forever of her heart a battleground.</p>

+

+<p>Her light feet scarcely touched the ground as she

+sped swiftly through all the network of the hills;

+<pb n="233" />

+<anchor id="Pg233" />

+and more than once her woman's heart asked the

+question, "And, prithee, Judith, if from henceforth

+you are only to hold fellowship with the stars and

+have no part in the ways of men, why do you walk

+a day's journey to catch a glimpse of a pale-haired

+woman?"</p>

+

+<p>She knew the probable course of the wolf-hunt.

+She had been on scores of them, galloped with Peter

+after the fleeing gray thing that swept along the

+ground like the nucleus of a whirling dust-devil.

+At least she was sure of the place of their nooning&mdash;a

+limpid stream that ran close to many young

+pine-trees. Here was a pause in the rugged ascent,

+a level space of open green, thick with buffalo grass.

+Many times had she been here with Peter, sometimes

+with many other people on the chase&mdash;sometimes,

+and these occasions were enshrined in her

+memory, each with its own particular halo, with

+Peter alone; and they had fished for trout and

+cooked their supper on the grassy levels. It was

+in Judith's planning to arrive before the hunting-party,

+to hide among the thickets of scrub pine

+that grew along the steep cliffs and overlooked the

+grassy level, to take her fill of looking at the pale-haired

+girl and the hunters at their merrymaking,

+and, when she had seen, to steal back across the

+trail to the Daxes'. They would not penetrate the

+thickets where she meant to hide, and, should they,

+she was prepared for that contingency, too. She

+had brought with her a bright-colored shawl that

+she would throw over her head, and with the start

+of them she could outrun them all, even Peter.

+<pb n="234" />

+<anchor id="Pg234" />

+Had she not outdistanced him easily, many times,

+in fun? Through the tangle of tree-trunks that

+grew not far from the thicket, they would think she

+was but a poor Shoshone squaw lying in wait for

+the broken meat of the revellers.</p>

+

+<p>By crossing and recrossing the tiny creeks that

+trickled slow and obstructed through the gaunt

+levels of plain and foot-hill, she had come by a

+direct route to the fringes of the pine country. And

+here she found a world dim, green, and mysterious.

+It was wellnigh inconceivable that the land of sage-brush

+and silence could, within walking distance of

+desolation, show such wealth of young timber, such

+shade and beauty. Her noiseless footfalls scarce

+startled a sage-hen that, realizing too late her presence,

+froze to the dead stump&mdash;a ruffled gray excrescence

+with glittering bead eyes that stared at

+her furtively, the one live thing in the tense body.</p>

+

+<p>The sun wanted an hour of noon when Judith

+rested by the stream, bathed her face and hands,

+flushed from the long walk, ate the bread and meat,

+then lay on the bed of pine-needles, brown and soft

+from the weathering of many suns and snows. She

+had been all day in the company she loved best&mdash;the

+earth, the sky, the sun and wind&mdash;and in her

+heart at last was a deep tranquillity. Thus she

+could face life and ask nothing but to watch the

+cloud fleeces as they are spun and heaped high in

+the long days of summer; in soberer moods to watch

+the thoughts of the Great Mystery as He reveals them

+in the shifting cloud shapes; to penetrate further

+and further into the councils of the great forces.

+<pb n="235" />

+<anchor id="Pg235" />

+Thus did she dream the moments away till the sun

+was high in the blue and threw long, yellow splashes

+of light on her still body, on the soft pine-needles,

+beneath the boughs. But there was no time for

+further day-dreams if she intended to forestall the

+hunters at the place of nooning. She followed a

+game trail that lay along the stream, ascending

+through the dense growths till she reached the top

+of the jutting rocks. Her hair was loosened, her

+skirt awry, and the pine-needles stood out from it

+as from a cushion. Much of the way she gained by

+creeping beneath the low branches on her hands and

+knees. No white woman would be likely to follow

+her reasoned the daughter of the plains. It would

+be a little too hard on her appearance. And here,

+by lying flat and hanging over the jutting knob of

+rock, with a pine branch in her hand, she could see

+this mysterious woman and Peter and the hunters.</p>

+

+<p>She broke a branch to shade her face, she looked

+down on the grassy level. She waited, but there

+was no sound of hoofs falling muffled on the soft

+ground. The shadows of the pines contended with

+the splashes of sunlight for the little world beneath

+the trees. They trembled in mimic battle, then the

+shadows stole the sunlight, bit by bit, till all was

+pale-green twilight, and there was no sound of the

+hunters.</p>

+

+<lb />

+

+<p>The hunters, meanwhile, had not been altogether

+successful in the chase. The necessary wolf had

+been coy, and they, perforce, had to compromise

+with his poor relation, the coyote&mdash;a poor relation,

+<pb n="236" />

+<anchor id="Pg236" />

+indeed, whose shabby coat, thinned by the process

+of summer shedding, made it an unworthy souvenir

+to Miss Colebrooke. But it was not the lack of a

+wolf that robbed the hunting-party of its zest for

+Kitty. She could not tell what it was, but something

+seemed to have gone wrong with the day from

+the beginning. She rode beside her cavalier in a

+habit the like of which the country had never before

+seen, and Peter, usually the most observant of men,

+had no word for its multitude of perfections. In the

+first realization of disappointment with the day, the

+hunt, the hardships of the long ride, her perturbed

+consciousness took up the problem of this missing

+element and tried to adjust itself to the irritating

+absence. Kitty wondered if it were something she

+had forgotten. No, there were her two little cambric

+pocket-handkerchiefs, remotely suggestive of orris,

+and bearing her monogram delicately wrought and

+characteristic. It was not her watch, the ribbon

+fob of which fluttered now and then in the breeze.

+It was not veil nor scarf-pin nor any of the paraphernalia

+of the properly garbed horsewoman. And yet

+there was something missing, something she should

+have had with her, something the absence of which

+was taking the savor from the day's hunting.</p>

+

+<p>It must be the very bigness of this great, splendid

+world that gave her the sense of being alone at sea.

+Intuitively she turned and looked at Peter riding

+beside her. There was something in his face that

+made her look again before accepting the realization

+at first incredulously, then with frank amusement.

+Peter had scarcely spoken since they left the ranch.

+<pb n="237" />

+<anchor id="Pg237" />

+She had come down to breakfast so sure of her new

+riding-habit. The Wetmore girls had been moved

+to hyperboles about its cut and fit and the trim

+shortness of the skirt&mdash;short riding-skirts were something

+of a novelty then. The fine gold hair, twisted

+tight at the back of the shapely head, was like a

+coiled mass of burnished metal, some safe-keeping

+device of mint or gold-worker till the season of

+coining or fashioning should come round. The translucent

+flesh-tints, pearl-white flushing into pink&mdash;"Bouguereau

+realized at last," as Nannie Wetmore

+was in the habit of summing up her cousin's complexion&mdash;was

+as marvellous as ever. The delicate

+firmness of profile gave to the face the artificial

+perfection of an old miniature, rather than of a

+flesh-and-blood countenance, and all these were

+there as of yore, but the marvel of them failed of the

+customary tribute. Kitty, on scanty reflection, was

+at no loss to translate Peter's reserve into a language

+at once flattering and retributive. In her scheme

+of life he was always to be her devoted cavalier, as

+indeed he had been from the beginning. She loved

+her own small eminence too well to imperil her

+tenure of it by sharing its pretty view of men and

+things with any one. In country house parties she

+loved the mild wonder that the successful <hi rend="font-style: italic">littÃĐrateuse</hi>

+could fight and play and win her social triumphs so

+well. She loved the star part, and next to playing

+it she enjoyed wresting it from other women or

+eclipsing them completely in some conspicuously

+minor rÃīle, while, in the matter of dress, Miss

+Colebrooke went beyond the point decreed by the

+<pb n="238" />

+<anchor id="Pg238" />

+most exigent mandates of fashion. When hats were

+worn over the face, her admirers had to content

+themselves with a glimpse of her charming mouth

+and chin. When they flared, hers fairly challenged

+the laws of equilibrium. She danced with the same

+facility with which she rode, swam, and played

+tennis. In doing these things supremely well she

+felt that she vindicated the position of the woman

+of letters. Why should one be a frump because one

+wrote?</p>

+

+<p>Her friendship with Peter was to endure to greenest

+old age, more platonic, perhaps, than that of

+Madame RÃĐcamier and Chateaubriand. It was to be

+fruitful in letters that would compare favorably

+with the best of the seventeenth century series.

+Even now her own letters to Peter were no sprightly

+scrawl of passing events, but efforts whose seriousness

+suggested, at least in their carefully elaborated

+stages of structure, the letters of the ladies of

+Cranford.</p>

+

+<p>But in the course of these Western wanderings,

+undertaken not wholly without consideration of

+Peter, there had appeared in the maplike exactness

+of her plans an indefinite territory that threatened

+undreamed-of proportions. It menaced the scheme

+of the letters, it shook the foundations of the

+Chateaubriand-RÃĐcamier friendship. The unknown

+quantity was none other than the frequent and irritating

+mention of one Judith Rodney, who, from

+all accounts, appeared a half-breed. Her name, her

+beauty, some intrinsic charm of personality made

+her an all too frequent topic, except in the case of

+<pb n="239" />

+<anchor id="Pg239" />

+Peter. He had been singularly keen in scenting

+any interrogatory venue that led to the mysterious

+half-breed; when questioned he persistently refused

+to exhibit her as a type.</p>

+

+<p>Kitty knew that she had treated her long-suffering

+cavalier with scant consideration the day he

+had spurred across the desert to see her. True, she

+had written him on her arrival, but, with feminine

+perversity of logic, thought it a trifle inconsiderate

+of him to come so soon after that trying railroad

+journey. An ardent resumption of his suit&mdash;and

+Peter could be depended on for renewing it early and

+often&mdash;was farthest from her inclination at that

+particular time. She intended to salve her conscience

+at the wolf-hunt for her casual reception of

+his impetuous visit. But apparently Peter did not

+intend to be prodigal of opportunity.</p>

+

+<p>"How garrulous you people are this morning!"

+Nannie Wetmore challenged them. Peter came out

+of his brown study with the look of one who has

+again returned to earth.</p>

+

+<p>"You don't find it like the drop-curtain of a

+theatre, now that you've seen it?" he questioned

+Kitty. For she had doubted her pleasure in the

+mountains, in the conviction that they would be too

+dramatic for her simple taste.</p>

+

+<p>Kitty closed her eyes and sighted the peaks as if

+she were getting the color scheme for an afternoon

+toilet.</p>

+

+<p>"Mass, bulk, rather than line&mdash;no, it's not like a

+drop-curtain, but it's distinctly 'hand-painted.' All

+it needs is a stag surveying the prospect from that

+<pb n="240" />

+<anchor id="Pg240" />

+great cliff. It's the kind of thing that would sound

+well in a description. Oh, I assure you I intend to

+make lavish use of it, but it leaves nothing to one's

+poor imagination!"</p>

+

+<p>Peter had a distinct feeling of being annoyed.

+No, she could not appreciate the mountains any

+more than they could appreciate her. They were

+incongruous, antipathetic, antipodal. Kitty, in her

+pink and white and flaxen prettiness and her trim

+habit, was in harmony with the bridle-path of a city

+park; in this great, lonely country she was an alien.

+He thought of Judith and the night they had climbed

+Horse-Thief Trail, of her quiet endurance, her keen

+pleasure in the wild beauty of the night, her quality

+of companionship, her loyalty, her silent bearing

+of many burdens. Yet until he had seen them both

+against the same relentless background, he had

+never been conscious of comparing the two women.</p>

+

+<p>Nannie Wetmore had fallen behind. She was

+riding with a bronzed young lieutenant from Fort

+Washakie. The two ahead rode long without speaking.

+Then Peter broke the silence impatiently:</p>

+

+<p>"You did not really mean that, did you?" He

+was boyishly hurt at her flippant summing up of his

+beloved blue country. And Kitty, tired with the

+long, hard ride, and missing that something in Peter

+that had always been hers, turned on him a pair of

+blue eyes in which the tears were brimming suspiciously.

+They were well out of sight of the others,

+and had come to the heavy fringes of a pine wood.

+Was it the psychological moment at last? Then

+suddenly their horses, that had been sniffing the

+<pb n="241" />

+<anchor id="Pg241" />

+air suspiciously, stopped. Kitty's horse, which was

+in advance of Peter's, rushed towards the thicker

+growth of pines as if all Bedlam were in pursuit.

+Peter's horse, swerving from the cause of alarm,

+bolted back across the trail over which they had

+just made their way. A large brown bear, feeding

+with her cub, and hidden by the trees till they were

+directly in front of her, had caused the alarm.</p>

+

+<p>And presently the hush of the shadowy green

+world in which Judith lay was broken by a light,

+sobbing sound. It had been so still that, lying on

+her bed of pine-needles, she had likened it to great

+waves of silence, rolling up from the valley, breaking

+over her and sweeping back again, noiseless,

+green from the billowing ocean of pine branches, and

+sunlit. Judith bent over the rocky ledge and saw a

+girl making her way down the game trail, dishevelled

+and tearful. Her hat was gone, her pale-yellow

+hair, that in shadow had the greenish tinge of corn-silk,

+blew about her shoulders, her trim skirt was

+torn and dusty, and she looked about, bewildered,

+hardly realizing that through the unexpected course

+of things she had been stranded in this great world

+of sunlit splendor and loneliness. She closed her

+eyes. The awful vastness and solitude oppressed

+her with a deepening sense of calamity. Suppose

+they never found her? How could she find her way

+in this endless wilderness, afoot? She sank to the

+turf and began to cry hysterically.</p>

+

+<p>Judith knew in a flash of instant cognition that

+this was Miss Colebrooke. Amazement seemed to

+<pb n="242" />

+<anchor id="Pg242" />

+have dulled her powers of action&mdash;amazement that

+she, who had stolen to this place and crouched close

+to earth that she might see the triumph of this

+preferred woman, and, having seen and paid her

+grievous dole, steal away and take up the thread

+of endless little things that spun for her the web of

+life, was forced instead to be an unwilling witness

+of the other's distress. Judith had risen with her

+first impulse, which had been to go to Kitty, but

+half-way through the thicket she hesitated and

+reconsidered. Undoubtedly Peter would come soon,

+and Peter's consolation would be more potent than

+any she could offer. She shrank in shuddering self-consciousness

+at the thought of her presence at

+their meeting, the uninvited guest, the outgrown

+friend and confidante, blundering in at such a time,

+pitifully full of good intentions. She recoiled from

+the picture as from a precipice that all unwittingly

+she had escaped. What madness had induced her

+to come on this expedition? A sudden panic at

+the possibility of discovery possessed her; suppose

+Peter should find her skulking like a beggar, waiting

+for broken meats? She looked at the image of

+herself that she carried in her heart. It was that

+of a proud woman who made no moan at the scourge

+of the inevitable. Many burdens had she carried

+in her proud, lonely heart, but of them her lips gave

+no sign. In her contemplative stoicism she felt

+with pride that she was no unworthy daughter of

+her mother's people, and catching a glimpse through

+the trees of the abjectly waiting woman who, though

+safe and sound, could but wait, wretched and dispirited,

+<pb n="243" />

+<anchor id="Pg243" />

+for some one to come and adjust her to the

+situation, Judith felt for her a wondering pity at her

+helplessness. She waited, expectant, for the sound

+of Peter's horse. Surely he must come at any

+moment, overcome with apologies, and she&mdash;Judith

+hid her face in her hands at the thought&mdash;she

+would steal away through the thicket at the first

+sound of hoofs. But as the minutes slipped by and

+still no sign of Peter, a sickening anxiety began to

+gnaw at her heart. Had something happened to

+him?</p>

+

+<p>She did not wait to ask herself the question twice.

+She crawled the length of the thicket with incredible

+rapidity, gained the pine forest, and made

+her way beneath the low-hanging boughs; without

+stopping to protect herself from them she gained

+the open space and ran quickly to Kitty.</p>

+

+<p>"Are you hurt? What has happened?"</p>

+

+<p>Kitty looked up, startled at the voice. She had

+not heard the sound of the moccasined feet. Her

+wandering, forlorn thoughts crystallized at sight of

+the woman before her. A new lightning leaped into

+her eyes as she recognized Judith. There was between

+them a thrilling consciousness that gave to

+their mutual perception a something sharp and fine,

+that grasped the drama of the moment with the

+precision and fidelity of a camera. And through

+all the wonder of the meeting there was in the heart

+of each an outflowing that met and mingled and

+understood the potential tragedy element of the

+situation.</p>

+

+<p>"You are Miss Rodney, I believe?"</p>

+<pb n="244" />

+<anchor id="Pg244" />

+

+<p>Kitty was conscious of something strange in her

+voice as she looked into the dark eyes, wide with

+questioning fear. Ah, but she had amazing beauty,

+and a something that seemed of the very essence of

+deep-souled womanliness! The two women presented

+a fine bit of antithesis, Kitty, flower-like,

+small, delicately wrought, the finished product of

+the town, exotic as some rare transplanted orchid

+growth. And in Judith there was a gemlike quality:

+it was in the bloom of her skin, the iridescent

+radiance of her hair, that was bluish, like a plum in

+sunlight; it was in the warm, red life in her lips, in

+the pulsing vitality of the slim, brown throat; in

+every line was sensuous force restrained by spiritual

+passion.</p>

+

+<p>Kitty told of the accident in which her horse had

+thrown her and disappeared in the pine fringes,

+leaving her stunned for a moment or two; and how

+she had finally pulled herself together and followed

+what appeared to be a trail, in the hope of finding

+some one. She dwelt long on the details of the

+accident.</p>

+

+<p>"Yes, but Peter, what has happened him?"

+Judith chose her words impatiently. She was

+racked with anxiety at his long delay, and now

+she hung over Kitty, waiting for her answer, without

+the semblance of a cloak for her alarm.</p>

+

+<p>There was reproof in Kitty's amendment. "I

+don't know which way Mr. Hamilton's horse went.

+It started back over the trail, I think."</p>

+

+<p>Judith clasped her hands. "Let us go and look

+for him. Why do we waste time?" But Kitty

+<pb n="245" />

+<anchor id="Pg245" />

+hung back. She was shaken from her fall, and upset

+by the events of the morning. Besides, her faith in

+Peter's ability to cope with all the exigencies of this

+country was supreme. And chiefest reason of all

+for her not going was a something within her that

+winced at the thought of this fellowship that had

+for its object the quest of Peter.</p>

+

+<p>"Oh, don't you see," pleaded Judith, "that if

+something had not happened to him he would have

+been here long ago?"</p>

+

+<p>Judith's anxiety awoke in Kitty a new consciousness.

+What was she to him, that at the possibility

+of harm, a fear not shared by Kitty, she should

+throw off a reserve that every line of her face pronounced

+habitual? In her very energy of attitude,

+an energy that all unconsciously communicated

+itself to Kitty, there was the power that belongs to

+all elemental human emotion&mdash;the power that compels.

+Kitty rose to follow Judith, then hesitated.</p>

+

+<p>"I'm sure nothing has happened him. No, I'm

+really too unstrung by my fall to walk." She

+sank again to the bowlder on which she had been

+sitting.</p>

+

+<p>To the woman of the world, Judith's ingenuous

+display of feeling had in its very sincerity a something

+pitiable. How could she strip from her soul

+every fold of reserve and stand unloved and unashamed,

+sanctified, as it were, by the very hopelessness

+of her passion? How could women make

+of their whole existence a thing to be rejected,

+reflected Kitty, who, giving nothing, could not

+understand. She looked again at the bronzed face

+<pb n="246" />

+<anchor id="Pg246" />

+beside her, so bold in outline, so expressive in detail.

+Yes, she was beautiful, and yet, what had her beauty

+availed her? The thought that she herself was the

+preferred woman throbbed through her for a moment

+with a sense of exaltation. The next moment a

+haunting doubt laid hold of her heart, held up

+mockingly the little that she and Peter had lived

+through together, the lofty plane of friendship along

+which she had tried to lead his unwilling feet

+sedately, his protests, his frank amusement at her

+serious pretensions to a career. How much fuller

+might not have been the intercourse between him

+and this woman, who, in all probability, had been

+his comrade for years? And she had been idealizing

+him, and his love for her, and his loneliness! Kitty

+stood with eyes cast down, while images crowded

+upon her, leaving her cold and smiling.</p>

+

+<p>"But think," pleaded Judith; "if you don't come

+it will take me longer to search the trail-marks.

+You could show me just where the horses ran&mdash;"</p>

+

+<p>Kitty's eyes were still on the ground. She did not

+lift them, and Judith, realizing that further appeal

+was but a waste of time, turned and ran swiftly

+down the trail.</p>

+

+<p>"He is her lover," said Kitty; and all the wilderness

+before her was no lonelier than her heart.</p>

+

+<p>Swift, intent, Judith traced Kitty's footprints.

+They followed the game trail, the one she herself

+had taken earlier in the day. She traced them

+back through the pine wood about a hundred rods,

+and then the trail-marks grew confused. This was

+unquestionably the place where the horses had taken

+<pb n="247" />

+<anchor id="Pg247" />

+fright, circled, reared, then dashed in different

+directions. She traced the other horse, whose

+tracks led under low-hanging boughs. It would

+have been a difficult matter for a horse with a rider

+to clear; and now the impression of the horse's shoes

+grew fainter, from the lighter footfalls of a horse

+at full gallop.</p>

+

+<p>"Ah!" A cry broke from her as she saw the marks

+had become almost eliminated by something that

+had dragged, something heavy. Those long-drawn

+lines were finger-prints, where a hand had dragged

+in its vain endeavor to grasp at something. A

+sickening image came persistently before her eyes&mdash;Peter's

+upturned face, blood-smeared and disfigured.</p>

+

+<p>"Sh-sh-sh!" She put her hand to her breast to

+still the beating of her heart. She could hear the

+sound of hoofs falling muffled on the soft ground,

+and a man's voice speaking in a soothing sing-song.

+She listened. It was Peter's voice, reassuring the

+horse, asking him what kind of a bag of nerves he

+was for a cow pony, to get frightened at a bear?

+Judith stood tall and straight among the pines.

+Surely he could not blindly pass her by. He must

+feel the joy in her heart that all was well with him.

+The hoofs came nearer, the man's voice sounded

+but intermittently, as he got his horse under better

+control. She felt as if he must come to her, as if

+some overpowering consciousness of her presence

+would speak from her heart to his; but his eyes

+scanned the distant trail for a glimpse of Kitty or

+Kitty's horse. Judith saw that his head was bound

+<pb n="248" />

+<anchor id="Pg248" />

+in something white and that it bore a red stain, but

+he held himself well in the saddle. He was not the

+man to heed a tumble. He urged the horse forward,

+never looking towards the tree-trunks, his face

+white and strained with anxiety as he scoured

+the trail for evidences of Kitty. The horse, with

+a keener sense than his master, shied slightly as

+he passed the group of pines where Judith stood;

+but Peter's glance was for the open trail, and as she

+heard him canter by, so close that she could have

+touched his stirrup with her hand, it seemed as if

+he must hear the beating of her heart.</p>

+

+<p>"Oh, blind eyes, and ears that will not hear, and

+heart that has forgotten how to beat! Yes, go to

+that pale, cold girl! You speak one language, and

+life for you is the way of little things!"</p>

+

+<p>She waited till the last sound of the horse's hoofs

+had died away and all was still in the tremulous

+green of the forest. Judith's mind was busy with

+the image of their meeting, the man bringing the

+joy of his youth to the calm divinity who could feel

+no thrill of fear in his absence. She broke into the

+running gait and hurried through the forest to the

+Daxes'.</p>

+<pb n="249" />

+<anchor id="Pg249" />

+</div>

+

+<div rend="page-break-before: always">

+<head>XVI</head>

+<index index="pdf" /><index index="toc" level1="In The Land Of The Red Silence" />

+<head type="sub">In The Land Of The Red Silence</head>

+

+<p>The beef-herd, that had been the pivotal point

+of the round-up and had made the mighty

+plain echo to its stampings and bellowings, beating

+up simooms that choked it with thirst, blinded it

+with dust, confounding itself on every side by the

+very fury of its blind force, had trailed for a week,

+tractable as toys in the hands of children. Little

+had happened to vary the monotony for the cow-punchers

+that handled the herd&mdash;they grazed,

+guarded, watered, night-herded the cattle day after

+day, night after night. Pasturage had been sufficient,

+if not abundant. The creeks were running

+low and slimy with the advance of summer, but

+there had been sufficient water to let the herd drink

+its fill at least once a day.</p>

+

+<p>The outfit ate its "sow-belly," soda-biscuit, and

+coffee three times a day, and smoked its pipes, but

+was a little shy on yarns round the camp-fire.</p>

+

+<p>"This yere outfit don't lather none," commented

+the cook to the horse-wrangler, over the smoke of

+an early morning fire.</p>

+

+<p>"Don't lather no more than a chunk of wood,"

+agreed the horse-wrangler. "That's the trouble

+<pb n="250" />

+<anchor id="Pg250" />

+with a picked-up outfit like this. Catch 'W-square'

+men kowtowing to a 'XXX' boss, even if he is only

+acting foreman."</p>

+

+<p>Simpson, the origin of whose connection with the

+"XXX" was rather a sensitive subject with that

+outfit, had begun to take his duties as a cattle-man

+with grim seriousness; he was untiring in his

+labors; he spent long hours in the saddle, he took

+his turn at night herding, though he was old for

+this kind of work. He condemned the sheep-men

+with foul-mouthed denunciations, scoffed at their

+range-rights, said the sheep question should be

+dealt with in the business-like manner in which

+the Indian question had been settled. He was an

+advocate of violence&mdash;in short, a swaggering, bombastic

+wind-bag. He talked much of "his outfit"

+and "his men." "What was good enough for them

+was good enough for him," he would announce at

+meal-time, in a snivelling tone, when the food happened

+to be particularly bad. He split the temporary

+outfit, brought together for the purpose of

+handling the beef-herd, into factions. He put the

+"XXX" in worse repute than it already enjoyed&mdash;he

+was, in fact, the discordant spirit of the expedition.

+The men attended to their work sullenly.

+Discord was rife. The one thought they shared in

+common was that of the wages that would come to

+them at the end of the drive; of the feverish joy of

+"blowing in," in a single night; perchance, of forgetting,

+in one long, riotous evening, the monotony,

+the hardship, the lack of comradery that made

+this particular drive one long to be remembered

+<pb n="251" />

+<anchor id="Pg251" />

+in the mind of every man who had taken part

+in it.</p>

+

+<p>Meanwhile the herd trailed its half-mile length

+to the slaughtering pens day after day, all unconscious

+of its power. When the steers had trailed

+for about a fortnight, the question of finding sufficient

+water for them began to be a serious one.

+The preceding winter had been unusually mild,

+the snow-fall on the mountains averaging less than

+in the recollection of the oldest plains-man. Summer

+had begun early and waxed hot and dry. The earth

+began to wrinkle, and cracked into trenches, like

+gaping mouths, thirsty for the water that came not.

+Such streams as had not dried shrank and crawled

+among the willows like slimy things, that the herd,

+thirsty though it was from the long drives, had to

+be coaxed to drink from.</p>

+

+<p>Discontent grew. The acting foreman, who was

+a "XXX" man, and a comparative stranger to

+that part of the country, refused to consult with the

+"W-square" men in the outfit, who knew every

+inch of the ground. The acting foreman thought

+the Wetmore men looked down on him, "put on

+dog"; and, to flaunt his authority, he ordered the

+herd driven due west instead of skirting to the

+north by the longer route, where they would have

+had the advantage of drinking at several creeks

+before crossing Green River. Moreover, the acting

+foreman was drinking hard, and he insisted upon his

+order in spite of the Wetmore men's protestations.</p>

+

+<p>The character of the country began to change, the

+soil took on the color of blood, even the omnipresent

+<pb n="252" />

+<anchor id="Pg252" />

+sage-brush began to fail the landscape; sun-bleached

+bones glistened on the red soil, white as ulcers.

+All the animal trails led back from the country into

+which they were proceeding. The sky, a vivid,

+cloudless blue, paled as it dipped earthward. The

+sun looked down, a flaming copper shield. There

+was no sign of life in all the land. Even the grasshoppers

+had left it to the sun, the silence, and the

+desolation. To ears accustomed to the incessant

+shrilling of the insects, the cessation was ominous,

+like the sudden stopping of a clock in a chamber

+of death. Above the angry bellow of the thirsty

+herd the men strained their ears again and again

+for this familiar sound of life, but there was nothing

+but the bellowing of the cattle, the trampling of

+their hoofs, and sometimes the long, squealing

+whinny of a horse as he threw back his head in

+seeming demand to know the justice of this thing.</p>

+

+<p>Across the red plain snailed the herd, like a

+many-jointed, prehistoric reptile wandering over

+the limitless spaces of some primeval world. A

+cloud of red dust hung over them in a dense haze,

+trailed after them a weary length, then all was

+featureless monotony as before. What were a thousand

+steers, a handful of men and horses, in the

+land of the red silence? It had seen the comings

+and goings of many peoples, and once it had flowed

+with streams; but that was before the curse of God

+came upon it, and in its harsh, dry barrenness it

+grew to be a menace to living things.</p>

+

+<p>The saddle-stock had been watered at some

+fetid alkali holes that had scarce given enough to

+<pb n="253" />

+<anchor id="Pg253" />

+slake their thirst. The effect of the water had

+weakened them, and the steers that had been without

+water for thirty-six hours were being pushed on

+a course slightly northwest as rapidly as the enfeebled

+condition of the saddle-horses would permit.

+Creek after creek that they had made for proved to

+be but a dry bed.</p>

+

+<p>The glare of the red earth, under the scourge of

+the flaming sun, tormented the eyes of the men into

+strange illusions. The naked red plain stretched

+flat like the colossal background of a screen, over

+which writhed a huge dragon, spined with many

+horns, headless, trailing its tortuous way over the

+red world. Sometimes it was as unreal as a fever-haunted

+dream, a drug-inspired nightmare, when a

+Chinese screen, perchance, has stood at the foot of

+the sleeper's bed. Sometimes the dragon curled

+itself into a ball, and the foreman sung out that they

+were milling, and the men turned and rode away

+from it, then dashed back at it, after getting the

+necessary momentum, entered like a flying wedge,

+fought their way into the rocking sea of surging

+bodies, shouted from their thirst-parched throats

+imprecations that were lost in the dull, sullen roar.

+Then the dragon would uncoil and again trail its

+way over the red waste-lands.</p>

+

+<p>A red sun had begun to set over a red earth, and

+the men who had been out since noon-scouring the

+country for water, returned to say that none had

+been found, and they began to look into each

+other's faces for the answer that none could give.

+At sunset they made a dry camp; there was but

+<pb n="254" />

+<anchor id="Pg254" />

+enough water left to cook with. Each man received,

+as a thirst-quenching ration, a can of tomatoes.

+After supper they consulted, and it was agreed to

+trail the herd till midnight, taking advantage of

+the coolness to hurry them on as fast as possible

+to Green River. The grave nature of their plight

+was indicated by the fact that no one smoked after

+supper. Silent, sullen, they sat round, waiting for

+the foreman to give the order to advance. He

+waited for the moon to come up. Slowly it rose

+over the Bad Land Hills and hung round and full

+like a gigantic lantern. The watches were arranged

+for the night with a double guard. Every man in

+the outfit was beginning to have a feeling of panic

+that communicated itself to every other man, and

+as they looked at the herd, tractable now no longer,

+but a blind force that they must take chances with

+through the long watches of the night, while the

+thirst grew in the beasts' parched throats, they

+foresaw what would in all probability happen; they

+thought of their women, of all that most strongly

+bound them to life, and they sat and waited

+dumbly.</p>

+

+<p>The moon that night was too brilliant for benisons;

+the gaunt, red world lay naked and unshriven for the

+sin that long ago had brought upon it the wrath of

+God. The picture was still that of the grotesque

+Chinese screen, with the headless dragon crawling

+endlessly; but the dream was long, centuries long,

+it seemed to the men listening to the bellowing of

+the herd. And while they waited, the red grew

+dull and the dragon dingy, and its fury made its

+<pb n="255" />

+<anchor id="Pg255" />

+contortions the more horrible; and that was all

+the difference between day and night in the land of

+the red silence. Sometimes the dragon split, and

+joints of it tried to turn back to the last water it

+had drunk; for cattle, though blinded with thirst,

+never forget the last stream at which they have

+quenched thirst, and will turn back to it, though

+they drop on the way. But the men pressed them

+farther and farther, and for yet a little while the

+cattle yielded.</p>

+

+<p>At midnight the saddle-stock was incapable of

+moving farther. One horse had fallen and lay too

+weak to rise. The others, limping and foot-sore,

+no longer responded to quirt and rowel. The foreman

+ordered the herd thrown on the bed ground

+for the night. The herders for the first watch

+began to circle. The rest of the outfit took to its

+blankets to snatch a little rest for the double duty

+that awaited every man that night. Now it is a

+time-honored belief among cow-men that the herd

+must be sung to, particularly when it is restless,

+and to-night they tried all the old favorites, the

+"Cow-boy's Lament" being chief among them. But

+the herd refused to be soothed, and round and

+round it circled; not once would it lie down.</p>

+

+<p>The moon gleamed almost brazen, showing the

+cruel scars, the trenches torn by cloud-bursts, the

+lines wrought by the long, patient waiting of the

+earth for the lifting of the wrath of God. Imperishable

+grief was writ on the land as on a human face.

+The night wore on, the watches changed, the herd

+continued restless; not more than a third of it had

+<pb n="256" />

+<anchor id="Pg256" />

+bedded down. The third watch was from one

+o'clock to half-past three in the morning. Simpson

+and another "XXX" man, with two of the Wetmore

+outfit, made up a double watch, and rode,

+singing, about the herd, as the long, dreary watch

+wore away. The cattle's lowing had taken on a

+gasping, cracked sound that was more frightful

+than the maddened bellow of the early evening.

+Simpson, who was past the age when men live the

+life of the saddle, felt the hardship keenly. He had

+ridden since sunrise, but for the respite at noon

+and the scant time at the dry camp while the evening

+meal was being eaten. He was more than

+half asleep now, as he lurched heavily in the saddle,

+crossing and recrossing his partner in the half-circle

+they completed about the herd. Suddenly

+the sharp yelp of a coyote rang out; it seemed to

+come from no farther than twenty yards away.

+The cattle heard it, too, and a wave of panic swept

+through them. Simpson stiffened in his saddle.

+The sound, which was repeated, was an exact reproduction

+of a coyote's yelp, yet he knew that it

+was not a coyote.</p>

+

+<p>The herd rose to its feet as a single steer, and for a

+second stood undetermined. From a clump of sage-brush

+not more than two feet high fluttered something

+long and white like a sheet. It waved in the

+wind as the cry was repeated. The herd crashed

+forward in a stampede, Simpson in the lead on a

+tired horse, but a scant length ahead of a thousand

+maddened steers bolting in a panic of thirst and

+fear.</p>

+<pb n="257" />

+<anchor id="Pg257" />

+

+<p>"Hell's loose!" yelled the men in their blankets,

+making for the temporary rope corral to secure

+horses. Simpson, tallow-colored with fear, clung

+like a cat to his horse, and dug the rowels in the

+beast's flanks till they were bloody and dripping.

+He had seen Jim Rodney's face above the white

+cloth as it fluttered in the face of the herd that came

+pounding behind him with the rumble of nearing

+thunder. He was too close to them to attempt

+to fire his revolver in the air in the hope of turning

+them, but the boys had evidently got into their

+saddles, to judge by the volley of shots that rang out

+and were answered. Simpson alone rode ahead of

+the herd that tore after him, ripping up the earth

+as it came, bellowing in its blind fury. His horse,

+a thoroughly seasoned cow-pony, sniffed the bedlam

+and responded to the goading spur. She had been

+in cattle stampedes before, and, though every fibre

+ached with fatigue, she flattened out her lean body

+and covered ground to the length of her stride at

+each gallop. The herd was so close that Simpson

+could smell the stench of their sweating bodies,

+taste their dust, and feel the scorch of their breath.

+The sound of their hoofs was like the pounding of a

+thousand propellers. From above looked the moon,

+round and serene; she had watched the passing of

+many peoples in the land of the red silence. The

+horse seemed to be gaining. A few more lengths

+ahead and Simpson could turn her to one side and

+let the maddened cattle race to their own destruction.

+All he asked of God was to escape their trampling

+hoofs, and though he gained he dug the rowel

+<pb n="258" />

+<anchor id="Pg258" />

+and plied the quirt, unmindful of what he did. On

+they came; the chorus of their fear swelled like the

+voice of a mighty cataract, the pound, pound, pound

+of their hoofs ringing like mighty sledge-hammers.</p>

+

+<p>Suddenly he felt himself sinking, horribly, irresistibly.

+"God! What is it?" as his horse went

+down with her foreleg in a gopher-hole. "Up, up,

+you damned brute!" but the mare's leg had cracked

+like a pipe-stem. In his fury at the beast Simpson

+began kicking her, then started to run as the cattle

+swept forward like a black storm-cloud.</p>

+

+<p>The next second the great sea of cattle had broken

+over horse and rider. When it had passed there

+was not enough left of either to warrant burial or to

+furnish a feast for the buzzards. A few shreds of

+clothes, that had once been a man, lay scattered

+there; a something that had been a horse.</p>

+<pb n="259" />

+<anchor id="Pg259" />

+</div>

+

+<div rend="page-break-before: always">

+<head>XVII</head>

+<index index="pdf" /><index index="toc" level1="Mrs. Yellett Contends With A Cloudburst" />

+<head type="sub">Mrs. Yellett Contends With A Cloudburst</head>

+

+<p>The matriarch had delayed longer in moving

+camp than was consistent with her habitual

+watchfulness where the interests of the sheep were

+involved. Mary Carmichael, who had already become

+inured to the experience of moving, was even

+conscious of a certain impatience at the delay, and

+could only explain the apathy with which Mrs. Yellett

+received reports of the dearth of pasturage on

+the ground that she wished each fresh educational

+germ to take as deep root as possible before transplantation.

+So that when Mrs. Yellett, shortly after

+Leander Dax's arrival at camp in the capacity of

+herder, announced that she and Leander were to

+make a trip to the dipping-vat that had kept Ben

+from his classes for the past ten days, and invited

+the "gov'ment" to join the expedition, Mary accepted

+with fervor.</p>

+

+<p>The Yelletts' "bunch" of sheep did not exceed

+three thousand head, and the matriarch had wisely

+decreed that it should be restricted to that number,

+as she wished always to give the flock her personal

+supervision.</p>

+<pb n="260" />

+<anchor id="Pg260" />

+

+<p>"'The hen that's the surest of her chicks is the one

+that does her own settin','" was the adage from the

+Book of Hiram with which Mrs. Yellett succinctly

+summed up the case.</p>

+

+<p>Each autumn, therefore, the wethers and the

+dry-bag ewes were sent to the market, and as the

+result of continual weeding of the stock the matriarch

+had as promising a herd of its size as could

+be found in Wyoming. Often she had explained to

+Mary, who was learning of the wonders of this new

+world with remarkable aptness, that she had constantly

+to fight against the inclination to increase

+her business of sheep-raising, but that as soon as she

+should begin to hire herders or depend on strangers

+things would go wrong. With the assistance of her

+sons, she therefore managed the entire details of the

+herd, with the exception of those occasions on which

+Leander lent his semi-professional co-operation.</p>

+

+<p>As a workman Leander was, considering his size

+and apparent weakness, surprisingly efficient. It

+was as a dispenser of anti-theological doctrine that

+Mrs. Dax's husband annoyed his temporary employer.

+Freed from his wife's masterful presence,

+Leander dared to be an "agnostic," as he called

+himself, of an unprecedentedly violent order. His

+iconoclasm was not of a pattern with paw's gusty

+protests against life in general, but it was Leander's

+way of asserting himself, on the rare occasions when

+he got a chance, to deny clamorously every tenet

+advanced by every religion. The mere use of certain

+familiar expletives drove him, ordinarily mild and

+submissive though he was, to frantic gesticulation

+<pb n="261" />

+<anchor id="Pg261" />

+and diatribe. Mary Carmichael could not make out,

+as she watched the comedy with growing amusement,

+whether poor Leander really believed that he

+was the first of doubting Thomases, or whether

+he took an unfair advantage of the lack of general

+information in his casual audiences to set forth

+well-known opinions as his own. Whatever its

+basis may have been, Leander sustained the rÃīle

+of doubter with passionate zeal, wearing himself

+to tatters of rage and hoarseness over arguments

+maliciously contrived beforehand by cow-punchers

+and sheep-herders in need of amusement; and yet

+he never saw the traps, going out of his way, apparently,

+to fall into them, tumbling headlong into

+the identical pits time after time. Jonah and the

+whale constituted one bait by means of which Leander

+could be lured from food, sleep, or work of the

+most pressing nature.</p>

+

+<p>"The poor fool would stop in the middle of shearing

+a sheep to argue that Jonah never come out of the

+whale's belly," the matriarch had told Mary Carmichael,

+in summing up Leander's disadvantages as a

+herder. And the first remark she had addressed to

+him on his arrival was: "Leander Dax, you'd have

+to be made over, and made different, to keep you

+from bein' a infidel, but there's one p'int on which

+you are particularly locoed, and that's Jonah and

+the whale. Now at this particular time in the hist'ry

+of the United States, nobody in his faculties has

+got no call to fret hisself over Jonah and his whereabouts&mdash;none

+whatever. There's a lot of business

+round this here camp that's a heap more pressin'.

+<pb n="262" />

+<anchor id="Pg262" />

+Now, Leander Dax, if I do hereby undertake to hire,

+engage, and employ you to herd sheep, do you agree

+to renounce discussions, arguments, and debates

+on the late Jonah and his whereabouts durin' them

+three days? God A'mighty, man, any one would

+think you was Jonah's wife, the interest you have

+in his absence!"</p>

+

+<p>"I come here to herd sheep," Leander had brazenly

+retaliated. "I 'ain't come to try to make you

+think."</p>

+

+<p>Nevertheless, he appeared docile enough as the

+time came for the journey to the dipping-vat, and

+did his part in making ready. The wagon was

+the rudest of structures; it consisted merely of one

+long, stout pole. Though she saw the horses being

+harnessed to this pole, Mary Carmichael, discreetly

+exercising her newly acquired wisdom, forbore to

+ask where she was going to sit, and listened with

+interest to a discussion between Mrs. Yellett and

+Leander as to the number of horses it would take to

+get the dip up the mountain. Leander, who loved

+pomp and splendor, was for taking six, but Mrs.

+Yellett, who carried simplicity to a fault, was in

+favor of only two. They finally compromised on

+four, and Leander went to fetch the extra two.</p>

+

+<p>Mrs. Yellett, ever economical of the flitting moment,

+took advantage of the delay to give Mr. Yellett

+a dose of "Brainard's Beneficial Blackthorn."</p>

+

+<p>"Paw's as hard to manage as a bent pin," she

+remarked, in an aside to Mary, while he protested

+and fought her off with his stick. But she, with the

+agility of an acrobat, got directly back of him, took

+<pb n="263" />

+<anchor id="Pg263" />

+his head under her arm, pried open his mouth, and

+poured down the unwelcome, if beneficial, dose.</p>

+

+<p>"There, there, paw," she said, wiping his mouth

+as if he had been a baby, "don't take on so! It's

+all gone, and I can't have you sick on my hands."</p>

+

+<p>But Mr. Yellett continued to splutter and flare

+and use violent language, whereupon the matriarch

+went into the tent and returned with a drink of

+condensed-milk and water, "to wash down the

+nasty taste," she told him, soothingly.</p>

+

+<p>A moment afterwards she and Leander were engaged

+in rolling the barrels of sheep-dip to the wagon,

+Mary Carmichael helplessly looking on while

+Mrs. Yellett looked doubtfully at a "gov'ment"

+who could not handle barrels. Finally, under the

+skilful manipulation of Mrs. Yellett and Leander,

+the long pole took on the aspect of a colossal vertebral

+column, from which huge barrel-ribs projected

+horizontally, leaving at the rear a foot or so of bare

+pole as a smart caudal appendage, bearing about the

+same proportion to the wagon as the neatly bitten

+tail of a fox-terrier does to the dog.</p>

+

+<p>Mrs. Yellett kissed "paw" good-bye, explaining

+to Mary, in extenuation of her weakness, that she

+would never forgive herself if she neglected it and

+anything happened to him during her absence. She

+then climbed to the front barrel and secured the

+ribbons. Leander had brought out three rolls of

+bedding of the inevitable bed-quilt variety, but

+Mrs. Yellett scorned such luxury while driving,

+and accordingly gave hers to the "gov'ment" for a

+back-rest. Mary sat on the lower row of barrels,

+<pb n="264" />

+<anchor id="Pg264" />

+with her feet dangling, using one roll of bedding for

+a seat and the other comfortably arranged at her

+back as a cushion.</p>

+

+<p>Madam called sharply to the horses, "Hi-hi-hi-kerat!

+hi-kerat-kerat!" and they started off at

+a rattling pace, the barrels of dip creaking and

+squeaking as they swayed under their rope lashings.

+Mary bounced about like a bean in a bag, working

+loose from between the bed-quilt rolls at each gulley,

+clinging frantically to barrel ends, shaken back

+and forth like a shuttle. Indeed, the drive seemed

+to combine every known form of physical exercise.

+Mrs. Yellett herself was in fine fettle; she drove

+sitting for a while, then rose, standing on a narrow

+ledge while she held the four ribbons lightly in one

+hand and tickled the leaders with a long whip carried

+in the other. She drove her four horses over

+the rough road with the skill of a circus equestrienne,

+balancing easily on the crazy ledge, shifting her

+weight from side to side as the wagon rattled down

+gullies and up ridges, the horses responding gallantly

+to the shrill "Hi-hi-kerat! hi-kerat! hi-kerat!"

+Her costume on this occasion represented joint concessions

+to her sex and the work that was before her,

+as the head of a family at the dipping-vat. She

+still wore the drum-shaped rabbit-skin cap pulled

+well down over her forehead for driving. The great,

+cable-like braids of hair stood out well below the

+cap, giving her head an appearance of denseness

+and solidity, but the rambling curls were still blowing

+about her face, perhaps adding to the sum total

+of grotesqueness. She wore a man's shirt of gray

+<pb n="265" />

+<anchor id="Pg265" />

+flannel, well open at the neck, from which the

+bronzed column of the throat rose in austere dignity.

+A pair of Mr. Yellett's trousers, stuffed into high,

+cow-puncher's boots, that met the hem of a skirt

+coming barely to the knees, contributed to the

+originality of her dress.</p>

+

+<p>The wagon had been pitching like a ship at sea

+through the desert dreariness for about an hour,

+when Mary Carmichael suddenly became conscious

+that the prods she had been receiving from time to

+time in her back were not due either to their manner

+of locomotion or to the freight carried. Clinging

+to two barrels, she waited for the next lurch of the

+wagon to shake her free from the rolls of bedding,

+and, at the peril of life and limb, looked round.

+Leander hung over the top row of barrels, gesticulating

+wildly. The change in the man, since leaving

+camp some two hours previous, was appalling. He

+seemed to have shrivelled away to a wraith of his

+former self. His cheeks, his chin, had waned to the

+vanishing point. He opened his lips and mouthed

+horribly, yet his frightful grimacings conveyed no

+meaning. Mary called to Mrs. Yellett, but her

+voice was drowned in the rattle of the wagon, the

+clatter of four horses' hoofs, and the continual

+"Hi-hi-hi-kerat! hi-kerat!" of the driver. In the

+mean time Leander pointed to his mouth and back

+to the road in indescribably pathetic pantomime.

+"Perhaps the poor creature wants to turn back and

+die in his bed, like a Christian, even if he isn't one,"

+thought Mary, as she called and called, Leander still

+emitting the most inhuman of cries, like the sounds

+<pb n="266" />

+<anchor id="Pg266" />

+made by deaf mutes in distress. Presently Mrs.

+Yellett drew up, and asked in the name of many

+profane things what was the matter with her

+companions.</p>

+

+<p>Leander resumed his mouthings and his dumb

+show, but Mrs. Yellett proved a better interpreter

+than Mary Carmichael.</p>

+

+<p>"God A'mighty!" she said, "he's lost his false

+teeth!" And without another word she turned the

+four horses and the wagon with a skill that fell little

+short of sleight-of-hand.</p>

+

+<p>The dialogue that followed between Mrs. Yellett

+and Leander as to how far back he had dropped his

+teeth, cannot be given, owing to the inadequacy of

+the English language to reproduce his toothless

+enunciation. Catching, as Mary did, the meaning

+of Mrs. Yellett's remarks only, she received something

+of the one-sided impression given by overhearing

+a telephone conversation:</p>

+

+<p>"What did you have 'em out for?... You didn't

+have 'em out?... I just shook 'em out? Then

+what made you have your mouth open? Ef your

+mouth had been shut, you couldn't have lost 'em.... You

+was a-yawnin', eh? Well, you are a plumb

+fool to yawn on this kind of a waggin, with your

+mouth full o' china teeth. Your yawnin' 'll put us

+back a good hour an' we won't reach camp before

+sundown."</p>

+

+<p>At this point of the diatribe the Infidel left the

+wagon and began to search along the road. He said

+he had noticed a buffalo skull near the place where

+he had dropped the teeth, and thought he could

+<pb n="267" />

+<anchor id="Pg267" />

+trace them by this landmark. Mrs. Yellett held

+the ribbons and suggested that Mary get down

+"and help to prospect for them teeth." As Mary

+clambered down she heard a fragment of the matriarch's

+monologue, which, being duly expurgated

+for polite ears, was to the effect that she would

+rather take ten babies anywhere than one grown

+man, and that as for getting in the way, hindering,

+obstructing, and being a nuisance, generally speaking,

+man had not his counterpart in the scheme of

+creation.</p>

+

+<p>"Talk about a woman bein' at the bottom of

+everything!" sniffed Mrs. Yellett; "I be so sick of

+always hearin' about 'the woman in the case!' Half

+the time the case would be a blame sight worse if it

+was left exclusive to the men. The Book of Hiram

+says: 'A skunk may have his good p'ints, but few

+folks is takin' the risk of waitin' round to get acquainted

+with 'em.'"</p>

+

+<p>While Mary was still "prospecting," a glad cry

+roused her attention, and Leander came up smiling,

+with his dental treasures nicely adjusted.</p>

+

+<p>"Quit smilin' like a rattlesnake, you plumb fool!"

+called out Mrs. Yellett. "Do you want to lose 'em

+again?"</p>

+

+<p>So, curtailing the muscular contraction indicative

+of his pleasure, the Infidel again took his place among

+the bed-quilts and the journey was resumed.</p>

+

+<p>It was now about five in the afternoon. The

+heat, which had been oppressive all day, suddenly

+relaxed its blistering grip, and a keenly penetrating

+dampness, not unlike that of a sea-fog, came from

+<pb n="268" />

+<anchor id="Pg268" />

+some unknown quarter of the arid wastes and

+chilled the three travellers to the marrow. The

+horses flung up their heads and sniffed it, rearing

+and plunging as if they had scent of something

+menacing. Across the horizon a dark cloud scudded,

+no bigger than your hand.</p>

+

+<p>"Cloud-burst!" announced Mrs. Yellett.</p>

+

+<p>"Cloud-burst, all right enough," agreed Leander,

+and he turned up his coat-collar in simple preparation

+for the deluge.</p>

+

+<p>There flashed into Mary Carmichael's mind a

+sentence from her physical geography that she had

+been obliged to commit to heart in her school-days:

+"A cloud-burst is a sudden, capricious rainfall, as

+if the whole cloud had been precipitated at once."

+She wanted to question her companions as to the

+accuracy of this definition, but before she had time

+to frame a sentence the real cloud-burst came, with

+a splitting crack of thunder; then the lightning

+flashed out its message in the short-hand of the

+storm, across the inky blackness, and the water fell

+as if the ocean had been inverted. In the fraction

+of a second all three were drenched to the skin, the

+water pouring from them in sheets, as if they had

+been some slight obstruction in the path of a waterfall.

+The wagon was soon in a deep gully, with

+frothing, foaming, yellow water up to the hubs of

+the wheels. Mrs. Yellett, like some goddess of the

+storm, lashed her horses forward to keep them from

+foundering in the mud, and the wagon creaked and

+groaned in all its timbers as it lurched and jolted

+through the angry torrents.</p>

+<pb n="269" />

+<anchor id="Pg269" />

+

+<p>Each moment Mary expected to be flung from the

+barrels, and clung till her finger-tips were white and

+aching. From the drenched red bedquilts a sticky

+crimson trail ran over the barrel heads, as well as

+over Mary's hands, face, and dress. Still they forged

+on through the deluge, Mrs. Yellett shouting and

+lashing the horses, holding them erect and safe with

+the skill she never lost. The fur on her rabbit-skin

+cap was beaten flat. The great, wet braids had fallen

+from the force of the water and hung straight and

+black, like huge snakes uncoiled. She was far from

+losing her grip on either the horses or the situation,

+and from the inspiring ring of her voice as she urged

+them forward it was plain that she took a fierce

+joy in this conflict of the elements.</p>

+

+<p>It was bitterly cold, and Mary reflected that if

+Leander's teeth chattered half as hard as hers did,

+without breaking, they must, indeed, be of excellent

+quality. The storm began to abate, and the sky

+became lighter, though the water still poured in

+torrents. As soon as her responsibility as driver

+left her time to speak, Mrs. Yellett lost no time in

+fastening the cloud-burst to Leander.</p>

+

+<p>"This here is what comes of settin' up your back

+against God A'mighty and encouragin' the heathen

+and the infidel in his idolatry. I might 'a' knowed

+somethin' would happen, takin' you along! 'And

+the heathen and the infidel went out, and the Lord

+God sent a cloud-burst to wet him,'" quoted Mrs.

+Yellett from the apocryphal Scriptures that never

+yet failed to furnish her with verse and text.</p>

+

+<p>The infidel, from his side of the wagon, began to

+<pb n="270" />

+<anchor id="Pg270" />

+display agitation. His jaws worked, but he said

+nothing.</p>

+

+<p>"You 'ain't lost them teeth again, have you?"</p>

+

+<p>He nodded his head wretchedly.</p>

+

+<p>"'And the Lord took away the teeth of his enemy,

+so that he could neither bite nor talk,'" quoted Mrs.

+Yellett to the miserable man, who could make no

+reply.</p>

+

+<p>"Wonder you wouldn't see the foolishness o'

+being a heathen and a infidel, and turn to the

+Lord! You 'ain't got no teeth, and it takes your

+wife to herd you. 'And the Lord multiplied the

+tribulations of his enemy.' You got no more show

+standin' up agin the Lord than an insect would have

+standin' up agin me."</p>

+

+<p>She had Leander, at last, just where she wanted

+him. He was forced to listen, and he could make

+no reply. She alternately abused him for his lack

+of faith and urged him to repentance. Leander

+raged, gesticulated, turned his back on her, mouthed,

+and finally put his fingers in his ears. But nothing

+stemmed the tide of Mrs. Yellett's eloquence; it

+was as inexhaustible and as remorseless as the

+cloud-burst.</p>

+

+<p>It continued bitterly cold, even after the rain had

+stopped falling, and the heap of sodden bedclothes

+furnished no protection against the chilling dampness.

+It was growing dark; there was no red in the

+sunset, only a streak of vivid orange along the

+horizon, chill and clear as the empty, soulless flame

+of burning paper. There were no deep, glowing

+coals, no amethystine opalescence, fading into gold

+<pb n="271" />

+<anchor id="Pg271" />

+and violet. All was cold and subdued, and the

+scrub pines on the mountain-tops stood out sharply

+against this cold background like an etching on

+yellow paper.</p>

+

+<p>Mrs. Yellett's self-inspired scriptural maxims were

+discontinued after a while, either because she could

+think of no more, or because the rain-soaked,

+shivering, chattering object towards which they

+were directed was too abject to inspire further

+efforts. Leander huddled on the barrel that was

+farthest from Mrs. Yellett, and wrapped himself in

+the soaked red bedquilt. The dye smeared his

+face till he looked like an Indian brave ready for

+battle, but there was no further suggestion of the

+fighting red man in the utter desolation of his

+attitude. Mary Carmichael, on her barrel, shivered

+with grim patience and longed for a cup of tea. Only

+Mrs. Yellett gave no sign of anxiety or discomfort;

+she drove along, sometimes whistling, sometimes

+swearing, erect as an Indian, and to all appearances

+as oblivious of cold and wet as if she were in her

+own home.</p>

+

+<p>The gathering darkness into which the horses were

+plunging was mysterious and appalling. Objects

+stood out enormously magnified, or distorted grotesquely,

+in the uncertain light. It was like penetrating

+into the real Inferno, like stumbling across

+the inspiration of Dante in all its sinister splendor.

+It was the Inferno of his dream rather than the

+Inferno of his poem; it had the ghastly reality of

+the unreal.</p>

+

+<p>"It wouldn't surprise me if we had a smash-up in

+<pb n="272" />

+<anchor id="Pg272" />

+Clear Creek," said Mrs. Yellett, just by way of

+adding her quota of cheerful speculation. She

+ducked her head and whispered in Mary's ear:</p>

+

+<p>"It's all along of me hirin' <hi rend="font-style: italic">him</hi>! I wouldn't be

+surprised if paw died. I'm thinkin' of shakin' him

+out after his teeth. 'Take not up with the enemy

+of the Lord, lest he make of you also an enemy.'"</p>

+

+<p>But there was no accent of apprehension in Mrs.

+Yellett's dismal prognostications of the evil that

+might befall her for employing Leander. She spoke

+more with the air of one who produces incidents to

+prove an argument than of one who anticipates a

+calamity.</p>

+

+<p>Leander, toothless and wretched, sitting on the

+side of the wagon, began to show symptoms of joy

+comparable to that of the vanguard of the Israelites,

+catching their first glimpse of the Promised Land.

+Touching Mary Carmichael on the shoulder, he

+pointed to a white tent and the remains of a camp-fire.

+Already Mrs. Yellett had begun to "Hallo,

+Ben!" But Ben was at work at the vat, which was

+still a quarter of a mile further up the mountain; so

+Mrs. Yellett, throwing the reins to Leander and

+bidding him turn out the horses, lost no time in

+building a fire, putting on coffee, and making her

+little party comfortable. So various was her efficiency

+that she seemed no less at home in these

+simple domestic tasks than when guiding her horses,

+goddess-like, through the cloud-burst. And Mary

+Carmichael, succumbing gradually to the revivifying

+influence of the fire and the hot coffee, acknowledged

+honestly to herself a warmth of affection for her

+<pb n="273" />

+<anchor id="Pg273" />

+hostess and for the atmosphere Mrs. Yellett created

+about her that made even Virginia and her aunts

+seem less the only pivot of rational existence. She

+felt that she had come West with but one eye, as it

+were, and countless prejudices, whereas her powers

+of vision were fast becoming increased a hundredfold.

+How very tame life must be, she reflected,

+as she sat smiling to herself, to those who did not

+know Mrs. Yellett, how over-serious to those who

+did not know Leander! Yet, after all, she knew

+that the real basis of her readjusted vision was her

+brief but illuminating acquaintance with Judith

+Rodney. To Mary, freed for the first time in her

+life from the most elegantly provincial of surroundings,

+Judith seemed the incarnation of all the

+splendor and heroism of the West. And in the

+glow of her enthusiasm she decided then and there

+not to abandon the Yellett educational problem till

+she should have solved it successfully. She might

+not be born to valiant achievement, like these

+sturdy folk about her, but she might as well prove

+to them that an Eastern tenderfoot was not all

+feebleness and inefficiency.</p>

+

+<p>"Leander!" called Mrs. Yellett. "Just act as if

+you was to home and wash up these dishes."</p>

+<pb n="274" />

+<anchor id="Pg274" />

+</div>

+

+<div rend="page-break-before: always">

+<head>XVIII</head>

+<index index="pdf" /><index index="toc" level1="Foreshadowed" />

+<head type="sub">Foreshadowed</head>

+

+<p>Alida awoke, knowing what was to happen.

+She had dreamed of it, just before daylight,

+and lay in bed stupefied by the horror of it, living,

+again and again, through each frightful detail. It

+had happened&mdash;there, in the very room, and before

+the children; the noise of it had startled them; and

+then she woke and knew she had been dreaming.

+In the dream the noise had wakened the children&mdash;when

+it really happened they must never know.

+It wouldn't be fair to them; they needed a "clean

+start."</p>

+

+<p>What had she done to keep them quiet? There

+had been a thunderous knocking at the door. She

+had expected it and was prepared; because the lock

+was feeble, she had shoved the old brown bureau

+against the door.</p>

+

+<p>Nothing had happened. What a fool she was to

+lie there and think of it! There was the brown

+bureau against the wall; she could hear the deep

+breathing of Jim in the room beyond. Jim had

+been unequal to the task of conventionally going

+to bed the night before, and she had put a pillow

+under his head and a quilt over him. She was the

+<pb n="275" />

+<anchor id="Pg275" />

+last woman in the world to worry about Jim, drunk,

+or to nag him for it when sober. But she didn't like

+the children to see him that way.</p>

+

+<p>What was it that she had done to quiet the children

+when "they" rode up? She had done something

+and they had gone to sleep again, and she&mdash;and she&mdash;oh

+no, it hadn't happened. What a fool she was

+to lie there thinking! There were the children to

+rouse and dress, and breakfast to cook, and Jim&mdash;Jim

+would be feeling pretty mean this morning;

+he'd like a good cup of coffee. She was glad he was

+alive to make coffee for.</p>

+

+<p>She got up and, in the uncertainty bred of the

+dream, felt the brown bureau, felt it hungrily, almost

+incredulously. The brown bureau had been pushed

+against the door when they had come, and knocked

+and knocked. Then they had thundered with the

+butts of their six-shooters, and the children had

+wakened, and she had called out to them:</p>

+

+<p>"Sh-sh! It's only a bad dream. Mammy will

+give you some dough to bake to-morrow."</p>

+

+<p>And she had gone to press her face flat to the

+thin wall, and call, "For God's sake, don't wake the

+children!"</p>

+

+<p>And they had called out, "Let him come out

+quiet, then."</p>

+

+<p>And then she could feel that they put their

+shoulders to the door&mdash;the weather-beaten door&mdash;with

+its crazy lock that didn't half catch. The

+brown bureau had spun across the floor like a top,

+and they had crowded in. Then she had done

+something to quiet the children&mdash;it was queer that

+<pb n="276" />

+<anchor id="Pg276" />

+she could not remember what it was, when everything

+else in the dream still lived within her, horribly

+distinct and real.</p>

+

+<p>What a fool she was, with Jim asleep in the next

+room; she would not think about it another minute.

+She began to dress, but her fingers were heavy,

+and the vague oppression of nightmare blocked her

+efficiency. Repeatedly she would detect herself subconsciously

+brooding over some one of the links in

+that pitiless memory&mdash;what they had said to Jim;

+his undaunted replies; how she had left him and

+gone into the next room because Jim had told her to.</p>

+

+<p>She called the children, but the sight of them,

+happy and flushed with sleep, did not reassure her.</p>

+

+<p>"Mammy," said Topeka, eldest of the family, and

+lately on the invalid list, the victim of a cactus

+thorn, "my toe's all well; can I go barefoot?"</p>

+

+<p>"Topeka Rodney, what kind of feet do you

+expect to have when you are a young lady, if you

+run barefoot now?"</p>

+

+<p>Topeka, sitting on the side of the bed, with tousled

+hair, put her small feet together and contemplated

+them. The toe was still suspiciously inflamed for

+perfect convalescence, although Topeka, with a

+Spartan courage that won her a place in the annals

+of household valor, had the day before allowed

+her mother to pick out with a needle the torturing

+cactus thorn, scorning to shed a tear during the

+operation, though afterwards she had taken the

+piece of dried apple that was offered her and devoured

+it to the last bite, as only just compensation

+for her sufferings.</p>

+<pb n="277" />

+<anchor id="Pg277" />

+

+<p>"Dimmy dot a tore toe, too." But Jimmy

+showed a strange reticence about offering proofs of

+his affliction. At the peril of his equilibrium, he

+clasped the allegedly injured member in his chubby

+hand and rolled over on the bed in apparent

+anguish.</p>

+

+<p>"Less see, Jimmy," asked his mother, anxiously.</p>

+

+<p>"Don't bleeve him, mammy. He 'ain't ever cried.

+He'd a cried, for sure, if his toe was sore." At the

+age of five, little Judith, namesake of her aunt, was

+something of a doubting Thomas.</p>

+

+<p>"Let mammy see, Jimmy," and Alida bent over

+her son and heir.</p>

+

+<p>"Doth Dimmy det any apple?" The wee man

+sometimes succeeded in making terms with his

+mother, when the other children were not present.

+Though feeling himself a trifle over-confident, he

+held the disputed toe with the air of one keeping

+back a trump card, and looked his mother squarely

+in the eyes.</p>

+

+<p>She struggled with the temptation to give him

+the apple. He had lifted the horrors of her dream

+as nothing else could have done, but she answered

+him with quiet firmness.</p>

+

+<p>"Jimmy must not tell stories."</p>

+

+<p>"Less see," insisted Topeka.</p>

+

+<p>"He dassent," affirmed Judith, junior, of little

+faith.</p>

+

+<p>"It hurths me," and Jimmy tried to squeeze out a

+tear. "It hurths me, my tore toe!"</p>

+

+<p>His mother tipped him over on his fat little back

+and opened the chubby hand that held the trump

+<pb n="278" />

+<anchor id="Pg278" />

+toe. It was white from the pressure applied by the

+infant dissembler, but there was no trace of the

+treacherous cactus thorn. She gave him an affectionate

+spank and went into the kitchen to make

+coffee.</p>

+

+<p>"I with I had a tore toe," he crooned, quite unabashed

+at the discovery of his deception. "I with

+I toud det a tore toe 'thout the hurt."</p>

+

+<p>But the horror of the dream gripped her when

+she found herself alone in the kitchen; and she

+remembered she had not told the children not to

+go into the room where their father was sleeping.

+She went back and found that Jimmy had not left

+his post on the side of the bed, where he still regretted

+that his perfectly well toe did not entitle him to

+gastronomic consideration. Topeka, who had arrived

+at an age where little girls, in the first subconscious

+attempt at adornment, know no keener

+delight than plastering their heads with a wet hairbrush,

+till they present an appearance of slippery

+rotundity equalled only by a peeled onion, put

+down the brush with guilty haste at sight of her

+mother.</p>

+

+<p>"I'm goin' to dress him soon as I've done my

+hair."</p>

+

+<p>"Any one think you was goin' to be married, the

+time you've took to it."</p>

+

+<p>"It's gettin' so long," urged Topeka.</p>

+

+<p>"I wouldn't give it a chance to grow no longer

+while Jimmy was waitin' to get dressed. And don't

+go into the front room. Your father's gettin' his

+sleep out."</p>

+<pb n="279" />

+<anchor id="Pg279" />

+

+<p>Topeka opened her round eyes. There was always

+something suspicious about that sleep her

+father had to get out, but she felt it was something

+she must not ask questions about. Her mother

+lingered; she dreaded to be alone in the kitchen.

+The little, familiar intimacies between herself and

+her children scattered the horrors of the dream

+which would come back to her when she was again

+at the mercy of her thoughts.</p>

+

+<p>"Judy, s'pose you dress Jimmy this morning! I

+want Topeka to help me get breakfast."</p>

+

+<p>"Yessum," said Judith, dutifully. "Is he to have

+his face washed?"</p>

+

+<p>"He certainly is, Judy. I's ashamed to have you

+ask such a question. 'Ain't you all been brought up

+to have your faces washed?"</p>

+

+<p>But young Judith seemed disinclined to take up

+this phase of family superiority. She merely inquired

+further:</p>

+

+<p>"Is he to have it washed with soap, maw?"</p>

+

+<p>"He shore is. Any one would think you had been

+born and raised in Arizony or Nebrasky, to hear

+you talk. I'm plumb ashamed of you, Judy."</p>

+

+<p>"But, 'deed, maw, I ain't big enough to wash

+his face with soap. It takes Topeka to hold his

+head."</p>

+

+<p>The subject of the discussion still sat on the edge

+of the bed, a small lord of creation, letting his women

+folk arrange among themselves who should minister

+to his wants. As an instrument of torture the washcloth,

+in the hands of his sister Judy, was no ignoble

+rival of the cactus thorn. The question of making

+<pb n="280" />

+<anchor id="Pg280" />

+terms for his sufferings again appealed to him in the

+light of a feasible business proposition.</p>

+

+<p>"Muvvy, tan't I have the apple? Judy hurts me

+a lot when she wathes my face wis soap."</p>

+

+<p>"Yes, you can have the apple, honey; and, Judy,

+you be gentle with him. Don't rub his features up,

+and be careful and don't get soap in his eyes."</p>

+

+<p>"No'm." And Judy heroically stifled the longing

+to slick her hair, like Topeka's, with the wet hairbrush.

+There were easier tasks than washing the

+face of her younger brother.</p>

+

+<p>When Topeka and her mother were alone in the

+kitchen, Topeka grinding the coffee and all unconsciously

+working her jaw in an accompaniment to

+the coffee-mill, her mother bent over her and said:</p>

+

+<p>"Did you dream of anything last night?"</p>

+

+<p>Topeka simultaneously stopped working the coffee-mill

+and her jaw, and regarded her mother solemnly.

+She did not remember having been thus questioned

+about her dreams before.</p>

+

+<p>"No'm," she answered, after laborious consideration.

+But something in her mother's face held her.</p>

+

+<p>"You're sure you didn't dream nothing?"</p>

+

+<p>"Yes, maw."</p>

+

+<p>"Did Judy or Jim say that they dreamed anything?"</p>

+

+<p>"Jim said he dreamed he had a pup."</p>

+

+<p>"Was that all? Think hard, Topeka!"</p>

+

+<p>Topeka held the handle of the coffee-mill in her

+hand; her jaw continued to work with the labor of

+her mental process. "I've thought hard, maw, and

+all he told was about the pup."</p>

+<pb n="281" />

+<anchor id="Pg281" />

+

+<p>Alida went back to her bedroom and again felt

+the brown bureau. "What's the matter with me,

+anyhow? It's the lonesomeness, and they bein' agin

+Jim the way they are. God, this country's hard on

+women and horses!"</p>

+

+<p>When breakfast was over, and young Jim had

+received the reward of his valor in presenting a

+brave face to his ablution, and Judith the reward

+of her skill, the evidence of which almost prevented

+the young martyr from smiling while he enjoyed his

+treat, their mother sent them all to play in the

+caÃąon. She told them not to come home till she

+should come for them, and if any one should ask

+about their father, to say that he was away from

+home. And this, as well as the mystery of her

+father's "getting his sleep out," roused some slight

+apprehension in Topeka, who was old for her age.

+They were seldom sent to the caÃąon to play. Topeka

+looked at her mother as she had when questioned

+about the dream, but there was no further confidence

+between them.</p>

+

+<p>"You do as your sister Topeka tells you, and

+remember what I said about your papa," Alida said

+to the younger children. Jim and Judy clasped each

+other's hands in mute compact at the edict. Their

+sister Topeka had a real genius for authority; they

+were minded all too well when she swayed the

+maternal sceptre vicariously.</p>

+

+<p>Alida made fresh coffee for Jim when the children

+had gone. She made it carefully; there was this

+morning, unconsciously, about each little thing that

+<pb n="282" />

+<anchor id="Pg282" />

+she did for him, the solemnity of a funeral rite.

+Struggle as she would, she could not divest her

+mind of the conviction that what she did this day

+she did for the dead. She would go to the door and

+listen to his breathing, and tell herself that she was a

+fool, then wring her hands at the remembrance of

+the dream.</p>

+

+<p>As he tossed, half waking, she heard him groan

+and curse the cattle-men with oaths that made her

+glad she had sent the children from home. Then

+she bent over him and woke him from his uneasy

+slumber.</p>

+

+<p>"Jim, don't you want me to bathe your head?

+And here's some nice, hot coffee all ready for you."</p>

+

+<p>Jim woke slowly to a realization of his troubles

+and his blessings. His wife was bathing his head

+with hands that trembled. Not always had she

+greeted his indiscretions with such loving forbearance.

+He noticed, though his waking faculties were

+not over-keen, that her face was pale and frightened,

+and that her eyes, meeting his, held a dumb,

+measureless affection.</p>

+

+<p>"What th' hell are you babying me for?" But

+his roughness did not deceive her woman's wits.

+He was not getting the lecture he anticipated, and

+this was his way of showing that he was not embarrassed

+by her kindness. The morning sunlight

+was pitilessly frank in its exposure of the grim pinch

+of poverty in the mean little room, but the woman

+was unconscious of these things; what she saw was

+that Jim, the reckless, Jim, the dare-devil terror of

+the country, Jim, who had married and settled with

+<pb n="283" />

+<anchor id="Pg283" />

+her into home-keeping respectability, Jim, who had

+struggled with misfortune and fallen, had, young as

+he was, lost every look of youth; that hope had gone

+from his dull eyes, and that his face had become

+drawn until the death's-head grinned beneath the

+scant padding of flesh. But he was to-day, as

+always, the one man in the world for her. In

+making a world of their own and reducing their

+parents to supplementary consideration, their children,

+whom she had sent away that she might be

+alone with him, had given a different quality to the

+love of this pair that had known so many curious

+vicissitudes. The responsibilities of parenthood

+had placed them on a tenderer, as well as a securer

+footing; and as she saw his age and weariness,

+he recognized hers, and both felt a self-accusing

+twinge.</p>

+

+<p>"That's a blamed good cup of coffee," he said,

+by way of relieving the tension that had crept into

+the situation. "Any one would think you was settin'

+your cap for me 'stead of us being married for

+years."</p>

+

+<p>Alida sighed. "It's better to end than to begin

+like this," she said, in the far-away voice of one who

+thinks aloud. The word "end" had slipped out

+before she realized what she was saying, and the

+knowledge haunted her as an omen. She glanced

+at him quickly, to see if he had noticed it.</p>

+

+<p>"Why did you say end?" He saw that her eyes

+were full of tears and chafed her. "You ain't

+thinking of divorcing me, like Mountain Pink done

+Bosky?"</p>

+<pb n="284" />

+<anchor id="Pg284" />

+

+<p>"Oh, Jim," she said, and her face was all

+aquiver, "I never could divorce you, no matter what

+you done." And then the grim philosophy of the

+plains-woman asserted itself. "I never can understand

+why women feed their pride on their

+heart's blood; it never was my way."</p>

+

+<p>He did not like to remember that he had given

+her cause for a way. "There's a lot of women

+as wouldn't exactly regard me as a Merino, or a

+Southdown, either;" he gulped the coffee to ease

+the tightness in his throat.</p>

+

+<p>"They'd be women of no judgment, then," she

+said, with conviction.</p>

+

+<p>Jim's head was tilted back, resting in the palm

+of his hand. His profile, sharpened by anxiety,

+more than suggested his quarter-strain of Sioux

+blood. He might almost have been old Chief

+Flying Hawk himself, as he looked steadily at the

+woman who had been a young girl and reckless,

+when he had been a boy and reckless; who had

+paid her woman's penalty and come into her woman's

+kingdom; who had made a man of him by the

+mystery of her motherhood, and who had uncomplainingly

+gone with him into the wilderness

+and become an alien and an outcast.</p>

+

+<p>These things unmanned him as the sight of the

+gallows and the rope for his hanging could not have

+done. Shielding himself with an affected roughness,

+he asked:</p>

+

+<p>"What the hell's the matter with you? I've been

+drinking like a beast of an Indian, and you give me

+coffee instead of a tongue-lashing."</p>

+<pb n="285" />

+<anchor id="Pg285" />

+

+<p>The color had all gone out of her face. She

+gasped the words:</p>

+

+<p>"Jim, I dreamed it last night&mdash;they came for

+you!"</p>

+

+<p>She cowered at the recollection.</p>

+

+<p>"Did they get me?" he asked. There was no

+surprise in his tone. He spoke as one who knew

+the answer.</p>

+

+<p>"Yes, the children saw. The noise woke them."</p>

+

+<p>"You mustn't let 'em see, when&mdash;they come.

+They've a right to a fair start; we didn't get it, old

+girl."</p>

+

+<p>"The children gave it to us," and she faced him.</p>

+

+<p>"Yes, yes, but we want them to have it from the

+start, like good folks."</p>

+

+<p>They looked into each other's eyes. The memory

+of dead and gone madness twinkled there a moment,

+then each remembered:</p>

+

+<p>"You must hurry, Jim. You haven't a moment

+to lose. I dreamed it was to be to-night&mdash;they'll

+come to-night!"</p>

+

+<p>"The game's all up, old girl! If I had a month I

+couldn't get away. Morrison's been looking for me

+over to the Owl Creek Range; he's back&mdash;Stevens

+told me yesterday. He'll be heading here soon.

+The price on my head is a strain on friendship."</p>

+

+<p>"Have the sheep-men gone back on you?"</p>

+

+<p>"Yes, damn them! A thousand dollars is big

+money, and they've had hard luck!"</p>

+

+<p>"They deserve it; I hope every herd in the State

+dies of scab."</p>

+

+<p>"There wasn't a scabby sheep in our bunch.

+<pb n="286" />

+<anchor id="Pg286" />

+What a sight they were, loaded with tallow! There

+wasn't one of them that couldn't have weathered

+a blizzard; they could have lived on their own tallow

+for a month."</p>

+

+<p>She tried to divert his attention from his lost

+flock. When he began to talk about them the

+despair of his loss drove him to drink. She was

+ground between the millstones of his going or staying.

+If he stayed they would come for him; if he

+went, they would apprehend him before he was ten

+miles from the house.</p>

+

+<p>"Jim, we got to think. If there's a chance in a

+thousand that you can get away, you got to take it;

+if there ain't, the children mustn't know. We got

+to think it out!"</p>

+

+<p>"There ain't a chance in a thousand, old girl.

+There ain't one in a million. They're circling round

+in the hills out here now, waitin' for me, like

+buzzards waitin' for the eyes of a dyin' horse."</p>

+

+<p>She rocked herself, and the clutching fingers left

+white marks on her face, but the eyes that met his

+glittered tearless:</p>

+

+<p>"Then there ain't nothing left but to face it like a

+man?"</p>

+

+<p>"That's all there be." He might have been giving

+an opinion on a matter in which he had no interest.</p>

+

+<p>"Then there ain't no use in our having any more

+talk about it?"</p>

+

+<p>"'Tain't just what you'd call an agreeable subject,"

+he answered, with the sinister humor of the

+frontiersman who has learned to make a crony of

+death.</p>

+<pb n="287" />

+<anchor id="Pg287" />

+

+<p>She was tempted to kiss him&mdash;they were not given

+to demonstrations, this pair&mdash;then decided it were

+kinder to him, less suggestive of what they anticipated,

+not to deviate from their undemonstrative

+marital routine.</p>

+

+<p>"Do you want your breakfast now?"</p>

+

+<p>"I guess you might bring it along."</p>

+

+<p>And for the same reason that she refrained from

+kissing him, she repressed a desire to wring the neck

+of a young broiler and cook it for his breakfast,

+remembering that she had heard they gave folks

+pretty much what they wanted when they wouldn't

+want it long. So Jim got his usual breakfast of

+bacon, uncooked canned tomatoes, soda-biscuit, and

+coffee. She sat with him while he ate, but they spoke

+no more of "them" or of how soon "they" might be

+expected. She told him that young Jim had pretended

+that morning that he had a cactus thorn in

+his foot, so that he might have a piece of dried

+apple. And old Jim, in an excess of parental

+fondness and pride, said: "The damned little liar,

+he'll get to Congress yet!"</p>

+

+<p>But the children were a dangerous topic for overstrained

+nerves at this particular time, so Alida

+told Jim that she had put the black hen to set and

+she thought they'd have some chickens at last.

+Jim smoked while Alida washed the dishes, and when

+Jim's back was turned she examined the lock on the

+door&mdash;a good push would open it. Then she looked

+at the brown bureau, and the recklessness of despair

+came into her eyes. In the room beyond, Jim

+was reading a two weeks' old newspaper and smoking.

+<pb n="288" />

+<anchor id="Pg288" />

+He looked like a lazy ranchman taking his

+ease.</p>

+

+<p>As she went about her household tasks that

+morning, Alida noticed things as she had never

+noticed them before. A sunbeam came through

+the shutterless window of the house and writhed

+and quivered on the wall as if it were a live thing.

+She read a warning in this, and in the color of the

+sun, that was red, like blood, and in the whirr of the

+grasshoppers, that was sinister and threatening.

+The creeks had dried, and their slimy beds crept

+along the willows like sluggish snakes. Gaunt range-cattle

+bellowed in their thirst, and the parched

+earth crackled beneath the sun that hung above the

+house like a flaming disk. Sometimes she sank

+beneath the burden of it; then she would wring

+her hands and call on God to help them; they were

+beyond human power. She and Jim were alone all

+the morning; they did not again refer to what they

+knew would happen. He read his old paper and she

+put her house in order. She did it with especial care.

+It was meet to have things seemly in the house of

+the dead. And every time she glanced at Jim

+she repressed the desire to fling herself on his breast

+and cry out the anguish that consumed her.</p>

+

+<p>At noon she brought the children home to dinner,

+and afterwards Jim taught them to throw the lasso

+and played buffalo with them. Alida did not trust

+herself to watch them; she stayed in the kitchen

+and saw the sunbeam grow pale with the waning

+of the day, the day whose minutes dragged like

+lead, yet had rushed from her, leaving her the night

+<pb n="289" />

+<anchor id="Pg289" />

+to face. At sundown she cooked supper, but she no

+longer knew what she did. A crazy agility had

+taken possession of her and she spun about the

+kitchen, doing the same errand many times, finding

+herself doing always something different from that

+she had set about doing. The molten day was

+burning itself out like a fever; hot gusts of air beat

+up from the earth, but the woman who waited

+felt chilled to the marrow, and took a cloak down

+from a peg and wrapped it about her while she

+waited for the biscuit to bake. At supper they sat

+down together, the man and his wife and their

+three children. The children were in fine spirits

+from the fun they had had that afternoon. Never

+had daddy been so nice to them. He had taught

+Topeka to throw the lasso so well that she had

+caught the cat once and little Jim twice; and daddy

+had played he was a buffalo and had charged them

+all with his head down, till they screamed in terror.

+But daddy seemed more quiet through the meal, and

+once mother started up and cried:</p>

+

+<p>"What's that?"</p>

+

+<p>She ran to the door with her hand pressed to her

+side, but daddy called after her:</p>

+

+<p>"Don't you know the cowards better than that?

+They'll wait for nightfall."</p>

+

+<p>But these things had not worried the children,

+with their heads full of playing buffalo and throwing

+the lariat.</p>

+

+<p>"Jim," said his father, before they went to bed,

+"remember you are the man of the family." But

+young Jim was already nodding with sleep. Topeka

+<pb n="290" />

+<anchor id="Pg290" />

+and Judith were sleepy, too; they kissed their father

+and were glad to go to bed.</p>

+

+<p>The night began menacingly to close over the

+wilderness. Where the sun had hung above the

+mountain a moment before there glowed a great

+pool of red that dripped across the blackness in faint

+tricklings. The outlines of the foot-hills loomed

+huge, formless, uncouth. In the half-light it seemed

+a world struggling in the birth-throes. All day

+the dry, burning heat had quivered over the desert,

+like hot-air waves flickering over a bed of live coals,

+and now the very earth seemed to palpitate with the

+intensity of its fever. The bellowing of the thirst-maddened

+cattle had not stopped with the twilight

+that brought no dew to slake their parched throats.

+In the hills the coyotes wailed like lost souls. It

+was night bereft of benisons, day made frightful by

+darkness. All the heat of a cycle of desert summers

+seemed concentrated in that house in the valley

+where the man and his wife waited. Each sound of

+the desert night Alida translated into the trampling

+of horses' feet; then, as the sound would die away,

+or prove to be but some night noise of the wilderness,

+the pallor would lose its pinch on her features, and

+she would stare into her husband's face with eyes

+that did not see. Jim smoked his pipe and refilled

+it, smoked and filled again, but gave no sign of the

+object of his waiting.</p>

+

+<p>"Jim," she said, when the clock had struck ten,

+then eleven, "I am going to fasten up the house."</p>

+

+<p>"Do you hear them?" he asked, without emotion,

+but as one who deferred to the finer senses of women.</p>

+<pb n="291" />

+<anchor id="Pg291" />

+

+<p>She shook her head, not trusting herself to speak.</p>

+

+<p>He looked at the door that was shrunken and

+warped from the heat till it barely held together,

+and there was no measure to the tenderness he put

+into:</p>

+

+<p>"Oh, you poor little fool, do you think you could

+keep them out by fastening that?"</p>

+

+<p>"Jim, I must," and her voice broke. "They may

+think you are not here, that it's only me and the

+children, and that's why the house is fastened."

+She got up and began to move about as though

+her thoughts scourged her to action, even if futile.

+He shook the ashes from his pipe.</p>

+

+<p>"Do anything you blame please," he said, more

+by way of humoring her than from faith in her stratagem.

+He felt strong enough to face his destiny, to

+meet it in a way worthy of his mother's people.</p>

+

+<p>Alida seemed under a spell in her preparations

+for the night. Each thing she did as she had done

+it in her dream the night before; it was as if she

+were constrained by a power greater than her will

+to fulfil a sinister prophecy. Yet now and then

+she would stop and wonder if she might not break

+the spell by doing things differently from the way

+she had dreamed them. Her hand grasped the

+knob of the door uncertainly, and she swung it to

+and fro on its creaking hinges, while her mind seemed

+likewise to sway hither and thither. Should she

+fasten the door and push the bureau against it, as it

+had been in the dream, or should she leave door

+and windows gaping wide for them? And then, as

+one who walks and does familiar things in sleep,

+<pb n="292" />

+<anchor id="Pg292" />

+she shut the door and turned the key. Jim smiled

+at her, but she could no longer look at him. One

+of the children wailed fretfully from the room beyond.

+Sleep had become a scourge in the stifling

+heat. One by one she lowered the windows and

+nailed them down; then she dragged the brown bureau

+against the door, took the brace of six-shooters

+from the wall, and sat down with Jim to wait.</p>

+

+<p>"What are you going to do with them toys?" he

+asked, as he saw her examine the chambers of one

+of the six-shooters.</p>

+

+<p>"You ain't going to let yourself be caught like

+a rat in a hole, are you?" she reproached him.</p>

+

+<p>"'Ain't we agreed that it's best to keep onpleasant

+family matters from the kids?" He smiled at her

+bravely. "The remembrance of what we're anticipatin'

+ain't going to help young Jim to get to

+Congress when his time comes, nor it ain't going to

+help the girls get good husbands, either. This here

+country ain't what it was in the way of liberality

+since it's got to be a State."</p>

+

+<p>"Sh-sh-sh!" she said. "Is that the range-cattle

+stampedin' after water, or is it&mdash;" They listened.

+The furniture in the room crackled; there was not

+a fibre of it to which the resistless heat had not

+penetrated. On the range the cattle bellowed in

+their thirst-torture; in the intervals of their cries

+sounded something far off, but regular as the thumping

+of a ship's screw. The woman did not need an

+answer to her question. The steady trampling of

+hoofs came muffled through the dead air, but the

+sound was unmistakable. She put her arms about

+<pb n="293" />

+<anchor id="Pg293" />

+the man's neck and crushed him to her with all her

+woman strength. "Oh, Jim, you've been a good

+man to me!"</p>

+

+<p>"Steady&mdash;steady." He strained her close to him.

+"They'd be, by the sound of them, on the straight

+bit of road now, before the turn. Soon we'll hear

+their hoofs ring hollow as they cross the plank

+bridge."</p>

+

+<p>His plainsman's faculty was as keen as ever;

+his calculation of the horsemen's distance was made

+as though he were the least concerned. All Alida's

+courage had gone, with the dread thing at hand.

+She clung to him, dazed.</p>

+

+<p>"They're sober, all right enough."</p>

+

+<p>"How do you know?"</p>

+

+<p>"They'd be cursing and bellowing if they were

+drunk."</p>

+

+<p>The hoofs rang hollow on the little plank bridge

+that crossed the ditch about a stone's-throw from

+the door. Not a word was said either within or

+without. The lynchers seemed to have drilled for

+their part; there was no whispering, no deferring

+to a leader. On they came, so close that Jim and

+Alida could hear the creaking of their saddles.

+There was the clank of spurs and the straining of

+leather as they dismounted, then some one knocked

+at the door till the warped boards rattled.</p>

+

+<p>Jim could feel the thudding of Alida's heart as

+she clung to him, but when the knock was repeated

+a new courage came to her, and she left Jim and

+went on her knees close to the outer wall.</p>

+

+<p>"Jim, is that you?" she called, and now every

+<pb n="294" />

+<anchor id="Pg294" />

+sense was trained to battle; her voice had even a

+sleepy cadence, as if she had been suddenly roused.</p>

+

+<p>"That won't do at all, Miz Rodney. We know

+you got Jim in there, just as certain as we're out

+here, and we want him to come out and we'll do the

+thing square, otherwise he can take the consequences."</p>

+

+<p>Jim opened his mouth to speak, but she, still on

+her knees beside the wall, gained his silence by one

+supplicating gesture. There was a sleepy, fretful

+cry from the room beyond&mdash;the noise had roused

+one of the children.</p>

+

+<p>"Sh-sh, dear," she called. "It's only a bad

+dream. Go to sleep again; mother is here."</p>

+

+<p>Through the warped door came sounds of the

+whispering voices without, drowned by the shrieking

+bellow of the cattle. There was not a breath

+of air in the suffocating room. Jim bent towards

+Alida:</p>

+

+<p>"I'm goin out to 'em. They'll do it square, over

+on the cotton-woods; this rumpus'll only wake the

+kids."</p>

+

+<p>But she shook her head imploringly, putting her

+finger to her lips as a sign that he was not to speak,

+and he had not the heart to refuse, though knowing

+that she made a desperate situation worse.</p>

+

+<p>"Gentlemen"&mdash;she spoke in a low, distinct voice&mdash;"Jim

+ain't here. He's been away from home five

+days. There's no one here but me and the children;

+you've woke them up and frightened them by

+pounding on the door. I ask you to go away."</p>

+

+<p>"If he ain't in there, will you let us search the

+<pb n="295" />

+<anchor id="Pg295" />

+house?" It was Henderson that spoke, Henderson,

+foreman of the "XXX" outfit.</p>

+

+<p>"I can't have them frightened; please take my

+word and go away."</p>

+

+<p>"Whas er matter, muvvy?" called Judith, sleepily.

+Young Jim was by this time crying lustily. Only

+Topeka said nothing. With the precocity of a

+frontier child, she half realized the truth. She tried

+to comfort little Jim, though her teeth chattered in

+fear and she felt cold in the hot, still room. Then

+Judith called out, "Make papa send them away."</p>

+

+<p>"Your papa ain't here, Judith." But the fight

+had all gone out of Alida's voice; it was the groan

+of an animal in a trap.</p>

+

+<p>"Where's papa gone to?"</p>

+

+<p>"Sh-sh, Judith! Topeka, keep your sister quiet."</p>

+

+<p>It was absolutely still, within and without, for a

+full minute. Then Alida heard the shoving of

+shoulders against the door. Once, twice, thrice the

+lock resisted them. The brown bureau spun across

+the room like a child's toy. The lynchers, bursting

+in, saw Alida with her arms around Jim. When the

+last hope had gone it was instinct with her to protect

+him with her own body.</p>

+

+<p>"Go into the kids, old girl, this is no place for you."

+And there was that in his voice that made her obey.</p>

+

+<p>Something of the glory of old Chief Flying Hawk,

+riding to battle, was in the face of his grandson.</p>

+

+<p>"Remember, the children ain't to know," he said

+to his wife; and to the lynchers, "Gentlemen, I'm

+ready."</p>

+<pb n="296" />

+<anchor id="Pg296" />

+</div>

+

+<div rend="page-break-before: always">

+<head>XIX</head>

+<index index="pdf" /><index index="toc" level1="&quot;Rocked By A Hempen String&quot;" />

+<head type="sub">"Rocked By A Hempen String"</head>

+

+<p>Alida heard the mingled sounds of footsteps

+and hoofs grow fainter on the trail. The

+children looked at her to tell them why this night

+was different from all others&mdash;what was happening.

+But she could only cower among them, more terrified

+than they. She seemed to be shrunken from the

+happenings of that day. They hardly knew the

+little, shrivelled, gray woman who looked at them

+with unfamiliar eyes. Alida gazed at the little

+Judith, and there was something in her mother's

+glance that made the little one hide her face in her

+sister's shoulder. Young Judith it was who all unwittingly

+had told the lynchers that her father was

+at home, and in Alida's heart there was towards this

+child a blind, unreasoning hate. Better had she

+never been born than live to do this thing!</p>

+

+<p>It was the wee man, Jim, who first began to

+reflect resentfully on this intrusion on his slumbers.

+He had been sleeping well and comfortably when

+some grown-ups came with a lot of noise, and his

+father had gone away with them. It had frightened

+him, but his mother was here, and why should she

+not put him to sleep again?</p>

+<pb n="297" />

+<anchor id="Pg297" />

+

+<p>"Muvvy, sing 'Dway Wolf.'" And as she paid

+no heed, but looked at him, white-faced and strange,

+he again repeated, with his most insinuating and

+beguiling tricks of eye and smile:</p>

+

+<p>"Muvvy, sing 'Dway Wolf' for Dimmy."</p>

+

+<p>The child put his head in his mother's lap, and

+Alida began, scarce knowing what she did:</p>

+

+<lg>

+<l rend="margin-left: 2">"'The gray wolves are coming fast over the hill,</l>

+<l rend="margin-left: 4">Run fast, little lamb, do not baa, do not bleat,</l>

+<l rend="margin-left: 2">For the gray wolves are hungry, they come here to kill,</l>

+<l rend="margin-left: 4">And the lambs shall be scattered&mdash;'</l>

+</lg>

+

+<p>"No, no, Jimmy, muvvy cannot sing. Oh, can't you

+feel, child? Judith, Judith, why were you ever born?"</p>

+

+<p>It was still in the valley. Had they come to the

+dead cotton-woods yet? Had they begun it? The

+children shrank from this gray-faced woman whom

+they did not know and but yet a little while had

+been their mother. An awful silence had fallen on

+the night. The range-cattle no longer bellowed in

+their thirst; the hot wind no longer blew from the

+desert. A hush not of earth nor air nor the things

+that were of her ken seemed to have fallen about

+them, muffing the dark loneliness as by invisible

+flakes. The children had crouched close together for

+comfort. They feared the little, gray-faced woman

+who seemed to have stolen into their mother's place

+and looked at them with strange eyes.</p>

+

+<p>Jimmy looked at the woman who held him, hoping

+his mother would come, and he could see them both.

+And while he waited he dropped off to sleep; and

+little Judith, hiding her head on Topeka's shoulder,

+<pb n="298" />

+<anchor id="Pg298" />

+that she might not see the look in those accusing

+eyes, presently dreamed that all was well with her

+again; and Topeka reflected that if her mother

+should ask her in the morning whether she had

+dreamed last night, she would have a fine tale to

+tell of men riding up, and loud voices, and trying

+of the door, and father going away with them.

+Her mother had questioned her this morning when

+nothing had happened to warrant it. Surely she

+would ask again to-morrow, and Topeka could tell&mdash;she

+could tell&mdash;all.</p>

+

+<p>Alida looked at her three sleeping children&mdash;his

+children, and yet they could sleep. Into her mind

+came that cry of utter desolation, "Could ye not

+watch with me one hour?" And God had been

+deaf to Him, His son, even as He was deaf to her.</p>

+

+<p>The children were sleeping easily. The hush that

+had hung like a pall over the valley had not lifted.

+Had they done it? Was it over yet? She went to

+the door and listened. Surely the silence that

+wrapped the valley was a thing apart. It was as no

+other silence that she could remember. It was still,

+still, and yet there was vibration to it, like the

+muffled roar within a shell. She strained her ears&mdash;was

+that the sound of horsemen going down the

+trail? No, no, it was only the beating of her foolish

+heart that would not be still, but beat and fluttered

+and would not let her hear. Yes, surely, that was

+the sound of hoofs. It was over then&mdash;they were

+going.</p>

+

+<p>She would go and look for him. Perhaps it would

+not be too late&mdash;she had heard of such things.

+<pb n="299" />

+<anchor id="Pg299" />

+A dynamic force consumed her. She had no consciousness

+of her body. Her feet and hands did

+things with incredible swiftness&mdash;lighted a lantern,

+selected a knife, ran to the corral for an old ladder

+that had been there when they took possession of

+the deserted house; and through all her frantic

+haste she could feel this new force, as it were, lick

+up the red blood in her veins, burn her body to

+ashes as it gave her new power. She felt that

+never again would she have need of meat and

+drink and sleep. This force would abide with her

+till all was over, then leave her, like the whitened

+bones of the desert.</p>

+

+<p>It was dark in the valley, but the menacing

+stillness seemed to be lifting. The range-cattle

+had again taken up their plaint, the sounds of the

+desert night swept across the stony walls of the

+caÃąon. Alida knew that it must have happened

+at the dead cotton-woods. There were no other

+high trees about for miles. Again she listened before

+advancing. There was no sound of hoof or

+champing bit or men moving quickly. They had

+gone their way into the valley. She ran swiftly, her

+lantern throwing its beam across the scrubby inequalities

+of ground, but for her there was no need

+of its beacon. To-night she was beyond the halting,

+stumbling uncertainties of tread to which man is

+subject. There was magic in her feet and in her

+hands and brain. Like the wind she ran, the wind

+on the great plain where there are no foot-hills to

+hinder its course. The black, dead trees stood out

+distinctly against the starry sky, and from a cross-limb

+<pb n="300" />

+<anchor id="Pg300" />

+of one of them dangled something with head

+awry, like a broken jumping-jack, something that

+had once been a man&mdash;and her husband. She could

+touch the feet of this frightful thing and feel its

+human warmth. A wind came up from the desert

+and blew across the caÃąon's rocky walls into the

+valley, and the parody of a man swayed to it.</p>

+

+<p>She had been expecting this thing. For weeks

+the image of it had been graven on her heart.

+Sleeping or waking, she had seen nothing but his

+dangling body from the cross-limb. Yet with the

+actual consummation before her, she felt its hideous

+novelty as though it were unexpected. At sight of

+it the force that had borne her up through the

+happenings of that day went out of her, and as

+she stood with the knife and the rope, that she

+had brought in the hope of cheating the lynchers,

+dangling from her nerveless hand her helplessness

+overcame her. Again and again she called to the

+dead man for help, called to him as she had been

+accustomed to call when her woman's strength had

+been unequal to some heavy household task.</p>

+

+<p>Far down the trail she could hear the gallop of a

+horse coming closer, and mingled with the sounds of

+its flying feet was a voice urging the horse to greater

+speed in the shrill cabalistic "Hi-hi-hi-ki!" of the

+plains-man. What was it&mdash;one of them returning

+to see that she did not cheat the rope of its due?&mdash;to

+hang her beside him, as an after-thought, as they

+hanged Kate Watson beside her man? Let them.

+She was standing near the swaying thing when horse

+and rider gained the ground beside her, and what

+<pb n="301" />

+<anchor id="Pg301" />

+was left to her of consciousness made out that the

+rider was Judith. She pointed to it, and stood

+helpless with the dangling rope in her hand.</p>

+

+<p>"Are we too late?" Judith almost whispered, as

+she caught Alida's cold, inert hands. "I dreamed

+it all and came. If I could have dreamed it sooner!"</p>

+

+<p>Alida did not seem to hear, neither could she

+speak. She only pointed again to the thing beside

+her.</p>

+

+<p>Judith understood. The women had a task to

+share, and in silence they began it. The lynchers

+had done their work all too well. Again and again

+the women strove with all their strength to take

+down the dangling parody of a man, which in its

+dead-weight resistance seemed in league with the

+forces against them. At last the thing was done.

+Down to a pale world, that in the haggard gray of

+morning seemed to bear in its countenance something

+of the pinch of death, Judith lowered the

+thing that had so lately been a man. She cut the

+rope away from the neck, she straightened the wry

+neck that seemed to wag in pantomimic representation

+of the last word to the lynchers. They'd have

+to reckon with him on dark nights, and when the

+wind wailed like a famished wolf and when things

+not to be explained lurked in the shadows of the

+desert.</p>

+

+<p>The morning stillness came flooding into the

+cup-shaped valley like a soft, resistless wave. Something

+had come to the gray, old earth&mdash;another day,

+with all its human gift of joy and woe, and the

+earth welcomed it though it had known so many.

+<pb n="302" />

+<anchor id="Pg302" />

+The sun burst through the gold-tipped aureole of

+cloud, scattering far and wide lavish promises of a

+perfect day. The earth seemed to respond with a

+thrill. No longer was the pinch of death in her

+countenance. The valley, the mountains, the invisible

+wind, even the dead cotton-woods, seemed

+endowed with throbbing life that contrasted fearsomely

+with the terrible nullity of this thing that

+once had been Jim Rodney.</p>

+

+<p>Alida had ceased to take any part in the hideous

+drama. She sat on the ground, a crouching thing

+with glittering eyes. It was past comprehension

+that the sun could shine and the world go on with

+her man dead before her. Judith had become the

+force that planned and did to save the family pride.

+While her hands were busy with preparations for

+the dead, she rehearsed what she would say to this

+and that one to account for Jim's absence. The

+silence of the men who had done this thing would

+be as steadfast as their own.</p>

+

+<p>And there were the children. Through all her

+frantic search for things in the house, Judith remembered

+that she must step softly and not waken

+the children. With each turn of the screw, as her

+numbed consciousness rallied and responded afresh

+to the hideous realization of this thing, there came

+no release from the tyrannous hold of petty detail.

+She remembered that she must be back at noon to

+hold post-office, and there would be the endless

+comedy to be played once more with her cavaliers.

+They must never suspect from word or look of hers.

+And there was the dance to-night at the Benton

+<pb n="303" />

+<anchor id="Pg303" />

+ranch&mdash;she hid her face in her hands. Ah, no, she

+could not do this thing! And yet they must not

+suspect. She must contrive to give the impression

+that Jim had cheated the rope. Yes, she must

+go and dance, and, if need be, dance with his very

+murderers. Jim's children were to have the "clean

+start" that he intended, and they would have to

+get it here. There was no money for an exodus and

+a beginning elsewhere.</p>

+

+<p>Alida still crouched beside the long, even tarpaulin

+roll that Judith had prepared with hands

+that knew not what they did. But now Judith

+gently roused her and put in her hand a spade;

+already she herself had begun. But Alida stared

+at it dully, as if she did not understand. Then

+Judith pointed to something black that had begun

+to wheel in the sky, wheel, and with each circular

+swoop come closer to the roll of tarpaulin. Then

+Alida knew, and, taking the spade, she and Judith

+began to dig the grave.</p>

+<pb n="304" />

+<anchor id="Pg304" />

+</div>

+

+<div rend="page-break-before: always">

+<head>XX</head>

+<index index="pdf" /><index index="toc" level1="The Ball" />

+<head type="sub">The Ball</head>

+

+<p>The dance in the Benton ranch was the great

+social event of the midsummer season. The

+Bentons had begun to give dances in the days of

+plenty, when the cattle industry had been at its

+dizziest height; and they had continued to give

+dances through all the depressing fluctuations of

+the trade, perhaps in much the same spirit as one

+whistles in the dark to keep up his courage. Thus,

+though cattle fell and continued to fall in the

+scale of prices till the end no man dared surmise,

+the Benton "boys"&mdash;they were two brothers, aged

+respectively forty-five and fifty years&mdash;continued

+to hold out facilities to dance and be merry.</p>

+

+<p>All day strange wagons&mdash;ludicrous, makeshift

+things&mdash;had been discharging loads of women and

+children at the Benton ranch, tired mothers and

+their insistent offspring. To the women this strenuous

+relaxation came as manna in the wilderness.

+What was the dreary round of washing, ironing,

+baking, and the chain of household tasks that

+must be done as primitively as in Genesis, if only

+they might dance and forget? So the mothers came

+early and stayed late, and the primary sessions of

+<pb n="305" />

+<anchor id="Pg305" />

+the dances fulfilled all the functions of the latter-day

+mothers' congresses&mdash;there were infant ailments

+to be discussed, there were the questions of food

+and of teething, of paregoric and of flannel bands,

+which, strange heresy, seemed to be "going out,"

+according to the latest advices from those compendiums

+of all domestic information, the "Woman's

+Pages" of the daily papers.</p>

+

+<p>Inasmuch as these more than punctual debaters

+must be cooked for, there was, to speak plainly,

+"feeling" on the part of the housekeeper at the

+Bentons'. Wasn't it enough for folks to come to a

+dance and get a good supper, and go away like

+Christians when the thing was over, instead of

+coming a day before it began and lingering on as

+if they had no home to go to? This, at least, was

+the housekeeper's point of view, a crochety one,

+be it said, not shared by the brothers Benton,

+whose hospitality was as genuine as it was primitive.

+To this same difficult lady the infants, who were

+too tender in years to be separated from their

+mothers, were as productive of anxiety as their

+elders. A room had been set apart for their especial

+accommodation, the floor of which, carefully spread

+with bed-quilts and pillows, prevented any great

+damage from happening to the more tender of the

+guests; and they rolled and crooned and dug their

+small fists into each other's faces while their mothers

+danced in the room beyond.</p>

+

+<p>By nightfall the Benton ranch gleamed on the

+dark prairie like a constellation. Lights burned at

+every window; a broad beam issued from the door

+<pb n="306" />

+<anchor id="Pg306" />

+and threw a welcoming beacon across the darkness

+and silence of the night. The scraping of fiddles

+mingled with the rhythmic scuffle of feet and the

+singsong of the words that the dancers sung as they

+whirled through the figures of the quadrille and

+lancers. About the walls of the room where the

+dancing was in progress stood a fringe of gallants,

+their heads newly oiled, and proclaiming the fact

+in a bewildering variety of strong perfumes. Red

+silk neckerchiefs knotted with elaborate carelessness

+displayed to advantage bronzed throats; new overalls,

+and of the shaggiest species, amply testified to

+the social importance of the Benton dance.</p>

+

+<p>As yet the dancing was but intermittent and was

+engaged in chiefly by the mothers with large progeny,

+who felt that after the arrival of a greater number

+of guests, and among them the unmarried girls, their

+opportunities might not be as plentiful as at present.

+One or two cow-punchers, in an excess of civility

+at the presence of the fair, had insisted on giving

+up their six-shooters, mumbling something about

+"there being ladies present and a man being hasty

+at times." In the "bunk-room," which did duty

+as a gentleman's cloak-room, things were really

+warming up. There was much drinking of healths,

+as the brothers Benton had thoughtfully provided

+the wherewithal, and that in excellent quality.</p>

+

+<p>Costigan was there, and Texas Tyler, who had

+ridden sixty miles to "swing a petticoat," or, if there

+were not enough to go round, to dance with a

+handkerchief tied to some fellow's sleeve. By

+"swinging a petticoat" it was perfectly understood

+<pb n="307" />

+<anchor id="Pg307" />

+among all his friends that he meant a chance to

+dance with Judith Rodney. Year in and year out

+Texas never failed to present himself at the post-office

+on mail-days, if his work took him within a

+radius of fifty miles of the Daxes. No dance where

+the possibility of seeing Judith was even remote was

+too long a ride for him to undertake, even when it

+took him across the dreariest wastes of the desert.

+Texas had been devoted to Judith since she had

+left the convent, and sometimes, perhaps twice a

+year, she told him that she valued his friendship.

+On all other occasions she rejected his suit as if his

+continual pressing of it were something in the nature

+of an affront. Yet Texas persevered.</p>

+

+<p>"Well, here's lukin' at you, since in the way of a

+frind there's nothing better to look at!" and Costigan

+drained a tin cup at Texas Tyler.</p>

+

+<p>"Your very good health," said Texas, who was

+somewhat embarrassed by what was regarded as

+Costigan's "floweriness."</p>

+

+<p>"Begorra, is that Hinderson or the ghost av the

+b'y?" Costigan's roving eye was arrested by the

+foreman of the "XXX," who stood drinking with

+two or three men of his outfit. He was pale and

+ill-looking. He drank several times in succession,

+as if he needed the stimulant, and without the

+formality of drinking to any one. The two or three

+"XXX" men who were with him seemed to be

+equally in need of restoratives.</p>

+

+<p>They talked of the cattle stampede in which

+several of the outfits had been heavy losers. Some

+nine hundred head of cattle had been recovered, and

+<pb n="308" />

+<anchor id="Pg308" />

+members of the different outfits were still scouring

+the Red Desert for strays.</p>

+

+<p>Something in the nature of a sensation was created

+by the arrival of the Wetmore party. The

+women were frankly interested in the clothes, bearing,

+and general deportment of the New-Yorkers.

+Rumors of Miss Colebrooke's beauty were rife, and

+there was a general inclination to compare her with

+local belles. Such exotic types&mdash;they had seen

+these city beauties before&mdash;were as a rule too colorless

+for their appreciation. They liked faces that

+had "more go to them," was the verdict passed upon

+one famous beauty who had visited the Wetmores

+the year before. In arrangement of the hair, perhaps,

+in matters of dress, the judges were willing

+to concede the laurels to city damsels, but there

+concession stopped. But evidently Kitty, to judge

+from the elaboration of her toilet, did not intend

+to be dismissed thus cursorily. She herself was

+delicately, palely pretty, as always, but her hair

+was tortured to a fashionable fluffiness, and the

+simplicity of her green muslin gown was only in

+the name. It was muslin disguised, elaborated,

+beribboned, lace-trimmed till its identity was all

+but lost in the multitude of pretty complications.</p>

+

+<p>"Did you know that old Ma'am Yellett had a

+school-marm up to her place?" asked one of the

+men, apropos of Eastern prettiness.</p>

+

+<p>"Well, well," Costigan reminisced, "'tis some av

+thim Yillitt lambs thot's six fut in their shtockings,

+if Oi be rimimbering right. Sure, the tacher ought

+to be something av a pugilist, Oi'm thinkin'."</p>

+<pb n="309" />

+<anchor id="Pg309" />

+

+<p>"I seen her the other day, and a neater little

+heifer never turned out to pasture. Lord, I'd like

+to be gnawing the corners of the primer right now,

+if she was there to whale the ruler."</p>

+

+<p>"Arrah," bayed Costigan, "but the women question

+is gittin' complicated ontoirely, wid Miss

+Rodney&mdash;an' herself lukin' loike a saint in a church

+window&mdash;dalin' the mails an' th' other wan tachin'

+in the mountains. Sure, this place is gittin' to be

+but a sorry shpot for bachelors loike mesilf."</p>

+

+<p>"I ain't mentionin' no names, but there's a man

+here ain't treatin' a mighty fine woman square and

+accordin' to the way she ought to be treated."</p>

+

+<p>The information ran through the circle like an

+electric shock. Men stopped in the act of pledging

+each other's healths to listen. Loungers straightened

+up; every topic was dropped. The man who

+had made the statement was the loose-lipped busybody

+who had suggested to his host that he give up

+his six-shooter since there were "ladies present."</p>

+

+<p>"What the hell are you waiting for?" queried

+Texas Tyler, savagely. "You've cracked your whip,

+made your bow, and got our attention; why the hell

+don't you go on?"</p>

+

+<p>The man looked about nervously. He was rather

+alarmed at the interest he had excited. The next

+moment Peter Hamilton had walked into the room.

+There was something crucial in his entrance at this

+particular time; it crystallized suspicion. The gossip

+took advantage of the greetings to Hamilton to make

+his escape. Texas Tyler left the bunk-room immediately

+and looked for him in the room with the

+<pb n="310" />

+<anchor id="Pg310" />

+dancers. The fiddles, in the hands of a couple of

+Mexicans, had set the whole room whirling as if

+by magic. As they danced they sang, joining with

+the "caller-out," who held his vociferous post between

+the rooms, till the room was full of singing,

+dancing men and women, who spun and pirouetted

+as if they had not a care in the world. But Texas

+Tyler was not of these, as he looked through the

+dancers for his man. There was a red flash in the

+pupils of his eyes, and he told himself that he was

+going to do things the way they did them in Texas,

+for, of course, he knew that the loose-lipped idiot

+had meant Judith Rodney and Peter Hamilton.

+Never before had such an idea occurred to him,

+and now that it had been presented to his mind's

+eye, he wondered why he had been such a blind fool.

+Never had the singing to these dances seemed so

+absurd.</p>

+

+<lg>

+<l rend="margin-left: 2">"Hawk hop out and the crow hop in,</l>

+<l rend="margin-left: 2">Three hands round and go it ag'in.</l>

+<l rend="margin-left: 2">Allemane left, back to the missus,</l>

+<l rend="margin-left: 2">Grande right and left and sneak a few kisses."</l>

+</lg>

+

+<p>He rushed from the room and down to the stable.

+At sight of him some one leaped on a horse and rode

+out into the darkness.</p>

+

+<p>"Who was that?" asked Texas of a man lounging

+by the corral.</p>

+

+<p>"That was&mdash;" and he gave the name of the loose-lipped

+man.</p>

+

+<p>Texas cursed long and picturesquely. Then he

+went back to the bunk-room and tried to pick a

+<pb n="311" />

+<anchor id="Pg311" />

+quarrel with Peter Hamilton, who good-naturedly

+assumed that his old friend had been drinking and

+refused to take offence.</p>

+

+<p>Peter went in to ask Kitty to dance with him.

+All that evening he had been waiting anxiously for

+Judith. Meanwhile he had used all his influence as

+a newly appointed member of the Wetmore outfit

+to soothe the ruffled feelings of the cattle-men.

+Of the tragedy in the valley he had heard no

+rumor.</p>

+

+<p>Kitty had come to the point where she was willing

+to waive the RÃĐcamier-Chateaubriand friendship

+in favor of one more personal and ordinary.

+In fact, as Peter showed a disposition to regard as

+final her answer to him on the day he had spurred

+across the desert, Kitty, with true feminine perversity,

+inclined to permit him to resume his suit.

+His acquiescence in her refusal she had at first

+regarded as the turning of the worm; after the wolf-hunt,

+however, her meditations were more disturbing.

+She had never told Peter of that strange

+woodland meeting with Judith, yet Judith's beauty,

+her probable hold over Peter, the degree of his

+affection for her were rankling questions in Kitty's

+consciousness. In the stress of these considerations

+Kitty lost her head completely for so old a campaigner.

+She drew the apron-string tight&mdash;attempted

+force instead of strategy.</p>

+

+<p>Kitty and Peter finished their waltz, one of the

+few round dances of the evening.</p>

+

+<p>"How perfectly you dance, Kitty! It's a long

+time since we've had a waltz together."</p>

+<pb n="312" />

+<anchor id="Pg312" />

+

+<p>The cow-punchers looked at Kitty as if she were

+not quite flesh and blood. Such flaxen daintiness,

+femininty etherealized to angelic perfection, was new

+to them, but their admiration was like that given to

+a delicate exotic which, wonderful as it is, one is

+well pleased to view through the glass of the florist's

+window.</p>

+

+<p>Peter was deferentially attentive and zealous to

+make the Wetmore party have a thoroughly good

+time, yet he did all these things, as it were, with

+his eye on the door. He was not obviously distrait;

+he was the man of the world, talking, making himself

+agreeable, "doing his duty," while his subconsciousness

+was busy with other matters. It was

+rather through telepathy than through any lack

+of attention paid to her that Kitty realized the

+state of things, and in proportion to her realization

+came a feeling of helplessness; it was so new, so

+unexpected, so cruel. He seemed drifting away

+from her on some tide of affairs of the very existence

+of which she had been unconscious. Further and

+further he had drifted, till intelligible speech no

+longer seemed possible between them. They said

+the foolish, empty things that people call out as the

+boat glides away from the shore, the things that

+all the world may hear, and in his eyes there was

+only that smiling kindness. How had it come about

+after all these years? What was it that had first

+cut the cable that sent him drifting? What was it?

+She must think. Oh, who could think with that

+noise! How silly was their singing as they danced,

+how uncouth!</p>

+<pb n="313" />

+<anchor id="Pg313" />

+

+<lg>

+<l rend="margin-left: 2">"All dance as pretty as you can,</l>

+<l rend="margin-left: 2">Turn your toes and left alleman;</l>

+<l rend="margin-left: 4">First gent sashay to the right,</l>

+<l rend="margin-left: 2">Now swing the girl you last swung about,</l>

+<l rend="margin-left: 2">And now the one that's cut her out,</l>

+<l rend="margin-left: 4">And now the one that's dressed in white,</l>

+<l rend="margin-left: 2">And now the belle of the ball."</l>

+</lg>

+

+<p>The dancers seemed bitten to the quick with the

+tarantula of an ecstatic hilarity; their bodies swayed

+in perfect harmony to the swing of the fiddles

+and the swell of the chorus. The most uncouth

+of them came under the spell of that mad magic.

+Their movements, that in the beginning of the

+dance had been shy and awkward, became almost

+beautiful; they forgot arms, hands, feet; their bodies

+had become like the strings of some skilfully played

+instrument, obediently responsive to rhythm,

+and in that composite blending of races each in his

+dancing brought some of the poetry of his own far

+land. The scene was amazing in its beauty and

+simplicity, like the strong, inspirational power and

+rugged rhythm of some old border minstrel. One

+by one the dancers glowed with better understanding;

+discordant elements, alien nations were

+fused to harmony in this vivid picture.</p>

+

+<p>Peter turned to Kitty, expecting to see her face

+aglow with the warmth of it. She stood beside

+him, the one unresponsive soul in the room, on her

+lips a pale, tolerant smile.</p>

+

+<p>"Aren't they splendid, Kitty, these women?

+More than half of them work like beavers all day,

+and they have young children and dozens of worries,

+<pb n="314" />

+<anchor id="Pg314" />

+but would you suspect it? They're just the women

+for this country."</p>

+

+<p>Now in the present state of affairs almost any

+other subject would have been better calculated

+to promote good feeling than the one on which

+Peter had alighted. Kitty's thoughts had perversely

+lingered about one who, though not one with these

+women, had yet their sturdy self-reliance, their

+acquiescence in grim conditions, their pleasure in

+simple things. Kitty's apprehension, slow to kindle,

+had taken fire like a forest, and by its blaze she saw

+things in a distorted light; her present vision

+magnified the relations of Peter and Judith to a

+degree that a month ago she would have regarded

+as impossible. "He is her lover!" was the accusation

+that suddenly flashed through her mind, and

+with the thought an overwhelming desire to say

+something unkind, something that should hurt him,

+supplanted all judgment and reason.</p>

+

+<p>"Oh, it's a decidedly remarkable scene, pictorially,

+I agree with you. And an artist, of course&mdash;but

+isn't it a trifle quixotic, Peter, to idealize them because

+they are having a good time? There's no

+virtue in it. It is conceivable that they might

+have to work just as hard and have just as many

+little children to look after, and yet not have these

+dances you praise them for coming to."</p>

+

+<p>"I'm afraid you find us and our amusements a

+little crude. Evidently the spirit of our dances

+does not appeal to you; but I did not suppose it

+necessary to remind you that they should not

+be judged by the standard of conventional evening

+<pb n="315" />

+<anchor id="Pg315" />

+parties," said Peter, hurt and angry in his

+turn.</p>

+

+<p>"Us, our amusements, our dances? So you are

+quite identified with these people, my dear Peter,

+and I had thought you an ornament of cotillions and

+country clubs. I can only infer that it is somebody

+in particular who has brought about your

+change of heart."</p>

+

+<p>Peter flushed a little, and Kitty kept on: "Some

+of the native belles are quite wonderful, I believe.

+Nannie Wetmore tells of a half-breed who is very

+handsome."</p>

+

+<p>Peter set his lips. "At the expense of spoiling

+Nannie's pretty romance, I must tell you that the

+lady she refers to is not only the most beautiful of

+women, but she would be at ease in any drawing-room.

+It would be as ridiculous to apply the petty

+standards of ladyhood to her as it would to&mdash;well,

+imagine some foolish girl bringing up the question at

+a woman's club&mdash;'Was Joan of Arc a lady?'" Peter

+spoke without calculating the conviction that his

+words carried. He was angry, and his manner,

+voice, intonation showed it.</p>

+

+<p>Kitty, now that her most unworthy suspicions

+had been confirmed by Peter's ardent championing

+of Judith, lost her discretion in the pang that

+gnawed her little soul: "I beg your pardon, Peter.

+When I spoke I did not, of course, know that this

+young woman was anything to you."</p>

+

+<p>"Anything to me? My dear Kitty, I've never

+had a better friend than Judith Rodney."</p>

+

+<p>The dance was at its flood-tide. The exhilaration

+<pb n="316" />

+<anchor id="Pg316" />

+had grown with each sweep of the fiddle-bow, with

+the sorcery of sinuous, swaying bodies, with the song

+of the dancers as they joined in the calling out of the

+figures, with the rhythmic shuffle of feet, with the

+hum of the pulses, with the leaping of blood to

+cheek and heart till the dancers whirled as leaves

+circling towards the eddies of a whirlpool. The

+dancing Mrs. Dax split her favors into infinitesimal

+fragments, for each measure of which her long list of

+waiting gallants stood ready to pick a quarrel if

+need be. Her dancing, in the splendor of its

+spontaneity, had something of the surge of the west

+wind sweeping over a field of grain. Sometimes

+she waved back her partner and alone danced a

+figure, putting to the music her own interpretation&mdash;barbaric,

+passionate, rude, but magnificently vivid.

+And the dancers would stop and crowd about her,

+clapping hands and stamping feet to the rhyming

+movement of her body, while against the wall her

+hostile sister-in-law, Mrs. Leander, stood and glared

+in a fury of disapproval, Leander himself smiling

+broadly meanwhile and exercising the utmost restraint

+to keep from joining Mrs. Johnnie's train.</p>

+

+<p>The "XXX" men, who had remained aloof from

+the dancers and the merriment, keeping a faithful

+vigil in the bunk-room, where the hospitable bottles

+were to be found, seemed to awaken from the spell

+that had bound them all day. Henderson, the

+foreman, whose face had not lost its tallow paleness

+despite the number of his potations, put his head

+through the door to have a look at the dancing Mrs.

+Dax, was caught in the outermost eddy of the

+<pb n="317" />

+<anchor id="Pg317" />

+whirling throng, and was soon dancing as madly as

+the others. The rest of the "XXX" party still

+hugged the bunk-room, where the bottles gleamed

+hospitable. They were still dusty from their long

+ride of the early morning, and more than once their

+fear-quickened imaginations had been haunted by

+the spectre of the dead cotton-woods, from which

+something heavy and limp and warm had been

+swaying when they left it. Henderson had secured

+the dancing Mrs. Dax for a partner. The "caller-out,"

+stationed between the two rooms, warmed to

+his genial task. He improvised, he put a wealth

+of imagination and personality into his work, he

+showered compliments on the nimbleness of Mrs.

+Dax's feet, he joked Henderson on his pallor, he

+attempted a florid venture at Kitty. Miguel put

+fresh magic into his bowing, JosÃĐ's fiddle rioted with

+the madness of it.</p>

+

+<p>Judith stood for a moment in the kindly enveloping

+darkness, and her heart cried out in protest at

+the thing she must do. It was the utmost cruelty

+of fate that forced her here to dance on the evening

+of the day that they had killed him. But she must

+do it, that his children might evade the stigma of

+"cattle-thief," that the shadow of the gallows-tree

+might not fall across their young lives, that the

+neighbors might give credence to the tale of Jim's

+escape from his enemies, that Alida and she might

+earn the pittance that would give the children the

+"clean start" that Jim had set his heart on so

+confidently. And she must dance and be the

+merriest of them all that these things might happen,

+<pb n="318" />

+<anchor id="Pg318" />

+but again and again she deferred the dread moment.

+The light, the music, the voices, the shuffle of the

+feet came to her as she stood forlorn in the grateful

+darkness. On the wall the shadows of the dancers,

+magnified and grotesque, parodied their movements,

+as they contended there, monstrous, uncouth shapes,

+like prehistoric monsters gripping, clinching in some

+mighty struggle; and above it all sang out the wild

+rhythm of Miguel's fiddle, and young JosÃĐ's bow

+capered madly.</p>

+

+<p>Judith drew close to the window, and the merriment

+struck chill at her heart like the tolling of a

+knell. She saw the pale face of Henderson gleam

+yellow-white among the dancers, and, watching him,

+the blood-lust of the Indian woke in her heart.

+The rest of the room was but a blur; the dancers

+faded into swaying shadows; she saw nothing but

+Henderson as he danced that he might forget the

+gray of morning, the black, dead trees, and the

+grotesque thing with head awry that swayed in the

+breeze like a pendulum. He dreaded the long, black

+ride that would bring him to his camp, for he alone

+of the lynchers remained. Something was drawing

+his gaze out into the blackness of the night. He

+struggled against the temptation to look towards

+the window. He whirled the Dax woman till her

+twinkling feet cleared the floor. He sang to the

+accompaniment of Miguel's fiddle. He was outwitting

+the thing that dangled before his eyes,

+having the incontrovertible last word with a vengeance.

+And as he danced and swayed, all unwittingly

+his glance fell on the window opposite,

+<pb n="319" />

+<anchor id="Pg319" />

+and Jim Rodney's face looked in at him, beautiful

+in its ecstasy of hate&mdash;Rodney's face, refined,

+sharpened, tried in some bitter crucible, but

+Rodney's face! Henderson could not withdraw his

+fascinated gaze. He stood in the midst of the

+dancers like a man turned to stone. He put up his

+hand to his eyes as if to brush away a cloud of

+swarming gnats, then threw up his arms and rushed

+from the room. The dancers paused in their mad

+whirl. Miguel's bow stopped with a wailing shriek.

+Every eye turned towards the window for an explanation

+of Henderson's sudden panic, but all

+was dark without on the prairie. The magic had

+gone from the dance, the whirlwind of drapery that

+had swung like flags in a breeze dropped in dead

+air. "What was it?" the dancers asked one another

+in whispers.</p>

+

+<p>And for answer Judith entered, but a Judith

+that was strange to them. There was about her a

+white radiance that kept the dancers back, and in

+her eyes something of Mary's look, as she turned

+from Calvary. The dancers still kept the position

+of the figures, the men with their arms about their

+partners' waists, the women stepping forward; they

+were like the painted figures of dancers in a fresco.

+And among them stood Judith, waiting to play her

+part, waiting to show her world that she could

+dance and be merry because all was well with her

+and hers. But the bronzed sons of the saddle hung

+back, they who a day before would have quarrelled

+for the honor of a dance. They were afraid of her;

+it would be like dancing with the death angel.

+<pb n="320" />

+<anchor id="Pg320" />

+She looked from face to face. Surely some one

+would ask her to dance, and her eyes fell on Henderson,

+returning from the bottled courage in the

+bunk-room. Some word was due from him to

+explain his terror of a moment ago.</p>

+

+<p>"Oh, Miss Judith, I thought you was a ghost

+when I seen you at the window."</p>

+

+<p>"A ghost that's ready to dance." She held out

+her hand to him. In her gesture there was something

+of royal command, and Henderson, reading

+the meaning in her eyes, stepped forward. Her

+face, almost a perfect replica of the dead man's,

+looked at him.</p>

+

+<p>"I bring you greeting from my brother," she said.

+"He has gone on a long journey."</p>

+

+<p>Henderson started. Through the still room ran

+the murmur, "Rodney's outwitted them; he's

+played a joke on the rope!" And Judith, his dare-devil

+sister, had come with his greetings to Henderson,

+leader of the faction against him! The

+tide had turned. The applause that is ever the

+meed of the winner was hers to command. The

+cattle faction were ready to sing the praises of her

+splendid audacity. In their hearts they were glad

+in the thought that Jim had outwitted them.</p>

+

+<p>Miguel's bow dashed across the strings, and he

+drew from the little brown fiddle music that again

+made them merry and glowing. The magic came

+back to the dance, the blood leaped again with

+the merry madness, and they swept to the bowing

+like leaves when the first faint wail of winter cries

+in the trees.</p>

+<pb n="321" />

+<anchor id="Pg321" />

+

+<p>Hamilton, standing apart with Kitty Colebrooke,

+had been a dazed witness of the scene. With the

+rest he had watched the entrance of Judith, had

+been stunned by the change in her appearance, had

+seen her triumph and heard the rumor of Jim's

+escape, and his heart had warmed with the good

+word. She had probably managed the plan, and

+had come to-night, in the joy of her triumph, to hurl

+in their faces that she had outwitted them. And

+she had paid the penalty of her courage&mdash;her face

+told that. What a woman she was! Her heart

+would pay the penalty to the last throb, and yet she

+could dance with the merriest of them. And as she

+danced she seemed to Peter Hamilton, in her white

+draperies, like a cloud of whirling snow-flakes drifting

+across the silence of the desert night. She was

+the one woman in all the world for him, though his

+blind eyes had faced the light for years and had not

+known it. He had squandered the strength of his

+youth in the pursuit of a little wax light, and had

+not marked the serene shining of the moon.</p>

+

+<p>"And a man there was and he made his prayer&mdash;"

+he quoted to himself. Well, thank God that it had

+not been answered. He would take her away from

+here. She could take her place in his family and

+reflect credit on his choice. His family, his friends&mdash;he

+winced at the thought of their possible reception

+of the news. But Judith's presence would

+adjust these difficulties. He would present her to

+Kitty now, that his old friend might see what

+manner of woman she was. Kitty, he felt, would

+be kind in memory of the old days. She would

+<pb n="322" />

+<anchor id="Pg322" />

+give to them both in friendship what she had

+denied him in love. And as he warmed to the

+thought he turned to the woman of his youth.

+And she read a look in his face that had not been

+there in a long time. Had he, then, come back to

+her? Was the distance from bark to shore lessening

+as the sea of misunderstanding diminished?</p>

+

+<p>"Kitty, we were speaking a moment ago of Miss

+Rodney. You would like to know her, I'm sure.

+We've been such good friends all these years while

+you were deciding that what I wanted was not

+good for us&mdash;and deciding wisely, as I know now.

+Look at her! You'll understand how she has helped

+me keep the balance of things. When she's finished

+dancing you'll let me bring her to you, won't you?"</p>

+

+<p>And Kitty, who had expected much different words,

+struggled with the meaning of these unexpected

+ones. The strangeness of the pain bewildered her.

+Her dazed consciousness refused to accept that Peter

+was asking permission to present to her a woman

+whom she thought should not have been permitted

+to enter her presence. There was about her a white

+flame of anger that seemed to lick up the red blood

+in her veins as she turned to answer:</p>

+

+<p>"She is undeniably handsome, Peter, but I do

+not care to meet your mistress."</p>

+

+<p>He bowed low to her as Lieutenant Swift, of Fort

+Washakie, who was of the Wetmore party, came to

+claim Kitty's hand for the next dance. Judith and

+Henderson were leading the last figure, their hands

+clasped high in an arch through which the dancers

+trooped in couples. Again and again he tried to

+<pb n="323" />

+<anchor id="Pg323" />

+catch Judith's eye, but her glance never once met

+his. Her great, wide eyes had a far-away look as

+if they saw some tragedy, the shadow of which

+would never fall from her. She was, indeed, the

+tragic muse in her floating white drapery, the

+tragic muse whose grief is too deep for tears. He

+watched her as she swept towards him in the figure

+of the dance, the head thrown back, slightly foreshortened,

+the mouth smiling with the smile that

+knows all things, the eyes holy wells of truth. He

+saw in her something of the tenderness of Eve, for

+all the blending of the calm modern woman, capable

+in affairs, equal to emergency. It was like her to

+contrive her brother's escape and then to dance with

+the very men who had knotted the noose for his

+hanging. Henderson was bowing to her, the dance

+was over, and the next moment she was alone.</p>

+

+<p>"Is it you, Peter?" She thrust a strand of hair

+back from her temple. Her eyes rested on him for

+a moment, then wandered, till in their absent look

+was the rapt expression of the sleep-walker. The

+dark-rimmed eyes had in their depths the quiet of a

+conflagration, and Peter, seeing these things, and

+knowing the gamut of all her moods, saw that he

+had been mistaken. She had not come, to dance in

+triumph, in the face of her brother's enemies. There

+was no triumph in her face, but white, consuming

+despair.</p>

+

+<p>"Did you ask me to dance?" Again she put back

+the strand of hair. "Forgive me for being so

+stupid, but I've kept post-office to-day, and had a

+long ride, and I danced with Henderson."</p>

+<pb n="324" />

+<anchor id="Pg324" />

+

+<p>He drew her arm within his and led the way out

+through the crowd of dancers to the star-strewn night.

+She did not speak again, nor did she seem to notice

+that they had left the room with the dancers. She

+turned her face towards the lonely valley, where the

+drama of her brother's passing had been consummated,

+and something there was in her look as it

+turned towards the hills that told Peter.</p>

+

+<p>"Tell me, Judith, 'what has happened?"</p>

+

+<p>For answer she pointed towards the valley. "They

+did it last night at the dead cotton-woods. Henderson

+led them. I could not stay with Alida.

+I had to come here to dance that no one might

+suspect."</p>

+

+<p>Her voice was steady, but low and thrilling.

+In its deep resonance was the echo of all human

+sorrow. There was no hint of accusation, yet Peter

+felt accused. He felt, now when it was too late,

+that his position had been one of almost pusillanimous

+negligence. From the beginning he had taken

+a firm stand against violent measures. He had

+talked, argued, reasoned, inveighed against violence;

+no later than a week ago he had ridden across the

+desert to tell Henderson that the Wetmore outfit

+would take no part in violence of any sort, and that

+the cattle outfit that did resort to extreme measures

+would miss the support of the "W-Square" in any

+future range business. But it had not been enough.

+He should have made plain his position in regard to

+Judith. With her as his future wife the tragedy

+of the valley would not have been possible.</p>

+

+<p>From the ranch-house came the swell of the

+<pb n="325" />

+<anchor id="Pg325" />

+fiddles, the rhythmic shuffle of feet, the song of the

+dancers, dulled by distance. Beside him was Judith,

+a white spirit, the woman in her dead of grief. And

+yet, through all the grim horror of the tragedy she

+remembered the part that had been allotted to her,

+threw all the weight of her personality on the side

+of the game she was playing.</p>

+

+<p>"You must be on our side, Peter, and when there

+is talk of Jim's absence you must imply that he is

+East somewhere. You will know how to meet such

+inquiries better than we women. Henderson will

+be only too glad. You should have seen the wretch

+when I held out my hand to him and told him to

+dance with me. He came, white and shambling;

+we have nothing to fear from Henderson. Alida

+has no money to go away with. She and I must

+stay here and make a beginning for the children,

+and, Peter, we want you to help us."</p>

+

+<p>He had no voice to answer her brave words for a

+minute, and then his sentences came uncertain and

+halting.</p>

+

+<p>"You must think me a poor sort of friend, Judith,

+one who has been blind till the eleventh hour and

+is then found wanting. I feel so guilty to you, to

+your brother's wife, to that little child who put out

+his arms so trustfully to me that night, but I never

+imagined that things would come to such a pass as

+this. The smaller cattle outfits have been doing a

+good deal of blustering, but the more conservative

+element supposed that they had them in check, and

+did not for a moment think that they would take

+the law into their own hands. Believe me, this lawlessness

+<pb n="326" />

+<anchor id="Pg326" />

+has been in the face of every influence

+that could be brought to bear, and it shall not go

+unpunished."</p>

+

+<p>She spoke to him from the darkness, as the spirit

+of grief might speak. "An eye for an eye, a tooth

+for a tooth, that is the justice of the plains. But,

+Peter, it is but poor justice. What's done is done,

+and fresh violence will not give back Alida her

+husband nor the little ones their father. What we

+need is friends, one or two loyal souls who, though

+knowing the hideous truth of this thing, will stand

+by us in our pitiful falsehood. I have told no one,

+nor shall I, but you and&mdash;Peter, you must not laugh

+at your fellow-conspirator&mdash;Leander."</p>

+

+<p>He took her hands in his and pressed them; big

+hands they were, and hardened by many a homely

+task, but withal tender and with the healing quality

+of womanliness in the touch of their warm, supple

+fingers. But to-night she did not seem to know that

+he held them, nor to be conscious of his presence.

+The woman in her was dead of grief. The white

+spirit in her place, that plotted and planned that

+Jim's children and Jim's wife might not from henceforth

+walk in the shadow of the gallows, was beyond

+the prompting of the flesh. And again she spoke

+to him in the same far-away voice, with the same

+far-away look in her eyes.</p>

+

+<p>"You must know, Peter, that Leander is at heart

+of the salt of the earth. I told him about it all, and

+he asked to be given the commission to deal with the

+men. He has risen to his post magnificently. I

+heard him swear the wretches to secrecy, hint to

+<pb n="327" />

+<anchor id="Pg327" />

+them that he had a great story to tell them. They

+were frightened, and listened. And the poor little

+man that we have so despised told them convincingly

+how Jim had made good his escape&mdash;even Henderson

+half believes we saved him."</p>

+

+<p>Peter hoped that she would accuse him of his half-heartedness

+indirectly, if not openly. It would

+have made his conscience more comfortable, and his

+conscience troubled him sorely to-night. It was

+that fatal habit of procrastination that had brought

+this thing about. He had hesitated all these weeks

+about Judith, and while he had threshed out the

+pro and con of her disadvantageous family connection,

+this hideous tragedy had happened.</p>

+

+<p>"Peter"&mdash;and now her eyes seemed to come back

+to earth again, to lose something of the far-away look

+of the sleep-walker&mdash;"Peter, I'm cruel to speak to

+you of these things now. When your heart is full

+of your own happiness, I come to you like a dark

+shadow with this tragedy. But I am glad for the

+good that has come to you, Peter. Perhaps Miss

+Colebrooke told you of the day I met her in the

+wood, the day of the wolf-hunt. She was so

+beautiful, I understood&mdash;"</p>

+

+<p>"Judith, I hardly know how to say what I am

+going to, I feel that I have been such a bad friend

+to you, but you must hear me patiently. Together,

+if you are willing, after knowing all of me that you

+do, we must look after your brother's children.

+That night in the little house in the valley, when

+the little chap came to me, don't you remember,

+there was something fine and fearless in the way

+<pb n="328" />

+<anchor id="Pg328" />

+he did it. 'You may belong to the cattle side of

+the argument,' he seemed to say, 'but I trust you.'

+Now, Judith dear, that boy's faith in me is not

+going to be shaken. We must look after them

+together. It is a very little thing you have asked

+of me, my dearest, but a very big one that I am

+asking of you. Do you understand, my Judith,

+it is <hi rend="font-style: italic">you</hi> that I want? Don't think of me as I have

+been, Judith, but as you are going to make me. I

+want you to give me the right now, this evening,

+to share all this trouble with you. Do we understand

+each other, Judith? Is it to be? And

+will you come back with me now, into the room

+where they are dancing, and let me present you to

+them, to the Wetmores, as <hi rend="font-style: italic">my</hi> Judith, my betrothed?"</p>

+

+<p>"But, Peter, I don't understand. I&mdash;I thought

+you and Miss Colebrooke were&mdash;"</p>

+

+<p>"That's all over, Judith. I did love her once.

+Oh, you dear, brave woman, I'm not a hero from any

+point of view, and you know it. It's but a sorry

+lover that's making his prayer to you, my dearest;

+but you won't judge, I know, beloved, you will

+love me instead?"</p>

+

+<p>Judith turned towards the valley. Her whole

+being throbbed with a passionate response to the

+man who stood so humbly before her, but there

+were duties that came first. Her mind was full of

+Alida and her children, and her eyes still sought

+Peter's imploringly.</p>

+

+<p>"You will be a good friend to them, Peter&mdash;to

+Jim's people? I cannot talk to you of anything

+<pb n="329" />

+<anchor id="Pg329" />

+else to-night. Your heart is big, Peter, but you

+cannot feel, perhaps&mdash;"</p>

+

+<p>"Listen, Judith. Whatever friendship and protection

+I can give your family you may count

+upon from now till the end of time. I will be theirs

+as I am yours. I feel your grief, but I want to

+soothe it, too. And if you love me, and I feel,

+Judith, that you do, you must let them all see to-night,

+these people who know us both, that we

+stand together before all the world for better or

+worse. Think, Judith, and you will see that you

+owe it to yourself, to me, to all these men, who

+reverence you as the one woman, the one ideal in

+their lonely lives."</p>

+

+<p>She could not speak. The moment was too full,

+the strain had been too great; but she smiled

+surrender, and Peter caught her tenderly in his

+arms and kissed her once&mdash;his Judith she was

+now, his heroine. Then, without another word,

+he drew her arm through his and led her back to

+the lights, where the dancers still held high carnival.</p>

+

+<p>Judith's half-sister, Eudora, was making a pretty

+quarrel by perversely forgetting the order in which

+she had given her dances. The girl was so undeniably

+happy that Judith dreaded the grim news she

+must tell her. Eudora blushed as she encountered

+Judith's eye. Her half-sister ever offered a check

+on Eudora's exuberant coquetry, with its precipitation

+of discussions that often ended in bullets.

+Leander stood on the outermost fringe of Eudora's

+potential partners. He would not have dared to

+<pb n="330" />

+<anchor id="Pg330" />

+maintain it openly, yet he was sure the pretty minx

+had promised that dance to him.</p>

+

+<p>"Dance with Leander, dear, and don't let those

+men begin quarrelling. I've something to tell you,

+presently," said Judith.</p>

+

+<p>Texas Tyler stood glowering at them from the

+doorway. He would not catch Judith's eye as she

+tried to speak to him. Kitty sat alone for the

+moment. She had sent the young lieutenant to

+fetch her a cup of coffee, but as Peter approached

+with Judith she averted her eyes.</p>

+

+<p>"Kitty, may I present to you my fiancÃĐe, Miss

+Rodney?"</p>

+

+<p>Kitty rose superbly to the situation. She might,

+indeed, have made the match she was so overjoyed

+in the good-fortune of her old friend Peter. She

+made no reference to the woodland meeting&mdash;she

+hoped for the happiness of seeing them in town.

+And she bade Peter tell the good news to Nannie

+Wetmore, they would be so glad. Nannie swallowed

+a grimace and proffered a cousinly hand. She

+had suspected some such news as this when she saw

+that things were not going well with Kitty and

+Peter.</p>

+

+<p>"Better one dance with a good partner that can

+swing ye than several with a feeble partner that

+leaves ye to swing your own corners!"</p>

+

+<p>Judith looked up, smiling. She recognized the

+characteristic utterance of her old friend Mrs.

+Yellett. The matriarch had sustained a breakdown,

+and arrived, in consequence, when the dance was

+half over, but she was philosophical, as always, in

+<pb n="331" />

+<anchor id="Pg331" />

+the face of misfortune, and loudly attested her

+pleasure in the renowned pedal feats of her partner,

+Costigan.</p>

+

+<p>Behind came Mary Carmichael, looking brown

+and happy. From the attitude of the group around

+Judith and Peter Mary divined what had happened,

+and came to add her congratulations. Even Mrs.

+Yellett forgot to choose an axiom as her medium

+of expression, and kissed Judith publicly, with

+affectionate unction. Henderson had effaced himself,

+and Leander, proud of his triumph and Judith's

+commendation, sat in a corner and smiled contentedly.

+Ignorant of the drama to which they had

+played chorus, the dancers still riotously swung one

+another up and down the length of the room, and

+from the little brown fiddles came the gay music

+of Judith's betrothal.</p>

+

+

+<p rend="text-align: center"><hi rend="font-weight: bold">THE END</hi></p>

+</div>

+</body>

+<back>
+

+<div rend="page-break-before: right">

+  <divGen type="pgfooter" />
+</div>

+</back>

+</text>

+</TEI.2>

+
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+<!--
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Judith Of The Plains by Marie Manning

+

+

+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 http://www.gutenberg.org/license

+

+

+

+

+Title: Judith Of The Plains

+

+Author: Marie Manning

+

+Release Date: April 2005 [EBook #15573]

+

+Language: American English

+

+Character set encoding: UTF-8
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+      <title>Judith Of The Plains</title>

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+      <edition n="1">Edition 1

+        <date value="2005-4">April 2005</date>

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+      <date value="2005-4">April 2005</date>

+      <idno type="etext-no">15573</idno>

+      <availability>

+        <p>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

+	online at <xref url="www.gutenberg.org/license">www.gutenberg.org/license</xref></p>

+      </availability>

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+      <bibl>

+        <title>Judith Of The Plains</title>

+        <author>Marie Manning</author>

+        <imprint>

+          <pubPlace>New York</pubPlace>

+          <pubPlace>London</pubPlace>

+          <publisher>Harper &amp; Brothers Publishers</publisher>

+          <date>1903</date>

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+      <item>Project Gutenberg Edition</item>

+    </change>

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+      .w95             { width: 95% }

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+  </pgStyleSheet>

+</pgExtensions>

+

+<text>

+<front>

+
+<div>
+<divGen type="pgheader" rend="page-break-before: always" />
+</div>
+

+<titlePage rend="page-break-before: right">

+<docTitle><titlePart type="main" rend="font-size: x-large">Judith Of The Plains</titlePart></docTitle>

+

+<lb /><byline>By <docAuthor>Marie Manning</docAuthor><lb /><lb /></byline>

+

+<docImprint>Harper &amp; Brothers Publishers<lb />

+New York And London<lb />

+<lb />

+Copyright, 1903. By Harper &amp; Brothers<lb />

+<lb/>

+Printed In The United States Of America</docImprint>

+</titlePage>

+

+<div rend="page-break-before: always">

+<p rend="text-align: center">

+<figure rend="w95" url="images/image01.png">

+<head>Peter's Hand Sought Hers, And All Her Woman's Fear Of

+The Vague Terrors Of The Dreadful Night Spoke

+In Her Answering Pressure&mdash;See p. <ref target="Pg154">154</ref>.</head>

+<figDesc>Image #1</figDesc></figure></p>

+</div>

+
+<div rend="page-break-before: right">

+<index index="pdf" />
+<head>Contents</head>
+<divGen type="toc" />
+</div>
+

+</front>

+

+<body>

+<div rend="page-break-before: right">

+

+<head>Judith Of The Plains</head>

+

+<p></p>

+</div>

+

+<div>

+<pb n="001" />

+<anchor id="Pg001" />

+

+<head>I</head>

+<index index="pdf" /><index index="toc" level1="&quot;Town&quot;" />

+<head type="sub">"Town"</head>

+

+<p>It was June, and a little past sunrise, but there

+was no hint of early summer freshness in the

+noxious air of the sleeping-car as it toiled like a snail

+over the infinity of prairie. From behind the green-striped

+curtains of the berths, now the sound of

+restless turning and now a long-drawn sigh signified

+the uneasy slumber due to stifling air and discomfort.</p>

+

+<p>The only passenger stirring was a girl whose youth

+drooped under the unfavorable influences of foul

+air, fatigue, and a strained anxiety to come to the

+end of this fateful journey. She had been up while

+it was yet dark, and her hand&mdash;luggage, locked,

+strapped, and as pitifully new at the art of travelling

+as the girl herself, clustered about the hem of her

+blue serge skirt like chicks about a hen. The engine

+shrieked, but its voice sounded weak and far off in

+that still ocean of space; the girl tightened her grasp

+on the largest of the satchels and looked at the

+approaching porter tentatively.</p>

+<pb n="002" />

+<anchor id="Pg002" />

+

+<p>"We're late twenty-fi'e minutes," he reassured

+her, with the hopeless patience of one who has lost

+heart in curbing travellers' enthusiasms.</p>

+

+<p>She turned towards the window a pair of shoulders

+plainly significant of the burdensome last straw.</p>

+

+<p>"Four days and nights in this train"&mdash;they were

+slower in those days&mdash;"and now this extra twenty-five

+minutes!"</p>

+

+<p>Miss Carmichael's famous dimple hid itself in

+disgust. The demure lines of mouth and chin, that

+could always be relied upon for special pleading

+when sentence was about to be passed on the dimple

+by those who disapproved of dimples, drooped with

+disappointment. But the light-brown hair continued

+to curl facetiously&mdash;it was the sort of hair

+whose spontaneous rippling conveys to the seeing

+eye a sense of humor.</p>

+

+<p>The train plodded across the spacious vacancy

+that unrolled itself farther and farther in quest of

+the fugitive horizon. The scrap of view that came

+within a closer range of vision spun past the car

+windows like a bit of stage mechanism, a gigantic

+panorama rotating to simulate a race at breakneck

+speed. But Miss Carmichael looked with unseeing

+eyes; the whirling prairie with its golden flecks of

+cactus bloom was but part of the universal strangeness,

+and the dull ache of homesickness was in it

+all.</p>

+

+<p>"My dear! my dear!"&mdash;a head in crimpers was

+thrust from between the curtains of the section opposite&mdash;"I've

+been awake half the night. I was so

+afraid I wouldn't see you before you got off."</p>

+<pb n="003" />

+<anchor id="Pg003" />

+

+<p>The head was followed, almost instinctively, by a

+hand travelling furtively to the crimpers that gripped

+the lady's brow like barnacles clinging to a keel.</p>

+

+<p>Mary expressed a grieved appreciation at the loss

+of rest in behalf of her early departure, and conspicuously

+forbore to glance in the direction of the

+barnacles, that being a first principle as between

+woman and woman.</p>

+

+<p>"And, oh, my dear, it gets worse and worse. I've

+looked at it this morning, and it's worse in Wyoming

+than it was in Colorado. What it 'll be before I

+reach California, I shudder to think."</p>

+

+<p>"It's bound to improve," suggested Mary, with

+the easy optimism of one who was leaving it. "It

+couldn't be any worse than this, could it?"</p>

+

+<p>The neuter pronoun, it might be well to state,

+signified the prairie; its melancholy personality

+having penetrated the very marrow of their train

+existence, they had come to refer to it by the

+monosyllable, as in certain nether circles the head

+of the house receives his superlative distinction in

+"He."</p>

+

+<p>Again the locomotive shrieked, again the girl

+mechanically clutched the suit-case, as presenting

+the most difficult item in the problem of transportation,

+and this time the shriek was not an idle

+formality. The train slowed down; the uneasy

+sleepers behind the green-striped curtains stirred

+restlessly with the lessening motion of their uncouth

+cradle. The porter came to help her, with the

+chastened mien of one whose hopes of largess are

+small, the lady with the barnacles called after her

+<pb n="004" />

+<anchor id="Pg004" />

+redundant farewells, and a moment later Miss

+Carmichael was standing on the station platform

+looking helplessly after the train that toiled and

+puffed, yet seemed, in that crystalline atmosphere,

+still within arm's-reach. She watched it till its

+floating pennant of smoke was nothing but a gray

+feather blowing farther and farther out of sight on

+the flat prairie.</p>

+

+<p>The town&mdash;it would be unkind to mention its

+name&mdash;had made merry the night before at the

+comprehensive invitation of a sheepman who had

+just disposed of his wool-clip, and who said, by way

+of general summons, "What's the use of temptin'

+the bank?" "Town," therefore, when Mary Carmichael

+first made its acquaintance, was still sleeping

+the sleep of the unjust. Those among last

+night's roisterers who had had to make an early

+start for their camps were well into the foot-hills by

+this time, and would remember with exhilaration

+the cracked tinkle of the dance-hall piano as inspiring

+music when the lonesomeness of the desert

+menaced and the young blood again clamored for

+its own.</p>

+

+<p>"Town"&mdash;it contained in all some two dozen

+buildings&mdash;was very unlovely in slumber. It

+sprawled in the lap of the prairies, a grimy-faced

+urchin, with the lines of dismal sophistication writ

+deep. Yet where in all the "health resorts" of the

+East did air sweep from the clean hill-country with

+such revivifying power? It seemed a glad world

+of abiding youth. Surely "Town" was but a

+dreary illusion, a mirage that hung in the unmapped

+<pb n="005" />

+<anchor id="Pg005" />

+spaces of this new world that God had made and

+called good; an omen of the abominations that men

+would make when they grew blind to the beauty of

+God's world.</p>

+

+<p>Mary Carmichael, with much the feelings of a

+cat in a strange garret, wandered about the sluggard

+town; and presently the blue-and-white sign of a

+telegraph office, with the mythological figure of a

+hastening messenger, suggested to her that a reassuring

+telegram was only Aunt Adelaide's due.

+Whereupon she began to rap on the door of the

+office, a scared pianissimo which naturally had

+little effect on the operator, who was at home and

+asleep some three blocks distant. But the West is

+the place for woman if she would be waited upon.

+No seven-to-one ratio of the sexes has tempered the

+chivalry of her sons of the saddle. A loitering something

+in a sombrero saw rather than heard the

+rapping, and, at the sight, went in quest of the

+dreaming operator without so much as embarrassing

+Miss Carmichael with an offer of his services. And

+presently the operator, whose official day did not

+begin for some two hours yet, appeared, much dishevelled

+from running and the cursory nature of his

+toilet, prepared to receive a message of life and death.</p>

+

+<p>The wire to Aunt Adelaide ran:</p>

+

+<quote rend="display">

+<p>"Practically at end of journey. Take stage to Lost Trail

+this morning. Am well. Don't worry about me.</p>

+

+<p rend="text-align: right">"MARY."</p>

+</quote>

+

+<p>And the telegraph operator, dimly remembering

+that he had heard Lost Trail was a "pizen mean

+<pb n="006" />

+<anchor id="Pg006" />

+country," and that it was tucked some two hundred

+miles back in the foot-hills, did not find it very hard

+to forgive the girl, who was "practically at end of

+journey," particularly as the dimple had come out

+of hiding, and he had never been called upon to

+telegraph the word "practically" before. He was a

+progressive man and liked to extend his experiences.</p>

+

+<p>After sending the telegram, Miss Carmichael, quite

+herself by reason of the hill air, felt that she was

+getting along famously as a traveller, but that it

+was an expensive business, and she was glad to be

+"practically" at the end of her journey. And,

+drawing from her pocket a square envelope of heavy

+Irish linen, a little worn from much reading, but

+primarily an envelope that bespoke elegance of

+taste on the part of her correspondent, she read:</p>

+

+<quote rend="display">

+<p rend="text-align: right">"LOST TRAIL, WYOMING.</p>

+

+<p>"My Dear Miss Carmichael,&mdash;Pray let me assure you

+of my gratification that the preliminaries have been so

+satisfactorily arranged, and that we are to have you with us

+by the end of June. The children are profiting from the

+very anticipation of it, and it will be most refreshing to all

+us isolated ones to be able to welcome an Eastern girl as a

+member of our family.</p>

+

+<p>"Although the long journey across the continent is trying,

+particularly to one who has not made it before, I hope

+you may not find it utterly fatiguing. Please remember

+that after leaving the train, it will be necessary to take

+a stage to Lost Trail. If it is possible, I shall meet you

+with the buckboard at one of the stage stations; otherwise,

+keep to the stage route, being careful to change at Dax's

+Ranch.</p>

+

+<p>"Unfortunately, the children vary so in their accomplishments

+<pb n="007" />

+<anchor id="Pg007" />

+that I fear I can make no suggestions as to what you

+may need to bring with you in the way of text-books. But

+I think you will find them fairly well grounded.</p>

+

+<p>"I had a charming letter from Mrs. Kirkland, who said

+the pleasantest things possible of you. I am glad the wife

+of our Senator was able conscientiously to commend us.</p>

+

+<p>"With our most cordial good wishes for a safe journey,

+believe me, dear Miss Carmichael,</p>

+

+<p rend="text-align: right">"Sincerely yours,</p>

+

+<p rend="text-align: right">"SARAH YELLETT."</p>

+</quote>

+

+<p>In the mean time, "Town" came yawning to

+breakfast. It was not so prankish as it had been

+the night before, when it accepted the sheepman's

+broad-gauge hospitality and made merry till the

+sun winked from behind the mountains. It made

+its way to the low, shedlike eating-house with a

+pre-breakfast solemnity bordering on sulkiness. Not

+a petticoat was in sight to offset the spurs and

+sombreros that filed into breakfast from every point

+in the compass, prepared to eat primitively, joke

+broadly, and quarrel speedily if that sensitive and

+often inconsistent something they called honor

+should be brushed however lightly.</p>

+

+<p>But the eternal feminine was within, and, discovering

+it, the temper of "Town" was changed;

+it ate self-consciously, made jokes meet for the ears

+of ladies, and was more interested in the girl in the

+sailor-hat than it was in remembering old feuds or

+laying the foundations of new.</p>

+

+<p>In its interior aspect, the eating-house conveyed

+no subtle invitation to eat, drink, and be merry. On

+the contrary, its mission seemed to be that of confounding

+appetite at every turn. A long, shedlike

+<pb n="008" />

+<anchor id="Pg008" />

+room it was, with walls of unpainted pine, still sweating

+from the axe. Festoons of scalloped paper, in

+conflicting shades, hung from the ceiling, a menace

+to the taller of the guests. On the rough walls some

+one, either prompted by a latent spirit of ÃĶstheticism

+or with an idea of abetting the town towards merrymaking&mdash;an

+encouragement it hardly required&mdash;had

+tacked posters of shows, mainly representing the

+tank-and-sawmill school of drama.</p>

+

+<p>Miss Carmichael sat at the extreme end of the

+long, oilcloth-covered table, on which a straggling

+army of salt and pepper shakers, catsup bottles,

+and divers commercial condiments seemed to pause

+in a discouraged march. A plague of flies was on

+everything, and the food was a threat to the hardiest

+appetite. One man summed up the steak with,

+"You got to work your jaw so hard to eat it that it

+ain't fair to the next meal."</p>

+

+<p>His neighbor heaved a sigh. "This here formation,

+whatever it be"&mdash;and he turned the meat over

+for better inspection&mdash;"do shore remind me of an

+indestructible doll that an old maid aunt of mine

+giv' my sister when we was kids. That doll sort

+of challenged me, settin' round oncapable o' bein'

+destroyed, and one day I ups an' has a chaw at her.

+She war ondestructible, all right; 'fore that I concluded

+my speriments I had left a couple o' teeth in

+her."</p>

+

+<p>"Well, I discyards the steak and draw to a pair

+of aces," and the first man helped himself to a

+couple of biscuits.</p>

+

+<p>Miss Carmichael knew, by the continual scraping

+<pb n="009" />

+<anchor id="Pg009" />

+of chairs across the gritty floor, that the places at

+the table must be nearly all taken; and while she

+anticipated, with an utterly unreasonable terror,

+any further invasion of her seclusion at the end of

+the table, still she could not persuade herself to

+raise her eyes to detect the progress of the enemy,

+even in the interest of the diary she had kept so

+conscientiously for the past three days; which was

+something of a loss to the diary, as those untamed,

+manly faces were well worth looking at. Reckless

+they were in many instances, and sometimes the

+lines of hardship were cruelly writ across young

+faces that had not yet lost the down of adolescence,

+but there were humor and endurance and the

+courage that knows how to make a crony of death

+and get right good sport from the comradeship.

+Their faults were the faults of lusty, red-blooded

+youth, and their virtues the open-handed generosity,

+the ready sympathy of those uncertain tilters at

+life who ride or fall in the tourney of a new country.</p>

+

+<p>At present, "the yearling," drinking her execrable

+coffee in an agony of embarrassment, weighed

+heavily on their minds. They would have liked to

+rise as a man and ask if there was anything they

+could do for her. But as a glance towards the end

+of the table seemed to increase her discomfiture

+tenfold, they did the kindest and for them the most

+difficult thing and looked in every direction but Miss

+Carmichael's. With a delicacy of perception that

+the casual observer might not have given them

+credit for, they had refrained from taking seats

+directly opposite her, or those immediately on her

+<pb n="010" />

+<anchor id="Pg010" />

+right, which, as she occupied the last seat at the

+table, gave her at least a small degree of seclusion.</p>

+

+<p>As one after another of them came filing in,

+bronzed, rugged, radiating a beauty of youth and

+health that no sketchy exigence of apparel could

+obscure, some one already seated at the table would

+put a foot on a chair opposite him and send it

+spinning out into the middle of the floor as a hint

+to the new-comer that that was his reserved seat.

+And the cow-puncher, sheep-herder, prospector, or

+man about "Town," as the case might be, would

+take the hint and the chair, leaving the petticoat

+separated from the sombreros by a table-land of

+oilcloth and a range of four chairs.</p>

+

+<p>But now entered a man who failed to take the

+hint of the spinning chair. In fact, he entered the

+eating-house with the air of one who has dropped

+in casually to look for a friend and, incidentally,

+to eat his breakfast. He stopped in the doorway,

+scanned the table with deliberation, and started

+to make his way towards Mary Carmichael with

+something of a swagger. Some one kicked a chair

+towards him at the head of the table. Some one

+else nearly upset him with one before he reached

+the middle, and the Texan remarked, quite audibly,

+as he passed:</p>

+

+<p>"The damned razor-back!"</p>

+

+<p>But the man made his way to the end of the table

+and drew out the chair opposite Miss Carmichael

+with a degree of assurance that precipitated the

+rest of the table into a pretty pother.</p>

+

+<p>Suppose she should countenance his audacity?

+<pb n="011" />

+<anchor id="Pg011" />

+The fair have been known to succumb to the headlong

+force of a charge, when the persistence of a

+long siege has failed signally. What figures they

+would cut if she did!&mdash;and Simpson, of all men! A

+growing tension had crept into the atmosphere of

+the eating-house; knives and forks played but intermittently,

+and Mary, sitting at the end of the

+oilcloth-covered table, felt intuitively that she was

+the centre of the brewing storm. Oh, why hadn't

+she been contented to stay at home and make over

+her clothes and share the dwindling fortunes of her

+aunts, instead of coming to this savage place?</p>

+

+<p>"From the look of the yearling's chin, I think

+he'll get all that's coming to him," whispered the

+man who had nearly upset him with the second

+chair.</p>

+

+<p>"You're right, pard. If I'm any good at reading

+brands, she is as self-protective as the McKinley

+bill."</p>

+

+<p>The man Simpson was not a pleasant vis-à-vis.

+He wore the same picturesque ruffianliness of apparel

+as his fellows, but the resemblance stopped there.

+He lacked their dusky bloom, their clearness of eye,

+the suppleness and easy flow of muscle that is the

+hall-mark of these frontiersmen. He was fat and

+squat and had not the rich bronzing of wind, sun,

+and rain. His small, black eyes twinkled from his

+puffy, white face, like raisins in a dough-pudding.</p>

+

+<p>He was ogling Mary amiably when the woman

+who kept the eating-house brought him his breakfast.

+Mrs. Clark was a potent antidote for the prevailing

+spirit of romance, even in this woman-forsaken

+<pb n="012" />

+<anchor id="Pg012" />

+country. A good creature, all limp calico,

+Roman nose, and sharp elbows, she brought him his

+breakfast with an ill grace that she had not shown

+to the others. The men about the table gave him

+scant greeting, but the absence of enthusiasm didn't

+embarrass Simpson.</p>

+

+<p>He lounged expansively on the table, regarding

+Miss Carmichael attentively meanwhile; then favored

+her with the result of his observations, "From

+the East, I take it." And the dumpling face

+screwed into a smile whose mission was pacific.</p>

+

+<p>Every knife and fork in the room suspended

+action in anxiety to know how the "yearling"

+would take it. Would their chivalry, which strained

+at a gnat, be compelled to swallow such a conspicuous

+camel as the success of Simpson? With the

+attitude he had taken towards the girl, there had

+crept into the company an imperceptible change;

+deep-buried impulses sprang to the surface. If a

+scoundrel like Simpson was going to try his luck,

+why shouldn't they? They didn't see a pretty girl

+once in a blue moon. With the advent of the

+green-eyed monster at the board, each man unconsciously

+became the rival of his neighbor.</p>

+

+<p>But Miss Carmichael merely continued her breakfast,

+and if she heard the amiable deductions of

+Simpson regarding her, she gave no sign. But a

+rebuff to him was in the nature of an appetizer, a

+fillip to press the acquaintance. He encroached a

+bit farther on the narrow limits of the table and

+continued, "Nice weather we're having."</p>

+

+<p>Miss Carmichael gave her undivided attention to

+<pb n="013" />

+<anchor id="Pg013" />

+her coffee. The spurs and sombreros, that had not

+relaxed a muscle in their strained observation of the

+little drama, breathed reflectively. Perhaps it was

+just as well that they had not emulated Simpson in

+his brazen charge; the "yearling" was not to be surprised

+into talking, that was certain.</p>

+

+<p>"He shore is showing hisself to be a friendly

+native," commented the man who had sacrificed

+milk-teeth investigating the indestructible doll.</p>

+

+<p>"Seems to me that the system he's playing lacks

+a heap of science. My money's on the yearling."

+And the man who had "discarded the steak and

+drawn to the biscuits" leaned a little forward that

+he might better watch developments.</p>

+

+<p>Simpson by this time fully realized his error, but

+failure before all these bantering youngsters was

+a contingency not to be accepted lightly. As he

+phrased it to himself, it was worth "another throw."

+"Seems kind o' lonesome not having any one to talk

+to while you're eatin', don't it?"</p>

+

+<p>Miss Carmichael's air of perfect composure seemed

+a trifle out of tune with her surroundings; the nice

+elevation of eyebrow, the slightly questioning curl

+of the lip as she, for the first time apparently, became

+aware of the man opposite, seemed to demand

+a prim drawing-room rather than the atmosphere

+of the slouching eating-house.</p>

+

+<p>"Well, really, I've hardly had a chance of finding

+out." And her eyes were again on her coffee-cup.

+And there was joy among the men at table that

+they had not rushed in after the manner of those

+who have a greater courage than the angels.</p>

+<pb n="014" />

+<anchor id="Pg014" />

+

+<p>"No offence meant," deprecated Simpson, with

+an uneasy glance towards the other end of the table,

+where the men sat with necks craned forward in an

+attitude uncomfortably suggestive of hounds straining

+at the leash. Simpson felt rather than saw that

+something was afoot among the sombreros. There

+was a crowding together in whispered colloquy, and

+in a flash some half-dozen of them were on their feet

+as a man. Descending upon Simpson, they lifted

+him, chair and all, to the other end of the table, as

+far removed as possible from Miss Carmichael.</p>

+

+<p>The man who thought Simpson's system lacked

+science rubbed his hands in delight. "She took the

+trick all right; swept his hand clean off the board!"</p>

+<pb n="015" />

+<anchor id="Pg015" />

+</div>

+

+<div rend="page-break-before: always">

+<head>II</head>

+<index index="pdf" /><index index="toc" level1="The Encounter" />

+<head type="sub">The Encounter</head>

+

+<p>Simpson, from the seat to which he had been

+so rapidly transplanted, looked about him with

+blinking anxiety. It was more than probable that

+the boys intended "to have fun with him," though

+his talking, or rather trying to talk, to a girl that

+sat opposite him at an eating-house table was, according

+to his ethics, plainly none of their business.

+He knew he wasn't popular since he had done for

+Jim Rodney's sheep, though the crime had never

+been laid at his door, officially. He had his way to

+make, the same as the next one; and, all said and

+done, the cattle-men were glad to get Jim Rodney's

+sheep off the range, even if they treated him as a

+felon for the part he had played in their extermination.</p>

+

+<p>Thus reasoned Simpson, while he marked with

+an uneasy eye that the temper of the company had

+grown decidedly prankish with the exit of the girl,

+who, after having caused all the trouble, had, with

+an irritating quality peculiar to her sex, vanished

+through the kitchen door.</p>

+

+<p>Some three or four of the boys now ran to Simpson's

+former seat at the table and rushed towards

+<pb n="016" />

+<anchor id="Pg016" />

+him with his half-eaten breakfast, as if the errand

+had been one of life and death. They showered

+him with mock attentions, waiting on him with an

+exaggerated deference, and the pale, fat man, remembering

+the hideousness of some of their manifestations

+of a sense of humor, breathed hard and

+felt a falling-off of appetite.</p>

+

+<p>Costigan, the cattle-man, a strapping Irish giant,

+was clearing his throat with ominous sounds that

+suggested the tuning-up of a bass fiddle.</p>

+

+<p>"Sure, Simpson, me lad, if ye happen to have

+a matther av fifty dollars, 'tis mesilf that can tell

+ye av an illegint invistmint."</p>

+

+<p>Simpson looked up warily, but Costigan's broad

+countenance did not harbor the wraith of a smile.

+"What kin I git for fifty chips? 'Tain't much,"

+mused the pariah, with the prompt inclination to

+spend that stamps the comparative stranger to

+ready money.</p>

+

+<p>"Ye can git a parrut, man&mdash;a grane parrut&mdash;to

+kape ye coompany while ye're aiting&mdash;"</p>

+

+<p>Simpson interrupted with an oath.</p>

+

+<p>"Don't be hard on old Simmy; remember he's

+studied for the ministry! How did I savey that

+Simpson aimed to be a sharp on doctrine?" A cow-puncher

+with a squint addressed the table in general.

+"I scents the aroma of dogma about Simpson

+in the way he throwed his conversational lariat at

+the yearling. He urbanes at her, and then comes his

+'firstly,' it being a speculation as to her late grazing-ground,

+which he concludes to be the East. His

+'secondly' ain't nothing startling, words familiar to

+<pb n="017" />

+<anchor id="Pg017" />

+us all from our mother's knee&mdash;'nice weather'&mdash;the

+congregation ain't visibly moved. His 'thirdly'

+is insinuating. In it he hints that it ain't good for

+man to be alone at meals&mdash;"</p>

+

+<p>"'Twas the congregation that added the 'foinelly,'

+though, before hastily leaving be the back door!"

+and Costigan slapped his thigh.</p>

+

+<p>"The gentleman in question don't seem to be

+makin' much use of his present conversational

+opportunities. I'm feelin' kinder turned down myself";

+and the Texan began to look over his six-shooter.</p>

+

+<p>The man with the squint looked up and down the

+board.</p>

+

+<p>"Gentlemen, I believe the foregoing expresses the

+sentiment of this company, which, while it incloodes

+many foreign and frequent-warring elements, is at

+present held together by the natchral tie of eating."</p>

+

+<p>Thumping with knife and fork handles, stamping

+of feet, cries of "Hear! hear!" with at least three

+cow-boy yells, argued well for a resumption of last

+night's festivities. Simpson glowered, but said nothing.</p>

+

+<p>"Seems to me you-all goin' the wrong way 'bout

+drawin' Mistu' Simpson out. He is shy an' has to

+be played fo' like a trout, an' heah you-all come at

+him like a cattle stampede." The big Texan leaned

+towards Simpson. "Now you-all watch my methods.

+Mistu' Simpson, seh, what du think of the

+prospects of rain?"</p>

+

+<p>There was a general recommendation from Simpson

+<pb n="018" />

+<anchor id="Pg018" />

+that the entire company go to a locality below

+the rain-belt.</p>

+

+<p>A boy, plainly "from the East," and looking

+as if the ink on his graduating thesis had scarce had

+time to dry, was on his feet, swaggering; he would

+not have swapped his newly acquired <hi rend="font-style: italic">camaraderie</hi>

+with these bronzed Westerners for the Presidency.</p>

+

+<p>"Gentlemen, you have all heard Simpson say it

+is lonesome having no one to talk to during meals.

+We sympathized with him and offered him a choice

+of subjects. He greets our remarks by a conspicuous

+silence, varied by profanity. This, gentlemen,

+reflects on us, and is a matter demanding public

+satisfaction. All who feel that their powers as

+conversationalists have been impugned by the silence

+of Simpson, please say 'Ay.'"</p>

+

+<p>"Ay" was howled, sung, and roared in every note

+of the gamut.</p>

+

+<p>"If me yoong frind here an me roight"&mdash;and

+Costigan jerked a shoulder towards the boy&mdash;"will

+be afther closin' that silf-feeding automatic dictionary

+av his for a moment, I shud be glad to call the

+attintion av the coomp'ny to somethin' in the nature

+av an ixtinuatin' circoomsthance in the case av

+Simpson."</p>

+

+<p>"Hear! hear!" they shouted. The broad countenance

+of Costigan beamed with joy at what he was

+about to say. "Gintlemin, the silence av Mr.

+Simpson is jew in all probabilitee to a certain ivint

+recalled by many here prisint, an' more that's

+absent, an' amicablee settled out av coort&mdash;"</p>

+

+<p>Up to this time the unhappy Simpson had shown

+<pb n="019" />

+<anchor id="Pg019" />

+an almost superhuman endurance. Now he bristled&mdash;and

+after looking up and down the board for a

+sympathetic face, and not finding one, he declared,

+loudly and generally, "'Tain't so!"</p>

+

+<p>"Ye may have noticed that frind Simpson do be

+t'reatened wid lockjaw in the societee av min, but

+in the prisince av a female ye can't count on him.

+Now, talk wid a female is an agreeable, if not a

+profitable, way av passin' the toime, but sure ye

+niver know where it will ind&mdash;as witness Simpson.

+This lady I'm recallin'&mdash;'tis a matther av two years

+ago&mdash;followed the ancient and honorable profission

+av biscuit shootin' not far from Caspar. Siz Simpson

+to the lady some such passin' civilitee as, 'Good-marnin';

+plisent weather we're havin'.' Whereupon

+the lady filt a damage to her affictions an'

+sued him for breach av promise."</p>

+

+<p>"'Twan't that way, at all!" screamed Simpson.

+"'Sall a lie!"</p>

+

+<p>"Yu ought er said 'Good-evenin'' to the lady,

+Mistu Simpson; hit make a diffunce," drawled the

+man from Texas, pleasantly.</p>

+

+<p>"But 'twas 'Good-marnin'' Simpson made chyce

+av," resumed Costigan. "An' the lady replied,

+'You've broke my heart.' Whereupon Simpson,

+havin' a matther av t'ree thousand dollars to pay

+for his passin' civilitee, learned thot silince was

+goolden."</p>

+

+<p>They all remembered the incident in question,

+and thundered applause at the reappearance of an

+old favorite. Without warning, a shadow fell across

+the sunlight-flooded room, and, as one after another

+<pb n="020" />

+<anchor id="Pg020" />

+of the men glanced up from the table, they saw

+standing in the doorway a man of such malignant

+aspect that his look fell across the company like a

+menace. The swing of their banter slowed suddenly;

+it was as if the cold of a new-turned grave had

+struck across the June sunshine checking their roughshod

+fun. None of them had the hardihood to joke

+with a man that stood in the shadow of death; and

+hate and murder looked from the eyes of the man

+in the doorway and looked towards Simpson. One

+by one they perceived the man of the shadow, all

+but Simpson, eating steak drowned in Worcestershire.</p>

+

+<p>The man in the doorway was tall and lean, and

+the prison blench upon his face was in unpleasant

+contrast to the ruddy tan of the faces about the

+table. His sombrero was tipped back and the hair

+hung dank about the pale, sweating forehead,

+suggestive of sickness. But weak health did not

+imply weak purpose; every feature in that hawk-like

+face was sharp with hatred, and in the narrowing

+eye was vengeance that is sweet.</p>

+

+<p>He stood still; there was in his hatred a something

+hypnotic that grew imperceptibly and imperceptibly

+communicated itself to the men at table.

+He gloated over the eating fat man as if he had

+dwelt much in imagination on the sight and was in

+no hurry to curtail his joy at the reality. The men

+began to get restless, shuffle their feet, moisten their

+lips; only the college boy spoke, and then from a

+wealth of ignorance, knowing nothing of the rugged,

+give-and-take justice of the plains&mdash;an eye for an

+<pb n="021" />

+<anchor id="Pg021" />

+eye, a tooth for a tooth, and the law and the courts

+go hang while a man's got a right arm to pull a trigger.

+Not one in all that company, even the cattle-men

+whose interests were opposed to Rodney's, but

+felt the justice of his errand.</p>

+

+<p>"When did they let him out?" whispered the

+college boy; and then, "Oughtn't we to do something?"</p>

+

+<p>"Yis, me son," whispered Costigan. "We ought

+to sit still and learn a thing or two."</p>

+

+<p>The fat man cleaned his plate with a crust of bread

+stuck on the point of a knife. There was nothing

+more to eat in the way of substantials, and he

+debated pouring a little more of the sauce on his

+plate and mopping it with a bit of bread still uneaten.

+Considering the pro and con of this extra

+tid-bit, he glanced up and saw the gaunt man

+standing in the doorway.</p>

+

+<p>Simpson dropped the knife from his shaking hand

+and started up with a cry that died away in a gurgle,

+an inhuman, nightmare croak. He looked about

+wildly, like a rat in a trap, then backed towards the

+wall. The men about the table got up, then cleared

+away in a circle, leaving the fat man. It was all

+like a dream to the college boy, who had never seen

+a thing of the kind before and could not realize now

+that it was happening. Rodney advanced, never

+once relaxing the look in which he seemed to hold

+his enemy as in a vise. Simpson was like a man

+bewitched. Once, twice, he made a grab for his

+revolver, but his right hand seemed to have lost

+power to heed the bidding of his will. Rodney,

+<pb n="022" />

+<anchor id="Pg022" />

+now well towards the centre of the room, waited,

+with a suggestion of ceremony, for Simpson to get

+his six-shooter.</p>

+

+<p>It was one of those moments in which time seems

+to have become petrified. The limp-clad proprietress

+of the eating-house, made curious by the

+sudden silence, looked in from the kitchen. Simpson,

+his eyes wandering like a trapped rat, saw, and

+called, through teeth that chattered in an ague of

+fear, "Ree&mdash;memm&mdash;her thth&mdash;there's la&mdash;dies

+p&mdash;present! For Gawd's sake, remember t&mdash;there's

+ladies p&mdash;present!"</p>

+

+<p>The pale man looked towards the kitchen, and,

+seeing the woman, he gave Simpson a look in which

+there was only contempt. "You've hid behind the

+law once, and this time it's petticoats. The open

+don't seem to have no charm for you. But&mdash;" He

+didn't finish, there was no need to. Every one

+knew and understood. He put up his revolver and

+walked into the street.</p>

+

+<p>The men broke into shouts of laughter, loud and

+ringing, then doubled up and had it out all over

+again. And their noisy merriment was as clear an

+indication of the suddenly lifted strain, at the

+averted shooting, as it was of their enjoyment of the

+farce. Simpson, relieved of the fear of sudden

+death, now sought to put a better face on his

+cowardice. Now that his enemy was well out of

+sight, Simpson handled his revolver with easy

+assurance.</p>

+

+<p>"Put ut up," shouted Costigan, above the general

+uproar. "'Tis toime to fear a revolver in

+<pb n="023" />

+<anchor id="Pg023" />

+the hands av Simpson whin he's no intinsions av

+shootin'."</p>

+

+<p>Simpson still attempted to harangue the crowd,

+but his voice was lost in the general thigh-slapping

+and the shouts and roars that showed no signs of

+abating. But when he caught a man by the coat

+lapel in his efforts to secure a hearing, that was

+another matter, and the man shook him off as if his

+touch were contagion. Simpson, craving mercy on

+account of petticoats, evading a meeting that was

+"up to him," they were willing to stand as a laughing-stock,

+but Simpson as an equal, grasping the

+lapels of their coats, they would have none of.</p>

+

+<p>He slunk away from them to a corner of the

+eating-house, feeling the stigma of their contempt,

+yet afraid to go out into the street where his enemy

+might be waiting for him. Much of death and

+blood and recklessness "Town" had seen and condoned,

+but cowardice was the unforgivable sin. It

+balked the rude justice of these frontiersmen and

+tampered with their code, and Simpson knew that

+the game had gone against him.</p>

+

+<p>"What was it all about? Were they in earnest,

+or was it only their way of amusing themselves?"

+inquired Mary Carmichael, who had slipped into

+Mrs. Clark's kitchen after the men at the table had

+taken things in hand.</p>

+

+<p>"Jim Rodney was in earnest, an' he had reason to

+be. That man Simpson was paid by a cattle outfit&mdash;now,

+mind, I ain't sayin' which&mdash;to get Jim

+Rodney's sheep off the range. They had threatened

+him and cut the throats of two hundred of his herd

+<pb n="024" />

+<anchor id="Pg024" />

+as a warning, but Jim went right on grazin' 'em,

+same as he had always been in the habit of doing.

+Well, I'm told they up and makes Simpson an offer

+to get rid of the sheep. Jim has over five thousand,

+an' it's just before lambing, and them pore ewes, all

+heavy, is being druv' down to Watson's shearing-pens,

+that Jim always shears at. Jim an' two herders

+and a couple of dawgs&mdash;least, this is the way

+I heard it&mdash;is drivin' 'em easy, 'cause, as I said

+before, it's just before lambing. It does now seem

+awful cruel to me to shear just before lambing, but

+that's their way out here.</p>

+

+<p>"Well, nothing happens, and Jim ain't more'n

+two hours from the pens an' he comes to that place

+on the road that branches out over the top of a

+caÃąon, and there some one springs out of a clump of

+willows an' dashes into the herd and drives the

+wether that's leading right over the cliff. The

+leaders begin to follow that wether, and they go

+right over the cliff like the pore fools they are. The

+herder fired and tried to drive 'em back, they tell me,

+an' he an' the dawg were shot at from the clump of

+willows by some one else who was there. Three

+hundred sheep had gone over the cliff before Jim

+knew what was happening. He rode like mad right

+through the herd to try and head 'em off; but you

+know what sheep is like&mdash;they're like lost souls

+headin' for damnation. Nothing can stop 'em when

+they're once started. And Jim lost every head&mdash;started

+for the shearing-pens a rich man&mdash;rich for

+Jim&mdash;an' seen everything he had swept away before

+his eyes, his wife an' children made paupers. My

+<pb n="025" />

+<anchor id="Pg025" />

+son he come by and found him. He said that Jim

+was sittin' huddled up in a heap, his knees drawed

+up under his chin, starin' straight up into the noonday

+sky, same as if he was askin' God how He could be

+so cruel. His dead dawg, that they had shot, was

+by the side of him. The herder that was with Jim

+had taken the one that was shot into Watson's, so

+when my son found Jim he was alone, sittin' on the

+edge of the cliff with his dead dawg, an' the sky

+about was black with buzzards; an' Jim he just sat

+an' stared up at 'em, and when my son spoke to him

+he never answered any more than a dead man. He

+shuck him by the arm, but Jim just sat there, watchin'

+the sun, the buzzards, and the dead sheep."</p>

+

+<p>"Was nothing done to this man Simpson?"</p>

+

+<p>"The cattle outfit that he done the dirty work

+for swore an alibi for him. Jim has been in hard

+luck ever since. He's been rustlin' cattle right

+along; but Lord, who can blame him? He got into

+some trouble down to Rawlins&mdash;shot a man he

+thought was with Simpson, but who wasn't&mdash;and

+he's been in jail ever since. Course now that he's

+out Simpson's bound to get peppered. Glad it

+didn't happen here, though. 'Twould be a kind of

+unpleasant thing to have connected with a eating-house,

+don't you think so?" she inquired, with the

+grim philosophy of the country.</p>

+

+<p>The eating-house patrons had gone their several

+ways, and the quiet of the dining-room was oppressive

+by contrast with its late boisterousness. Mrs.

+Clark, her hands imprisoned in bread-dough, begged

+Mary to look over the screen door and see if anything

+<pb n="026" />

+<anchor id="Pg026" />

+was happening. "I'm always suspicious when

+it's quiet. I know they're in deviltry of some sort."</p>

+

+<p>Mary tiptoed to the door and peeped over, but

+the room was deserted, save for Simpson, huddled

+in a corner, biting his finger-nails. "The nasty

+thing!" exploded Mrs. Clark, when she had received

+the bulletin. "I'd turn him out if it wasn't for the

+notoriety he might bring my place in gettin' killed

+in front of it."</p>

+

+<p>"I dare say I'd better go and see after my trunk;

+it's still on the station platform." Mary wondered

+what her prim aunts would think of her for sitting

+in Mrs. Clark's kitchen, but it had seemed so much

+more of a refuge than the sordid streets of the

+hideous little town, with its droves of men and

+never a glimpse of a woman that she had been only

+too glad to avail herself of the invitation of the

+proprietress to "make herself at home till the stage

+left."</p>

+

+<p>"Well, good luck to you," said Mrs. Clark, wiping

+her hand only partially free from dough and presenting

+it to Miss Carmichael. She had not inquired

+where the girl was going, nor even hinted to discover

+where she came from, but she gave her the godspeed

+that the West knows how to give, and the girl felt

+better for it.</p>

+

+<p>At the station, where Mary shortly presented

+herself, in the interest of that old man of the sea

+of all travellers, luggage, she learned that the stage

+did not leave town for some three-quarters of an

+hour yet. A young man, manipulating many sheets

+of flimsy, yellow paper covered with large, flourishing

+<pb n="027" />

+<anchor id="Pg027" />

+handwriting, looked up in answer to her inquiries

+about Lost Trail. This young man, whose

+accent, clothes, and manner proclaimed him "from

+the East," whither, in all probability, he would

+shortly return if he did not mend his ways, disclaimed

+all knowledge of the place as if it were an

+undesirable acquaintance. But before he could

+deny it thrice, a man who had heard the cabalistic

+name was making his way towards the desk, the

+pride of the traveller radiating from every feature.</p>

+

+<p>The cosmopolite who knew Lost Trail was the

+type of man who is born to be a Kentucky colonel,

+and perhaps may have achieved his destiny before

+coming to this "No Man's Land," for reasons into

+which no one inquired, and which were obviously

+no one's business. They knew him here by the

+name of "Lone Tooth Hank," and he wore what had

+been, in the days of his colonelcy&mdash;or its equivalent&mdash;a

+frock-coat, restrained by the lower button, and

+thus establishing a waist-line long after nature had

+had the last word to say on the subject. With this

+he wore the sombrero of the country, and the combination

+carried a rakish effect that was positively

+sinister.</p>

+

+<p>The scornful clerk introduced Mary as a young

+lady inquiring about some place in the bad-lands.

+Off came the sombrero with a sweep, and Lone

+Tooth smiled in a way that accented the dental

+solitaire to which he owed his name. Miss Carmichael,

+concealing her terror of this casual cavalier,

+inquired if he could tell her the distance to Lost

+Trail.</p>

+<pb n="028" />

+<anchor id="Pg028" />

+

+<p>"I sho'ly can, and with, consid'able pleasure."

+The sombrero completed a semicircular sweep and

+arrived in the neighborhood of Mr. Hank's heart in

+significance of his vassalage to the fair sex. He

+proceeded:</p>

+

+<p>"Lost Trail sutney is right lonesome. A friend

+of mine gets a little too playful fo' the evah-increasin'

+meetropolitan spirit of this yere camp, and tries

+a little tahget practice on the main bullyvard, an'

+finds the atmospheah onhealthful in consequence.

+Hearin' that the quiet solitude of Lost Trail is what

+he needs, he lit out with the following circumstance

+thereof happenin'. One day something in his harness

+giv' way&mdash;and he recollects seein' a boot

+sunnin' itself back in the road 'bout a quartah of a

+mile. An' he figgahs he'll borry a strip of leather

+off the boot to mend his harness. Back he goes and

+finds it has a kind of loaded feelin'. So my friend

+investigates&mdash;and I be blanked if there wasn't a

+foot and leg inside of it."</p>

+

+<p>Miss Carmichael had always exercised a super-feminine

+self-restraint in the case of casual mice,

+and it served her in the present instance. Instead

+of screaming, she said, after the suppression of a

+gasp or two:</p>

+

+<p>"Thank you so much, but I won't detain you

+any longer. Your information makes Lost Trail

+even more interesting than I had expected."</p>

+

+<p>Besides, Miss Carmichael had a faint suspicion

+that this might be a preconcerted plan to terrify

+the "lady tenderfoot," and she prided herself on

+being equal to the situation. The time at her

+<pb n="029" />

+<anchor id="Pg029" />

+disposal before the stage would embark on that

+unknown sea of prairies she spent in the delectable

+pastime of shopping. The financial and social interests

+of the town seemed to converge in Hugous

+&amp; Co.'s "trading store," where Miss Carmichael

+invested in an extra package of needles for the

+mere excitement of being one of the shoppers,

+though her aunt Adelaide had stocked the little

+plaid-silk work-bag to repletion with every variety

+of needle known to woman. She pricked up her

+ears, meanwhile, at some of the purchases made

+by the cow-boys for their camp-larders&mdash;devilled

+ham, sardines, canned tomatoes heading the list

+as prime favorites. Did these strapping border

+lads live by the fruit of the tin alone? Apparently

+yes, with the sophisticated accompaniment of soda

+biscuit, to judge by the quantity of baking-powder

+they invested in&mdash;literally pounds of it. Men in

+any other condition of life would have died of slow

+poisoning as the result of it.</p>

+

+<p>There were other customers at Hugous' that

+morning besides the spurred and booted cow-puncher

+and his despised compeer, the sheep-herder.

+That restless emigrant class, whose origin, as

+a class, lay in the community of its own uncertain

+schemes of fortune; the West, with her splendid,

+lavish promises, called them from their thriftless

+farms in the South and their gray cabins in New

+England. They began their journeying towards

+the land of promise long before the Indians had

+ever seen the shrieking "fire-wagon." All day they

+would toil over the infinitude of prairie, the sun that

+<pb n="030" />

+<anchor id="Pg030" />

+hid nightly behind that maddeningly elusive vanishing-point,

+the horizon, their only guide. But the

+makeshifts of the wagon life were not without charm.

+They began to wander in quest of they knew not

+precisely what, and from these vague beginnings

+there had sprung into existence that nomadic

+population that was once such a feature of the far

+West, but is now going the way of the Indians and

+the cow-boys.</p>

+

+<p>This breathing-space in the long journey had

+for them the stimulus of a holiday-making. They

+bought their sides of bacon and their pounds of

+coffee as merrily as if they were playing a game of

+forfeits, the women fingering the calico they did

+not want for the joy of pricing and making shoppers'

+talk.</p>

+

+<p>The scene had a scriptural flavor that not even

+the blue overalls of the men nor the calico gowns

+of the women could altogether eliminate. Their

+wagons, bulging with household goods and trailing

+with kitchen utensils secured by bits of rope, were

+drawn up in front of the trading-store. From a

+pump, at some little distance, the pilgrims filled

+their stone water-bottles, for the wise traveller does

+not trust to the chance springs of the desert.

+Baskets of chickens were strapped to many of the

+wagons, but whether the unhappy fowls were designed

+to supply fresh eggs and an occasional fricassÃĐe,

+or were taken for the pleasure of their company,

+there was no means of determining short of

+impertinent cross-questioning. Sometimes a cow,

+and invariably a dog, formed one of the family

+<pb n="031" />

+<anchor id="Pg031" />

+party, and an edifying <hi rend="font-style: italic">esprit de corps</hi> seemed to

+dwell among them all.</p>

+

+<p>Lone Tooth Hank, in his capacity of man about

+town, stood on the steps of Hugous' watching the

+preparations; and, seeing Miss Carmichael, approached

+with the air of an old and tried family friend.</p>

+

+<p>"Do I obsehve yu regyarding oweh 'settleahs,'

+called settleahs 'cause they nevah settle?" Hank

+laughed gently, as one who has made a joke meet

+for ladies. "I've known whole famblies to bohn an'

+raise right in one of them wagons; and tuhn out a

+mighty fine, endurin' lot, too, this hyeh prospectin'

+round afteh somethin' they wouldn't reco'nize if

+they met. Gits to be a habit same as drink. They

+couldn't live in a house same as humans, not if yu

+filled their gyarden with nuggets an' their well

+with apple-jack."</p>

+

+<p>Miss Carmichael looked attentive but said nothing.

+In truth, she was more afraid of Hank, his

+obvious gallantry, and his grewsome tales of boots

+with legs in them than she was of the unknown

+terrors of Lost Trail.</p>

+

+<p>"I believe that is my stage," she said, as a red

+conveyance not unlike a circus wagon halted at

+some little distance from the trading-store. And

+as she spoke she saw four of her companions of the

+breakfast-table heading towards the stage, each with

+a piece of her precious luggage. Mary Carmichael

+was precipitated in a sudden panic; she had heard

+tales of the pranks of these playful Western squires&mdash;a

+little gun-play to induce the terrified tenderfoot

+to put a little more spirit into his Highland fling,

+<pb n="032" />

+<anchor id="Pg032" />

+"by request." She remembered their merrymaking

+with Simpson at breakfast. What did they intend

+to do with her belongings? And as she remembered

+the little plaid sewing-bag that Aunt Adelaide had

+made for her&mdash;surreptitiously drying her tears in the

+mean time&mdash;when she remembered that bag and the

+possibility of its being submitted to ignominy, she

+could have cried or done murder, she wasn't sure

+which.</p>

+

+<p>"Well, 'pon my wohd, heah ah the boys with

+yo' baggage. How time du fly!"</p>

+

+<p>"Oh!" she gasped, "what are they going to do

+with it?"</p>

+

+<p>"Place it on the stage, awaitin' yo' ohdahs."

+And to her expression of infinite relief&mdash;"Yo' didn't

+think any disrepec' would be shown the baggage of

+a lady honorin' this hyeh metropolis with her presence?"</p>

+

+<p>She thanked the knights of the lariat the more

+warmly for her unjust suspicions. They stowed

+away the luggage with the deft capacity of men who

+have returned to the primitive art of using their

+hands. She climbed beside the driver on the box

+of the stage. Lone Tooth Hank and the cow-punchers

+chivalrously raised their sombreros with

+a simultaneous spontaneity that suggested a flight

+of rockets. The driver cracked his whip and turned

+the horses' heads towards the billowing sea of foot-hills,

+and the last cable that bound Mary Carmichael

+to civilization was cut.</p>

+<pb n="033" />

+<anchor id="Pg033" />

+</div>

+

+<div rend="page-break-before: always">

+<head>III</head>

+<index index="pdf" /><index index="toc" level1="Leander And His Lady" />

+<head type="sub">Leander And His Lady</head>

+

+<p>The only stage passenger besides Miss Carmichael

+was a fat lady, whose entire luggage

+seemed to consist of luncheon&mdash;pasteboard boxes

+of sandwiches, baskets of fruit, napkins of cake.

+These she began to dispose of, before the stage had

+fairly started, with an industry almost automatic,

+continuing faithful to her post as long as the supplies

+lasted. Then she dozed, sleeping the sleep of the

+just and those who keep their mouths open. From

+time to time the stage-driver invoked his team in

+cabalistic words, and each time the horses toiled

+forward with fresh energy; but progress became a

+mockery in that ocean of space, their driving seemed

+as futile as the sport of children who crack a whip

+and play at stage-coach with a couple of chairs;

+the mountains still mocked in the distance.</p>

+

+<p>A flat, unbroken sweep of country, a tangle of

+straggling sage-brush, a glimpse of foot-hills in the

+distance, was the outlook mile after mile. The day

+grew pitilessly hot. Clouds of alkaline dust swept

+aimlessly over the desert or whirled into spirals till

+lost in space. From horizon to horizon the sky

+was one cloudless span of blue that paled as it

+<pb n="034" />

+<anchor id="Pg034" />

+dipped earthward. Mary Carmichael dozed and

+wakened, but the prospect was always the same&mdash;the

+red stage crawling over the wilderness, making

+no evident progress, and always the sun, the sage-brush,

+and the silence.</p>

+

+<p>It was all so overwhelmingly different from the

+peaceful atmosphere of things at home. The mellow

+Virginia country, with its winding, red roads, wealth

+of woodland, and its grave old houses that were the

+more haughtily aloof for the poverty that gnawed at

+their vitals. This wilderness was so gaunt, so parched;

+she closed her eyes and thought of a bit of landscape

+at home. A young forest of silver beeches

+growing straight and fine as the threads on a loom;

+and through the gray perspective of their satin-smooth

+trunks you caught the white gleam of a fairy

+cascade as it tumbled over the moss-grown stones

+to the brook below. It was like a bit from a Japanese

+garden in its delicate artificiality.</p>

+

+<p>And harder to leave than these cherished bits

+of landscape had been the old house Runnymede,

+that always seemed dozing in the peaceful comatose

+of senility. It was beyond the worry of debt; the

+succession of mortgages that sapped its vitality and

+wrote anxious lines on the faces of Aunt Adelaide

+and Aunt Martha was nothing to the old house. Had

+it not sheltered Carmichaels for over a century?&mdash;it

+had faith in the name. But Mary could never

+remember when the need of money to pay the

+mortgage had not invaded the gentle routine of

+their home-life, robbing the sangaree of its delicate

+flavor in the long, sleepy summer afternoons, invading

+<pb n="035" />

+<anchor id="Pg035" />

+the very dining-room, an unwelcome guest at

+the old mahogany table, prompting Aunt Adelaide

+to cast anxious glances at the worn silver&mdash;would it

+go to pay that blood-sucking mortgage next?</p>

+

+<p>But hardest of all to leave had been Archie, best

+and most promising of young brothers&mdash;Archie, who

+had come out ahead of his class in the high-school,

+all ready to go to The University&mdash;the University

+of Virginia is always "The University"; but who,

+it had seemed at a certain dark season, must give

+up this long-cherished hope for lack of the wherewithal.

+Mary, being four years older than her

+brother and quite twenty, had long felt a maternal

+obligation to administer his affairs. If he did

+not go to the university, like his father and grandfather

+before him, it would be because she had failed

+in her duty. At this particular phase of the domestic

+problem there had appeared, in a certain

+churchly periodical, a carefully worded advertisement

+for a governess, and the subsequent business

+of references, salary, and information to be imparted

+and received proving eminently satisfactory,

+Mary had finally received a tearful permission from

+her aunts to depart for some place in Wyoming, the

+name of which was not even to be found on the map.

+She was to consider herself quite one of the family,

+and the compensation was to be fifty dollars a month.

+Archie would now be able to go to "The University."</p>

+

+<p>As the day wore on the sage-brush became

+scarcer and grayer, there were fewer flowering cacti,

+and the great white patches of alkali grew more and

+more frequent. In the distance there was a riot

+<pb n="036" />

+<anchor id="Pg036" />

+of rainbow tints&mdash;violet, pink, and pale orange. It

+seemed inconceivable that such barrenness could

+produce such wealth of color; nothing could have

+been more beautiful&mdash;not even the changing colors

+on a pigeon's neck&mdash;than the coppery iridescence,

+shading to cobalt and blue on some of the buttes.</p>

+

+<p>Night had fallen before they made the first break

+in their journey. The low, beetle-browed cabin that

+faced them in the wilderness carried in its rude

+completeness a hint of the prestidigitateur's art&mdash;a

+world of desolation, and behold a log cabin with

+smoke issuing from the chimney and curtains at the

+windows! The interior was unplastered, but this

+shortcoming was surmounted by tacking cheesecloth

+neatly over the logs, a device at once simple and

+strategic, as in the lamplight the effect was that of

+plaster. Miss Carmichael, suddenly released from

+the actual rumbling of the stage, felt its confused

+motion the more strongly in imagination, and hardly

+knew whether she was eating canned tomatoes,

+served uncooked directly from the tin, fried steak,

+black coffee, and soda biscuit, in company with the

+fat lady, the stage-driver, and the woman who kept

+the road ranch, or if it was all some Alice in Wonderland

+delusion.</p>

+

+<p>The fat lady had brought her own bedding&mdash;an

+apoplectic roll of bedquilts&mdash;and these she insisted

+on making a bed of, despite the protests of the

+ranch-woman, who seemed to detect a covert insinuation

+against her accommodations in the precedent.

+Miss Carmichael profited by the controversy.

+The landlady, touched no doubt by the simple faith

+<pb n="037" />

+<anchor id="Pg037" />

+of a traveller who trusted to the beds of a road-ranch,

+or because she was young or a girl, led the

+way in triumph to her own bedroom, and indicating

+an imposing affair with pillow-shams, she defied Miss

+Carmichael to find a more comfortable bed "in the

+East."</p>

+

+<p>In the unaccountable manner of these desert

+conveyances, that creak and groan across the arid

+wastes with an apparently lumbering inconsequence,

+the stage that brought the travellers to the Dax

+ranch left at sunrise to pursue a seemingly erratic

+career along the North Platte, while Miss Carmichael

+and the fat lady were to continue their journey with

+one Lemuel Chugg, who drove a stage northward

+towards the Red Desert, when he was sober enough

+to handle the ribbons.</p>

+

+<p>Breakfast was largely devoted to speculation regarding

+the approximate condition of Mr. Chugg&mdash;would

+he be wholly or partially incapacitated for

+his job? Mrs. Dax, flirting a feather-duster in the

+neighborhood of Miss Carmichael in a futile effort

+to beguile her into giving a reason for her solitary

+journey across the desert, took a gloomy view of the

+situation.</p>

+

+<p>But Miss Carmichael kept her own counsel. Not

+so the fat lady. Falling into the snare ingenuously

+set for another, she divulged her name, place of

+residence, and the object of her travels, which was to

+visit a son on Sweetwater. Furthermore, she stated

+the probable cause of every death in her family for

+the past thirty-five years. Miss Carmichael felt

+an especial interest in an Uncle Henry who "died

+<pb n="038" />

+<anchor id="Pg038" />

+of a Friday along of eating clams." He stood out

+with such refreshing vividness against a background

+of neutralities who succumbed to consumption,

+bile colic, and other more familiar ailments

+of the patent-medicine litany. But loquacity, apparently,

+like virtue, is its own reward, for the landlady

+scarce vouchsafed a comment on this dismal

+recitative, while Miss Carmichael remained the object

+of her persistent attentions.</p>

+

+<p>But there seemed to be no topic of universal

+interest but Chugg's condition, Mrs. Dax finally

+asserting, "Before I'd trust my precious neck to

+him, I'd get Mr. Dax to shoot me."</p>

+

+<p>Meditating on this Spartan statement, Mary and

+the fat lady became aware for the first time of a

+subtle, silent force in the domestic economy. But

+so unobtrusive was this influence that one had to

+scrutinize very closely, indeed, to detect the evanescent

+personality of Mrs. Dax's husband. Leander

+was his name, but it is safe to say that he swam no

+Hellesponts for the masterful wife of his bosom.

+Otherwise he was slender, willowy, bald; if he ever

+stood straight enough to get the habitually apologetic

+crooks out of his knees, he would be tall;

+but so in the habit was he of repressing himself

+in the marital presence that Leander passed for

+middle height. He waited on the table at breakfast

+with the dumb submissiveness of a trained dog

+that has been taught to give pathetic imitations of

+human servility. But no sooner had his lady left

+the room than Leander began quite brazenly to call

+attention to himself as a man and an individual,

+<pb n="039" />

+<anchor id="Pg039" />

+coughing, rattling his dishes, and clearing his throat.

+Mary and the fat lady, out of very pity, responded

+to these crude signals with overtures equally frank,

+and Leander ventured finally to inquire if they

+aimed to spend the night at his brother's ranch, it

+being the next mess-box between here and nowhere.

+They admitted that his brother's ranch was their

+next stopping-place, and Leander went through

+perfect contortions of apology and self-effacement

+before he could bring himself to ask them to do him

+a favor. It would have taken a very stern order of

+womankind to refuse anything so abject, and they

+blindly committed themselves to the pledge.</p>

+

+<p>"Tell him I send my compliments," he whispered,

+and, looking about him furtively, he repeated the

+blood-curdling request.</p>

+

+<p>"Is that all?" sniffed the fat lady, at no pains to

+conceal her disappointment.</p>

+

+<p>"It's enough, if it was known, to raise a war-whoop

+and stampede this yere family." His glance

+at the door through which his wife had disappeared

+was pregnant with meaning.</p>

+

+<p>"Family troubles?" asked the fat lady, as a

+gourmet might say "Truffles."</p>

+

+<p>"Looks like it," said Leander, dismally. "Me

+and Johnnie don't ask for nothin' better than to

+bask in each other's company; but our wives insists

+on keepin' up the manoeuvres of a war-dance

+the whole endoorin' time."</p>

+

+<p>"So," said the fat lady, as a gourmet might tell

+of a favorite way of preparing truffles, "it's a case

+of wives?"</p>

+<pb n="040" />

+<anchor id="Pg040" />

+

+<p>"Yes, marm, an' teeth an' nails an' husbands

+thrown in, when they get a sight of each other's

+petticoats."</p>

+

+<p>"I've known sisters-in-law not to agree," helped

+on the fat lady, by way of an encouraging parallel.</p>

+

+<p>"While I deplores usin' such a comparison to the

+refinin' and softenin' inflooance of wimmen, the

+meetin' of the Dax ladies by chanst anywheres has

+all the elements of danger and excitement that accompanies

+an Injun uprisin'."</p>

+

+<p>The travellers looked all manner of encouragement.</p>

+

+<p>"You see, my wife's a great housekeeper; her

+talent lies"&mdash;and here Leander winked knowingly&mdash;"in

+managin' the help."</p>

+

+<p>"Land's sake!" interrupted the fat lady. "Why

+don't you kick?"</p>

+

+<p>Leander sighed softly. "I tried to once. As an

+experiment it partook of the trustfulness of a mule

+kickin' against the stony walls of Badger CaÃąon.

+But to resoom about the difficulties that split the

+Dax family. Before Johnnie got mislaid in that

+matrimonial landslide o' his, he herds with us.

+Me an' him does the work of this yere shack, and

+my wife just roominates and gives her accomplishments

+as manager full play. She never put her

+hand in dirty water any more than Mrs. Cleveland

+sittin' up in the White House parlor. Johnnie

+done the fancy cookin'; he could make a pie like

+any one's maw, and while you was lost to the world

+in the delights of masticatin' it, he'd have all his

+greasy dishes washed up and put away&mdash;"</p>

+<pb n="041" />

+<anchor id="Pg041" />

+

+<p>"No wonder she hated to lose a man like that,"

+interrupted the fat lady, feelingly.</p>

+

+<p>"But he took to pinin' and proclaimin' that he

+shore was a lone maverick, and he just stampeded

+round lookin' for trouble and bleatin' a song that

+went:</p>

+

+<lg>

+<l rend="margin-left: 2">"'No one to love,</l>

+<l rend="margin-left: 2">None to caress.'</l>

+</lg>

+

+<p>"Well, the lady that answers his signal of distress

+don't bear none of the brands of this yere range.

+She lives back East, and him and her took up

+their claims in each other's affections through a

+matrimonial paper known as <hi rend="font-style: italic">The Heart and Hand</hi>.

+So they takes their pens in hand and gets through

+a hard spell of courtin' on paper. Love plumb

+locoes Johnnie. His spellin' don't suit him, his

+handwritin' don't suit him, his natchral letters don't

+suit him. So off he sends to Denver for all the

+letter-writin' books he can buy&mdash;<hi rend="font-style: italic">Handbook of

+Correspondence, The Epistolary Guide, The Ready

+Letter-Writer</hi>, and a stack more. There's no denyin'

+it, Johnnie certainly did sweat hisself over them

+letters."</p>

+

+<p>"Land's sakes!" said the fat lady.</p>

+

+<p>"Yes, marm; he used to read 'em to me, beginnin'

+how he had just seized five minutes to write to her,

+when he'd worked the whole day like a mule over it.

+She seemed to like the brand, an' when he sent her

+the money to come out here an' get married, she

+come as straight as if she had been mailed with a

+postage-stamp."</p>

+<pb n="042" />

+<anchor id="Pg042" />

+

+<p>"The brazen thing!" said the fat lady.</p>

+

+<p>"They stopped here, goin' home to their place.

+My Lord! warn't she a high-flyer! She done her

+hair like a tied-up horse-tail&mdash;my wife called it a

+Sikey knot&mdash;and it stood out a foot from her head.

+Some of the boys, kinder playful, wanted to throw

+a hat at it and see if it wouldn't hang, but they

+refrained, out of respect to the feelin's of the groom.</p>

+

+<p>"From the start," continued Leander, "the two

+Mrs. Daxes just hankered to get at each other; an'

+while I, as a slave to the fair sex"&mdash;here he bowed to

+the fat lady and to Miss Carmichael&mdash;"hesitates to

+use such langwidge in their presence, the attitood

+of them two female wimmin shorely reminds me of

+a couple of unfriendly dawgs just hankerin' to chaw

+each other.</p>

+

+<p>"At first, Johnnie waited on her hand an' foot,

+and she just read novels and played stylish all the

+time and danced. She was the hardest dancer that

+ever struck this yere trail, and she could give lessons

+to any old war-dancin' chief up to the reservation.

+No dance she ever heard of was too far for her to go

+to. She just went and danced till broad daylight.

+Many a man would have took to dissipation, in his

+circumstances, but Johnnie just lost heart and grew

+slatterly. Why, he'd leave his dishes go from one

+day till the next&mdash;"</p>

+

+<p>"There's more as would leave their dishes from

+one day till the next if they wasn't looked after."

+And the wife of his bosom stood in the door like a

+vengeful household goddess. Mr. Dax made a grab

+for the nearest plates.</p>

+<pb n="043" />

+<anchor id="Pg043" />

+</div>

+

+<div rend="page-break-before: always">

+<head>IV</head>

+<index index="pdf" /><index index="toc" level1="Judith, The Postmistress" />

+<head type="sub">Judith, The Postmistress</head>

+

+<p>The arrival of Chugg's stage with the mail

+should have been coincident with the departure

+of the stage that brought the travellers

+from "Town," but Chugg was late&mdash;a tardiness

+ascribed to indulgence in local lethe waters, for

+Lemuel Chugg had survived a romance and drank

+to forget that woman is a variable and a changeable

+thing. In consequence of which the sober stage-driver

+departed without the mails, leaving Mary

+Carmichael and the fat lady to scan the horizon

+for the delinquent Chugg, and incidentally to hear

+a chapter of prairie romance.</p>

+

+<p>Some sort of revolution seemed to be in progress

+in the room in which the travellers had breakfasted.

+Mrs. Dax had assumed the office of dictator, with

+absolute sway. Leander, as aide-de-camp, courier,

+and staff, executed marvellous feats of domestic

+engineering. The late breakfast-table, swept and

+garnished with pigeon-holes, became a United States

+post-office, prepared to transact postal business, and

+for the time being to become the social centre of

+the surrounding country.</p>

+

+<p>Down the yellow road that climbed and dipped

+<pb n="044" />

+<anchor id="Pg044" />

+and climbed and dipped again over foot-hills and

+sprawling space till it was lost in a world without

+end, Mary Carmichael, standing in the doorway,

+watched an atom, so small that it might have been a

+leaf blowing along in the wind, turn into a horseman.</p>

+

+<p>There was inspiration for a hundred pictures in

+the way that horse was ridden. No flashes of daylight

+between saddle and rider in the jolting, Eastern

+fashion, but the long, easy sweep that covers ground

+imperceptibly and is a delight to the eye. It needed

+but the solitary figure to signify the infinitude of

+space in the background. In all that great, wide

+world the only hint of life was the galloping horseman,

+the only sound the rhythmical ring of the nearing

+hoofs. The rider, now close enough for Miss Carmichael

+to distinguish the features, was a thorough

+dandy of the saddle. No slouching garb of exigence

+and comfort this, but a pretty display of doeskin

+gaiter, varnished boot, and smart riding-breeches.

+The lad&mdash;he could not have been, Miss Carmichael

+thought, more than twenty&mdash;was tanned a splendid

+color not unlike the bloomy shading on a nasturtium.

+And when the doughty horseman made out the girl

+standing in the doorway, he smiled with a lack of

+formality not suggested by the town-cut of his

+trappings. Throwing the reins over the neck of the

+horse with the real Western fling, he slid from the

+saddle in a trice, and&mdash;Mary Carmichael experienced

+something of the gasping horror of a shocked old

+lady as she made out two splendid braids of thick,

+black hair. Her doughty cavalier was no cavalier

+at all, but a surprisingly handsome young woman.</p>

+<pb n="045" />

+<anchor id="Pg045" />

+

+<p>Miss Carmichael gasped a little even as she extended

+her hand, for the masquerader had pulled

+off her gauntlet and held out hers as if she was conferring

+the freedom of the wilderness. It was

+impossible for a homesick girl not to respond to

+such heartiness, though it was with difficulty at first

+that Mary kept her eyes on the girl's face. Curiosity,

+agreeably piqued, urged her to take another glimpse

+of the riding clothes that this young woman wore

+with such supreme unconcern.</p>

+

+<p>Now, "in the East" Mary Carmichael had not been

+in the habit of meeting black-haired goddesses who

+rode astride and whose assurance of the pleasure

+of meeting her made her as self-conscious as on her

+first day at dancing-school; and though she tried

+to prove her cosmopolitanism by not betraying this,

+the attempt was rather a failure.</p>

+

+<p>"Are you surprised that I did not wait for an

+introduction?" the girl in the riding clothes asked,

+noticing Mary's evident uneasiness; "but you don't

+know how good it is to see a girl. I'm so tired of

+spurs and sombreros and cattle and dust and distance,

+and there's nothing else here."</p>

+

+<p>"Where I come from it's just the other way&mdash;too

+many petticoats and hat-pins."</p>

+

+<p>The horseman who was no horseman dropped

+Miss Carmichael's hand and went into the house.

+Mary wondered if she ought to have been more

+cordial.</p>

+

+<p>From the back door came Leander, with dishcloths,

+which he began to hang on the line in a dumb,

+driven sort of way.</p>

+<pb n="046" />

+<anchor id="Pg046" />

+

+<p>"Who is she?" asked Mary.</p>

+

+<p>"Her?" he interrogated, jerking his head in the

+direction of the house. "The postmistress, Judith

+Rodney; yes, that's her name." He dropped his

+voice in the manner of one imparting momentous

+things. "She never wears a skirt ridin', any more

+than a man."</p>

+

+<p>Mary felt that she was tempting Leander into the

+paths of gossip, undoubtedly his besetting sin, but

+she could not resist the temptation to linger. He

+had disposed of his last dish-cloth, and he withdrew

+the remaining clothes-pin from his mouth in a way

+that was pathetically feminine.</p>

+

+<p>"She keeps the post-office here, since Mrs. Dax

+lost the job, and boards with us; p'r'aps it's because

+she is my wife's successor in office, or p'a'ps it's jest

+the natural grudge that wimmin seem to harbor

+agin each other, I dunno, but they don't sandwich

+none."</p>

+

+<p>Leander having disposed of his last dish-towel,

+squinted at it through his half-closed eyes, like an

+artist "sighting" a landscape, saw apparently that

+it was in drawing, and next brought his vision to

+bear on the back premises of his own dwelling,

+where he saw there was no wifely figure in evidence.</p>

+

+<p>"Sh-sh-h!" he said, creeping towards Mary, his

+dull face transfigured with the consciousness that he

+had news to tell. "Sh-sh&mdash;her brother's a rustler.

+If 'twan't for her"&mdash;Leander went through the

+grewsome pantomime of tying an imaginary rope

+round his neck and throwing it over the limb of an

+imaginary tree. "They're goin' to get him for shore

+<pb n="047" />

+<anchor id="Pg047" />

+this time, soon as he comes out of jail; but would

+you guess it from her bluff?"</p>

+

+<p>There was no mistaking the fate of a rustler after

+Mr. Dax's grisly demonstration, but of the quality

+of his calling Mary was as ignorant as before.</p>

+

+<p>"And why should they do that?" she inquired,

+with tenderfoot simplicity.</p>

+

+<p>"Stealin' cattle ain't good for the health hereabouts,"

+said Leander, as one who spoke with

+authority. "It's apt to bring on throat trouble."</p>

+

+<p>But Mary did not find Leander's joke amusing.

+She had suddenly remembered the pale, gaunt man

+who had walked into the eating-house the previous

+morning and walked out again, his errand turned

+into farce-comedy by the cowardice of an unworthy

+antagonist. The pale man's grievance had had to

+do with sheep and cattle. His name had been

+Rodney, too. She understood now. He was Judith

+Rodney's brother, and he was in danger of being

+hanged. Mary Carmichael felt first the admiration

+of a girl, then the pity of a woman, for the brave

+young creature who so stoutly carried so unspeakable

+a burden. But she could not speak of

+her new knowledge to Leander.</p>

+

+<p>She glanced towards this childlike person and

+saw from his stealthy manner that he had more to

+impart. He walked towards the kitchen door, saw

+no one, and came back to Mary.</p>

+

+<p>"There ain't a man in this Gawd-forsaken country

+wouldn't lope at the chance to die for her&mdash;but the

+women!" Leander's pantomimic indication of absolute

+feminine antagonism was conclusive.</p>

+<pb n="048" />

+<anchor id="Pg048" />

+

+<p>"The wimmin treats her scabby&mdash;just scabby.

+Don't you go to thinkin' she ain't a good girl on

+that account"; and something like an attitude of

+chivalrous protection straightened the apologetic

+crook in his craven outline.</p>

+

+<p>"She's good, just good, and when a woman's that

+there's no use in sayin' it any more fanciful. As I

+says to my wife, every time she give me a chance,

+'If Judy wasn't a good girl these boys about here

+would just natchrally become extinct shootin' each

+other upon account of her.' But she don't favor

+none enough to cause trouble."</p>

+

+<p>"Are the women jealous of her?"</p>

+

+<p>"It's her independence that riles 'em. They take

+on awful about her ridin' in pants, an' it certainly

+is a heap more modest than ridin' straddle in a

+hitched up caliker skirt, same as some of them do."</p>

+

+<p>"And do all the women out here ride astride?"

+Mary gasped.</p>

+

+<p>"A good many does, when you ain't watchin';

+horses in these parts ain't broke for no such lopsided

+foolishness as side-saddles. But you see she

+does it becomin', and that's where the grudge

+comes in. You can't stir about these foot-hills without

+coming across a woman, like as not, holdin' on

+to a posse of kids, and ridin' clothes-pin fashion in a

+looped-up skirt; when she sees you comin' she'll

+p'r'aps upset a kid or two assoomin' a decorous

+attitood. That's feemi<hi rend="font-style: italic">nine</hi>, and as such is approved

+by the ladies, but"&mdash;and here Leander put his head

+on one side and gave a grotesque impression of outraged

+decorum&mdash;"pants is considered unwomanly."</p>

+<pb n="049" />

+<anchor id="Pg049" />

+

+<p>"Leander! Leander!" came in accusing accents

+from the kitchen.</p>

+

+<p>"Run!" gasped Mrs. Dax's handmaiden; "don't

+let her catch us chinnin'."</p>

+

+<p>Mary Carmichael ran round one side of the house

+as she was bidden, but, like Lot's wife, could not

+resist the temptation of looking back. Leander,

+with incredible rapidity, grabbed two clothes-pins

+off the line, clutched a dish-towel, shook it. "Comin'!

+comin'!" he called, as he went through the farce of

+rehanging it.</p>

+

+<p>The lonesomeness of plain and foot-hill, the utter

+lack of the human element that gives to this country

+its character of penetrating desolation, had been

+changed while Mary Carmichael forgathered with

+Leander by the clothes-line. From the four quarters

+of the compass, men in sombreros, flannel

+shirts, and all manner of strange habiliments came

+galloping over the roads as if their horses were as

+keen on reaching Dax's as their riders. They came

+towards the house at full tilt, their horses stretching

+flat with ears laid back viciously, and Mary, who

+was unused to the tricks of cow-ponies, expected to

+see them ride through the front door, merely by way

+of demonstrating their sense of humor. Not so; the

+little pintos, buckskins, bays, and chestnuts dashed

+to the door and stopped short in a full gallop; as a

+bit of staccato equestrianism it was superb.</p>

+

+<p>And then the wherefore of all this dashing horsemanship,

+this curveting, prancing, galloping revival

+of knightly tourney effects was apparent&mdash;Judith

+Rodney had opened post-office. She had changed

+<pb n="050" />

+<anchor id="Pg050" />

+her riding clothes; or, rather, that portion of them to

+which the ladies took exception was now concealed

+by a long, black skirt. Her wonderful braids of

+black hair had been twisted high on her head. She

+was well worth a trip across the alkali wastes to

+see. The room was packed with men. One unconsciously

+got the impression that a fire, a fight, or

+some crowd-collecting casualty had happened.

+Above the continual clinking of spurs there arose

+every idiom and peculiarity of speech of which these

+United States are capable. There is no Western

+dialect, properly speaking. Men bring their modes

+of expression with them from Maine or Minnesota,

+as the case may be, but their figures of speech, which

+give an essential picturesqueness to their language,

+are almost entirely local&mdash;the cattle and sheep

+industries, prospecting, the Indians, poker, faro,

+the dance-halls, all contribute their printable or unprintable

+embellishment.</p>

+

+<p>Judith managed them all&mdash;cow-punchers, sheep-herders,

+prospectors, freighters&mdash;with an impersonal

+skill that suggested a little solitary exercise in the

+bowling-alley. The ten-pins took their tumbles in

+good part&mdash;no one could congratulate himself on

+escaping the levelling ball&mdash;and where there's a

+universal lack of luck, doubtless also there will be

+found a sort of grim fellowship.</p>

+

+<p>That they were all more or less in love with her

+there could be no doubt. As a matter of fact,

+Judith Rodney did not depend on the scarcity of

+women in the desert for her pre-eminence in the interests

+of this hot-headed group. Her personality&mdash;and

+<pb n="051" />

+<anchor id="Pg051" />

+through no conscious effort of hers&mdash;would have

+been pre-eminent anywhere. As it was, in this

+woman-forsaken wilderness she might have stirred

+up a modern edition of the Trojan war at any

+moment. That she did not, despite the lurking

+suggestion of temptation written all over her,

+brought back the words of Leander: "If Judy

+wasn't a good girl, these boys would just nacherally

+become extinct shooting each other upon account

+of her."</p>

+

+<p>And yet what a woman she was! It struck Miss

+Carmichael, as she watched Judith hold these warring

+elements in the hollow of her hand, that her

+interest might be due to a certain temperamental

+fusion; that there might lie, at the essence of her

+being, a subtle combination of saint and devil. One

+could fancy her leading an army on a crusade or

+provoking a bar-room brawl. The challenging

+quality of her beauty, the vividness of color, the

+suggestion of endurance and radiating health in

+every line, were comparable to the great primeval

+forces about her. She was cast to be the mother

+of men of brawn and muscle, who would make this

+vast, unclaimed wilderness subject to them.</p>

+

+<p>At present neither pole of her character, as it

+had been hastily estimated, was even remotely

+suggested. The atmosphere in the post-office was,

+considering the potential violence of its visitors,

+singularly calm. And Judith, feeding these wild

+border lads on scraps of chaff and banter, and retaining

+their absolute loyalty, was a sight worth

+seeing. She had the alertness of a lion-tamer

+<pb n="052" />

+<anchor id="Pg052" />

+locked in a cage with the lords of the jungle; the

+rashly confident she humbled, the meek she exalted,

+and all with such genuine good-fellowship, such

+an absence of coquetry in the genial game of give

+and take, that one ceased to wonder at even the

+devotion of Leander. And since they were to her,

+on her own confession, but "spurs and sombreros,"

+one wondered at the elaboration of the comedy, the

+endless wire-pulling in the manipulation of these

+most picturesque marionettes&mdash;until one remembered

+the outlaw brother and felt that what she did

+she did for him.</p>

+

+<p>"You right shore there ain't a letter for me,

+Miss Judith. My creditors are pretty faithful 'bout

+bearing me in mind." It was the third time that

+the big, shambling Texan who had been one of the

+company at Mrs. Clark's eating-house had inquired

+for mail, and seemed so embarrassed by his own

+bulk that he moved cautiously, as if he might step

+on a fellow-creature and maim him. Each time he

+had asked for a letter he took his place at the end

+of the waiting-line and patiently bided his time for

+the chance of an extra word with the postmistress.</p>

+

+<p>"They've begun to lose hope, Texas."</p>

+

+<p>She shuffled the letters impartially, as a goddess

+dispensing fate, and barely glanced at the man who

+had ridden a hundred and fifty miles across sand and

+cactus to see her.</p>

+

+<p>"That's the difference between them and me."

+There was a grim finality in his tone.</p>

+

+<p>"What, you're going to take your place at the end

+of that line again! I'll try and find you a circular."</p>

+<pb n="053" />

+<anchor id="Pg053" />

+

+<p>He tried to look at her angrily, but she smiled

+at him with such good-fellowship that he went off

+singing significantly that universal anthem of the

+cow-puncher the West over:</p>

+

+<lg>

+<l rend="margin-left: 2">"Oh, bury me not on the lone prairie,</l>

+<l rend="margin-left: 4">In a narrow grave just six by three,</l>

+<l rend="margin-left: 4">Where the wild coyotes will howl o'er me.</l>

+<l rend="margin-left: 2">Oh, bury me not on the lone prairie."</l>

+</lg>

+

+<p>"Ain't there a love letter for me?" The young

+man who inquired seemed to belong to a different

+race from these bronzed squires of the saddle. He

+suggested over-crowded excursion boats on Sunday

+afternoons in swarming Eastern cities. He buttonholed

+every one and explained his presence in the

+West on the score of his health, as though leaving

+his native asphalt were a thing that demanded

+apology.</p>

+

+<p>"Yes," answered the postmistress, with a real

+motherly note, "here is one from Hugous &amp; Co."</p>

+

+<p>A roar went up at this, and the blushing tenderfoot

+pocketed his third bill for the most theatrical

+style of Mexican sombrero; it had a brass snake

+coiled round the crown for a hat-band, and a cow-puncher

+in good and regular standing would have

+preferred going bareheaded to wearing it.</p>

+

+<p>"She seems to be pressing her suit, son; you

+better name the day," one of the loungers suggested.</p>

+

+<p>"The blamed thing ain't worth twenty-five

+dollars," the young man from the East declared.

+A conspicuous silence followed. It seemed to

+<pb n="054" />

+<anchor id="Pg054" />

+irritate the owner of the hat that no one would

+defend it. "It ain't worth it," he repeated.</p>

+

+<p>"I think you allowed you was out here for your

+health?" the big Texan, who had returned from

+the corral, inquired.</p>

+

+<p>"Betcher life," swaggered the man with the hat,

+"N'York's good enough for me."</p>

+

+<p>"But"&mdash;and the Texan smiled sweetly&mdash;"the

+man who sold you the hat ain't out here for

+his."</p>

+

+<p>Judith hid her head and stamped letters. The

+boys were suspiciously quiet, then some one began

+to chant:</p>

+

+<lg>

+<l rend="margin-left: 2">"The devil examined the desert well,</l>

+<l rend="margin-left: 2">And made up his mind 'twas too dry for hell;</l>

+<l rend="margin-left: 2">He put up the prices his pockets to swell,</l>

+<l rend="margin-left: 2">And called it a&mdash;heal-th resort."</l>

+</lg>

+

+<p>The postmistress waited for the last note of the

+chorus to die away, and read from a package she

+held in her hand&mdash;"'Mrs. Henry Lee, Deer Lodge,

+Wyoming.' Well, Henry, here's a wedding-present,

+I guess. And my congratulations, though you've

+hardly treated us well in never saying a word."</p>

+

+<p>The unfortunate Henry, who hadn't even a sweetheart,

+and who was noted as the shyest man in the

+"Goose Creek Outfit," had to submit to the mock

+congratulations of every man in the room and

+promise to set up the drinks later.</p>

+

+<p>"I never felt we'd keep you long, son; them

+golden curls seldom gets a chance to ripen singly."</p>

+

+<p>"Shoshone squaw, did you say she was, Henry?

+<pb n="055" />

+<anchor id="Pg055" />

+They ain't much for looks, but there's a heep of

+wear to 'em."</p>

+

+<p>"Oh, go on, now; you fellows know I ain't

+married." And the boy handled the package with

+a sort of dumb wonder, as if the superscription

+were indisputable evidence of a wife's existence.</p>

+

+<p>"Open it, Henry; you shore don't harbor sentiments

+of curiosity regarding the post-office dealings

+of your lady."</p>

+

+<p>"Now, old man, this here may be grounds for

+divorce."</p>

+

+<p>"See what the other fellow's sending your wife."</p>

+

+<p>Henry, badgered, jostled, the target of many a

+homely witticism, finally opened the package, which

+proved to be a sample bottle of baby food. At

+sight of it they howled like Apaches, and Henry was

+again forced to receive their congratulations. Judith,

+who had been an interested on-looker without joining

+in the merriment, now detected in the tenor of

+their humor a tendency towards breadth. In an instant

+her manner was official; rapping the table with

+her mailing-stamp, she announced:</p>

+

+<p>"Boys, this post-office closes in ten minutes, if

+you want to buy any stamps."</p>

+

+<p>The silence following this statement on the part

+of the postmistress was instantaneous. Henry took

+his mirth-provoking package and went his way; some

+of the more hilariously inclined followed him. The

+remainder confined themselves absolutely to business,

+scrawling postal-cards or reading their mail.

+The pounce of the official stamp on the letters, as

+<pb n="056" />

+<anchor id="Pg056" />

+the postmistress checked them off for the mail-bag,

+was the only sound in the hot stillness.</p>

+

+<p>A heavily built man, older than those who had

+been keeping the post-office lively, now took advantage

+of the lull to approach Judith. He had a

+twinkling face, all circles and pouches, but it grew

+graver as he spoke to the postmistress. He was

+Major Atkins, formerly a famous cavalry officer, but

+since his retirement a cattle-man whose herds grazed

+to the pan-handle of Texas. As he took his mail,

+talking meantime of politics, of the heat, of the lack

+of water, in the loud voice for which he was famous,

+he managed, with clumsy diplomacy, to interject a

+word or two for her own ear alone.</p>

+

+<p>"Jim's out," he conveyed to her, in a successfully

+muffled tone. "He's out, and they're after him,

+hot. Get him out of the State, Judy&mdash;get him out,

+<hi rend="font-style: italic">quick</hi>. He tried to kill Simpson at Mrs. Clark's, in

+town, yesterday. The little Eastern girl that's here

+will tell you." Then the major was gone before

+Judith could perfectly realize the significance of

+what he had told her.</p>

+

+<p>She threw back her head and the pulse in her

+throat beat. Like a wild forest thing, at the first

+warning sound, she considered: Was it time for

+flight?&mdash;or was the warning but the crackling of a

+twig? Major Atkins was a cattle-man: her brother

+hated all cattle-men. How disinterested had been

+the major's warning! He had always been her

+friend. Mrs. Atkins had been one of the ladies at

+the post who had helped to send her to school to

+the nuns at Santa FÃĐ. She despised herself for

+<pb n="057" />

+<anchor id="Pg057" />

+doubting; yet these were troublous times, and all

+was fair between sheep and cattle-men. Major

+Atkins had spoken of the Eastern girl; then that

+pretty, little, curly-haired creature, whom Judith

+had found standing in the sunshine, had seen Jim&mdash;had

+heard him threaten to kill. Should she ask

+her about it&mdash;consult her? Judith's training was not

+one to impel her to give her confidence to strangers,

+still she had liked the little Eastern girl.</p>

+

+<p>These were the perplexities that beset her, sweeping

+her thoughts hither and thither, as sea-weed is

+swept by the wash of the waves. She strove to collect

+her faculties. How should she rid the house of

+her cavaliers? She had regularly to refuse some half-dozen

+of them each day that she kept post-office.</p>

+

+<p>In a few minutes more the group in the post-office

+began to disperse under the skilful manipulation

+of the postmistress. To some she sold stamps

+with an air of "God speed you," and they were

+soon but dwindling specks on the horizon. To

+others she implied such friendly farewells that there

+was nothing to do but betake themselves to their

+saddles. Others had compromised with the saloon

+opposite, and their roaring mirth came in snatches

+of song and shouts of laughter. She fastened up

+the little pile of letters that had remained uncalled

+for with what seemed a deliberate slowness. Each

+time any one entered the room she looked up&mdash;then

+the hope died hard in her face. Leander came in

+with catlike tread and removed the pigeon-holes

+from the table. The post-office was closed. Family

+life had been resumed at the Daxes'.</p>

+<pb n="058" />

+<anchor id="Pg058" />

+

+<p>Judith left the room and stood in the blinding

+sunlight, basking in it as if she were cold. The

+mercury must have stood close to a hundred, and

+she was hatless. There was no trace of her ebullient

+spirits of the morning. Her head was sunk on her

+breast and she held her hands with locked fingers

+behind her. It was hot, hot as the breaths of a

+thousand belching furnaces. A white, burning glare

+had spread itself from horizon to horizon, and the

+earth wrinkled and cracked beneath it. From

+every corner of this parched wilderness came an

+ominous whirring, like the last wheezing gasp of an

+alarm-clock before striking the hour. This menacing

+orchestration was nothing more or less than millions

+of grasshoppers rasping legs and wings together in

+hoarse appreciation of the heat and glare; but it

+had a sound that boded evil. Again and again she

+turned towards the yellow road as it dipped over

+the hills; but there was never a glimpse of a horseman

+from that direction.</p>

+<pb n="059" />

+<anchor id="Pg059" />

+</div>

+

+<div rend="page-break-before: always">

+<head>V</head>

+<index index="pdf" /><index index="toc" level1="The Trail Of Sentiment" />

+<head type="sub">The Trail Of Sentiment</head>

+

+<p>Within the house the travellers had disposed

+themselves in a repressed and melancholy

+circle that suggested the suspended animation of a

+funeral gathering. The fat lady had turned back

+her skirt to save her travelling dress. The stage

+was late, and there was no good and sufficient reason

+for wearing it out. A similar consideration of

+economy led her to flirt off flies with her second best

+pocket-handkerchief. Mrs. Dax presided over the

+gathering with awful severity. Every one truckled

+to her shamefully, receiving her lightest remarks as

+if they were to be inscribed on tablets of bronze.

+Leander, his eyes bright with excitement at being

+received in the family circle on an equal footing,

+balanced perilously on the edge of his chair, anticipating

+dismissal.</p>

+

+<p>"Chugg's never ben so late as this," said Mrs.

+Dax, rocking herself furiously. She strongly resembled

+one of those mottled chargers of the nursery

+whose flaunting nostrils seem forever on the

+point of sending forth flame. Leander, the fat

+lady, and Miss Carmichael meekly murmured assent

+and condemnation.</p>

+<pb n="060" />

+<anchor id="Pg060" />

+

+<p>"And there ain't a sign of him," said Mrs. Dax,

+returning to the house after straining the landscape

+through her all-observant eye, and not detecting him

+in any of the remote pin-pricks on the horizon, in

+which these plainsfolk invariably decipher a herd

+of antelope, an elk or two, or a horseman.</p>

+

+<p>"Bet he had a woman in the stage and upset it

+with her," said Leander, in the animated manner

+of a poor relation currying favor with a bit of news.</p>

+

+<p>Mrs. Dax regarded him severely for a moment,

+then conspicuously addressed her next remark to

+the ladies. "Bet he had a woman in the stage, the

+old scoundrel!"</p>

+

+<p>"Wonder who she was?" said Leander, with the

+sparkling triumph of a poor relation whose surmise

+had been accepted. But Mrs. Dax had evidently

+decided that Leander had gone far enough.</p>

+

+<p>"Was you expectin' any of your lady friends by

+Chugg's stage that you are so frettin' anxious?" she

+inquired, and the poor relation collapsed miserably.</p>

+

+<p>"You've heard about Chugg's goin' on since

+'Mountain Pink' jilted him?" inquired Mrs. Dax

+of the fat lady, as the only one of the party who

+might have kept abreast with the social chronicles

+of the neighborhood.</p>

+

+<p>"My land, yes," responded the fat lady, proud

+to be regarded as socially cognizant. "M' son says

+he's plumb locoed about it&mdash;didn't want me to travel

+by his stage. But I said he dassent upset a woman

+of my age&mdash;he just nacherally dassent!"</p>

+

+<p>Miss Carmichael, by dint of patient inquiry, finally

+got the story which was popularly supposed to

+<pb n="061" />

+<anchor id="Pg061" />

+account for the misdemeanors of the stage-driver,

+including his present delinquency that was delaying

+them on their journey.</p>

+

+<p>It appeared that Lemuel Chugg, then writhing

+in the coils of perverse romance, was among the

+last of those famous old stage-drivers whose talents

+combined skill at handling the ribbons with the

+diplomacy necessary to treat with a masked envoy

+on the road. His luck in these encounters was

+proverbial, and many were the hair-breadth escapes

+due to Chugg's ready wit and quick aim; and, to

+quote Leander, "while he had been shot as full of

+holes as a salt-shaker, there was a lot of fight in the

+old man yet."</p>

+

+<p>Chugg had had no loves, no hates, no virtues, no

+genial vices after the manner of these frontiersmen.

+Avarice had warmed the cockles of his heart, and the

+fetish he prayed to was an old gray woollen stocking,

+stuffed so full of twenty-dollar gold pieces that it

+presented the bulbous appearance of the "before

+treatment" view of a chiropodist's sign. This

+darling of his old age had been waxing fat since

+Chugg's earliest manhood. It had been his only

+love&mdash;till he met Mountain Pink.</p>

+

+<p>Mountain Pink's husband kept a road-ranch

+somewhere on Chugg's stage-route. She was of a

+buxom type whose red-and-white complexion had

+not yet surrendered to the winds, the biting dust,

+and the alkali water. Furthermore, she could "bring

+about a dried-apple pie" to make a man forget the

+cooking of his mother. Great was the havoc wrought

+by Mountain Pink's pies and complexion, but she

+<pb n="062" />

+<anchor id="Pg062" />

+followed the decorous precedent of CÃĶsar's wife, and,

+like her pastry, remained above suspicion.</p>

+

+<p>Her husband, whose name was Jim Bosky, seemed,

+to the self-impanelled jury that spent its time sitting

+on the case, singularly insensible to his own advantages.

+Not only did he fail to take a proper

+pride in her beauty, but there were dark hints

+abroad that he had never tasted one of her pies.

+When delicately questioned on this point, at that

+stage of liquid refreshment that makes these little

+personalities not impossible, Bosky had grimly

+quoted the dearth of shoes among shoe-makers'

+children.</p>

+

+<p>Whatever were the facts of the case, Mountain

+Pink got the sympathy that might have been expected

+in a section of the country where the ratio

+of the sexes is fifty to one. Chugg, eating her pies

+regularly once a week on his stage-route, said

+nothing, but he presented her with a red plush

+photograph album with oxidized silver clasps, and

+by this first reckless expenditure of money in the

+life of Chugg, Natrona, Johnson, Converse, and Sweetwater

+counties knew that Cupid had at last found

+a vulnerable spot in the tough and weather-tanned

+hide of the old stage-driver.</p>

+

+<p>Nor did Cupid stop here with his pranks. Having

+inoculated the stage-driver with the virus of romance,

+madness began to work in the veins of

+Chugg. He presented Mountain Pink with the

+gray woollen stocking&mdash;not extracting a single coin&mdash;and

+urged her to get a divorce from the clodlike

+man who had never appreciated her and marry him.</p>

+<pb n="063" />

+<anchor id="Pg063" />

+

+<p>Mountain Pink coyly took the stocking so

+generously given for the divorce and subsequent

+trousseau, and Chugg continued to drive his stage

+with an Apollo-like abandon, whistling love-songs

+the while.</p>

+

+<p>Coincident with Mountain Pink's disappearance

+Dakotaward, in the interests of freedom, went also

+one Bob Catlin, a mule-wrangler. Bosky, with conspicuous

+pessimism, hoped for the worst from the

+beginning, and as time went on and nothing was

+heard of either of the wanderers, some of Mountain

+Pink's most loyal adherents confessed it looked

+"romancy." But crusty old Chugg remained true

+to his ideal. "She'll write when she gets good and

+ready," and then concluded, loyally, "Maybe she

+can't write, nohow," and nothing could shake his

+faith.</p>

+

+<p>When Mountain Pink and the mule-wrangler returned

+as bride and groom and set up housekeeping

+on the remainder of Chugg's stocking, and on his

+stage-route, too, so that he had to drive right past

+the honeymoon cottage every time he completed

+the circuit, they lost caste in Carbon County. Chugg

+never spoke of the faithlessness of Mountain Pink.

+His bitterness found vent in tipping over the stage

+when his passengers were confined to members of

+the former Mrs. Bosky's sex, and, as Leander said,

+"the flask in his innerds held more." And these

+were the only traces of tragedy in the life of Lemuel

+Chugg, stage-driver.</p>

+

+<p>Judith had continued her unquiet pacing in the

+blinding glare while the group within doors, somnolent

+<pb n="064" />

+<anchor id="Pg064" />

+from the heat and the incessant shrilling of

+the locusts, droningly discussed the faithlessness of

+Mountain Pink, dozed, and took up the thread of

+the romance. Each time she turned Judith would

+stop and scan the yellow road, shading her eyes

+with her hand, and each time she had turned away

+and resumed her walk. Mary, who gave the postmistress

+no unstinted share of admiration for the

+courage with which she faced her difficulties, and

+who had been seeking an opportunity to signify her

+friendship, and now that she saw the last of the

+gallants depart, inquired of Judith if she might

+join her.</p>

+

+<p>They walked without speaking for several minutes,

+enjoying a sense of comradeship hardly in keeping

+with the brevity of their acquaintance; a freedom

+from restraint spared them the necessity of exchanging

+small-talk, that frequently irritating toll

+exacted as tribute to possible friendship.</p>

+

+<p>The desert lay white and palpitating beneath the

+noonday glare, and from the outermost rim of desolation

+came dancing "dust-devils" whirling and

+gliding through the mazes of their eerie dance. "I

+think sometimes," said Judith, "that they are the

+ghosts of those who have died of thirst in the

+desert."</p>

+

+<p>Mary shuddered imperceptibly. "How do you

+stand it with never a glimpse of the sea?"</p>

+

+<p>"You'll love it, or hate it; the desert is too jealous

+for half measures. As for the sea"&mdash;Judith

+shrugged her fine shoulders&mdash;"from all I've heard

+of it, it must be very wet."</p>

+<pb n="065" />

+<anchor id="Pg065" />

+

+<p>Each felt a reticence about broaching the subject

+uppermost in her thoughts&mdash;Judith from the instinctive

+tendency towards secretiveness that was

+part of the heritage of her Indian blood; Mary because

+the subject so closely concerned this girl for

+whom she felt such genuine admiration.</p>

+

+<p>Judith finally brought up the matter with an

+abruptness that scarce concealed her anxiety.</p>

+

+<p>"You saw my brother yesterday at Mrs. Clark's

+eating-house; will you be good enough to tell me just

+what happened?"</p>

+

+<p>Mary related the incident in detail, Judith cross-examining

+her minutely as to the temper of the

+men at table towards Jim. Did she know if any

+cattle-men were present? Did she hear where her

+brother had gone?</p>

+

+<p>Mary had heard nothing further after he had left

+the eating-house; the only one she had talked to

+had been Mrs. Clark, whose sympathy had been

+entirely with Jim. Judith thanked her, but in

+reality she knew no more now than she had heard

+from Major Atkins.</p>

+

+<p>Judith now stopped in their walk and stood

+facing the road as it rolled over the foot-hills&mdash;a

+skein of yellow silk glimmering in the sun. Then

+Mary saw that the object spinning across it in the

+distance, hardly bigger than a doll's carriage, was

+the long-delayed stage. She spoke to the postmistress,

+but apparently she did not hear&mdash;Judith

+was watching the nearing stage as if it might bring

+some message of life and death. She stood still,

+and the drooping lines of her figure straightened,

+<pb n="066" />

+<anchor id="Pg066" />

+every fibre of her beauty kindled. She was like

+a flame, paling the sunlight.</p>

+

+<p>And presently was heard the uncouth music of

+sixteen iron-shod hoofs beating hard from the earth

+rhythmic notes which presently grew hollow and

+sonorous as they came rattling over the wooden

+bridge that spanned the creek.</p>

+

+<p>"Chugg!" exclaimed Leander, rushing to the door

+in a tumult. There was something crucial in the

+arrival of the delayed stage-driver. His delinquencies

+had deflected the course of the travellers,

+left them stranded in a remote corner of the wilderness;

+but now they should again resume the thread

+of things; Chugg's coming was an event.</p>

+

+<p>"'Tain't Chugg, by God!" said Leander, impelled

+to violent language by the unexpected.</p>

+

+<p>"It's Peter Hamilton!" exclaimed Mrs. Dax.</p>

+

+<p>"Land's sakes, the New-Yorker!" said the fat

+lady. Only Judith said nothing.</p>

+

+<p>Mr. Hamilton held the ribbons of that battered

+prairie-stage as if he had been driving past the

+judges' bench at the Horse Show. Furthermore, he

+wore blue overalls, a flannel shirt, and a sombrero,

+which sartorial inventory, while it highly became

+the slim young giant, added an extra comedy touch

+to his rÃīle of whip. He was as dusty as a miller;

+close-cropped, curly head, features, and clothes were

+covered with a fine alkali powdering; but he carried

+his youth as a banner streaming in the blue. And

+he swung from the stage with the easy flow of

+muscle that is the reward of those who live in the

+saddle and make a fine art of throwing the lariat.</p>

+<pb n="067" />

+<anchor id="Pg067" />

+

+<p>They greeted him heartily, all but Judith, who did

+not trust herself to speak to him before the prying

+eyes of Mrs. Dax, and escaped to the house. Chugg's

+latest excursion into oblivion had resulted in a fall

+from the box. He was not badly hurt, and recuperation

+was largely a matter of "sleeping it off,"

+concluded Peter Hamilton's bulletin of the condition

+of the stage-driver. So the travellers were still

+marooned at Dax's, and the prospect of continuing

+their journey was as vague as ever.</p>

+

+<p>"Last I heard of you," said Mrs. Dax to Hamilton,

+with a sort of stone-age playfulness, "you was

+punching cows over to the Bitter Root."</p>

+

+<p>"That's true, Mrs. Dax"&mdash;he gave her his most

+winning smile&mdash;"but I could not stay away from

+you long."</p>

+

+<p>Leander grimaced and rubbed his hands in an

+ecstasy of delight at finding a man who had the

+temerity to bandy words with Mrs. Dax.</p>

+

+<p>"Hum-m-m-ph!" she whinnied, with equine

+coquetry. "Guess it was rustlers brought you back

+as much as me."</p>

+

+<p>Judith, who had entered the room in time to hear

+Mrs. Dax's last remark, greeted him casually, but

+her eyes, as they met his, were full of questioning

+fear. Had he come from the Bitter Root range to

+hunt down her brother? The thought was intolerable.

+Yet, when he had bade her good-bye

+some three weeks ago, he had told her that he did

+not expect to return much before the fall "round-up."

+She had heard, a day or two before, that he

+was again in the Wind River country, and her morning

+<pb n="068" />

+<anchor id="Pg068" />

+vigil beneath the glare of the desert sun had

+been for him.</p>

+

+<p>Mrs. Dax regarded them with the mercilessness

+of a death-watch; she remembered the time when

+Hamilton's excuses for his frequent presence at the

+post-office had been more voluble than logical. But

+now he no longer came, and Judith, for all her

+deliberate flow of spirits, did not quite convince

+the watchful eyes of Leander's lady&mdash;the postmistress

+was a trifle too cheerful.</p>

+

+<p>"Mrs. Dax," pleaded Peter, boyishly, "I'm

+perishing for a cup of coffee, and I've got to get

+back to my outfit before dark."</p>

+

+<p>"Oh, go on with you," whinnied the gorgon; but

+she left the room to make the coffee.</p>

+

+<p>Judith's eyes sought his. "Why don't you and

+Leander form a coalition for the overthrow of the

+enemy?" His voice had dropped a tone lower than

+in his parley with Mrs. Dax; it might have implied

+special devotion, or it might have implied but the

+passing tribute to a beautiful woman in a country

+where women were few&mdash;the generic admiration

+of all men for all women, ephemerally specialized

+by place and circumstance.</p>

+

+<p>But Judith, harassed at every turn, heart-sick

+with anxiety, had anticipated in Peter's coming, if

+not a solution of her troubles, at least some evidence

+of sustaining sympathy, and was in no mood for

+resuscitating the perennial pleasantries anent

+Leander and his masterful lady.</p>

+

+<p>The shrilling of the locusts emphasized their

+silence. She spoke to him casually of his change of

+<pb n="069" />

+<anchor id="Pg069" />

+plan, but he turned the subject, and Judith let the

+matter drop. She was too simple a woman to

+stoop to oblique measures for the gaining of her

+own ends. If he was here to hunt down her brother,

+if he was here to see the Eastern woman at the

+Wetmore ranch&mdash;well, "life was life," to be taken

+or left. Thus spoke the fatalism that was the

+heritage of her Indian blood.</p>

+

+<p>The thought of Miss Colebrooke at Wetmore's

+reminded her of a letter for Peter that had been

+brought that morning by one of the Wetmore cow-boys.</p>

+

+<p>"I forgot&mdash;there's a letter for you." She went to

+the pigeon-holes on the wall that held the flotsam

+and jetsam of unclaimed mail, and brought him a

+square, blue linen envelope&mdash;distinctly a lady's

+letter.</p>

+

+<p>Peter took it with rather a forced air of magnanimity,

+as if in neglecting to present it to him sooner

+she drew heavily on his reserve of patience. Tearing

+open the envelope, he read it voraciously, read it to

+the exclusion of his surroundings, the world at

+large, and&mdash;Judith. He strode up and down the

+floor two or three times, and called to Leander, who

+was passing:</p>

+

+<p>"Dax, I must have that gray mare of yours right

+away." He went in the direction of the stable,

+without a second glance at the postmistress, and

+presently they saw him galloping off in the opposite

+direction from which he had come. Mrs. Dax came

+in with a tray on which were a pot of coffee and

+sundry substantial delicacies.</p>

+<pb n="070" />

+<anchor id="Pg070" />

+

+<p>"Where's he gone?" she demanded, putting the

+tray down so hard that the coffee slopped.</p>

+

+<p>"I dunno," said Leander. "He said he'd got to

+have the gray mare, saddled her hisself, and rode

+off like hell."</p>

+

+<p>Mrs. Dax looked at them all savagely for the

+explanation that they could not give. In sending

+her out to make coffee she felt that Peter, whom

+she regarded in the light of a weakness, had taken

+advantage of her affections to dupe her in regard

+to his plans.</p>

+

+<p>"Take them things back to the kitchen," she

+commanded Leander.</p>

+

+<p>Mary Carmichael involuntarily glanced at Judith;

+the fall of the leaf was in her cheek.</p>

+

+<p>Peter Hamilton, bowed in his saddle and flogging

+forward inhumanely, bred rife speculation as to

+his destination among the group that watched him

+from the Daxes' front door. Mrs. Dax, who entertained

+so profound a respect for her own omniscience

+that she disdained to arrive at a conclusion

+by a logical process of deduction, was "plumb certain

+that he had gone after 'rustlers!'" Leander, who

+had held no opinions since his marriage except that

+first and all-comprehensive tenet of his creed&mdash;that

+his wife was a person to be loved, honored, and

+obeyed instantly&mdash;agreed with his lady by a process

+of reflex action. The fat lady, who had a commonplace

+for every occasion, didn't "know what we were

+all coming to." Miss Carmichael, who was beginning

+to find her capacity for amazement overstrained,

+alone accepted this last incident with apathy. Mr.

+<pb n="071" />

+<anchor id="Pg071" />

+Hamilton might have gone in swift pursuit of cattle

+thieves or he might be riding the mare to death for

+pure whimsy. Only Judith Rodney, who said nothing,

+felt that he was spurring across the wilderness

+at breakneck speed to see a girl at Wetmore's. But

+her lack of comment caused no ripple of surprise in

+the flow of loose-lipped speculation that served, for

+the time being, to inject a casual interest into the

+talk of these folk, bored to the verge of demoralization

+by long waiting for Chugg.</p>

+

+<p>Judith preferred to confirm her apprehensions regarding

+Hamilton's ride, alone. She knew&mdash;had

+not all her woman's intuitions risen in clamorous

+warning&mdash;and yet she hoped, hoped despairingly,

+even though the dread alternative to the girl at the

+Wetmore ranch threatened lynch law for her brother.

+Her very gait changed as she withdrew from the

+group about the door, covertly gaining her vantage-ground

+inch by inch. The heels of her riding-boots

+made no sound as she stole across the kitchen floor,

+toeing in like an Indian tracking an enemy through

+the forest. The small window at the back of the

+kitchen commanded a view of the road in all its

+sprawling circumlocution. Seen from this prospect,

+it had no more design than the idle scrawlings of

+a child on a bit of paper; but the choice of roads

+to Good and Evil was not fraught with more

+momentous consequences than was each prong of

+that fork towards which Hamilton was galloping.</p>

+

+<p>The right arm swung towards the Wetmore ranch,

+where at certain times during the course of the year

+a hundred cow-punchers reported on the stock that

+<pb n="072" />

+<anchor id="Pg072" />

+grazed in four States. At certain seasons, likewise,

+despite the fact that the ranch was well into the

+foot-hill country, there might be found a New York

+family playing at life primeval with the co-operation

+of porcelain bath-tubs, a French <hi rend="font-style: italic">chef</hi>, and electric

+light.</p>

+

+<p>The left fork of the road had a meaner destiny.

+It dipped straight into desolation, penetrating a naked

+wilderness where bad men skulked till the evil

+they had done was forgotten in deeds that called

+afresh to Heaven for vengeance. It was well away

+on this west fork of the road that they lynched

+Kate Watson&mdash;"Cattle Kate"&mdash;for the crime of loyalty.

+It was she, intrepid and reckless, who threatened

+the horde of masked scoundrels when they came

+to lynch her man for the iniquity of raising a few

+vegetables on a strip of ground that cut into their

+grazing country. And when she, recognizing them,

+masked though they were, threatened them with

+the vengeance of the law, they hanged her with her

+man high as Haman.</p>

+

+<p>Judith watched Hamilton with narrowing eyes.

+And now she was all Indian, the white woman in

+her dead. Only the Sioux watched, and, in the

+patient, Indian style, bided its time. "Cattle

+thieves," "the girl at Wetmore's"&mdash;the words sang

+themselves in her head like an incantation. "Cattle

+thieves" meant her brother, their recognized leader&mdash;her

+brother, who was dearer to her than the heart

+in her breast, the eye in her head, the right hand

+that held together the shambling, uncertain destiny

+of her people. Would he turn to the left, Justice,

+<pb n="073" />

+<anchor id="Pg073" />

+on a pale horse, hunting her brother gallowsward?

+Would he turn towards the right, the impetuous

+lover spurring his steed that he might come swiftly

+to the woman. A pulse in her bosom rose slowly

+until her breath was suspended, then fell again;

+she was still watching, without an outward quiver,

+long after he had turned to the right&mdash;and the

+woman.</p>

+<pb n="074" />

+<anchor id="Pg074" />

+</div>

+

+<div rend="page-break-before: always">

+<head>VI</head>

+<index index="pdf" /><index index="toc" level1="A Daughter Of The Desert" />

+<head type="sub">A Daughter Of The Desert</head>

+

+<p>Judith knew that the name of the girl whose

+letter sent Peter Hamilton vaulting to the saddle

+was Katherine Colebrooke. There had been a deal

+of letter-writing between her and the young cow-puncher

+of late, of which perforce, by a singular

+irony of fate, the postmistress had been the involuntary

+instrument. The correspondence had

+followed a recent hasty journey to New York, undertaken

+somewhat unwillingly by Hamilton in the interest

+of certain affairs connected with the settlement

+of an estate.</p>

+

+<p>The precipitancy of this latest turn of events

+bewildered Judith; but yet a little while&mdash;a matter

+of weeks and days&mdash;and her friendship with Hamilton

+had been of that pleasantly indefinite estate

+situated somewhere on the borderland of romance,

+a kingdom where there is no law but the mutual

+interest of the wayfarers. Judith and Peter had

+been pitifully new at the game of life when the gods

+vouchsafed them the equivocal blessing of propinquity.

+Judith was but lately come from the

+convent at Santa FÃĐ, and Hamilton from the

+<pb n="075" />

+<anchor id="Pg075" />

+university whose honors availed him little in the

+trailing of cattle over the range or in the sweat and

+tumult of the branding-pen. It was a strange

+election of opportunity for a man who had been

+class poet and had rather conspicuously avoided

+athletics during his entire college course. In

+pursuing fortune westward Hamilton did not lack

+for chroniclers who would not have missed a good

+story for the want of an authentic dramatic interpretation

+of his plans. His uncle, said they, who

+had put him through college, was disposed to let

+him sink or swim by his own efforts; or, again, he

+had quarrelled with this same omnipotent uncle

+and walked from his presence with no prospects but

+those within grasp of his own hand. Again, he had

+taken the negative of a fair lady more to heart than

+two-and-twenty is in the habit of taking negatives.

+Peter made no confidences. He went West to punch

+cows for the Wetmore outfit; he was a distant connection

+of the Wetmores through his mother's side

+of the family.</p>

+

+<p>In those days Peter wore his rue&mdash;whether for

+lady fair or for towering prospects stricken down&mdash;with

+a tinge of wan melancholy not unbecoming

+to a gentle aquilinity of profile, softened by the

+grace of adolescence. His instinctive aristocracy

+of manners and taste would have availed him little

+with his new associates had he been a whit less

+manly. But as he shirked no part of the universal

+hardship, they left him his reticence. He even

+came to enjoy a sort of remote popularity as one

+who was conversant with the best&mdash;a nonchalant

+<pb n="076" />

+<anchor id="Pg076" />

+social connoisseur&mdash;yet who realized the stern

+primitive beauties of the range life.</p>

+

+<p>Judith's convent upbringing had conferred on

+her the doubtful advantage of a gentlewoman's

+tastes and bearing, making of her, therefore, an

+alien in her father's house. When Mrs. Atkins,

+who was responsible for her education, realized

+the equivocal good of these things, and saw moreover

+that the girl had grown to be a beauty, she

+offered to adopt her; but Judith, with the pitiful

+heroism of youth that understands little of what it

+is renouncing, thought herself strong enough to hold

+together a family, uncertain of purpose as quicksilver.</p>

+

+<p>In those tragic days of readjustment came Peter

+Hamilton, as strange to the bald conditions of

+frontier life as the girl herself. From the beginning

+there had been between them the barrier of circumstance.

+Hamilton was poor, Judith the mainstay

+of a household whose thriftlessness had become

+a proverb. He came of a family that numbered a

+signer of the Declaration of Independence, a famous

+chief-justice, and the dean of a great university;

+Judith was uncertain of her right to the very name

+she bore. And yet they were young, he a man,

+she a woman&mdash;eternal fountain of interest. A

+precocious sense of the fitness of things was the

+compass that enabled Peter to steer through the

+deep waters in the years that followed. But the

+girl paid the penalty of her great heart; in that

+troublous sea of friendship, she was soon adrift

+without rudder, sail, or compass.</p>

+<pb n="077" />

+<anchor id="Pg077" />

+

+<p>Judith was now eight-and-twenty, and a sculptor

+would have found a hundred statues in her. Long

+of limb, deep-bosomed, youth and health radiated

+from her as sparks fly upward. In sunlight, her

+black hair had the bluish iridescence of a ripe plum.

+The eyes were deep and questioning&mdash;the eyes of

+a young seraph whose wings had not yet brushed

+the far distant heights of paradise. Again, in her

+pagan gladness of living, she might have been a

+Valkyr come down from Valhalla on a shooting-star.

+And yet, in this wilderness that was famishing for

+woman's love and tears and laughter, by a very

+perversity of fate she walked alone.</p>

+

+<p>She was a true daughter of the desert, the child

+of stark, unlovely circumstance. No well-bred romance

+of book and bells and churchly benediction

+had ushered her into being. Her maternal grandfather

+had been the famous Sioux chief, Flying

+Hawk; her grandmother, a white woman, who knew

+no word of her people's tongue, nor yet her name or

+race. The Indians found the white baby sleeping

+by her dead mother after the massacre of an emigrant

+train. They took her with them and she grew up,

+in the Black Hill country, a white-skinned Sioux,

+marrying a chief of the people that had slain her

+people. She accepted her squaw's portion uncomplainingly;

+slaved cheerfully at squaw's work while

+her brave made war on the whites, hunted, and

+smoked. She reared her half-breed children in the

+legends of their father's people, and died, a withered

+crone, cursing the pale-faces who had robbed the

+Sioux of the buffalo and their hunting-ground.</p>

+<pb n="078" />

+<anchor id="Pg078" />

+

+<p>Her daughter, Singing Stream, who knew no word

+of English, but who could do better bead-work than

+any squaw in the tribe, went to live with Warren

+Rodney when he finished his cabin on Elder Creek.

+That was before the gold fever reached the Black

+Hills, and Rodney built the cabin that he might

+fish and hunt and forget the East and why he left

+it. There were reasons why he wanted to forget his

+identity as a white man in his play at being an Indian.

+In the first flare of youth and the joy of

+having come into her woman's kingdom, the half-breed

+squaw was pretty; she was proud, too, of her

+white man, the house he had built her, and the girl

+pappoose with blue eyes. Furthermore, she had

+been taught to serve man meekly, for he was the

+lord of creation.</p>

+

+<p>Rodney talked Sioux to her. He had all but

+forgotten he was a white man. The girl pappoose

+ran about the cabin, brown and bare, but for the

+bead jacket Singing Stream had made for her in the

+pride of her maternity. Rodney called the little

+girl "Judith." Her Indian mother never guessed

+the significance of the strange name that she could

+not say, but made at least ten soft singing syllables

+of, in the Indian way. The little Judith greeted her

+father in strange lispings; Warren Rodney was far

+from unhappy in playing at primitive man. This

+recessional into conditions primeval endured for

+"seven snows," as the Indian tongue hath it. Then

+the squaw began to break, after the manner of

+the women of her father's people. She had begun

+her race with time a decade after Warren

+<pb n="079" />

+<anchor id="Pg079" />

+Rodney, and she had outdistanced him by a decade.</p>

+

+<p>And then the Tumlins came from Tennessee to

+the Black Hills. They came in an ox-cart, and the

+days of their journey were more than two years.

+They had stopped in Ohio, and again in Illinois;

+and, behold! neither was the promised land, the

+land that their excited imaginations had painted

+from the large talk of returning travellers, and that

+was further glorified through their own thriftless

+discontent with conditions at home. They had

+travelled on and on across half a continent in the

+wake of a vanishing sky-line. The vague westward

+impulse was luring them to California, but they

+waited in Dakota that their starved stock might

+fatten, and while they rested themselves from the

+long journey, Warren Rodney made the acquaintance

+of Sally Tumlin, who rallied him on being a

+"squaw man."</p>

+

+<p>Warren Rodney had almost forgotten the sorceries

+of the women of his people; he had lived so long

+with a brown woman, who spread no silken snares.

+Sally's blushes stirred a multitude of dead things&mdash;the

+wiles of pale women, all strength in weakness,

+fragile flowers for tender handling&mdash;the squaw had

+grown as withered as a raisin.</p>

+

+<p>Now, Sally Tumlin had no convictions about life

+but that the world owed her "a home of her own."

+Her mother had forged the bolt of this particular

+maxim at an early date. And Sally saw from

+precocious observation that the business of women

+was home-getting, to which end they must be neat

+<pb n="080" />

+<anchor id="Pg080" />

+and sweet and sparing of speech. After the home

+was forthcoming, then, indeed, might a woman take

+ease in slippers and wrapper, and it is surely a wife's

+privilege to speak her mind. Sally knew that she

+hated travelling westward after the crawling oxen;

+each day the sun pursued them, caught up with

+them, outdistanced them, and at night left them

+stranded in the wilderness, and rose again and

+mocked them on the morrow. Her father and

+oafish brother loved the makeshifts of the wagon

+life, with its chance shots at fleeing antelope, scurrying

+sage-hens, and bounding cotton-tails; a chance

+parley with a stray Indian but added zest to the

+game of chance. But Sally hated it all. The cabin

+on Elder Creek had a tight roof; Warren Rodney

+had money in the bank. He had had uncommon

+luck at trapping. His talk to Sally was largely of

+his prospects.</p>

+

+<p>Sally knew that the world owed her "a home of

+her own"; and why should she let a squaw keep her

+from it? Sally's mother giggled when consulted.

+She plainly regarded the squaw as a rival of her

+daughter. The ethics of the case, as far as Mrs.

+Tumlin was concerned, was merely a question of

+white skin against brown, and which should carry

+the day. Singing Stream knew not one word of

+the talk, much of which occurred in her very

+presence, that threatened to pull her home about

+her ears, but she knew that Sally was taking her

+man from her. The white-skinned woman wore

+white ruffles about her neck and calico dresses that

+were the color of the wild roses that grew among

+<pb n="081" />

+<anchor id="Pg081" />

+the willows at the creek. Sally Tumlin's pink

+calico gowns sowed a crop of nettles in the mind of

+the squaw. It was the rainbow things, she felt,

+that were robbing her of her man. All her barbaric

+craving for glowing colors asserted itself as a means

+towards the one great end of keeping him. Singing

+Stream began to scheme schemes. One day

+Rodney was splitting wood at the Tumlin camp&mdash;though

+why he should split wood where there were

+two women puzzled the squaw. But the ways of

+the pale-faces were beyond her ken. She only

+knew that she must make herself beautiful in the

+eyes of Warren Rodney, like this devil woman, and

+then perhaps the pappoose that she expected with

+the first snowfall would be a man-child; and she

+hoped great things of this happening.</p>

+

+<p>With such primitive reasoning did Singing Stream

+put the horses to the light wagon, and, taking the

+little Judith with her, drove to Deadwood, a matter

+of two hundred miles, to buy the bright calicoes that

+were to make her like a white woman. It never

+occurred to the half-breed woman to make known

+her plans to Warren Rodney. In circumventing

+Sally Tumlin the man became the spoils of war, and

+it is not the Indian way to tell plans on the war-trail.

+So the squaw left her kingdom in the hands

+of the enemy, without a word.</p>

+

+<p>Sally Tumlin and Warren Rodney looked upon

+the disappearance of the squaw in the light of a

+providential solution of the difficulties attending

+their romance. They admitted it was square of

+her to "hit the trail," and they decided to lose no

+<pb n="082" />

+<anchor id="Pg082" />

+time in going to the army post, where a chaplain,

+an Indian missionary, happened to be staying at

+the time, and have a real wedding, with a ring and

+a fee to the parson. The wedding party started

+for the post, old mother Tumlin fluttering about

+the bride as complacently as if the ceremony had

+been the culmination of the most decorous courtship.

+The oafish brother drove the bridal party, making

+crude jests by-the-way, to the frank delight of the

+prospective groom and the giggling protestations

+of the bride. The chaplain at the post was disposed

+to ask few questions. Parsons made queer marriages

+in those tumultuous days, and it was regarded

+as a patent of worthy motives that the pair should

+call in the man of the gospel at all. To the question

+whether or not he had been married before, Rodney

+answered:</p>

+

+<p>"Well, parson, this is the first time I have ever

+stood up for a life sentence." And the ceremony

+proceeded.</p>

+

+<p>Some of the ladies at the post, hearing that there

+was to be a wedding, dropped in and added their

+smiles and flutterings to the rather grim party;

+among them, Mrs. Atkins, who had just come to

+the post as a bride. They even added a trifle or two

+from their own store of pretty things, as presents to

+Sally. And Miss Tumlin left the post Mrs. Warren

+Rodney, with "a home of her own" to go to.</p>

+

+<p>Singing Stream did not hasten in her quest for

+bright fabrics with which to stay the hand of fate.

+To the half-breed woman the journey to town was

+not without a certain revivifying pleasure. The Indian

+<pb n="083" />

+<anchor id="Pg083" />

+in her stirred to the call of the open country.

+The tight roof to the cabin on Elder Creek had not

+the attractions for her that it had for Sally Tumlin.

+She had chafed sometimes at a house with four walls.

+But now the dead and gone braves rose in her as

+she followed the old trail where they had so often

+crept to battle against their old enemies, the Crows,

+before the white man's army had scattered them.

+And as she drove through the foot-hill country, she

+told the solemn-eyed little Judith the story of the

+Sioux, and what a great fighting people they had

+been before Rodney's people drove them from their

+land. Judith was holding a doll dressed exactly

+like herself, in soft buckskin shirt, little trousers, and

+moccasins, all beautifully beaded. In her turn she

+told the story to the doll.</p>

+

+<p>Singing Stream told her daughter of the making

+of the world, as the Sioux believe the story of

+creation; of the "Four who Never Die"&mdash;Sharper,

+or Bladder, Rabbit, Turtle, and Monster; likewise

+of the coming of a mighty flood on which swam the

+Turtle and a water-fowl in whose bill was the earth

+atom, from which presently the world began to

+grow, Turtle supporting the bird on his great

+back, which was hard like rock. The rest of the

+myth, that deals with the rising and setting of the

+sun, Singing Stream could not tell her daughter, as

+the old Sioux chiefs did not think it wise to let their

+women folk know too much about matters of

+theology. Nor did they relate to squaws the sun

+myth, with its account of much cutting-off of heads&mdash;thinking,

+perhaps, with wisdom, that these good

+<pb n="084" />

+<anchor id="Pg084" />

+ladies saw enough of carnage in their every-day life

+without introducing it into their catechism.</p>

+

+<p>But Singing Stream knew the story of "Sharper,"

+or "Bladder," as he is called by some of the

+people, because he is round and his grotesquely fat

+figure resembles a bladder blown to bursting. Bladder's

+province it is to make a fool of himself,

+diving into water after plums he sees reflected

+there from the branches of the trees. He dives

+again and again in his pursuit of folly, even tying

+stones to his wrists and ankles to keep himself

+down while he gathers the reflected fruit. After

+his rescue, which he fights against valiantly, as he

+lies gasping on the bank of the stream, he sees the

+fruit on the branches above his head. It is this

+same Bladder who is one of the <hi rend="font-style: italic">dramatis personÃĶ</hi>

+in the moon myth, and that is told to women as

+safely without the limits of that little learning that

+is a dangerous thing. Bladder met Rabbit hunting;

+and Bladder kept throwing his eye up into the

+tree-tops to look for game. The Rabbit watched

+him enviously, thinking what a saving of effort it

+would be if he could do the same thing. Wherefore

+Bladder promised to instruct him, telling him to

+change eyes after using one four times, but Rabbit

+did not think that the first time counted, as that

+was but a trial. So he lost his eye after throwing

+it up the fifth time. And the eye of the rabbit is

+the moon, and the face seen in the full moon is the

+reflection of the rabbit seen in his own eye as we

+see ourselves reflected in the eye of a friend if we

+look closely. The little girl was wonderfully impressed.

+<pb n="085" />

+<anchor id="Pg085" />

+She put her hand to her own eyes, but they

+were in tight, too tight to throw up to the tree-tops.</p>

+

+<p>Singing Stream also told little Judith that the

+Great Mystery had shown truths, hid to man, to the

+trees, the streams, the hills; and the clouds that

+shaped themselves, drifting hither and yon, were

+the Great Mystery's passing thoughts. But he had

+deprived all these things of speech, as he did not

+trust them fully, and they could only speak to man

+in dreams, or in some passing mood, when they

+could communicate to him the feeling of one of the

+Great Spirits, and warn man of what was about

+to befall him. Judith was not quite four when she

+took this memorable drive with her mother, but the

+impression of these things abided through all her

+years. It was to the measureless spaces of desert

+loneliness that she learned to bring her sorrows in

+the days of her arid youth, and to feel a kinship

+with all its moods and to hear in the voice of its

+silence a never-failing consolation.</p>

+

+<p>And when they had come within a mile of Warren

+Rodney's cabin on Elder Creek, Singing Stream

+halted and prepared for the great event of reinstatement.

+First she made a splendid toilet of purple

+calico torn into strips and tied about the waist to

+simulate the skirts of the devil woman. Over these

+she wore a shirt of buckskin, broidered with beads

+of many colors, and a necklace of elk teeth, wound

+twice about the throat. On her feet she wore new

+moccasins of tanned elk-hide, and these, too, were

+beaded in many colors. Her hair, now braided with

+strips of scarlet flannel, hung below the waist. And

+<pb n="086" />

+<anchor id="Pg086" />

+she walked to Rodney's cabin, not as an outgrown

+mistress, but as the daughter of a chief. The little

+Judith held up her head and clung tight to the doll.

+She knew that something of moment was about to

+happen.</p>

+

+<p>The gala trio, Singing Stream, Judith, and Judith's

+doll, presented themselves at Rodney's house, before

+which the bride was washing clothes, the day being

+fine. Sally, as usual, wore one of the rose-colored

+calicoes with the collar turned well in and the sleeves

+rolled above the elbows. She washed vigorously,

+with a steady splashing of suds. Sally enjoyed this

+home of her own and all the household duties

+appertaining to it. She was singing, and a strand

+of pale-brown hair, crinkly as sea-weed, had blown

+across the rose of her cheek, when she felt rather

+than saw a shadow fall across her path, and, glancing

+up, she saw facing her the woman whom she

+had supplanted, and the solemn-eyed little girl

+holding tight to her doll. Now, neither woman

+knew a word of the other's speech, but Sally was

+proficient in the language of femininity, and she was

+not at a loss to grasp the significance of the purple

+calico, the beaded buckskin shirt, and the necklace

+of elk teeth. The half-breed walked as a chief's

+daughter to the woman at the tub, and Sally grew

+sick and chill despite her white skin and the gold

+ring that made Warren Rodney her man in the face

+of the law. The dark woman held Judith proudly

+by the hand, as a sovereign might carry a sceptre.

+Judith was her staff of office, her emblem of authority

+in the house of Warren Rodney.</p>

+<pb n="087" />

+<anchor id="Pg087" />

+

+<p>Singing Stream held out her hands to Sally

+in a gesture of appeal&mdash;and blundered. Of the

+chief's daughter, walking proudly, Sally was afraid;

+but a supplicating half-breed in strips of purple

+calico, not even hemmed, was a matter for merriment.

+Sally put her hands on her hips, arms

+akimbo, and laughed a dry cackle. The light in

+the brown woman's eyes, as she looked at the white,

+was like prairie-fires rolling forward through darkness.

+There was no need of a common speech between

+them. The whole destiny of woman was in

+the laugh and the look that answered it.</p>

+

+<p>And the man they could have murdered for came

+from the house, an unheroic figure with suspenders

+dangling and a corncob pipe in his mouth, sullen,

+angry, and withal abjectly frightened, as mere man

+inevitably is when he sniffs a woman's battle in the

+air. The bride, at sight of her husband, took to

+hysterics. She wept, she laughed, and down tumbled

+her hair. She felt the situation demanded a scene.

+Rodney, with a marital brevity hardly to be expected

+so soon, commanded Sally to go into the

+house and to "shut up."</p>

+

+<p>Then he faced Singing Stream and said to her in

+her own language: "You must go away from here.

+The pale-faced woman is my wife by the white man's

+law&mdash;ring and Bible. No Indian marriage about

+this."</p>

+

+<p>But the brown woman only pointed to Judith.

+She asked Rodney had she not been a good squaw

+to him.</p>

+

+<p>And Rodney, who at best was but a poltroon,

+<pb n="088" />

+<anchor id="Pg088" />

+could only repeat: "You got to keep away from

+here. It's the white man's law&mdash;one squaw for

+one man."</p>

+

+<p>From within came the sound of Sally's lamentation

+as she called for her father and brother to take

+her from the squaw and contamination. Warren

+Rodney was a man of few words. It had become

+his unpleasant duty to act, and to act quickly. He

+snatched Judith from her mother and took her into

+the house, and he returned with his Winchester,

+which was not loaded, to Singing Stream.</p>

+

+<p>"You got to go," he said, and levelling the

+Winchester, he repeated the command. Singing

+Stream looked at him with the dumb wonder of a

+forest thing. "I was a good squaw to you," she

+said; and did not even curse him. And turning, she

+ran towards the foot-hills, with all the length of purple

+calico trailing.</p>

+

+<p>Now Mrs. Rodney, <hi rend="font-style: italic">nÃĐe</hi> Tumlin, was but human,

+and her cup of happiness as the wife of a "squaw

+man" was not the brimming beaker she had anticipated.

+The expulsion of her predecessor, at such

+a time, to make room for her own home-coming,

+was, it seemed, open to criticism. "The neighborhood"&mdash;it

+included perhaps five families living in a

+radius of as many hundred miles&mdash;felt that the

+Tumlins had established a bad precedent. A "squaw

+man" driving out a brown wife to make room for a

+white is not a heroic figure. It had been done before,

+but it would not hand down well in the traditions of

+the settling of this great country. Trespass of law

+and order, with their swift, red-handed reckoning,

+<pb n="089" />

+<anchor id="Pg089" />

+were but moves of the great game of colonization.

+But to shove out a brown woman for a white was

+a mean move. Few stopped at the Rodneys' ranch,

+though it marked the first break in the journey

+from town to the gold-mining country. Rodney

+had fallen from his estate as a pioneer; his political

+opinions were unsought in the conclaves that sat

+and spat at the stove, when business brought them

+to the joint saloon and post-office. The women dealt

+with the question more openly, scorning feminine

+subtlety at this pass as inadequate ammunition.

+When they met Mrs. Rodney they pulled aside their

+skirts and glared. This outrage against woman it

+was woman's work to settle.</p>

+

+<p>Mrs. Rodney, who had no more moral sense than

+a rabbit, felt that she was the victim of persecution.

+She knew she was a good woman. Hadn't she a

+husband? Had there ever been a word against her

+character? What was the use of making all that

+fuss over a squaw? It was not as if she was a white

+woman. The injustice of it preyed on the former

+Miss Tumlin. She took to the consolations of snuff-dipping

+and fell from her pink-and-white estate.</p>

+

+<p>The Tumlin family did not remain long enough

+in the Black Hill country to witness Sally's failure

+as the wife of a pioneer. The restlessness of the

+"settler," if the paradox be permissible, was in the

+marrow of their bones. The makeshifts of the

+wagon, the adventures of the road, were the only

+home they craved. The spring after Sally's marriage

+they set forth for California, the year following for

+New Mexico, and still sighed for new worlds to visit.

+<pb n="090" />

+<anchor id="Pg090" />

+They were happier now that Sally, the one element

+of discontent, had been removed from their perennial

+journeying by the merciful dispensation of marriage.

+Old Tumlin, his wife, and the son gave themselves

+up more than ever to the day-dreams of the road,

+the freedom of the open country, and the spirit of

+adventure.</p>

+

+<p>Rodney's squaw wife was taken in by some

+neighbors, good folk who were conversant with all

+phases of the romance. They stood by her in her

+hour of trial, and afterwards continued to keep her

+as a servant. Her son Jim grew up with their own

+children. When he was four years of age his

+mother, Singing Stream, died, and Sally persuaded

+her husband to take young Jim into their own

+home, partly as a sop to neighborly criticism, partly

+as a salve to her own conscience. Sally had children

+of her own, and looked at things differently now

+from the time when she fought the squaw for

+Rodney's favor.</p>

+

+<p>Jim's foster-parents were, in truth, glad to part

+with him. From his earliest babyhood he had been

+known as a "limb of Satan." He was an Ishmael

+by every instinct of his being. And Mrs. Warren

+Rodney, <hi rend="font-style: italic">nÃĐe</hi> Tumlin, felt that in dealing with him,

+in her capacity of step-mother, she daily expiated any

+offence that she might have done to his mother.</p>

+

+<p>Sally grew slatternly with increasing maternity.

+She spent her time in a rocking-chair, dipping snuff&mdash;a

+consolation imported from her former home&mdash;and

+lamenting the bad marriage she had made.

+Rodney ascribed his ill-fortune to unjust neighborly

+<pb n="091" />

+<anchor id="Pg091" />

+criticism. He farmed a little, he raised a little

+stock, and he drank a great deal of whiskey. Sally

+hated the Black Hill country. She felt that it

+knew too much about her. The neighborly inquisition

+had fallen like a blight on the family

+fortunes. A vague migratory impulse was on her.

+She wanted to go somewhere and begin all over

+again. By dint of persistent nagging she persuaded

+her husband to move to Wyoming, then in the

+golden age of the cattle industry. Those were days

+when steers, to speak in the cow language, had

+"jumped to seventy-five." The wilderness grew

+light-headed with prosperity. Wonderful are the

+tales still told about those fat years in cattle-land.

+It was in those halcyon days of the Cheyenne Club

+that the members rode from the range, white with

+the dust of the desert, to enjoy greater luxuries than

+those procurable at their clubs in New York.</p>

+

+<p>Nor was it all feasting and merrymaking. A

+heroic band it was that battled with the wilderness,

+riding the range with heat and cold, starvation and

+death, and making small pin-pricks in that empty

+blotch of the United States map that is marked

+"Great Alkali Desert" blossom into settlements.

+When the last word has been said about the pioneers

+of these United States, let the cow-boy be remembered

+in the universal toast, that bronzed son of the

+saddle who lived his little day bravely and merrily,

+and whose real heroism is too often forgotten in the

+glamour of his own picturesqueness.</p>

+

+<p>Judith was ten years old when her father, his

+wife, and their children moved from Dakota&mdash;they

+<pb n="092" />

+<anchor id="Pg092" />

+were not so particular about North and South

+Dakota, in those days&mdash;to take up a claim on

+Sweetwater, Wyoming. Judith gave scant promise

+of the beauty that in later life became at once her

+dower and her misfortune, that which was as likely

+to bring wretchedness as happiness. In Wyoming

+she was destined to find an old friend, Mrs. Atkins,

+who, as the bride of the young lieutenant, had been

+present at the marriage of Sally Tumlin and Warren

+Rodney, and who had always felt a wholly unreasonable

+sense of guilt at witnessing the ceremony

+and contributing a lace handkerchief to the bride.

+Her husband, now Major Atkins, was stationed at

+Fort Washakie, Wyoming. Mrs. Atkins happening

+again on the Rodney family, and her husband having

+increased and multiplied his army pay many

+times over by a successful venture in cattle, the

+scheme of Judith's convent education was put

+through by the major's wife, who had kept her New

+England conscience, the discomforts of frontier posts

+notwithstanding.</p>

+

+<p>So Judith went to the nuns to school, and stayed

+with them till she was eighteen. Mrs. Atkins would

+have adopted her then; but Judith by this time

+knew her family history in all its sordid ramifications,

+and felt that duty called her to her brother, who

+had not improved his unfortunate start in life,

+though his step-mother did not spoil him for the

+staying of the rod.</p>

+<pb n="093" />

+<anchor id="Pg093" />

+</div>

+

+<div rend="page-break-before: always">

+<head>VII</head>

+<index index="pdf" /><index index="toc" level1="Chugg Takes The Ribbons" />

+<head type="sub">Chugg Takes The Ribbons</head>

+

+<p>Chugg, comforted with liquids and stayed with

+a head-plaster, presented himself at the Dax

+ranch just twenty-four hours after he was due.

+His mien combined vagueness with hostility, and

+he harnessed up the stage that Peter Hamilton had

+driven over the day before, when his prospective

+passengers were looking, with a graphic pantomimic

+representation of "take it or leave it." Under the

+circumstances, Miss Carmichael and the fat lady consented

+to be passengers with much the same feeling

+of finality that one might have on embarking for

+the planet Mars in an air-ship.</p>

+

+<p>There was, furthermore, a suggestion of last rites

+in the farewells of the Daxes, each according to their

+respective personalities, that was far from reassuring.</p>

+

+<p>"Here's some bread and meat and a bottle of cold

+coffee, if you live to need it," was Mrs. Dax's grim

+prognostication of accident. Leander, being of an

+emotional nature, could scarce restrain his tears&mdash;the

+advent of the travellers had created a welcome

+variation in the monotony of his dutiful routine&mdash;he

+felt all the agitation of parting with life-long

+<pb n="094" />

+<anchor id="Pg094" />

+friends. Mary Carmichael and Judith promised

+to write&mdash;they had found a great deal to say to each

+other the preceding evening.</p>

+

+<p>Chugg cracked his whip ominously, the travellers

+got inside, not daring to trust themselves to the box.</p>

+

+<p>The journey with the misanthrope was but a

+repetition of that first day's staging&mdash;the sage-brush

+was scarcer, the mountains seemed as far off

+as ever, and the outlook was, if possible, more

+desolate. The entry in Miss Carmichael's diary,

+inscribed in malformed characters as the stage jolted

+over ruts and gullies, reads: "I do not mind telling

+you, in strictest confidence, 'Dere Diary'&mdash;as the

+little boy called you&mdash;that when I so lightly severed

+my connection with civilization, I had no idea to

+what an extent I was going in for the prairie

+primeval. How on earth does a woman who can

+write a letter like Mrs. Yellett stand it? And where

+on the map of North America is Lost Trail?"</p>

+

+<p>"Land sakes!" regretted the fat lady, "but I do

+wish I had a piece of that 'boy's favorite' cake that

+I had for my lunch the day we left town. I just

+ate and ate it 'cause I hadn't another thing to do.

+If I hadn't been so greedy I could offer him a piece,

+just to show him that some women folk have kind

+hearts, and that the whole sect ain't like that

+Pink."</p>

+

+<p>"Boy's favorite," as adequate compensation for

+shattered ideals, a broken heart, and the savings

+of a lifetime, seemed to Mary Carmichael inadequate

+compensation, but she forbore to express her sentiments.</p>

+<pb n="095" />

+<anchor id="Pg095" />

+

+<p>The fat lady had never relaxed her gaze from

+Chugg's back since the stage had started. She

+peered at that broad expanse of flannel shirt through

+the tiny round window, like a careful sailing-master

+sweeping the horizon for possible storm-clouds. At

+every portion of the road presenting a steep decline

+she would prod Chugg in the back with the handle

+of her ample umbrella, and demand that he let

+her out, as she preferred walking. The stage-driver

+at first complied with these requests, but when he

+saw they threatened to become chronic, he would

+send his team galloping down grade at a rate to

+justify her liveliest fears.</p>

+

+<p>"Do you think you are a-picnicking, that you

+crave roominating round these yere solitoodes?"

+And the misanthrope cracked his whip and adjured

+his team with cabalistic imprecations.</p>

+

+<p>"Did you notice if Mrs. Dax giv' him any cold

+coffee, same as she did us?" anxiously inquired the

+fat lady from her lookout.</p>

+

+<p>Mary hadn't noticed.</p>

+

+<p>"He's drinking something out of a brown bottle&mdash;seems

+to relish it a heep more'n he would cold

+coffee," reported the watch. "Hi there! Hi! Mr.

+Chugg!" The stage-driver, thinking it was merely

+a request to be allowed to walk, continued to drive

+with one hand and hold the brown bottle with the

+other. But even his too solid flesh was not proof

+against the continued bombardment of the umbrella

+handle.</p>

+

+<p>"Um-m-m," he grunted savagely, applying a

+watery eye to the round window.</p>

+<pb n="096" />

+<anchor id="Pg096" />

+

+<p>"Nothing," answered the fat lady, quite satisfied

+at having her worst fears confirmed.</p>

+

+<p>Chugg returned to his driving, as one not above

+the weakness of seeing and hearing things.</p>

+

+<p>"'Tain't coffee."</p>

+

+<p>"Could you smell it?" questioned Mary, anxiously.</p>

+

+<p>"You never can tell that way, when they are

+plumb pickled in it, like him."</p>

+

+<p>"Then how did you know it wasn't coffee?"</p>

+

+<p>"His eyes had fresh watered."</p>

+

+<p>Mary collapsed under this expert testimony.

+"What are we going to do about it?"</p>

+

+<p>"Appeal to him as a gentleman," said the fat

+lady, not without dramatic intonation.</p>

+

+<p>"You appeal," counselled Mary; "I saw him look

+at you admiringly when you were walking down

+that steep grade."</p>

+

+<p>"Is that so?" said the fat lady, with a conspicuous

+lack of incredulity; and she put her hand involuntarily

+to her frizzes.</p>

+

+<p>This time she did not trust to the umbrella-handle

+as a medium of communication between the stage-driver

+and herself. Putting her hand through the

+port-hole she grasped Chugg's arm&mdash;the bottle arm&mdash;with

+no uncertain grip.</p>

+

+<p>"Why, Mr. Chugg, this yere place is getting to be

+a regular summer resort; think of two ladies trusting

+themselves to your protection and travelling out

+over this great lonesome desert."</p>

+

+<p>Chugg's mind, still submerged in local Lethe

+waters, grappled in silence with the problem of the

+feminine invasion, and then he muttered to himself

+<pb n="097" />

+<anchor id="Pg097" />

+rather than to the fat lady, "Nowhere's safe

+from 'em; women and house-flies is universally prevailing."</p>

+

+<p>The fat lady dropped his arm as if it had been

+a brand. "He's no gentleman. As for Mountain

+Pink, she was drove to it."</p>

+

+<p>All that day they toiled over sand and sage-brush;

+the sun hung like a molten disk, paling the

+blue of the sky; the grasshoppers kept up their

+shrill chirping&mdash;and the loneliness of that sun-scorched

+waste became a tangible thing.</p>

+

+<p>Chugg sipped and sipped, and sometimes swore

+and sometimes muttered, and as the day wore on

+his driving not only became a challenge to the

+endurance of the horses, but to the laws of gravitation.

+He lashed them up and down grade, he drove

+perilously close to shelving declivities, and sometimes

+he sang, with maudlin mournfulness:</p>

+

+<lg>

+<l rend="margin-left: 2">"'Oh, bury me not on the lone prairie.'</l>

+<l rend="margin-left: 2">The words came low and mournfully</l>

+<l rend="margin-left: 2">From the cold, pale lips of a youth who lay</l>

+<l rend="margin-left: 2">On his dying couch at the close of day."</l>

+</lg>

+

+<p>The fat lady reminded him that he was a gentleman

+and that he was driving ladies; she threatened

+him with her son on Sweetwater, who began, in

+the maternal chronicles, by being six feet in his

+stockings, and who steadily grew, as the scale

+of threats increased, till he reached the altitude of

+six feet four, growing hourly in height and fierceness.</p>

+

+<p>But Chugg gave no heed, and once he sang the

+<pb n="098" />

+<anchor id="Pg098" />

+"Ballad of the Mule-Skinner," with what seemed

+to both terrified passengers an awful warning of

+their overthrow:</p>

+

+<lg>

+<l rend="margin-left: 2">"As I was going down the road,</l>

+<l rend="margin-left: 2">With a tired team and a heavy load,</l>

+<l rend="margin-left: 2">I cracked my whip and the leaders sprung&mdash;</l>

+<l rend="margin-left: 2">The fifth chain broke, and the wheelers hung,</l>

+<l rend="margin-left: 2">The off-horse stepped on the wagon tongue&mdash;"</l>

+</lg>

+

+<p>This harrowing ballad was repeated with accompanying

+Delsarte at intervals during the afternoon,

+but as Mary and the fat lady managed to

+escape without accident, they began to feel that

+they bore charmed lives.</p>

+

+<p>At sundown they came to the road-ranch of

+Johnnie Dax, bearing Leander's compliments as a

+secret despatch. The outward aspect of the place

+was certainly an awful warning to trustful bachelors

+who make acquaintances through the columns of

+<hi rend="font-style: italic">The Heart and Hand</hi>. The house stood solitary in

+that scourge of desolation. The windows and doors

+gaped wide like the unclosed eyes of a dead man on

+a battle-field. Chugg halloed, and an old white

+horse put his head out of the door, shook it upward

+as if in assent, then trotted off.</p>

+

+<p>"That's Jerry, and he's the intelligentest animal

+I ever see," remarked the stage-driver, sobering up

+to Jerry's good qualities, and presently Johnnie

+Dax and the white horse appeared together from

+around the corner of the house.</p>

+

+<p>This Mr. Dax was almost an exact replica of the

+other, even to the apologetic crook in the knees

+<pb n="099" />

+<anchor id="Pg099" />

+and a certain furtive way of glancing over the

+shoulder as if anticipating missiles.</p>

+

+<p>"Pshaw now, ladies! why didn't you let me know

+that you was coming? and I'd have tidied up the

+place and organized a few dried-apple pies."</p>

+

+<p>"Good house-keepers don't wait for company to

+come before they get to their work," rebukefully

+commented the fat lady.</p>

+

+<p>Mr. Dax, recognizing the voice of authority, seized

+a towel and began to beat out flies, chickens, and

+dogs, who left the premises with the ill grace of

+old residents. Two hogs, dormant, guarded either

+side of the door-step and refused so absolutely to

+be disturbed by the flicking of the towel that

+one was tempted to look twice to assure himself

+that they were not the fruits of the sculptor's

+chisel.</p>

+

+<p>"Where's your wife?" sternly demanded the fat

+lady.</p>

+

+<p>"Oh, my Lord! I presume she's dancin' a whole

+lot over to Ervay. She packed her ball-gown in a

+gripsack and lit out of here two days ago, p'inting

+that way. A locomotive couldn't stop her none

+if she got a chance to go cycloning round a dance."</p>

+

+<p>In the mean time, the two hogs having failed to

+grasp the fact that they were <hi rend="font-style: italic">de trop</hi>, continued to

+doze.</p>

+

+<p>"Come, girls, get up," coaxed Johnnie, persuasively.

+"Maude, I don't know when I see you so lazy.

+Run on, honey&mdash;run on with Ethel." For Ethel, the

+piebald hog, finally did as she was bid.</p>

+

+<p>Mary Carmichael could not resist the temptation

+<pb n="100" />

+<anchor id="Pg100" />

+of asking how the hogs happened to have such

+unusual names.</p>

+

+<p>"To tell the truth, I done it to aggravate my wife.

+When I finds myself a discard in the matrimonial

+shuffle, I figgers on a new deal that's going to

+inclood one or two anxieties for my lady partner&mdash;to

+which end&mdash;viz., namely, I calls one hawg Ethel

+and the other hawg Maude, allowing to my wife

+that they're named after lady friends in the East.

+Them lady friends might be the daughters of

+Ananias and Sapphira, for all they ever happened,

+but they answers the purpose of riling her same as

+if they were eating their three squares daily. I have

+hopes, everything else failing, that she may yet quit

+dancing and settle down to the sanctity of the home

+out of pure jealousy of them two proxy hawgs."</p>

+

+<p>"I can just tell you this," interrupted the fat

+lady: "I don't enjoy occupying premises after

+hawgs, no matter how fashionable you name 'em.

+A hawg's a hawg, with manners according, if it's

+named after the President of the United States or

+the King of England."</p>

+

+<p>"That's just what I used to think, marm, of all

+critters before I enjoyed that degree of friendliness

+that I'm now proud to own. Take Jerry now, that

+old white horse&mdash;why, me and him is just like brothers.

+When I have to leave the kid to his lonesome

+infant reflections and go off to chop wood, I just call

+Jerry in, and he assoomes the responsibility of nurse

+like he was going to draw wages for it."</p>

+

+<p>"I reckon there's faults on both sides," said

+the fat lady, impartially. "No natural woman

+<pb n="101" />

+<anchor id="Pg101" />

+would leave her baby to a horse to mind while she

+went off dancing. And no natural man would fill

+his house full of critters, and them with highfalutin

+names. Take my advice, turn 'em out."</p>

+

+<p>Mary did not wait to hear the continuation of the

+fat lady's advice. She went out on the desert to

+have one last look at the west. The sun had taken

+his plunge for the night, leaving his royal raiment of

+crimson and gold strewn above the mountain-tops.</p>

+

+<p>Her sunset reflections were presently interrupted

+by the fat lady, who proposed that they should

+walk till Mr. Dax had tidied up his house, observing,

+with logic, that it did not devolve on them to

+clean the place, since they were paying for supper

+and lodging. They had gone but a little way when

+sudden apprehension caused the fat lady to grasp

+Mary's arm. Miss Carmichael turned, expecting

+mountain-lions, rattlesnakes, or stage-robbers, but

+none of these casualties had come to pass.</p>

+

+<p>"Land sakes! Here we be parading round the

+prairie, and I never found out how that man cooked

+his coffee."</p>

+

+<p>"What difference does it make, if we can drink

+it?"</p>

+

+<p>"The ways of men cooks is a sealed book to you,

+I reckon, or you wouldn't be so unconcerned&mdash;'specially

+in the matter of coffee. All men has got the

+notion that coffee must be b'iled in a bag, and if they

+'ain't got a regular bag real handy, they take what

+they can get. Oh, I've caught 'em," went on the

+fat lady, darkly, "b'iling coffee in improvisations

+that'd turn your stomach."</p>

+<pb n="102" />

+<anchor id="Pg102" />

+

+<p>"Yes, yes," Mary hastily agreed, hoping against

+hope that she wasn't going to be more explicit.</p>

+

+<p>"And they are so cute about it, too; it's next to

+impossible to catch 'em. You ask a man if he b'iles

+his coffee loose or tight, and he'll declare he b'iles it

+loose, knowing well how suspicious and prone to investigate

+is the female mind. But you watch your

+chance and take a look in the coffee-pot, and maybe

+you'll find&mdash;"</p>

+

+<p>"Yes, yes, I've heard&mdash;"</p>

+

+<p>"I've seen&mdash;"</p>

+

+<p>"Let's hurry," implored Mary.</p>

+

+<p>"Have you made your coffee yet?" inquired the

+fat lady.</p>

+

+<p>"Yes, marm," promptly responded Johnnie.</p>

+

+<p>"I hope you b'iled it in a bag&mdash;it clears it beautiful,

+a bag does."</p>

+

+<p>Johnnie shifted uneasily. "No, marm, I b'iles it

+loose. You see, bags ain't always handy."</p>

+

+<p>The fat lady plied her eye as a weapon. No

+Dax could stand up before an accusing feminine eye.

+He quailed, made a grab for the coffee-pot, and

+rushed with it out into the night.</p>

+

+<p>"What did I tell you?" she asked, with an air of

+triumph.</p>

+

+<p>Johnnie returned with the empty coffee-pot. "To

+tell the truth, marm, I made a mistake. I 'ain't

+made the coffee. I plumb forgot it. P'raps you

+could be prevailed on to assist this yere outfit to

+coffee while I organizes a few sody-biscuits."</p>

+

+<p>After supper, when the fat lady was so busy talking

+"goo-goo" language to the baby as to be oblivious

+<pb n="103" />

+<anchor id="Pg103" />

+of everything else, Mary Carmichael took the opportunity

+to ask Johnnie if he knew anything about

+Lost Trail. The name of her destination had come

+to sound unpleasantly ominous in the ears of the

+tired young traveller, and she feared that her inquiry

+did not sound as casual as she tried to have

+it. Nor was Johnnie's candid reply reassuring.</p>

+

+<p>"It's a pizen-mean country, from all I ever heard

+tell. The citizens tharof consists mainly of coyotes

+and mountain-lions, with a few rattlers thrown in

+just to make things neighborly. This yere place"&mdash;waving

+his hand towards the arid wastes which night

+was making more desolate&mdash;"is a summer resort,

+with modern improvements, compared to it."</p>

+

+<p>Mary screwed her courage to a still more desperate

+point, and inquired if Mr. Dax knew a family named

+Yellett living in Lost Trail.</p>

+

+<p>"Never heard of no family living there, excepting

+the bluff at family life maintained by the wild beasts

+before referred to. See here, miss, I ain't makin' no

+play to inquire into your affairs, but you ain't

+thinkin' o' visitin' Lost Trail, be you?"</p>

+

+<p>"Perhaps," said Mary, faintly; and then she, too,

+talked "goo-goo" to the baby.</p>

+<pb n="104" />

+<anchor id="Pg104" />

+</div>

+

+<div rend="page-break-before: always">

+<head>VIII</head>

+<index index="pdf" /><index index="toc" level1="The Rodneys At Home" />

+<head type="sub">The Rodneys At Home</head>

+

+<p>All that long and never-to-be-forgotten night

+the stage lurched through the darkness with

+Mary Carmichael the solitary passenger. The fat

+lady had warned Johnnie Dax that he was on no

+account to replenish Chugg's flask, if he had the

+wherewithal for replenishment on the premises.

+Moreover, she threatened Dax with the fury of her

+son should he fail in this particular; and Johnnie,

+hurt to the quick by the unjust suspicion that he

+could fail so signally in his duty to a lady, not

+only refused to replenish the flask, but threatened

+Chugg with a conditional vengeance in the event

+of accident befalling the stage. It was with a

+partially sobered and much-threatened stage-driver,

+therefore, that Mary continued her journey

+after the supper at Johnnie Dax's, but the

+knowledge of it brought scant reassurance, and

+it is doubtful if the red stage ever harbored any

+one more wakeful than the pale, tired girl who

+watched all the changes from dark to dawn at

+the stage window.</p>

+

+<p>Once or twice she caught a glimpse of distant

+camp-fires burning and knew that some cattle outfit

+<pb n="105" />

+<anchor id="Pg105" />

+was camped there for the night; and once they

+drove so close that she could hear the cow-boys'

+voices, enriched and mellowed by distance, borne

+to them on the cool, evening wind. It gave a sense

+of security to know that these big-hearted, manly

+lads were within call, and she watched the dwindling

+spark of their camp-fires and strained her ears to

+catch the last note of their singing, with something

+of the feeling of severed comradeship. Range cattle,

+startled from sleep by the stage, scrambled to their

+feet and bolted headlong in the blind impulse of

+panic, their horns and the confused massing of their

+bodies showing in sharp silhouette against the

+horizon for a moment, then all would settle into

+quiet again. There was no moon that night, but

+the stars were sown broadcast&mdash;softly yellow stars,

+lighting the darkness with a shaded luster, like

+lamps veiled in pale-yellow gauze. The chill

+electric glitter of the stars, as we know it from

+between the roofs of high houses, this world of

+far-flung distance knows not. There the stars

+are big and still, like the eyes of a contented

+woman.</p>

+

+<p>The hoofs of the horses beat the night away as

+regularly as the ticking of a clock. It grew darker

+as the night wore on, and sometimes a coyote

+would yelp from the fringe of willows that bordered

+a creek in a way that made Mary recall tales of

+banshees. And once, when the first pale streak of

+dawn trembled in the east and the mountains looked

+like jagged rocks heaved against the sky and in

+danger of toppling, the whole dread picture brought

+<pb n="106" />

+<anchor id="Pg106" />

+before her one of Vedder's pictures that hung in

+the shabby old library at home.</p>

+

+<p>They breakfasted somewhere, and Chugg put

+fresh horses to the stage. She knew this from their

+difference of color; the horses that they had left the

+second Dax ranch with had been white, and these

+that now toiled over the sand and desolation were

+apparently brown. She could not be certain that

+they were brown, or that they were toiling over the

+sand and desolation, or that her name was Mary

+Carmichael, or indeed of anything. Four days in

+the train, and what seemed like four centuries in

+the stage, eliminated any certainty as to anything.

+She could only sit huddled into a heap and wait

+for things to become adjusted by time.</p>

+

+<p>Chugg was behaving in a most exemplary manner.

+He drove rigidly as an automaton, and apparently

+he looked no longer on the "lightning" when it was

+bottled. Once or twice he had applied his eye to

+the pane that separated him from his passenger,

+and asked questions relative to her comfort, but

+Mary was too utterly dejected to reply in more than

+monosyllables. As they crept along, the sun-dried

+timbers of the stage creaked and groaned in seeming

+protest at wearing its life away in endless journeyings

+over this desert waste, then settled down into

+one of those maddeningly monotonous reiterations

+to which certain inanimate things are given in

+seasons of nervous tension. This time it was:

+"All the world's&mdash;a stage&mdash;creak&mdash;screech&mdash;all&mdash;the

+world's a stage&mdash;creak&mdash;screech!" over and over

+till Mary found herself fast succumbing to the

+<pb n="107" />

+<anchor id="Pg107" />

+hypnotic effect of the constant repetition, listening

+for it, even, with the tyrannous eagerness of overwrought

+nerves, when the stage-driver broke the

+spell with, "This here stage gets to naggin' me along

+about here. She's hungry for her axle-grease&mdash;that's

+what ails her."</p>

+

+<p>"I suppose," Mary roused herself to say, "you

+have quite a feeling of comradeship for the stage."</p>

+

+<p>"Me and Clara"&mdash;the stage had this name painted

+on the side&mdash;"have been travelling together nigh

+onto four year. And while there's times that I

+would prefer a greater degree of reciprocity, these

+yere silent companions has their advantages. Why,

+compare Clara to them female blizzards&mdash;the two

+Mrs. Daxes&mdash;and you see Clara's good p'ints

+immejit. Yes, miss, the thirst-quenchers are on

+me if either one of the Dax boys wouldn't be glad

+to swap, but I'd have to be a heap more locoed than

+I am now to consent to the transaction."</p>

+

+<p>At sunset the interminable monotony of the

+wilderness was broken by a house of curious architecture,

+the like of which the tired young traveller

+had never seen before, and whose singular candor

+of design made her doubt the evidence of her own

+thoroughly exhausted faculties. The house seemed

+to consist of a series of rooms thrown, or rather

+blown, together by some force of nature rather than

+by formal design of builder or carpenter. The

+original log-cabin of this composite dwelling looked

+better built, more finished, neater of aspect than

+those they had previously stopped at in crossing

+the Desert. Springing from the main building, like

+<pb n="108" />

+<anchor id="Pg108" />

+claws from a crustacean, were a series of rooms

+minus either side walls or flooring. Indeed, they

+might easily have passed for porches of more

+than usually commodious size had it not been for

+the beds, bureaus, chairs, stove with attendant

+pots, kettles, and supper in the course of preparation.

+Seen from any vantage-point in the surrounding

+country, the effect was that of an interior on the

+stage&mdash;the background of some homely drama where

+pioneer life was being realistically depicted. The

+<hi rend="font-style: italic">dramatis persona</hi> who occupied the centre of the

+stage when Mary Carmichael drove up was an

+elderly woman in a rocking-chair. She was dressed

+in a faded pink calico gown, limp and bedraggled,

+whose color brought out the parchment-like hue

+and texture of her skin in merciless contrast. Perhaps

+because she still harbored illusions about the

+perishable quality of her complexion, which gave

+every evidence of having borne the brunt of merciless

+desert suns, snows, blizzards, and the ubiquitous

+alkali dust of all seasons, she wore a pink sun-bonnet,

+though the hour was one past sundown,

+and though she sat beneath her own roof-tree, even

+if lacking the protection of four walls. From the

+corner of her mouth protruded a snuff-brush, so constantly

+in this accustomed place that it had come

+to be regarded by members of her family as part

+and parcel of her attire&mdash;the first thing assumed

+in the morning, the last thing laid aside at night.

+Mary Carmichael had little difficulty in recognizing

+Judith Rodney's step-mother, <hi rend="font-style: italic">nÃĐe</hi> Tumlin&mdash;she who

+had been the heroine of the romance lately recorded.</p>

+<pb n="109" />

+<anchor id="Pg109" />

+

+<p>Mrs. Rodney's interest in the girl alighting from

+the stage was evinced in the palsied motion of the

+chair as it quivered slightly back and forth in place

+of the swinging seesaw with which she was wont to

+wear the hours away. The snuff-brush was brought

+into more fiercely active commission, but she said

+nothing till Mary Carmichael was within a few inches

+of her. Then, shifting the snuff-brush to a position

+more favorable to enunciation, she said: "Howdy?

+Ye be Miz Yellett's gov'ment, ain't ye?" There was

+something threatening in her aspect, as if the office

+of governess to the Yelletts carried some challenging

+quality.</p>

+

+<p>"Government?" repeated Mary, vaguely, her head

+still rumbling with the noise and motion of the

+stage; "I'm afraid I hardly understand."</p>

+

+<p>"Ain't you-uns goin' to teach the Yellett outfit

+ther spellin', writin', and about George Washington,

+an' how the Yankees kem along arter he was in his

+grave an' fit us and broke up the kentry so we had

+ter leave our home in Tennessee an' kem to this

+yere outdacious place, where nobody knows the

+diffunce between aig-bread an' corn-dodger? I war

+a Miss Tumlin from Tennessee."</p>

+

+<p>The rocking-chair now began to recover its accustomed

+momentum. This much-heralded educational

+expert was far from terrifying. Indeed, to

+Mrs. Rodney's hawklike gaze, that devoured every

+visible item of Mary's extremely modest travelling-dress,

+there was nothing so very wonderful about

+"the gov'ment from the East." With a deftness

+compatible only with long practice, Mrs. Rodney

+<pb n="110" />

+<anchor id="Pg110" />

+now put a foot on the round of an adjoining chair

+and shoved it towards Mary Carmichael in hospitable

+pantomime, never once relaxing her continual

+rocking the meantime. Mary took the chair, and

+Mrs. Rodney, after freshening up the snuff-brush

+from a small, tin box in her lap, put spurs to her

+rocking-chair, so to speak, and started off at a brisk

+canter.</p>

+

+<p>"I 'low it's mighty queer you-uns don't recognize

+the job you-uns kem out yere to take, when I call

+it by name." From the sheltering flap of the pink

+sun-bonnet she turned a pair of black eyes full of

+ill-concealed suspicion. "Miz Yellett givin' herself

+as many airs 'bout hirin' a gov'ment 's if she wuz

+goin' to Congress. Queer you don't know whether

+you be one or not!" She withdrew into the sun-bonnet,

+muttering to herself. She could not be

+more than fifty, Mary thought, but her habit of

+muttering and exhibiting her depopulated gums

+while she was in the act of revivifying the snuff-brush

+gave her a cronish aspect.</p>

+

+<p>A babel of voices came from the open-faced room

+on the opposite side of the house corresponding to

+the one in which Mary and Mrs. Rodney were sitting.

+Apparently supper was being prepared by some half-dozen

+young people, each of whom thought he or she

+was being imposed upon by the others. "Hand

+me that knife." "Git it yourself." "I'll tell maw

+how you air wolfing down the potatoes as fast as I

+can fry 'em." "Go on, tattle-tale." This was the

+repartee, mingled with the hiss of frying meat, the

+grinding of coffee, the thumping sound made by

+<pb n="111" />

+<anchor id="Pg111" />

+bread being hastily mixed in a wooden bowl standing

+on a wooden table. The babel grew in volume.

+Dogs added to it by yelping emotionally when the

+smell of the newly fried meat tempted them too

+near the platter and some one with a disengaged

+foot at his disposal would kick them out of doors.

+Personalities were exchanged more freely by members

+of the family, and the meat hissed harder as it

+was newly turned. "Laws-a-massy!" muttered Mrs.

+Rodney; and then, shoving back the sun-bonnet, she

+lifted her voice in a shrill, feminine shriek:</p>

+

+<p>"Eudory! Eu-dory! You-do-ry!"</p>

+

+<p>A Hebe-like creature, blond and pink-cheeked,

+in a blue-checked apron besmeared with grease and

+flour, came sulkily into her mother's presence. Seeing

+Mary Carmichael, she grasped the skirt of the

+greasy apron with the sleight of hand of a prestidigitateur

+and pleated it into a single handful. Her

+manner, too, was no slower of transformation. The

+family sulks were instantly replaced by a company

+bridle, aided and abetted by a company simper.

+"I didn't know the stage was in yet, maw. I

+been talking to Iry."</p>

+

+<p>"This here be Miz Yellett's gov'ment. Maybe

+she'd like to pearten up some before she eats."

+She started the rocking-chair at a gallop, to signify

+to her daughter that she washed her hands of further

+responsibility. Being proficient in the sign language

+of Mrs. Rodney's second self, as indeed was every

+member of the family, Eudora led Mary to a bench

+placed in one of the rooms enjoying the distinction

+of a side wall, and indicated a family toilet service,

+<pb n="112" />

+<anchor id="Pg112" />

+which displayed every indication of having lately

+seen active service. A roll-towel, more frankly significant

+of the multitude of the Rodneys than had

+been the babel of voices, a discouraged fragment

+of comb, a tin basin, a slippery atom of soap, these

+Eudora proffered with an unction worthy of better

+things. "I declare Mist' Chugg have scarce left any

+soap, an' I don't believe thar's 'nother bit in the

+house." Eudora's accent was but faintly reminiscent

+of her mother's strong Smoky Mountain dialect,

+as a crude feature is sometimes softened in the

+second generation. It was not unpleasing on her

+full, rosy mouth. The girl had the seductiveness of

+her half-sister, Judith, without a hint of Judith's

+spiritual quality.</p>

+

+<p>Mary told her not to mind about the soap, and

+went to fetch her hand-bag, which, consistent with

+the democratic spirit of its surroundings, was resting

+against a clump of sage-brush, whither it had

+been lifted by Chugg. Miss Carmichael's individual

+toilet service, which was neither handsome nor

+elaborate, impressed Eudora far more potently in

+ranking Mary as a personage than did her dignity

+of office as "gov'ment."</p>

+

+<p>"I reckon you-uns must have seen Sist' Judy up

+to Miz Dax's. I hope she war lookin' right well."

+There was in the inquiry an unmistakable note of

+pride. The connection was plainly one to be flaunted.

+Judith, with her gentle bearing and her simple,

+convent accomplishments, was plainly the <hi rend="font-style: italic">grande

+dame</hi> of the family. Eudora had now divested herself

+of the greasy, flour-smeared apron, flinging it

+<pb n="113" />

+<anchor id="Pg113" />

+under the wash-bench with a single all-sufficient

+movement, while Mary's look was directed towards

+her dressing-bag. In glancing up to make some

+remark about Judith, Mary was confronted by a

+radiant apparition whose lilac calico skirts looked

+fresh from the iron.</p>

+

+<p>At the side of the house languished a wretched,

+abortive garden, running over with weeds and sage-brush,

+and here a man pottered with the purposeless

+energy of old age, working with an ear cocked in

+the direction of the house, as he turned a spade of

+earth again and again in hopeless, pusillanimous

+industry. But when his strained attention was

+presently rewarded by a shouted summons to supper,

+and he stood erect but for the slouching droop of

+shoulders that was more a matter of temperament

+than of age, one saw a tall man of massive build,

+whose keen glance and slightly grizzled hair belied

+his groping, ineffectual labor. The head, and face

+were finely modelled. Unless nature had fashioned

+them in some vagrant, prankish mood, such

+elegance of line betokened prior generations in

+which gentlemen and scholars had played some part&mdash;the

+vagabond scion of a good family, perhaps. A

+multitude of such had grafted on the pioneer stock

+of the West, under names that carried no significance

+in the places whence they came.</p>

+

+<p>Weakness and self-indulgence there were, and

+those writ large and deep, on the face of Warren

+Rodney; and, in default of an expression of deeper

+significance, the wavering lines of instability produced

+a curiously ambiguous effect of a fine head

+<pb n="114" />

+<anchor id="Pg114" />

+modelled by a 'prentice hand; a lady's copy of the

+Belvidere, attempted in the ardors of the first lessons,

+might approximate it.</p>

+

+<p>A smoking kerosene lamp revealed a supper-table

+of almost institutional proportions. There

+were four sons and two daughters of the Tumlin

+union, strapping lads and lasses all of them, with

+more than a common dower of lusty health and a

+beauty that was something deeper than the perishable

+iridescence of youth. There was Fremont,

+named for the explorer-soldier; there was Orlando,

+named from his mother's vague, idle musings over

+paper-backed literature at certain "unchancy" seasons;

+there was Richards, named from pure policy,

+for a local great man of whom Warren Rodney had

+anticipated a helping hand at the time; there was

+Eudora, whose nominal origin was uncertain, unless

+it bore affiliation to that of Orlando; there was

+Sadie, thus termed to avoid the painful distinctions

+of "old Sally" and "young Sally"; and, lastly,

+like a postscript, came Dan&mdash;with him, fancy, in the

+matter of names, seemed to have failed. Dan was

+now six, a plump little caricature of a man in blue

+overalls, which, as they had descended to him from

+Richards in the nature of an heirloom, reached

+high under his armpits and shortened the function

+of his suspenders to the vanishing point.</p>

+

+<p>Eudora was now sixteen, and the woman-famine

+in all the land had gifted her with a surprising

+precocity. Eudora knew her value and meant to

+make the most of it. Unlike her mother in the old

+Black Hill days, she expected more than a "home

+<pb n="115" />

+<anchor id="Pg115" />

+of her own." To-night four suitors sat at table with

+Eudora, and she might have had forty had she

+desired it. Any one of the four would have cheerfully

+murdered the remaining three had opportunity

+presented itself. Supper was a mockery to them,

+a Barmecide feast. Each watched his rivals&mdash;and

+Eudora. This was a matter of life and death.

+There was no time for food. The girl revelled in

+the situation to the full of her untaught, unthinking,

+primitive nature. She gave the incident a tighter

+twist by languishing at them in turns. She smiled,

+she sighed, she drove them mad by taking crescent

+bites out of a slice of bread and exhibiting the havoc

+of her little, white teeth with a delectably dainty

+gluttony.</p>

+

+<p>Her mother, mumbling her supper with toothless

+impotency, renewed her youth vicariously, and,

+while she quarrelled with her daughter from the

+rising of the sun to the setting of the same, she

+added the last straw to the burden of the distracted

+suitors by announcing what a comfort Eudora was

+to her and how handy she was about the house.</p>

+

+<p>Warren Rodney supported the air of an exile at

+his own table. Beyond a preliminary greeting to

+his daughter's guests, he said nothing. His family,

+in their dealings with him, seemed to accord him the

+exemptions of extreme age. He ate with the enthusiasm

+of a man to whom meals have become the

+main business in life.</p>

+

+<p>"How's your mine up to Bad Water comin'

+along, Iry?" Orlando inquired, not from any hospitable

+interest in Ira's claim, but because he had

+<pb n="116" />

+<anchor id="Pg116" />

+sundry romantic interests in that neighborhood and

+hoped to make use of the young prospector's interest

+in his sister by securing an invitation to return

+with him. Ira regarded the inquiry in the light

+of a special providence. Here was his chance to

+impress Eudora with the splendor of his prospects

+and at the same time smite the claims of his rivals,

+and behold! a brother of his lady had led the way.</p>

+

+<p>Ira cleared his throat. "They tell me she air

+like to yield a million any day." At this Eudora

+gave him the wealth of her eyes, and her mother

+reached across two of the glowering suitors and

+dropped a hot flapjack on his plate.</p>

+

+<p>"Who sez that she air likely to yield a million

+any day?" inquired Ben Swift, openly flouting such

+prophecy. "Yes, who sez it?" inquired Hawks and

+Taylor, joining forces for the overthrow of the common

+enemy.</p>

+

+<p>"'They sez' is easy talkin', shore 'nuff," mumbled

+Mrs. Rodney, as she helped herself to butter with her

+own knife.</p>

+

+<p>"A sharp from the Smithsonian Institute at Washington,

+he said it, and he has taken back speciments

+with him."</p>

+

+<p>"Ye can't keep lackings from freightin' round

+speciments&mdash;naw, sir, ye can't, not till the fool-killer

+has finished his job." Ben Swift charged the

+table with the statement as the prosecution subtly

+appeals to the high grade of intelligence on the

+part of the jury. The point told. Eudora, wavering

+in her donation of hot flapjacks, gave them to

+Ben Swift.</p>

+<pb n="117" />

+<anchor id="Pg117" />

+

+<p>Hawks now leaned across the table with a sinuous,

+beguiling motion, and, extending his long neck towards

+the prospector, with the air of a turkey-gobbler

+about to peck, he crooned, softly: "Ira, it's a heap

+risky puttin' your faith in maverick sharps that

+trail around the country, God-a'mightying it, renaming

+little, old rocks into precious stones, seein'

+gold mines in every gopher-hole they come to.

+They names your backyard and the rocks appertainin'

+thereunto a heap fashionable, and like as

+not some sucker gives him good money to float the

+trash back East."</p>

+

+<p>Mrs. Rodney, whose partisanship in any discussion

+was analogous to the position of a hen

+perching on a fence unable to decide on which

+side to flutter, was visibly impressed by Hawks's

+presentation of the case. Looking towards her

+daughter from under the eaves of her sun-bonnet,

+she "'lowed she had hearn that Bad Water was hard

+on the skin, an' that it warn't much of a place arter

+all. Folks over thar war mostly half-livers."</p>

+

+<p>Ira, now losing all semblance of policy at being

+thus grievously put down by his possible mother-in-law,

+"reckoned that herdin' sheep over to the

+Basin was a heap easier on the skin than livin' in a

+comf'table house over to Bad Water"&mdash;this as a

+fling at Hawks, who herded a small bunch of sheep

+"over in the Basin."</p>

+

+<p>"Ai-yi," openly scoffed the former Miss Tumlin;

+"talk's cheap before&mdash;" She would have considered

+it indelicate to supply the word "marriage,"

+but by breaking off her sentence before she came

+<pb n="118" />

+<anchor id="Pg118" />

+to the pith of it she continued to maintain the proprieties,

+and at the same time conveyed to her

+audience that she was too old and experienced to

+permit any fledgling from her nest to be caught, for

+want of a warning, by such obvious ante-matrimonial

+chaff as fair promises.</p>

+

+<p>"Laws a massy!" she continued, reminiscently,

+working her toothless jaw to free it from an escaped

+splinter from the snuff-brush. "When me an' paw

+war keepin' comp'ny, satin warn't good enough for

+me. He lowed I wuz to have half creation. Sence

+we wuz married he 'ain't never found time, endurin'

+all these years, to build me a bird-house."</p>

+

+<p>The unbuilt bird-house was the Banquo's ghost

+at the Rodney board, Mrs. Rodney hearkening back

+to it in and out of season. If the family made

+merry over a chance windfall of game or fresh

+vegetables, a prospect of possible employment for

+one of the boys, a donation of money from Judith,

+Mrs. Rodney remembered the unbuilt bird-house

+and indulged herself to the full of melancholy. It is

+not improbable that, if she had been asked to name

+the chiefest disappointment of her wretched married

+life, she would have mentioned the bird-house that

+was never built.</p>

+

+<p>At mention of it Warren Rodney murmured broken,

+deprecatory excuses. His dull eyes nervously

+travelled about the table for some one to make

+excuses for him. The family broke into hearty peals

+of laughter; the tragedy of the first generation had

+grown to be the unfailing source of merriment for

+the second.</p>

+<pb n="119" />

+<anchor id="Pg119" />

+

+<p>"Maw," began Orlando, "the reason you don't

+get no bird-house built out hyear is that they ain't

+no birds. We have offered time and time again to

+build you a house fo' buzzuds, they bein' the only

+birds hyearabouts, but you 'low that you ain't

+fav'ble to tamin' 'em."</p>

+

+<p>"I wuz raised in Tennessee, an' we-uns had a house

+for martins made out'n gourds, an' it was pearty."

+The pride with which she repeated this particular

+claim to honor in an alien land never diminished with

+repetition. As she advanced further through the

+dim perspective of years, the little mountain town

+in Tennessee became more and more the centre of

+cultivation and civic importance. The desolate

+cabin that she had left for the interminable journey

+westward was recalled flatteringly through the

+hallowing mists of time. The children, by reason

+of these chronicles, had grown to regard their

+mother as a sort of princess in exile.</p>

+

+<p>"Mrs. Rodney"&mdash;Swift leaned towards her and

+whispered something in her ear. She regarded him

+tentatively, then grinned. At her time of life, why

+should she put faith in the promises of men? "You

+fix it up, an' you get your bird-house," was the

+conclusion of his sentence.</p>

+

+<p>While this discussion had been in progress the

+viands had not been neglected except by such members

+of the company as had been bereft of appetite

+by loftier emotions&mdash;in consequence of which the

+table appeared to have sustained a visitation of

+seventeen-year locusts. Eudora, ever economic in

+the value she placed not only upon herself but her

+<pb n="120" />

+<anchor id="Pg120" />

+environment, proposed to her guests that they should

+wash the dishes, an art in which they were by no

+means deficient, being no exception to the majority

+of range bachelors in their skill in homely pursuits.

+And thus it came to pass that Eudora's suitors,

+swathed in aprons, meekly washed dishes shoulder

+to shoulder, while their souls craved the performance

+of valorous deeds.</p>

+

+<p>As this was the last stage station on the way to

+Lost Trail, Mary Carmichael was perforce obliged

+to content herself till Mrs. Yellett should call or

+send for her. After supper, Chugg, with fresh

+horses to the stage, left Rodney's, apparently for

+some port in that seemingly pathless sea of foot-hills.

+That there should be trails and defined routes

+over this vast, unvaried stretch of space seemed more

+wonderful to Mary than the charted high-roads of

+the Atlantic. The foot-hills seemed to have grown

+during the long journey till they were foot-hills no

+longer; they had come to be the smaller peaks of

+the towering range that had formed the spine of the

+desert. The air, that seemed to have lost some of

+its crystalline quality on the flat stretches of the

+plains, was again sparkling and heady in the clean

+hill country. It stirred the pulses like some rare

+vintage, some subtle distillation of sun-warmed

+fruit that had been mellowing for centuries.</p>

+

+<p>Very lonely seemed the Rodney home among the

+great company of mountains. A brooding desolation

+had settled on it at close of day, and all the

+laughter and light footsteps and gayly ringing

+voices of the young folk could not dispel the feeling

+<pb n="121" />

+<anchor id="Pg121" />

+of being adrift in a tiny shell on the black waters

+of some unknown sea; or thus it seemed to the

+stranger within their gate.</p>

+

+<p>Mrs. Rodney retired within the flap of her sun-bonnet

+after the evening meal, settling herself in

+the rocking-chair as if it were some sort of conveyance.

+Her family, who might have told the

+hour of day or her passing mood by the action of

+the chair, knew by her pacific gait that she would

+lament the unbuilt bird-house no more that night.

+The snuff-brush, newly replenished from the tin

+box, kept perfect time to the motion of the chair.

+With the lady of the house it was one of the brief

+seasons of passing content vouchsafed by an ample

+meal and a good digestion.</p>

+

+<p>Warren Rodney took down a gun from the wall

+and began to clean it. His hands had the fumbling,

+indefinite movements, the obscure action, directed

+by a brain already begun to crumble. His industry

+with the gun was of a part with the impotent

+dawdling in the garden. His eyes would seek for

+the rag or the bottle of oil in a dull, glazed way, and,

+having found them, he would forget the reason of

+his quest. Not once that evening had they rested

+on his wife or any member of his family. He had

+shown no interest in any of the small happenings

+of home, the frank rivalry of Eudora's suitors, the

+bickerings of the girls and boys over the division

+of household labor. The one thing that had momentarily

+aroused his somnolent intelligence was a

+revival of his wife's plaint anent the unbuilt bird-house.

+That, and a certain furtive anxiety during

+<pb n="122" />

+<anchor id="Pg122" />

+supper lest his daughter Eudora should forget to

+keep his plate piled high, were the only signs of a

+participation in the life about him.</p>

+

+<p>From one of the rooms that opened to the world

+like a stage to the audience, Mrs. Rodney kept her

+evening vigil. The last faint amethystine haze on

+the mountains was deepening. They towered about

+the valley where the house lay, with a challenging

+immensity, mocking the pitiful grasp of these

+pygmies on the thousand hills. The snow on the

+taller of the peaks still held the high lights. But

+all the valleys and the spaces between the mountains

+were wrapped in sombre shadows; the crazy house

+invading the great company of mountains, penetrating

+brazenly to the very threshold of their

+silent councils, seemed but a pitiful ant-hill at the

+mercy of some possible giant tread. The ill-adjusted

+family, disputing every inch of ground with

+the wilderness, became invested with a dignity

+quite out of keeping with its achievements. Their

+very weaknesses and vanities, old Sally still clinging

+to her sun-bonnet and her limp rose-colored skirts,

+an eternal requiem for the dead and gone complexion,

+lost the picturesqueness of the pioneer and

+ranked as universal qualities, admissible in the

+austerest setting. Perhaps in some far distant council

+of the Daughters of the Pioneers a prospective

+member of the house of Rodney would unctuously

+announce: "My great-great-grandmother was a

+Miss Tumlin of Tennessee; great-great-grandfather's

+first wife had been a Sioux squaw. Isn't it interesting

+and romantic?"</p>

+<pb n="123" />

+<anchor id="Pg123" />

+

+<p>Eudora now came to her mother with great news.

+Hawks had taken the first opportunity of being

+alone with her to tell her of Jim's release from jail

+and of his abortive encounter with Simpson in the

+eating-house. He had not deferred the telling from

+any feeling of reticence regarding the disclosure of

+family affairs before strangers. News travels in

+the desert by some unknown agency. Twenty-four

+hours after a thing happened it would be safe

+to assume that every cow and sheep outfit in a

+radius of three hundred miles would be discussing

+it over their camp-fires; and this long before there

+was an inch of telegraph wire or a railroad tire in

+the country. Hawks had merely reserved the news

+for Eudora's private ear because he hoped thus to

+gain an advantage over his three rivals.</p>

+

+<p>"Ai-yi!" said old Sally, sharply, and the chair

+came to an abrupt stand-still. "In the name o'

+Heaven, how kem they to let him out?" Mrs.

+Rodney's knowledge of the law was of the vaguest;

+and if incarceration would keep a prisoner out of

+more grievous trouble, she could not understand

+giving him his freedom. To her the case was

+analogous to releasing a child from the duress of a

+corner and turning him loose to play with matches.

+"How kem they to let him out?" she repeated,

+the still rocking-chair conveying the impersonal

+dignity of the pulpit or the justice-seat. "I 'ain't

+hearn tell of so pearty a couple as the jail an' Jim

+in years."</p>

+

+<p>The meaning that she put into her words belied

+their harsh face-value. With Jim in jail, her mind

+<pb n="124" />

+<anchor id="Pg124" />

+was comparatively at rest about him. She knew

+he had been branding other men's cattle since the

+destruction of his sheep, and she knew the fate of

+cattle-thieves, and that Jim would be no exception

+to the rule. With her purely instinctive maternity,

+she had been fond of Jim. He had been one more

+boy to mother. She harbored no ill-feeling towards

+him that he was not her own. Moreover, she

+wanted no gallows-tree intermingled with the annals

+of her family. It suited her convenience at this

+particular time that Jim should stay in jail. That

+he had been given his freedom loosed the phials of

+her condemnation on the incompetents that released

+him.</p>

+

+<p>"I 'low they wuz grudgin' him the mouthful they

+fed to him, that they ack so outdaciously plumb

+locoed as to tu'n a man out to get hisself hanged.

+An' Jim never wuz a hearty eater. He never seemed

+to relish his food, even when he wuz a growin' kid."</p>

+

+<p>A pale, twinkling point of light, faintly glimmering

+in the vast solitudes above the billowing peaks,

+suddenly burst into a dazzling constellation before

+the girl and her mother. "It's a warning!" shivered

+the old woman. "Some'um's bound to happen."

+She began to rock herself slowly. The thing she

+dreaded had already come to pass in her imagination.

+Jim a free man was Jim a dead man. He was so

+dead that already his step-mother was going on with

+a full acceptance of the idea. She reviewed her

+relationship to him. No, she had nothing to blame

+herself for. He had been more troublesome than

+any of her own children and for that reason she had

+<pb n="125" />

+<anchor id="Pg125" />

+been more liberal with the rod. And yet&mdash;the face

+of the squaw rose before her, wraithlike, accusing!

+"Ai-yi!" she said; but this time her favorite expletive

+was hardly more than a sigh.</p>

+

+<p>"I mind Jim when he first kem to us," she said,

+more to herself than to Eudora, who sat at her feet.

+The impending tragedy in the family had robbed

+her of all the joy in her suitors. They sat on a

+bench on the opposite side of the house, divided

+by the very nature of their interests yet companions

+in misery.</p>

+

+<p>"He wuz scarce four, an' yet he had never been

+broke of the habit of sucking his thumb. Ef he'd

+ben my child, I'd a lammed it out'n him before he'd

+a seen two, but seem' he was aged for an infant

+havin' such practices, I tried to shame him out'n it.

+But, Lord a massy, men folks is hard to shame even

+at four. I hissed at him like a gyander every time

+I seen him do it. Now I'd a knowed better&mdash;I'd

+a sewed it up in a pepper rag."</p>

+

+<p>"What's suckin' his thumb as an infant got to do

+with his gettin' lynched now?" demanded Eudora,

+with the scepticism of the second generation.</p>

+

+<p>"Wait till you-uns has children of your own,"

+sniffed her mother, from the assured position of

+maternal experience, "an' see the infant that's

+allowed to suck its thumb has the makin's in him

+of a felon or a unfortunit." She rocked a slow accompaniment

+to her dismal, prophecy.</p>

+

+<p>Eudora's eyes, big with wonder, were fixed on the

+crouching flank of a distant mountain. Her mother

+broke the silence. Not often did they speak thus

+<pb n="126" />

+<anchor id="Pg126" />

+intimately. Old Sally belonged to that class of

+mothers who feel a pride in their reticent dealings

+with their daughters, and who consider the management

+of all affairs of the heart peculiarly the

+province of youth and inexperience.</p>

+

+<p>But to-night she was prompted by a force beyond

+her ken to speak to the girl. "Eudory, in pickin'

+out one of them men," she jerked her thumb towards

+the opposite side of the house, "git one tha's clar

+o' the trick o' stampedin' round other wimming.

+It's bound to kem back to ye, same as counterfeit

+money."</p>

+

+<p>Eudora giggled. She was of an age when the

+fascinations of curiosity as to the unknown male

+animal prompt lavish conjecture. "I 'lowed they

+all stampeded."</p>

+

+<p>"Yes," leered the old woman&mdash;and she grinned

+the whole horrid length of her empty gums&mdash;"the

+most of 'em does. But you must shet your eyes

+to it. The moment they know you swallow it,

+they's wuthless, like horses that has run away

+once."</p>

+

+<p>"Hark!" said Eudora. "Ain't that wheels?"</p>

+

+<p>"It be," answered her mother. "It be that old

+Ma'am Yellett after her gov'ment."</p>

+<pb n="127" />

+<anchor id="Pg127" />

+</div>

+

+<div rend="page-break-before: always">

+<head>IX</head>

+<index index="pdf" /><index index="toc" level1="Mrs. Yellett And Her &quot;Gov'ment&quot;" />

+<head type="sub">Mrs. Yellett And Her "Gov'ment"</head>

+

+<p>The buckboard drew up to the back or open-faced

+entrance of the Rodney house with a

+splendid sweep, terminating in a brilliantly staccato

+halt, as if to convey to the residents the flattering

+implication that their house was reached via a

+gravelled driveway, rather than across lumpish inequalities

+of prairie overgrown with cactus stumps

+and clumps of sage-brush. From the buckboard

+stepped a figure whose agility was compatible with

+her driving.</p>

+

+<p>No sketchy outline can do justice to Mrs. Yellett

+or her costume. Like the bee, the ant, and other

+wonders of the economy of nature, she was not to

+be disposed of with a glance. And yet there was

+no attempt at subtlety on her part; on the contrary,

+no one could have an appearance of greater candor

+than the lady whose children Mary Carmichael had

+come West to teach. Her costume was a thing apart,

+suggesting neither sex, epoch, nor personal vanity,

+but what it lacked of these more usual sartorial

+characteristics, it more than made up in a passionate

+individualism; an excessively short skirt, so innocent

+of "fit" or "hang" in its wavering, indeterminate

+<pb n="128" />

+<anchor id="Pg128" />

+outline as to suggest the possible workmanship

+of teeth rather than of scissors; and riding-boots

+coming well to the knee, displaying a well-shaped,

+ample foot, perched aloft on the usual high heel

+that cow-punchers affect as the expression of their

+chiefest vanity. But Mrs. Yellett was not wholly

+mannish in her tastes, and to offset the boots she

+wore a bodice of the type that a generation ago used

+to be known as a "basque." It fitted her ample

+form as a cover fits a pin-cushion, the row of jet

+buttons down the front looking as if a deep breath

+might cause them to shoot into space at any moment

+with the force of Mauser bullets.</p>

+

+<p>Such a garb was not, after all, incongruous with

+this original lady's weather-beaten face. Her skin

+was tanned to a fine russet, showing tiny, radiating

+lines about the eyes when they twinkled with

+laughter, which was often. No individual feature

+was especially striking, but the general impression

+of her countenance was of animation and activity,

+mingled with geniality and with native shrewdness.</p>

+

+<p>"Howdy, Miz Yellett," called out old Sally,

+hitching her rocker forward, in an excitement she

+could ill conceal. "You-uns' gov'ment come, an'

+she ain't much bigger'n a lettle green gourd. Don't

+seem to have drawed all the growth comin' to her

+yit."</p>

+

+<p>"In roundin' up the p'ints of my gov'ment, Mis'

+Rodney, you don't want to forget that green gourds

+and green grapes is mighty apt to belong to the

+sour fambly, when they hangs beyant your reach."</p>

+<pb n="129" />

+<anchor id="Pg129" />

+

+<p>"Ai-yi!" grimaced old Sally. "It's tol'able far

+to send East for green fruit. We can take our own

+pep'mint."</p>

+

+<p>The prospective advent of a governess in the

+Yellett family, moreover, one from that mysterious

+centre of culture, the East, had not only rent the

+neighborhood with bitter factions, but had submitted

+the Yelletts to the reproach of ostentation.

+In those days there were no schools in that portion

+of the Wind River country where the Yelletts

+grazed their flocks and herds. Parents anxious to

+obtain "educational advantages"&mdash;that was the

+term, irrespective of the age of the student or the

+school he attended&mdash;sent them, often, with parental

+blindness as to the equivocal nature of the blessing

+thus conferred, to visit friends in the neighboring

+towns while they "got their education." Or they

+went uneducated, or they picked up such crumbs

+of knowledge as fell from the scant parental board.

+But never, up to the present moment, had any one

+flown into the face of neighborly precedent except

+sturdy Sarah Yellett.</p>

+

+<p>Old Sally, in her eagerness to convey that she was

+in no degree impressed with the pedagogical importation,

+like many another belligerent lost the

+first round of the battle through an excess of

+personal feeling. But though down, Sally was by

+no means out, and after a brief session with the

+snuff-brush she returned to the field prepared to

+maintain that the Yellett children, for all their

+pampering in the matter of having a governess

+imported for their benefit, were no better off than

+<pb n="130" />

+<anchor id="Pg130" />

+her own brood, who had taken the learning the gods

+provided.</p>

+

+<p>"Too bad, Miz Yellett, that you-uns had to hire

+that gov'ment without lookin' over her p'ints. I've

+ben takin' her in durin' supper, and she'll never be

+able to thrash 'em past Clem. She mought be able

+to thrash Clem if she got plumb mad, these yere

+slim wimmin is tarrible wiry 'n' active at such times,

+but she'll never be able to thrash beyant her."

+And having injected the vitriolic drop in her neighbor's

+cup of happiness, Old Sally struck a gait on

+her chair which was the equivalent of a gallop.</p>

+

+<p>But Mrs. Yellett was not the sort of antagonist to

+be left gaping on the road, awed to silence by the

+action of a rocking-chair, no matter how brilliant.</p>

+

+<p>"I reckon I can thrash my own children when it's

+needed, without gettin' in help from the East, or

+hereabouts either, for that matter. If other folks

+would only take out their public-spirited reformin'

+tendencies on their own famblies, there'd be a heap

+less lynchin' likely to happen round the country in

+the course of the next ten years."</p>

+

+<p>Old Sally let the home-thrust pass. "Who ever

+hearn tell of a good teacher that wasn't a fine

+thrasher in the bargain?" She swung the chair

+about with a pivotal motion, as if she were addressing

+an assemblage instead of a single listener, and

+then, bethinking herself of a clinching illustration,

+she called aloud to her daughter to bear witness.

+"Eudory! Eu-do-ry! You-do-ry!"</p>

+

+<p>"Ye-'s ma'am," drawled the daughter, coming

+most unwillingly from the open-faced room opposite,

+<pb n="131" />

+<anchor id="Pg131" />

+where she had been inciting all four of the suitors to

+battle.</p>

+

+<p>"What was it they called that teacher down to

+Caspar that larruped the hide off'n the boys?"</p>

+

+<p>"A fine dis-a-<hi rend="font-style: italic">ply</hi>-narian, maw."</p>

+

+<p>"Yes, that's it&mdash;a dis-a-<hi rend="font-style: italic">ply</hi>-narian. What kin a

+lettle green gourd like her know 'bout dis-apply-in?"</p>

+

+<p>"Your remarks shore remind me of a sayin' that

+'the discomfort of havin' to swallow other folks' dust

+causes a heap of anxiety over their reckless driving.'"</p>

+

+<p>Mrs. Yellett flicked her riding-boot with her whip.

+Her voice dropped a couple of tones, her accent

+became one of honeyed sweetness.</p>

+

+<p>"Your consumin' anxiety regardin' my gov'ment

+and my children shore reminds me of a narrative

+appertainin' to two dawgs. Them dawgs was neighbors,

+livin' in adj'inin' yards separated by a fence,

+and one day one of them got a good meaty bone and

+settled hisself down to the enj'yment thereof. And

+his intimate friend and neighbor on the other side

+of the fence, who had no bone to engage his faculties,

+he began to fret hisself 'bout the business of his

+friend. S'pose he was to choke hisself over that

+bone. S'pose the meat disagreed with him. And

+he begins to bark warnin's, but the dawg with

+the bone he keeps right on. But the other dawg

+he dashes hisself again the fence and he scratches

+with his claws. He whines pitiful, he's that anxious

+about his friend. But the dawg with the bone he

+went right on till he gnawed it down to the last

+morsel, and, goin' to the hole in the fence whar his

+<pb n="132" />

+<anchor id="Pg132" />

+friend had kep' that anxious vigil, he says: 'Friend,

+the only thing that consoled me while having to

+endure the anguish of eatin' that bone was the

+thought of your watchful sympathy!' Which bein'

+the case, I'd thank you to tell me whar I can find

+my gov'ment."</p>

+

+<p>"Ai-yi!" said old Sally. "I ain't seein' no bone

+this deal. Just a lettle green gourd 's all I see with

+my strongest specs."</p>

+

+<p>Mary Carmichael, in one of the inner rooms, was

+writing a home letter, which was chiefly remarkable

+for what it failed to relate. It gave long accounts

+of the scenery, it waxed didactic over the future of

+the country; but the adventures of the trip, with her

+incidental acquaintance with the Daxes and Chugg,

+were not recorded. Eudora announced the arrival

+of Mrs. Yellett, and Mary, at the news, dropped the

+contents of her portfolio and started up with much

+the feeling a marooned sailor might have on hearing

+a sail has been sighted. At this particular stage of

+her career Miss Carmichael had not developed the

+philosophy that later in life was destined to become

+her most valuable asset. Her sense of humor no

+longer responded to the vagaries of pioneer life. The

+comedy element was coming a little too thick and

+fast. She was getting a bit heart-sick for a glimpse

+of her own kind, a word with some one who spoke

+her language. And here, at last, was the woman

+who had written such a charming letter, who had

+so graciously intimated that there was room for her

+at the hearth-stone. Mary was, indeed, eager to

+make the acquaintance of Mrs. Yellett.</p>

+<pb n="133" />

+<anchor id="Pg133" />

+

+<p>To the end of her life she never forgot that first

+meeting&mdash;the perfect confidence with which she

+followed Eudora to the open room, the ensuing blank

+amazement, the utter inability to reconcile the Mrs.

+Yellett of the letter with the Mrs. Yellett of fact.

+The lamp on the table, burning feebly, seemed to

+burst into a thousand shooting-stars as the girl

+struggled with her tears. Home was so far, and

+Mrs. Yellett was so different from what she had

+expected! And yet, as she felt her fingers crush

+in the grip of that hard but not unkindly hand,

+there was in the woman's rugged personality a

+sustaining quality; and, thinking again of Archie's

+prospects, Mary was not altogether sorry that she

+had come.</p>

+

+<p>"You be a right smart young maverick not to get

+lost none on this long trail, and no one to p'int you

+right if you strayed," commented Mary's patroness,

+affably. "But we won't roominate here no longer

+than we can help. It's too hard on old Ma'am

+Rodney. She's just 'bout the color of withered

+cabbage now, 'long of me havin' you."</p>

+

+<p>While she talked, Mrs. Yellett picked up Mary's

+trunk and bags and stowed them in the back of the

+buckboard with the ease with which another woman

+might handle pasteboard boxes. One or two

+of the male Rodneys offered to help, but she waved

+them aside and lashed the luggage to the buckboard,

+handling the ropes with the skill of an old

+sailor. The entire Rodney family and the suitors

+of Eudora assembled to witness the departure. "It's

+a heap friendly of you to fret so," was the parting

+<pb n="134" />

+<anchor id="Pg134" />

+stab of Sarah Yellett to Sally Rodney; and she swung

+the backboard about, cleared the cactus stumps in the

+Rodney door-yard, and gained the mountain-road.</p>

+

+<p>"Ai-yi!" said old Sally. "What's this country

+comin' to?"</p>

+

+<p>"A few more women, thank God!" remarked Ira.

+Eudora had just snubbed him, and he put a wealth

+of meaning into his look after the vanishing buckboard.</p>

+

+<p>The night was magnificent. From horizon to

+horizon the sky was sown with quivering points of

+light. Each straggling clump of sage-brush, rocky

+ledge, and bowlder borrowed a beauty not its own

+from the yellow radiance of the stars.</p>

+

+<p>They had gone a good two miles before Mary's

+patroness broke the silence with, "Nothing plumb

+stampedes my temper like that Rodney outfit&mdash;old

+Sally buckin' an' pitchin' in her rockin'-chair same

+as if she was breakin' a bronco, an' that Eudory

+always corallin', deceivin', and jiltin' one outfit of

+men after another. If she was a daughter of mine,

+I'd medjure her length across my knee, full growed

+and courted though she is. The only one of the outfit

+that's wuth while is Judith, an' she ain't old

+woman Rodney's girl, neither. You hyeard that

+already, did you? Well, this yere country may be

+lackin' in population, but it's handy as a sewin'-circle

+in distributin' news."</p>

+

+<p>Mary mentioned Leander. "Yes," answered Mrs.

+Yellett, reflectively, "Leander's mouth do run about

+eight and a half octaves. Sometimes I don't blame

+his wife for bangin' down the lid."</p>

+<pb n="135" />

+<anchor id="Pg135" />

+

+<p>They talked of Jim Rodney's troubles, and the

+growing hatred between sheep and cattle men,

+because of range rights.</p>

+

+<p>"Now that pore Jim had a heap of good citizen

+in him, before that pestiferous cattle outfit druv'

+his sheep over the cliff. Relations 'twixt sheep and

+cattle men in this yere country is strained beyant

+the goin'-back place, I can tell you. My pistol-eye

+'ain't had a wink of sleep for nigh on eighteen months,

+an' is broke to wakefulness same as a teethin' babe.</p>

+

+<p>"Jim was wild as a coyote 'fore he marries that

+girl. She come all the way from Topeka, Kansas,

+thinking she was goin' to find a respectable home,

+and when she come out hyear and found the place

+was a dance-hall, she cried all the time. She didn't

+add none to the hilarity of the place. An' one day

+Jim he strolled in, an' seem' the girl a-cryin' like

+a freshet and wishin' she was dead, he inquired the

+cause. She told him how that old harpy wrote her,

+an', bein' an orphant, she come out thinkin' she was

+goin' to a respectable place as waitress, an' Jim he

+'lowed it was a case for the law. He was a little shy

+of twenty at the time, just a young cockerel 'bout

+br'ilin' size. Some of the old hangers-on 'bout the

+place they see a heap of fun in Jim's takin' on 'bout

+the girl, he bein' that young that he had scarce

+growed a pair of spurs yet. An' one of 'em says to

+him,' Sonny, if you're afeerd that this yere corral is

+onjurious to the young lady's morals, we'll call in

+the gospel sharp, if you'll stand for the brand.' Now

+Jim hadn't a cent, nor no callin', nor a prospect to

+his back, but he struts up to the man that was doin'

+<pb n="136" />

+<anchor id="Pg136" />

+the talkin', game as a bantam, an' he says, 'The

+lady ain't rakin' in anythin' but a lettle white chip,

+in takin' me, but if she's willin', here's my hand.'</p>

+

+<p>"At which that pore young thing cried harder

+than ever. Well, Jim he up an' marries the girl

+an' it turns out fine. He gets a job herdin' sheep on

+shares, an' she stays with the Rodney outfit till he

+saves enough to build a cabin. Things is goin' with

+Jim like a prairie afire. In a few years he acquires

+a herd of his own, a fine herd, not a scabby sheep

+in the bunch. Alida she makes him the best kind

+of a wife, them kids is the pride of his life, and then,

+them cursed cattle-men do for him. Of course, he

+takes to rustlin'; I'd do more'n rustle if they'd touch

+mine."</p>

+

+<p>The pair of broncos that Mrs. Yellett was driving

+humped their backs like cats as they climbed the

+steep mountain-road. With her, driving was an

+exact science. It was a treat to see her handle the

+ribbons. Mary asked some trifling question about

+the children and it elicited the information that

+one of the girls was named Cacta. "Yes," she said,

+"I like new names for children, not old ones that is

+all frazzled out and folks has suffered an' died to.

+It seems to start 'em fair, like playin' cards with a

+new deck. Cacta's my oldest daughter, and I named

+her after the flowers that blooms all over the desert

+spite of everything, heat, cold, an' rain an' alkali

+dust&mdash;the cactus blooms right through it all. Even

+its own thorns don't seem to fret it none. I called

+her plain Cactus till she was three, and along came

+a sharp studyin' the flowers an' weeds out here, and

+<pb n="137" />

+<anchor id="Pg137" />

+he 'lowed that Cactus was a boy's name an' Cacta

+was for girls&mdash;called it a <hi rend="font-style: italic">fee</hi>minin tarnation, or

+somethin' like that, so we changed it. My second

+daughter 'ain't got quite so much of a name. She's

+called Clematis. That holds its own out here pretty

+well, 'long by the willows on the creek. Paw 'lowed

+he was terrible afraid that I'd name the youngest

+girl Sage-brush, so he spoke to call her Lessie Viola,

+an' I giv' in. The boys is all plain named, Ben,

+Jack, and Ned. Paw wouldn't hear of a fancy brand

+bein' run onto 'em."</p>

+

+<p>The temperature fell perceptibly as they climbed

+the heights, and the air had the heady quality of

+wine. It was awesome, this entering into the great

+company of the mountains. Presently Mary caught

+the glimmer of something white against the dark

+background of the hills. It gleamed like a snow-bank,

+though they were far below the snow-line on

+the mountain-side they were climbing.</p>

+

+<p>"Well, here be camp," announced Mrs. Yellett.

+What Mary had taken for a bank of snow was a

+huge, canvas-covered wagon. Several dogs ran

+down to greet the buckboard, barking a welcome.

+In the background was a shadowy group, huge of

+stature, making its way down the mountain-path.

+"And here's all the children come to meet teacher."

+Mrs. Yellett's tone was tenderly maternal, as if it

+was something of a feat for the children to walk down

+the mountain-path to meet their teacher. But

+Mary, straining her eyes to catch a glimpse of her

+little pupils, could discover nothing but a group of

+persons that seemed to be the sole survivors of some

+<pb n="138" />

+<anchor id="Pg138" />

+titanic race. Not one among them but seemed to

+have reached the high-water mark of six feet. Was

+it an optical illusion, a hallucination born of the

+wonderful starlight? Or were they as huge as they

+seemed? The young men looked giants, the girls

+as if they had wandered out of the first chapters of

+Genesis. Their mother introduced them. They all

+had huge, warm, perspiring hands, with grips like

+bears. Mary looked about for a house into which

+she could escape to gather her scattered faculties,

+but the starlight, yellow and luminous, revealed

+none. There was the huge covered wagon that she

+had taken for a snow-bank, there was a small tent,

+there were two light wagons, there were dogs innumerable,

+but there was no sign of a house.</p>

+

+<p>"What do you think of it?" inquired Mrs. Yellett,

+smilingly, anticipating a favorable answer.</p>

+

+<p>"It's almost too beautiful to leave." Mary innocently

+supposed that Mrs. Yellett referred to the

+starlit landscape. "But I'm so tired, Mrs. Yellett,

+and so glad to get to a real home at last, that I'm

+going to ask if you will not show me the way to

+the house so that I may go to bed right away."</p>

+

+<p>This apparently reasonable request was greeted

+by a fine chorus of titanic laughter from Mary's

+pupils. Mrs. Yellett waved her hand over the surrounding

+landscape in comprehensive gesture.</p>

+

+<p>"Ain't all this large enough for you?" she asked,

+gayly.</p>

+

+<p>"You mean the mountains? They're wonderful.

+But&mdash;I really think I'd like to go in the house."</p>

+

+<p>"I shore hope you ain't figgerin' on goin' into no

+<pb n="139" />

+<anchor id="Pg139" />

+house, 'cause there ain't no house to go into." She

+laughed merrily, as if the idea of such an effete

+luxury as a house were amusing. "This yere family

+'ain't ever had a house&mdash;it camps."</p>

+

+<p>Mary gasped. The real meaning of words no

+longer had the power of making an impression on

+her. If Mrs. Yellett had announced that they were

+in the habit of sleeping in the moon, it would not

+have surprised her.</p>

+

+<p>"If you are tired, an' want to go to bed, you can

+shuck off and lie down any time. Ben, Jack, Ned,

+go an' set with paw in the tent while the gov'ment

+gets ready for bed. Cacta and Clem, you help me

+with them quilts."</p>

+

+<p>Mary stood helpless in the wilderness while quilts

+and pillows were fetched somewhere from the adjacent

+scenery, and Mrs. Yellett asked her, with the

+gravity of a Pullman porter interrogating a passenger

+as to the location of head and foot, if she liked

+to sleep "light or dark." She chose "dark" at

+random, hating to display her ignorance of the

+alternatives, with the happy result that her bed

+was made up to leeward of the great sheep-wagon,

+in a nice little corner of the State of Wyoming.

+Mary was grateful that she had chosen dark.</p>

+

+<p>As she dozed off, she was reminded of a certain

+magazine illustration that Archie had pinned over

+his bed after the aunts had given a grudging consent

+to this westward journey. There was a line beneath

+the pictorial decoy which read: "Ranch Life

+in the New West." And there were piazzas with

+fringed Mexican hammocks, wild-grass cushions,

+<pb n="140" />

+<anchor id="Pg140" />

+a tea-table with a samovar, and, last, a lady in

+white muslin pouring tea. The stern reality apparently

+consisted in scorching alkali plains, with

+houses of the packing-box school of architecture

+at a distance of seventy or eighty miles apart. No

+ladies in white muslin poured tea; they garbed

+themselves in simple gunny-sacking, and their repartee

+had an acrid, personal note. But Mary was

+glad to know that Archie had that picture, and that

+he thought of her in such ideal surroundings.</p>

+<pb n="141" />

+<anchor id="Pg141" />

+</div>

+

+<div rend="page-break-before: always">

+<head>X</head>

+<index index="pdf" /><index index="toc" level1="On Horse-thief Trail" />

+<head type="sub">On Horse-thief Trail</head>

+

+<p>Judith, on her black mare, Dolly, left the

+Dax ranch after the mid-day meal to go in

+quest of her brother. He had left his comfortable

+cabin on the Bear Creek, when he had turned rustler,

+and moved into the "bad man's country," one of

+those remote mountain fastnesses that abound in

+Wyoming and furnish a natural protection to the

+fugitive from justice. Judith took the left fork

+of the road even as Peter Hamilton had chosen the

+right, the day she had watched him gallop towards

+Kitty Colebrooke with never a glance backward.

+Judith strove now to put him and the memory of

+that day from her mind by turning towards the

+open country without a glance in the direction he

+had taken. But her thoughts were weary of journeying

+over that trail that she would not look towards;

+in imagination she had travelled it with Peter a

+hundred times, saw each dip and turn of the yellow

+road, each feature of the landscape as he rode

+exultant to Kitty, to be turned, tried, taken or left

+as her mood should prompt. But Judith was more

+woman than saint, and in her heart there was a

+blending of joy and pain. For she knew&mdash;such

+<pb n="142" />

+<anchor id="Pg142" />

+skill has love in inference from detail&mdash;that the

+mysterious far-away girl, who was so powerful that

+she could have whatever she wanted, even to Peter,

+loved her own ambitions better than she did Peter

+or Peter's happiness, and that she would not marry

+him except as a makeshift. For Miss Colebrooke

+wrote verses; Peter had a white-and-gold volume of

+them that Judith fancied he said his prayers to.</p>

+

+<p>As for Peter himself, he had never been able to

+explain the magic Kitty had brewed for him. There

+was a heady quality in the very ring of her name.

+His first glimpse of her, on Class Day, in a white

+gown and a hat that to his manly indiscrimination

+looked as guileless as a sheaf of poppies nodding

+above the pale-yellow hair that had the sheen of

+corn-silk, had been a vision that stirred in him

+heroic promptings. He had no difficulty in securing

+an introduction. She was a connection of the

+Wetmores, as was he, though through opposite

+sides of the house. In the few minutes' talk that

+followed, he had the disconcerting sensation of

+being "talked down to." There was the indulgent

+tolerance of the woman of the world to the "nice

+boy" about this amazing young woman, who might

+have been eighteen. Hamilton had repudiated the

+very suggestion of being a "nice boy." But he

+felt himself blushing, groping for words, saying

+stupid things, supplying every requisite of the

+"nice boy" as if he were acting the part. Her

+chaperon bore her away presently, and he was left

+with a radiant impression of corn-silk hair and a

+complexion that justified Bouguereau's mother-of-pearl

+<pb n="143" />

+<anchor id="Pg143" />

+flesh tints. And when she had tilted the

+ruffled lace parasol over her shoulder, so that it

+framed her head like a fleecy halo, he had seen that

+her eyes were green as jade. Withal he had a sense

+of having acquitted himself stupidly.</p>

+

+<p>Later, when he ran the gamut of some friends,

+they had chaffed him on his hardihood. By Jove!

+He had nerve to look at her! Didn't he know she

+was "the" Miss Colebrooke? Now Hamilton was

+absolutely ignorant of Miss Colebrooke's right of

+way to the definite article, but it was characteristic

+of him to make no inquiries. On the whole, he

+found the situation meeting with a greater number

+of the artistic requirements than such situations

+usually presented. He was still dallying with this

+pleasant vagueness of sensation when he picked up

+a copy of a magazine, and the name Katherine

+Colebrooke caught his eye and held it like the

+flight of a comet. Her contribution was a sonnet

+entitled "The Miracle." As a naÃŊve emotional confession,

+"The Miracle" interested him; as a sonnet,

+he rent it unmercifully.</p>

+

+<p>Peter was to learn, however, that this sonnet was

+but a solitary flake in a poetic fall of more or less

+magnitude. He rather conspicuously avoided a

+reference to her poetry when they met again. To

+him it was the very least of her gifts. Her hair, that

+had the tender yellow of ripening corn, was worthy

+a cycle of sonnets, but pray leave the making of

+them to some one else! By daylight the jade-colored

+eyes seemed to shut out the world. The

+pupils shrank to pin-points. The green looked

+<pb n="144" />

+<anchor id="Pg144" />

+deep&mdash;as many fathoms as the sea. She was all

+Diana by daylight, a huntress, if you will, of the

+elusive epithet, but essentially a maiden goddess,

+who would add no sprightly romance to the chronicles

+of Olympus. By lamp-light she suggested

+quite another divinity. The pin-points expanded;

+they burned black, like coals newly breaking into

+flame.</p>

+

+<p>When Hamilton knew her better, he did not like

+to think that he had thought her eighteen at their

+first meeting. It impugned his judgment as a man

+of the world. Young ladies of eighteen could not

+possibly be contributors of several years' standing

+to the various magazines. Disconcerting scraps of

+gossip floated to him. He heard of her as bridesmaid

+at a famous wedding of six years back, when

+she had deflected the admiration from the bride and

+remained the central figure of the picture. Her

+portrait by Sargent had been the sensation of the

+Salon when he had been a grubby-faced boy with

+his nose in a Latin grammar. An unusual situation

+was abhorrent to him. That he should marry an

+older woman, one, moreover, who had gained her

+public in a field to which he had not gained admission,

+was doubly distasteful by reason of his

+deference to the conventional. If she had flirted

+with him, his midsummer madness would have

+evaporated into thin air; but she kept him at arm's-length,

+ostensibly took him seriously, and the boy

+proposed.</p>

+

+<p>Her rejection of him was a matter of such consummate

+skill that Hamilton did not realize the

+<pb n="145" />

+<anchor id="Pg145" />

+keenness of his disappointment till he was swinging

+westward over the prairies. She had confided to

+him that her work claimed her and that she must

+renounce those sweet responsibilities that made the

+happiness of other women. It was with the protective

+mien of one who sought to shield him from

+an adverse destiny that she declined his suit.</p>

+

+<p>This had all happened seven years ago. In the

+mean time he had adjusted his disappointment to

+the new life of the West. To say that he had fallen

+in love with the situation would be to misrepresent

+him. But the rÃīle of lonely cow-puncher loyally

+wedded to the thought of his first love was not without

+charm to Peter. How long his constancy would

+have survived the test of propinquity to a woman

+of Judith Rodney's compelling personality, other

+things being equal, it would be difficult to hazard

+a guess. The coming of Judith from the convent

+increased the perspective into which Kitty was retreating.

+With the vivid plainswoman in the

+foreground, the pale-haired writer of verse dwindled

+almost to reminiscence. But the reverence for the

+usual, that made up the underlying motive for so

+much of Hamilton's conduct, presented barriers

+alongside of which his previous quandary regarding

+Miss Colebrooke's seniority shrank to insignificance.

+He might marry a woman older than himself and

+swallow the grimace of it, but by no conceivable

+system of argument could he persuade himself to

+marry into a family like that of the Rodneys&mdash;the

+girl herself, for all her beauty and rare

+womanliness, a quarter Indian, her father the

+<pb n="146" />

+<anchor id="Pg146" />

+synonyme for obloquy, her brother a cattle thief.

+Hamilton preferred that other men should make the

+heroic marriages of a new country. He was prepared

+to applaud their hardihood of temperament,

+but in his own case such a thing was inconceivable.

+Similar arguments have ensnared multitudes in the

+web of caution and provided a rich feast for the

+arch-spider, convention, the shrivelled flies dangling

+in the web conveying no significance, apparently,

+beyond that of advertising the system.</p>

+

+<p>When Peter went East, he had expected to find

+Kitty worn by the pursuit of epithets, haunted by

+the phantom of a career, resigned to the slings and

+arrows of remorseful spinsterhood. An obvious

+regret, or, at least, resignation tempered with remembrance,

+was the unguent he anticipated at the

+hands of Kitty. But alas for sanctuaries built to

+refuge wounded pride! He found Kitty the pivot of

+an adoring coterie, the magazines flowing with the

+milk and honey of her verse and she looking younger,

+if possible, than when he had first known her.

+Time, experience, even the pangs of literary parturition

+had not writ a single character on that

+alabaster brow. The very atrophy of the forces

+of time which she had accomplished by unknown

+necromancy seemed to endow her with an elfin

+youth, making her seem smaller, more childlike,

+more radiantly elusive than when she had worn the

+poppy hat at Cambridge.</p>

+

+<p>The tan and hardship of the prairie had adjusted

+the blunder of their ages. Stark conditions had

+overdrawn his account perhaps a decade; she retained

+<pb n="147" />

+<anchor id="Pg147" />

+a surplus it would be rude to estimate. Her

+greeting of him was radiant, her welcome panoplied

+in words that verged close to inspiration. A woman

+would have scented warning instantly, deep feeling

+and the curled and perfumed phrase being suspicious

+cronies and sure to rouse those lightly slumbering

+watch-dogs, the feminine wits. But Peter only

+turned the other cheek. More than once, in the

+days that followed, he devoutly thanked his patron

+saint, caution, that his relations with Judith had been

+governed by characteristic prudence. Kitty admitted

+him to her coterie, but he had lost nothing

+of his attitude of grand Turk towards her verses.

+The sin be upon the heads of whomever took such

+things seriously! The irony of fate that compelled

+a class poet to punch cows may have tinctured his

+judgment.</p>

+

+<p>A telegram recalled him to the ranch and prevented

+a final leave-taking with Miss Colebrooke.

+He made his adieux by letter, and they were frankly

+regretful. Miss Colebrooke's reply mingled sorrow

+in parting from her old friend with joy in having

+found him. Her letter, a masterpiece of phrase-spinning,

+presented to Peter the one significant fact

+that she would not be averse to the renewal of his

+suit. In reading her letter he made no allowance

+for the fact that the lady had made a fine art of

+saying things, and that her joy and regret at their

+meeting and parting might have been reminiscent

+of the printed passion that was so prominent a

+feature of magazinedom. Her letters&mdash;the like of

+them he had never seen outside printed volumes of

+<pb n="148" />

+<anchor id="Pg148" />

+letters that had achieved the distinction of classics&mdash;culminated

+in the one that Judith had given him that

+morning, announcing that unexpectedly she had

+decided to join the Wetmore girls and would be

+glad to see him at the ranch.</p>

+

+<p>That he had flown at her bidding, Judith knew.

+What she would least have suspected was that

+Miss Colebrooke had received her visitor as if his

+breakneck ride across the desert had been in the

+nature of an afternoon call. If Judith, knowing

+what she did of this long-drawn-out romance, could

+have known likewise of her knight's chagrin, would

+she have pitied him?</p>

+

+<p>Ignorant of the recent anticlimax, and with a

+burden of many heavy thoughts, Judith was penetrating

+a world of unleavened desolation. Beneath

+the scourge of the noon-day sun the desert lay,

+stripped of every illusion. Vegetation had almost

+ceased, nothing but sun-scorched, dust-choked sage-brush

+could spring from such sterility. The fruit

+of desolation, it gave back to desolation a quality

+more melancholy than utter barrenness. Glittering

+in the sunlight, the beds of alkali gleamed leper

+white; above them the agitated air was like the hot

+waves that dance and quiver about iron at white

+heat. From horizon to horizon the curse of God

+seemed to have fallen on the land; it was as if,

+cursing it, He had forgotten it, and left it as the

+abomination of desolation. Judith scarce heeded,

+her thoughts straying after first one then another

+of the group that made up her little world&mdash;Peter

+Hamilton, Kitty Colebrooke, Jim, his family&mdash;thoughts

+<pb n="149" />

+<anchor id="Pg149" />

+inconsequent as the dancing dust-devils

+that whirled over that infinity of space, and, whirling,

+disappeared and reappeared at some new corner

+of the compass.</p>

+

+<p>The trail that she must take to Jim's camp in the

+mountain was known to but few honest men. Fugitives

+from justice&mdash;the grave, impersonal justice

+of the law, or the swift justice of the plains&mdash;found

+there an asylum. And while they sometimes suffered,

+in death by thirst or hunger, a sentence more

+dreadful than the law of the land or the law of the

+rope would have given them, the desert, like the sea,

+seldom gave up her own. It was more than probable

+that no woman except Alida Rodney had ever

+taken that trail before, and reasonably certain that

+no woman had ever taken it alone. Dolly, when she

+saw the beds of alkali grow more frequent, and that

+the trails of the range cattle turned back, sniffed the

+lack of water in the air, slackened her pace, and turned

+an interrogatory ear towards her mistress.</p>

+

+<p>"It's all right, old girl"; the gauntleted hand

+patted the satin neck. "We're in for"&mdash;Judith

+flung her head up and confronted the infinite

+desolation yawning to the sky-line&mdash;"God knows

+what."</p>

+

+<p>Dolly broke into a light canter; this evidently was

+not an occasion for dawdling. There was a touch

+of business about the way the reins were held that

+made the mare settle down to work. But her flying

+hoofs made little apparent progress against the

+space and silence of the desert. Five, ten, fifteen

+miles and the curving shoulder of the mountain,

+<pb n="150" />

+<anchor id="Pg150" />

+that she must cross, still mocked in the distance.

+Only the sun moved in that vast world of seemingly

+immutable forces.</p>

+

+<p>There was no stoic Sioux in Judith now. The

+girl that breasted the crests of the foot-hills shrank

+in terror from the loneliness and the suggestion of

+foes lurking in ambush. The sun dropped behind

+the mountain, leaving a blood-red pool in his wake,

+like fugitive Cain. Already night was sweeping

+over the earth from mountain shadows that flowed

+imperceptibly together like blackened pools. To

+the girl following the trail the silence was more

+dreadful than a chorus of threatening voices. She

+listened till the stillness beat at her ears like the

+stamping of ten thousand hoofs, then pulled up her

+horse, and the desert was as still as the chamber

+of death.</p>

+

+<p>"Ah, Dolly, my dear, a house is the place for

+women folk when the night comes&mdash;a house, the fire

+burning clear, the kettle singing, and&mdash;" Dolly

+whinnied an affirmative without waiting for the

+picture to be completed. The wilderness was being

+gradually swallowed by the shadows, as deliberately

+as a snake swallows its victim. They were nearing

+the mountains. The hot blasts of air from the

+desert blew more and more intermittently. The

+breeze swept keen from the hills, towering higher

+and higher, and Judith breathed deep of the piny

+fragrance and felt the tension of things loosen a

+little.</p>

+

+<p>Whitening cattle bones gleamed from the darkness,

+tragic reminders of hard winters and scant pasturage,

+<pb n="151" />

+<anchor id="Pg151" />

+and Judith, with the Indian superstition that was

+in the marrow of her bones, read ghostly warnings

+in the empty eye-sockets of the grinning skulls

+that stared up at her. She dared not think of

+the dangers that the looming darkness might conceal,

+or of what she might find at her journey's

+end, or&mdash;"Whoa, Dolly! softly, girl. Is it my

+foolish, white-blood nerves, or is some one following?"</p>

+

+<p>The mare had been trained to respond to the

+slightest touch on her mouth, and stopped instantly.

+Judith swayed slightly in the saddle with the

+heaving of the sweating horse. The blood beat at

+her temples, confusing what she actually heard with

+what her imagination pictured. She was half-way

+up a towering spur of the Wind River when she slid

+from the saddle, and putting her ear to the ground

+listened, Indian fashion. Above the throbbing stillness

+of the desert night, that came to her murmurously,

+like the imprisoned roar of the sea from a

+shell, she could hear the regular beat of horse's hoofs

+following up the steep mountain grade. She

+scrambled up with the desperate nimbleness of a

+hunted thing, but when she attempted to vault to

+the saddle her limbs failed and she sank clinging to

+the pommel. Twice she tried and twice the trembling

+of her limbs held her captive. With the loss

+of each moment the beat of the hoofs on the trail

+below became more distinct. The very desperation

+of her plight kept her clinging to the pommel, incapable

+of thought, so that when she finally flung

+herself to the saddle she was surprised to find herself

+<pb n="152" />

+<anchor id="Pg152" />

+there. To the left the trail dropped sharply

+to a precipice, choked by the close crowding of

+many scrub pines. To the right the snow-clad

+spires of the Wind River kept their eternal vigil.

+If she should call aloud for help, these white,

+still mountains would echo the anguish of her

+woman's cry and give no further heed to her

+plight.</p>

+

+<p>The trail had begun to widen. The horse behind

+her again stumbled, loosening a stone that rolled

+with crashes and echoings down to the precipice

+below. She took advantage of the widening of the

+trail to urge Dolly forward. Her impulse was to

+put spurs to the mare and run, to take chances with

+loose stones, a narrowing trail, and the possibility

+of Dolly's stumbling and breaking a leg; but discretion

+prompted the showing of a brave front, the

+pleasantries of the road, with flight as the last

+resource of desperation.</p>

+

+<p>Suddenly gaining what seemed to be a plateau,

+she wheeled and waited the coming of this possible

+friend or foe. The thudding of hoofs through the

+inferno of darkness stopped, as the rider below considered

+the latest move of the horseman above.

+They were so near that Judith could hear the

+labored breathing of the sweating horse. The blackness

+of the night had become a tangible thing. The

+towering mountains were one piece with the gaping

+precipice, the trail, the scrub pines, the gauntlet

+on her hand. The horse below resumed its stumbling

+gait. Judith crowded Dolly close to the rocky

+wall. If the chance comrade of the wilderness

+<pb n="153" />

+<anchor id="Pg153" />

+should pass her by in the darkness&mdash;God speed

+him!</p>

+

+<p>"What the devil are you blocking the trail for?"

+sung out a voice from the darkness. At sound of it

+Judith's heart stopped beating. The voice was

+Peter Hamilton's.</p>

+<pb n="154" />

+<anchor id="Pg154" />

+</div>

+

+<div rend="page-break-before: always">

+<head>XI</head>

+<index index="pdf" /><index index="toc" level1="The Cabin In The Valley" />

+<head type="sub">The Cabin In The Valley</head>

+

+<p>And Judith, taken unawares by the unexpected

+turn of things, comforted as a lost child that is

+found, told all her feeling for him in the way she

+called his name. The easy tenderness of the man

+awoke; his senses swayed to the magic of her voice,

+the mystery of the night, the shadow world in which

+they two, 'twixt earth and sky, were alone. They

+rode without speaking. Peter's hand sought hers,

+and all her woman's terror of the desolation, her

+fear of the vague terrors of the dreadful night,

+spoke in her answering pressure. It was as if the

+desert had given them to each other as they groped

+through the silent darkness. In the great company

+of earth, sky, silence, and this great-hearted woman,

+Peter grew conscious of a real thrill. There were

+depths to life&mdash;vast, still depths; this woman's unselfish

+love for him made him realize them. He

+felt his soul sweeping out on the great tide of things.

+Farther and farther it swept; his patron saint,

+caution, beckoning frantically from the receding

+shore, was miles behind. "Judith!" he said, and he

+scarce recognized his own voice. "Judith!" he

+struggled as a swimmer in a drowning clutch.

+<pb n="155" />

+<anchor id="Pg155" />

+Then his patron saint threw him a life-line and he

+saved the situation.</p>

+

+<p>"Judith!" he said, a third time, and now he knew

+his voice. It was the voice of the man who tilted

+at life picturesquely in a broad-brimmed hat, who

+loved his darling griefs and fitted them as a Rembrandt

+fits its background. And still, in the same

+voice, the voice he knew, he said: "I feel as if we

+had died and our souls were meeting. You know

+Aldrich's exquisite lines:</p>

+

+<lg>

+<l rend="margin-left: 2">"Somewhere in desolate, wind-swept space,</l>

+<l rend="margin-left: 4">In twilight land&mdash;no man's land&mdash;</l>

+<l rend="margin-left: 2">Two hurrying shapes met face to face</l>

+<l rend="margin-left: 4">And bade each other stand.</l>

+</lg>

+

+<lg>

+<l rend="margin-left: 2">"'And who are you?' cried one, agape,</l>

+<l rend="margin-left: 4">Shuddering in the gloaming light.</l>

+<l rend="margin-left: 2">I know not,' said the other shape,</l>

+<l rend="margin-left: 2">'I only died last night.'"</l>

+</lg>

+

+<p>"'I only died last night!'" she repeated the line,

+slowly, significantly. In her questioning she forgot

+the night, the desolation, the presence of the

+man. Had she died last night? Had youth, the

+joy of living, her infinite capacity for love, had they

+died when Peter, with the ugly haste of the man without

+a nice sense of the time that should elapse between

+the old and the new love, had spurred away

+cheerfully at the beck of another woman? And

+now the desert, this earth-mother as she called it,

+in the Indian way, had given him back to her,

+thrown them together as driftwood in the still

+ocean of space. She drew a long breath, the breath

+<pb n="156" />

+<anchor id="Pg156" />

+of one waking from an anguished dream. A wild,

+unreasoning gladness woke in her heart, the joy of

+living swept her back again to life. She had not

+died last night, she was riding through the wilderness

+with Peter.</p>

+

+<p>"Look!" she whispered. The sky had lost its

+forbidding blackness. The sharp notches of the

+mountains, faintly outlined in white, undulated

+through an eternity of space. Venus hung in the

+west, burning softly as a shaded lamp. The trail

+they climbed seemed to end in her pale yellow light.</p>

+

+<p>Peter had saved the situation, but the wild beauty

+of the night stirred in him that gift of silvery speech

+that was ever his tribute to the sex, rather than

+the woman. He bent towards Judith. A loosened

+strand of her hair blew across his cheek. The

+breakneck ride to Kitty was already the madness

+of a dead and gone incarnation. He pointed to the

+pale star, and told her it was the omen of their

+destiny; the formless blackness through which they

+had groped was the way of life, but for such as were

+not condemned to eternal darkness Venus held

+high her lamp and they scaled the heights.</p>

+

+<p>And Judith, listening, found her heart a battle-field

+of love and hate. "Were women dogs, that

+men should play with them in idle moods, caress

+them, and fling them out for other toys?" she demanded

+of herself, even while the tones of his voice

+melted her innermost being to thankfulness for this

+hour that he was wholly hers.</p>

+

+<p>Gayly, with ready turns of speech and snatches

+of song, trolled in his musical barytone, Peter rode

+<pb n="157" />

+<anchor id="Pg157" />

+through the night, even as he rode through life, a

+Sir Knight of the Joyous Heart, unbrushed by the

+wing of sorrow, loving his pale griefs for the values

+they gave the picture. And Judith understood by

+reason of that exquisite perception that was hers in

+all matters pertaining to him, and, knowing, only

+loved the more.</p>

+

+<p>Down the valley came the sharp yelp of a coyote,

+and in a moment the towering crags had taken it up,

+the echo repeating it and giving it back to the valley,

+where the coyote barked again at the shadow of

+his voice. The night was full of the eerie laughter.

+Peter put a restraining hand on Dolly's bridle, and,

+waiting for the coyote to stop, called Judith's name,

+and all the mountains made music of it. The echo

+sang the old Hebrew name as if it had been a psalm.

+Peter's voice gave it to the mountains joyously, but

+the mountains gave it back in the minor. And

+Judith was reminded of the soft, singing syllables

+that her mother, in the Indian way, had made of

+her daughter's Indian name. The remembrance

+tugged at her heart. In her joy at seeing Peter

+she had forgotten that the errand that had brought

+her was an errand of life and death&mdash;life and death

+for her brother!</p>

+

+<p>But Peter's ready enthusiasms pressed him hard.

+Surely love-making was the business of such a night.

+"Ah, Judith, goddess of the heights, if I could sing

+your name like the mountains, would you love me a

+little?"</p>

+

+<p>For his pains he had a flash of white teeth in a

+smile that recalled his first acquaintance with Kitty,

+<pb n="158" />

+<anchor id="Pg158" />

+the sort of smile one would give to a "nice boy"

+when his manoeuvres were a trifle obvious. "Not

+if you sang my name as the chorus of all the Himalayas

+and the Rockies and Andes, and with the fire

+of all their volcanoes and the beauty of their snows

+and the strength of all their hills, for it's not my way

+to love a little!"</p>

+

+<p>He bent towards her; to brush her cheek lightly

+as they rode was but to imply his appreciation of

+the scene as a bit of chiaroscuro, the panorama of

+the desert night, eternal romance typified by the

+man and woman scaling the heights, the goddess of

+love lighting them on their way by her flaming

+torch. But Judith, who said little because she felt

+much, was in no mood to brook such dalliance, and,

+urging the mare sharply, she cantered down the

+divide at peril of life and limb. Peter, cursing

+the heavy-footed beast he rode, came stumbling

+after.</p>

+

+<p>Judith rode wildly through the night, leaving

+Peter laps behind, to beseech, to prophesy dire

+happening if she should slip, and to scramble after,

+as best he might, on the heavy-footed beast he

+repudiated, with all his ancestors, as oxen, to the

+fourth generation. But the woman kept her pace.

+She had stern questions to put to herself, and they

+were likely to have truer answers if Peter were

+elsewhere than riding beside her. Whither was he

+going? They had met casually on a trail known

+to few honest men. It led over a spur of the Wind

+River to a sort of no man's land, the hiding-place

+of horse and cattle thieves. She had gone to warn

+<pb n="159" />

+<anchor id="Pg159" />

+her brother. Could he be going there&mdash;She could

+not bring herself to finish.</p>

+

+<p>Her heart was divided against itself. Within it

+were fought again the red and the white man's

+battles, bitterly, and to the finish. And now the

+white man, with his open warfare, won, and all

+her love rose up and scourged her little faith. She

+would wait on the trail for Peter, penitent and

+ashamed. And while she waited suspicions bred

+of her Indian blood stirred distrustfully, and she

+told herself that her mother's daughter made a

+worthy champion of the ways of white men. Did

+Hamilton hunt her brother gallowsward, making

+merry with her the meantime? He had not even

+been courteously concerned as to where she was

+going when they met on the divide. They had met

+and ridden together as casually as if it had been

+the most natural thing for them both to be taking

+the horse-thief trail as a summer evening's ride.

+And she had not thought to wonder at his possible

+destination, when the man from whom she rode in

+terror through the night proved to be Peter, because

+the lesser question of his errand had been swallowed

+up in the greater miracle of his presence.</p>

+

+<p>She was by this time well down the divide. The

+temperature had risen perceptibly on the down

+grade. The heat of the plains had already mingled

+with the cool hill air; the heights, where Venus

+kept her love vigil, were already past. Judith gave

+Dolly a breathing spell, herself lounging easily meanwhile.

+She knew how to take her ease in the saddle

+as well as any cow-puncher on the range.</p>

+<pb n="160" />

+<anchor id="Pg160" />

+

+<p>"The Hayoka has dominion over me," she mused,

+with Indian fatalism. "As well resign myself to

+sorrow with dignity. Hayoka, Hayo&mdash;ka!" and

+she began to croon softly a hymn of propitiation

+to the Hayoka, the Sioux god of contrariety. According

+to the legends, he sat naked and fanned himself

+in a Dakota blizzard and huddled, shivering,

+over a fire in the heat of summer. Likewise the

+Hayoka cried for joy and laughed for sorrow.</p>

+

+<p>She remembered how the nuns at Santa FÃĐ had

+been shocked at her for praying to Indian gods, and

+how once she had built a little mound of stones,

+which was the Sioux way of making petition, in the

+shadow of the statue of the Virgin Mary, and how

+Sister Angela had scattered the stones and told her

+to pray instead to the Blessed Lady. She still

+prayed to the Blessed Lady every day; but sometimes,

+too, she reared little mounds of stones in the

+desert when she was very sad and the kinship between

+her and the dead gods of her mother's people

+seemed the closer for their common sorrow.</p>

+

+<p>Peter, coming up with a much-blown horse, found

+her still chanting the Indian song.</p>

+

+<p>"Sing him a verse for me, Judith. Heaven knows

+I need something to straighten out my infernal luck.

+Tell the Hayoka that I'm a good fellow and need

+only half a chance. Tell him to prosper my present

+venture."</p>

+

+<p>She had begun to chant the invocation, then

+stopped suddenly. "I must not; you know I am a

+Catholic." Suspicion that had been scotched, not

+killed, raised its head. "What was his present

+<pb n="161" />

+<anchor id="Pg161" />

+venture?" Her eye had not changed in expression,

+nor a tone of her voice, but in her heart was a sickening

+distrust for all things.</p>

+

+<p>A belated moon had come up. The level plain,

+on which their horses threw grotesque, elongated

+shadows, was flooded with honey-colored light. Each

+straggling clump of sage-brush, whitening bone and

+bowlder, gleamed mysterious, ghostly in the radiant

+flood-tide. They seemed to be riding through a

+world that had no kinship with that black, formless

+void through which they had groped but yet a little

+while. Then darkness had been upon the face of the

+deep. Now there was a miracle of light such as

+only the desert, in its desolation, knows. To Judith,

+with a soul attuned to every passing expression of

+nature, there was significance in this transition from

+darkness to light. The sudden radiance was emblematic

+of her belated perception, coming as it

+did after a blindness so dense as to appear almost

+wilful. Her mind was busy with a multitude of

+schemes. Fool though she had been, she would

+not be the instrument of her brother's undoing.</p>

+

+<p>"I've come too far," she cried, in sudden dismay.

+"I should have stopped at the foot of the divide.

+I've never been over the trail before."</p>

+

+<p>"You foolish child, why should you stop in the

+middle of the wilderness?"</p>

+

+<p>She wheeled the mare about and faced him, a

+figure of graven resolution.</p>

+

+<p>"I promised to meet Tom Lorimer there&mdash;now

+you know."</p>

+

+<p>With which she cracked Dolly sharply with her

+<pb n="162" />

+<anchor id="Pg162" />

+heel and began to retrace her way over the trail.

+Peter turned his horse and followed, with the feeling

+of utter helplessness that a man has when confronted

+with the granite obstinacy of women. Judith

+had meanwhile expected that the announcement of

+her mythical appointment with Tom Lorimer would

+be received differently. Tom Lorimer's reputation

+was of the worst. An Eastern man formerly, an

+absconder from justice, rumor was busy with tales

+of ungodly merrymaking that went on at his ranch,

+where no woman went except painted wisps from

+the dance-halls. But Peter was too loyal a friend,

+despite his shortcomings as a lover, to see in Judith's

+statement anything more than a sisterly devotion

+so deeply unselfish that it failed to take into account

+the danger to which she subjected herself.</p>

+

+<p>However, it was plainly his duty to prevent an

+unprotected rendezvous with Lorimer, to reason, to

+plead, and, if he should fail to bring her to a reasonable

+frame of mind, to go with her, come what would

+of the result. There were reasons innumerable

+why he, a cattle-man, should avoid the appearance

+of dealing with the sheep faction, he reflected,

+grimly. Lorimer owned sheep, many thousand head.

+His herds had been allowed to graze unmolested,

+while smaller owners, like Jim Rodney, had been

+crowded out because his influence, politically, was a

+thing to be reckoned with. So Peter followed

+Judith, pleading Judith's cause; she did not understand,

+he told her, what she was doing; and while

+perhaps there was not another man in the country

+who would not honor her unselfishness in coming to

+<pb n="163" />

+<anchor id="Pg163" />

+him, Lorimer's chivalry was not a thing to be reckoned

+with, drunken beast that he was. And Judith,

+worn with the struggle, tried beyond measure,

+made reckless by the daily infusion of ill-fortune,

+pulled up the mare and laughed unpleasantly.</p>

+

+<p>"You think I'm going to see Lorimer about Jim?

+I'm going with him to a merrymaking. We're old

+pals, Lorimer and I."</p>

+

+<p>"Judith, dear, has it come to this, that you not

+only distrust an old friend, but that you try to

+degrade yourself to hide from him the fact that you

+are going to your brother's? You've never spoken

+to Lorimer. I heard him say, not a week ago, that

+he had never succeeded in making you recognize

+him. You deceived me at first when you spoke of

+meeting him&mdash;I thought you had a message from

+Jim&mdash;but this talk of merrymaking is beneath you."

+He shrugged his shoulders in disgust. He felt the

+torrent of grief that rent her. No sob escaped her

+lips; there was no convulsive movement of shoulder.

+She rode beside him, still as the desert before the

+sand-storm breaks, her soul seared with white-hot

+iron that knows no saving grace of sob or tear. She

+rode as Boadicea might have ridden to battle; there

+was not a yielding line in her body. But over and

+over in her woman's heart there rang the cry: "I

+am so tired! If the long night would but come!"</p>

+

+<p>Peter drew out his watch. "It's a quarter to

+eleven. We'll have a hard bit of riding to reach

+Blind Creek before midnight."</p>

+

+<p>Then he knew as well as she, perhaps better, the

+route to Jim's hiding-place; she had never been

+<pb n="164" />

+<anchor id="Pg164" />

+there as yet. And if Peter knew, doubtless every

+cattle-man in the country knew. What a fool she

+had been with her talk of meeting Tom Lorimer!

+A sense of utter defeat seemed to paralyze her

+energies. She felt like a trapped thing that after

+eluding its pursuers again and again finds that it

+has been but running about a corral. Physical

+weariness was telling on her. She had been in the

+saddle since a little past noon and it was now not far

+from midnight. And still there was the unanswered

+question of Peter's errand. It was long since either

+had broken the silence. A delicious coolness had

+crept into the air with the approach of midnight.

+Judith, breathing deep draughts of it, reminded

+herself of the stoicism that was hers by birthright.</p>

+

+<p>"Peter"&mdash;her voice lost some of its old ring, but

+it had a deeper note&mdash;"Peter, we make strange

+comrades, you and I, in a stranger world. We

+meet on Horse-Thief Trail, and there is reason to

+suppose that our errands are inimical. You've

+pierced all my little pretences; you know that I am

+going to my brother, who is an outlaw&mdash;my brother,

+the rope for whose hanging is already cut. And

+yet we have been friends these many years, and we

+meet in this world of desolation and weigh each

+other's words, and there is no trust in our hearts.

+Our little faith is more pitiful than the cruel errands

+that bring us. I take it you, too, are going to my

+brother's?"</p>

+

+<p>"I'm going there to see that you arrive safe and

+sound, but I had no intention of going when I left

+camp. You've brought me a good twenty miles out

+<pb n="165" />

+<anchor id="Pg165" />

+of my way, not to mention accusing me of ulterior

+motives. Now, aren't you penitent?" He smiled

+at her, boyish and irresistible. To Judith it was

+more reassuring than an oath. "It's like dogs

+fighting over a picked bone; the meat's all gone.

+The range is overworked; it needs a good, long

+rest." He turned towards Judith, speaking slowly.

+"What you have said is true. We're friends

+before we're partisans of either faction. I'm on

+my way to a round-up. There's been an unexpected

+order to fill a beef contract&mdash;a thousand

+steers. We're going to furnish five hundred, the

+XXX two hundred and fifty, and the "Circle-Star"

+two hundred and fifty. Men have been scouring

+the enemy's country for days rounding up stragglers.

+It will go hard with the rustlers after this round-up,

+Judith."</p>

+

+<p>She felt a great wave of penitence and shame

+sweep over her. She had not trusted him; in her

+heart she had nourished hideous suspicions of him,

+and he was telling her, quite simply, of the plans of

+his own faction, trusting her, as, indeed, he might,

+but as she never expected to be trusted.</p>

+

+<p>"Peter, do you know that sometimes I think

+Jim has gone quite mad with these range troubles.

+He's acted strangely ever since his sheep were driven

+over the cliff. He's not been home to Alida and the

+children since he has been out of jail, and you

+know how devoted to them he has always been!

+He spends all his time tracking Simpson. Alida

+wrote me that she expects him to-night, and I'm

+going there on the chance."</p>

+<pb n="166" />

+<anchor id="Pg166" />

+

+<p>"It's the devil's own hole for desolation that he's

+come to." Peter looked about the cup-shaped

+valley that was but a <hi rend="font-style: italic">cul-de-sac</hi> in the mountains.

+Its approach was between the high rock walls of a

+caÃąon. Passing between them, the rise of temperature

+was almost incredible. The great barrier of

+mountain-range, that cut it off from the rest of

+the world, seemed also to cut it off from light and

+air. The atmosphere hung lifeless, the occasional

+bellow of range-cattle sounded far-off and muffled.

+Vegetation was scant, the sage-brush grew close and

+scrubby, even the brilliant cactus flowers seemed

+to have abandoned the valley to its fate. A lone

+group of dead cotton-woods grew like sentinels close

+to the rocky walls. Their twisted branches, gaunt

+and bare, writhed upward as if in dumb supplication.

+There was about them a something that made

+Judith come closer to Peter as they passed them

+by. The night wind sang in their leafless branches

+with a long-drawn, shuddering sigh. The despair of

+a barren, deserted thing seemed to have settled on

+them.</p>

+

+<p>"Those frightful trees, how can Alida stand

+them?" She looked back. "Oh, I wish they were

+cut down!"</p>

+

+<p>Before them was the cabin, its ruined condition

+pitifully apparent even by night. It had been

+deserted ten years before Jim brought his family

+to it. Rumor said it was haunted. Grim stories

+were told of the death of a woman who had come

+there with a man, and had not lived to go away

+with him. The roof of the adjoining stable had

+<pb n="167" />

+<anchor id="Pg167" />

+fallen in, the bars of the corral were missing. The

+house was dark but for a feeble light that glimmered

+in one window, the beacon that had been lighted,

+night after night, against Jim's coming. It added

+a further note of apprehension, peering through the

+dark, still valley like a wakeful, anxious eye, keeping

+a long and unrewarded vigil. Judith felt the

+consummation of the threatening tragedy after her

+first glimpse of the sentinel trees. She could not

+explain, but her heart cried, even as the wind in

+them had sung of death. Perhaps her mother's

+spirit spoke to her, just as she had said, on that

+memorable drive, that the Great Mystery spoke to

+his people in the earth, the sky, and the frowning

+mountains.</p>

+

+<p>"Peter"&mdash;she had slid from her horse and was

+clinging to his arm&mdash;"when it happens, Peter, you

+will have no part in it?"</p>

+

+<p>"It won't happen, Judith, if I can help it."</p>

+

+<p>She kissed his hand as it held the loose reins.</p>

+

+<p>"Lord, I am not worthy!" was the thought in his

+heart. He sat graven in the saddle. Sir Knight of

+the Joyous Heart though he was, the unsought kiss

+of trust gifted him with a self-reverence that would

+not soon forsake him.</p>

+

+<p>Judith was rapping on the door and calling to

+Alida not to be frightened. And presently it was

+opened. Peter wanted to leave Judith, now that she

+was safely at the end of her journey, but she would

+not hear of it till he had eaten.</p>

+

+<p>"You would have had your comfortable supper

+five hours ago had you not been playing cavalier

+<pb n="168" />

+<anchor id="Pg168" />

+to me all over the wilderness." And Peter

+yielded.</p>

+

+<p>Judith busied herself about the kitchen. Her

+mood of racking apprehension had disappeared.

+Indian stoicism had again the guiding hand. She

+waved Peter from the fire that she was kindling, as

+if he were a blundering incompetent. But she let

+him slice the bacon and grind the coffee as one

+lets a child help. Alida came in, white-faced and

+anxious over the long absence of her husband, but

+conscientiously hospitable nevertheless. Peter noticed

+that Judith made a gallant pretence of eating,

+crumbling her bread and talking the meanwhile.

+The pale wife, who had little to say at the best of

+times, was put to the test to say anything at all.

+But, withal, their intent was so genuinely hospitable

+that Peter himself could not speak with the pity of

+it. Accustomed as he was to the roughness of these

+frontier cabins, never had he seen a human habitation

+so desolate as this. The mud plaster had

+fallen away from between the logs, showing cross

+sections of the melancholy prospect. An atmosphere

+of tragedy brooded over the place.

+Whether from its long period of emptiness, or from

+the vaguely hinted murder of the woman who had

+died there, or whether it took its character from the

+prevailing desolation, the cabin in the valley was an

+unlovely thing. Nor did the cleanliness, the conscientious

+making the best of things, soften the

+woful aspect of the place. Rather was the appeal

+the more poignant to the seeing eye, as the brave

+makeshift of the self-respecting poor strikes deeper

+<pb n="169" />

+<anchor id="Pg169" />

+than the beggar's whine. The house was bare but

+for the few things that Alida could take in the

+wagon in which they made their flight. And all

+through the pinch of poverty and grinning emptiness

+there was visible the woman-touch, the brave making

+the best of nothing, the pitiful preparation for

+the coming of the man. Wild roses from the creek

+bloomed against the gnarled and weather-warped

+logs of the walls. Sprays of clematis trailed their

+white bridal beauty from cans rescued from the

+ashes of a camp-fire. But Alida was a strategist

+when it came to adorning her home, and the rusty

+receptacle was hid beneath trailing green leaves.

+There was at the window a muslin curtain that in

+its starched and ruffled estate was strongly suggestive

+of a child's frock hastily converted into a

+window drapery. The curtain was drawn aside

+that the lamp might shed its beam farther on the

+way of the traveller who came not. There was but

+one other light in the place, a bit of candle. Alida

+apologized for the poor light by which they must

+eat, but she did not offer to take the lamp from the

+window.</p>

+

+<p>Peter was no longer Sir Knight of the Joyous

+Heart as he watched the little, white-faced woman,

+who went so often to the door to look towards the

+road that entered the valley that she was no longer

+aware of what she did. He saw her wide eyes full

+of fear, the bow of the mouth strained taut with

+anxiety, her unconscious fear of him as one of the

+alien faction, and withal her concern for his comfort.

+Judith's control was far greater, but though she

+<pb n="170" />

+<anchor id="Pg170" />

+hid it skilfully, he knew the sorrow that consumed

+her.</p>

+

+<p>There was a cry from the room beyond, and

+Judith, snatching up the candle, went in to the

+children. All three of them were sleeping cross-ways

+in one bed, their small, round arms and legs

+striking out through the land of dreams as swimmers

+breasting the waves. She gave a little cry of delight

+and appreciation, and called Peter to look.

+Little Jim, who had cried in some passing fear, sat

+up sleepily. He stretched out his small arms to

+Peter, whom he had never seen before. Peter took

+him, and again he settled to sleep, apparently assured

+that he was in friendly hands.</p>

+

+<p>The warm, small body, giving itself with perfect

+confidence, strongly affected Peter's heightened

+susceptibilities. In the very nature of the situation

+he could be no friend to Jim Rodney, yet here in

+his arms lay Jim Rodney's son, loving, trusting him

+instinctively. Judith noticed that his face paled

+beneath its many coats of tan. He was afraid of

+the little sleeping boy, afraid that his unaccustomed

+touch might hurt him, and yet loath to part with the

+small burden. Judith took the boy from Peter and

+placed him between the two little girls on the bed.</p>

+

+<p>Through the window they could see Alida's dress

+glimmering, like a phantom in the darkness, as she

+strained her eyes towards the path. Peter hated

+to leave the women and children in this desolate

+place. The night was far spent. To reach the

+round-up in season, he could at best snatch a couple

+of hours' sleep and be again in the saddle while the

+<pb n="171" />

+<anchor id="Pg171" />

+stars still shone. His saddle and saddle blanket

+were enough for him. The broad canopy of heaven,

+the bosom of mother earth, had given him sound,

+dreamless sleep these many years. He bade the

+women good-night, and made his bed where the

+caÃąon gave entrance to the valley. But sleep was

+slow to come. Now, in that vague, uncertain world

+where we fall through oceans of space, and the

+waking is the dream, the dream the waking, Peter

+caught pale flashes of Kitty's gold head as she ran

+and ran, ever in the pursuit of something, she knew

+not what. And as she ran hither and thither, she

+would turn her head and beckon to Peter, and as he

+followed he felt the burden of years come upon him.

+And then he saw Judith's eyes, still and grave. He

+turned and wakened. No, it was not Judith's eyes,

+but the stars above the mountain-tops.</p>

+<pb n="172" />

+<anchor id="Pg172" />

+</div>

+

+<div rend="page-break-before: always">

+<head>XII</head>

+<index index="pdf" /><index index="toc" level1="The Round-up" />

+<head type="sub">The Round-up</head>

+

+<p>The stars were still shining when Peter Hamilton

+looked at his watch next morning, but

+he sternly fought the temptation to lie another two

+minutes by remembering the day's work before

+him, and went in search of the horse that he had

+not picketed overnight, as the beast required a full

+belly after the hard night's ride he had given him.

+Peter had rolled out of his blankets with a keen

+anticipatory relish for the day ahead. It was well,

+he knew, that there was ample work of a definite

+nature for Peter the cow-puncher; as for Peter

+the man, he was singularly at sea. Had Judith

+Rodney been his desert comrade all these cheerful

+years for him to get his first belated insight into the

+real Judith only a few little hours back? Or was it,

+he wondered, her seeming unconsciousness of him,

+as she rode brave and sorrowful through the night,

+to avert, if might be, her brother's death&mdash;at all

+events, to comfort and inspirit the frightened woman

+and her little children&mdash;that had freshly tinged the

+friendship he had so long felt for her? Many were

+the questions that Peter vaguely put to himself as

+he started out for his long day in the saddle; and

+<pb n="173" />

+<anchor id="Pg173" />

+none of them he answered. Indeed, he could not

+satisfactorily explain to himself why he should think

+of Judith at all in this way&mdash;Judith, whom he had

+known so long, and upon whom he counted so

+securely&mdash;Judith, who understood things, and was

+as good a comrade as a man. Surely it was a

+strange thing that he should discover himself in a

+sentimental dream of Judith!</p>

+

+<p>For it was in such dreams that Katherine Colebrooke

+had figured ever since Peter could remember.

+For years, indeed&mdash;and Judith knew it!&mdash;he had

+stood, tame and tractable, waiting for Chloe to

+throw her dainty lariat. But Chloe had intimated

+that her graceful fingers were engaged with the

+inkpot and her head with schemes for further

+sonneting. Chloe was becoming famous. To Peter,

+who was unmodern, there was little to be gained in

+arguing against a state of affairs so crassly absurd

+as career-getting for women. At such seasons it

+behooved sane men to pray for patience rather

+than the gift of tongues. When the disheartened

+fair should weary of the phantom pursuit, then

+might the man of patience have his little day.

+Peter winced at the picture. To the world he

+knew that his long waiting on the brink of the bog,

+while his ambitious lady floundered after false lights,

+was, in truth, no more impressive a spectacle than

+the anguished squawking of a hen who watches a

+brood of ducklings, of her own hatching, try their

+luck in the pond.</p>

+

+<p>And there was Judith the great-hearted, Judith

+who was as inspiring as a breath of hill air, Judith

+<pb n="174" />

+<anchor id="Pg174" />

+with no thought of careers beyond the loyal doing

+of her woman's part, Judith, trusty and loyal&mdash;and

+Judith with that accursed family connection!</p>

+

+<p>Peter tightened his cinch and turned his horse

+westward. The stars had grown dim in the sky.

+The world that the night before had seemed to float

+in a silvery effulgence looked gray and old. The

+cabin in the valley flaunted its wretched squalor,

+like a beggar seeking alms on the highway. Riding

+by, Peter lifted his sombrero. "Sweet dreams,

+gentle lady!" He dug the rowel into his horse's side

+and began his day at no laggard pace. Nor did he

+spare his horse in the miles that lay between him

+and breakfast. The beast would have no more

+work to do that day, when once he reached camp,

+and Peter was not in his tenderest mood as he

+spurred through the gray of the morning. The

+pale, chastened world was all his own at this hour.

+Not a creature was stirring. The mountains, the

+valleys, the softly huddled hills slept in the deep

+hush that is just before the dawn. He looked about

+with questioning eyes. Last night this very road

+had been a pale silver thread winding from the

+mountain crests into a world of dreams. To-day

+it was but a trail across the range. "Where are the

+snows of yester year?" he quoted, with a certain

+early-morning grimness. At heart he was half inclined

+to believe Judith responsible for the vanished

+world; Judith, Judith&mdash;he was riding away from

+her as fast as his horse could gallop, and yet his

+thoughts perversely lingered about the cabin in the

+valley.</p>

+<pb n="175" />

+<anchor id="Pg175" />

+

+<p>After a couple of hours' hard riding he could

+dimly make out specks moving on that huge background

+of space, and presently his horse neighed

+and put fresh spirit into his gait, recognizing his

+fellows in moving dots on the vast perspective.

+And being a beast of some intelligence, for all his

+heavy-footed failings, he reasoned that food and

+rest would soon be his portion. Peter had no further

+use for the rowel.</p>

+

+<p>Breakfast was already well under way when he

+reached camp. The outfit, seated on saddles in a

+semicircle about the chuck wagon, ate with that

+peculiar combination of haste and skill that doubtless

+the life of the saddle counteracts, as digestive

+troubles are apparently unknown among plainsmen.

+The cook, in handing Peter his tin plate, cup,

+spoon, and black-handled fork, asked him if "he

+would take overland trout or Cincinnati chicken,

+this morning?" The cook never omitted these jocular

+inquiries regarding the various camp names for

+bacon. He seemed to think that a choice of alias

+was as good as a change of menu. There was little

+talk at breakfast, and that bearing chiefly on the

+day's work. Every one was impatient for an early

+start. The horse wrangler had his string waiting,

+the cook was scouring his iron pots, saddles were

+thrown over horses fresh from a long night's good

+grazing, cinches were tightened, slickers and blankets

+were adjusted, and camp melted away in a troup

+of horsemen winding away through the gray of early

+morning.</p>

+

+<p>The scene of the beef round-up was a mighty

+<pb n="176" />

+<anchor id="Pg176" />

+plain, affording limitless scope for handling the

+cattle of a thousand hills. In the distance rose the

+first undulations of the mountains, that might be

+likened to the surplusage of space that rolled the

+length of the sweeping levels, then heaped high to

+the blue. The specks in the far distance began to

+grow as if the screw of a field-glass were bringing

+them nearer, turning them into horsemen, bunches

+of cattle, "chuck-wagons" of the different outfits,

+reserves of horses restrained by temporary rope-corrals,

+all the equipment of a great round-up.

+Dozens of men, multitudes of horses, hordes of cattle&mdash;the

+mighty plain swallowed all the little, prancing,

+galloping, bellowing things, and still looked mighty

+in its loneliness. Fling a handful of toys from a

+Noah's Ark&mdash;if they make such simple toys now&mdash;in

+an ordinary field, and the little, wooden men,

+horses and cows, will suggest the round-up in relation

+to its background. Men darted hither and thither,

+yelling shrilly; cows&mdash;born apparently to be leaders&mdash;broke

+from the bunches to which they had been

+assigned and started at a clumsy run, followed by

+kindred susceptible to example. Cow-punchers,

+waiting for just such manifestations of individuality,

+whirled after them like comets, and soon they were

+again in the pawing, heaving, sweltering bunch to

+which they belonged.</p>

+

+<p>Peter Hamilton, whose particular skill as a cow-puncher

+lay in that branch of the profession known

+as "cutting out," found that the work of the rustlers

+had been carried on with no unsparing hand since

+the early spring round-up. Calves bearing the "H

+<pb n="177" />

+<anchor id="Pg177" />

+L" brand&mdash;that claimed by a company known to be

+made up of cattle-thieves&mdash;followed mothers bearing

+almost every brand that grazed herds in that

+part of the State. The Wetmore outfit, that used a

+"W" enclosed in a square, were apparently the

+heaviest losers. The cows and calves were herded

+at the right of the plain, convenient to the branding-pen,

+the steers well away to the opposite side. As

+Peter drove a "W-square" cow, followed by a little,

+white-faced calf, whose brand had plainly been

+tampered with, he heard one of his associates say:</p>

+

+<p>"There's nothing small about the 'H L' except

+their methods."</p>

+

+<p>"What's 'H L' stand for, anyway?" the other

+cow-puncher asked.</p>

+

+<p>"Why, Hell, or, How Long; depends whether

+you're with 'em or again 'em."</p>

+

+<p>Peter wheeled from the men and headed for the

+bunch he was cutting out. He fancied that the

+man had looked at him strangely as he offered a

+choice of meanings for the "H L"&mdash;and yet he

+could not have known that Peter had gone to

+Rodney's cabin last night. He flung himself heart

+and soul into his work, dashing full tilt at the

+snorting, stamping bedlam, enveloped in clouds of

+dust that dimmed the very daylight. Calves bleated

+piteously as they were jammed in the thickening

+pack. Peter shouted, swung the rope right and

+left, thinning the bunch about him, and a second

+later emerged, driving before him a cow, followed

+by a calf. These were turned over to cow-boys

+waiting for them. Time after time Hamilton returned

+<pb n="178" />

+<anchor id="Pg178" />

+to that mass of unconscious power, that with

+a single rush could have annihilated the little band

+of horsemen that handled them with the skill of a

+dealer shuffling, cutting, dealing a pack of cards.</p>

+

+<p>To the left were the steers, pawing and tearing up

+the earth in a very ecstasy of impotent fury. Picture

+the giant propeller of an ocean liner thrashing about

+in the sands of the desert and you will have an

+approximate knowledge of the dust raised by a

+thousand steers. Their long-drawn, shrieking bellow

+had a sinister note. Horns, hoofs, tails beat the

+air, their bloodshot eyes looked menacingly in every

+direction; but a handful of cow-boys kept them in

+check, circling round and round them on ponies who

+did their work without waiting for quirt or rowel.</p>

+

+<p>The noonday sun looked down upon a scene that

+to the eye unskilled in these things was as confusion

+worse confounded. Cow-boys dashed from nowhere

+in particular and did amazing things with a

+bit of rope, sending it through the air with snaky

+undulations after flying cattle. The rope, taking

+on lifelike coils, would pursue the flying beast like

+an aerial reptile, then the noose would fall true,

+and the thing was done. A second later a couple

+of cow-boys would be examining the disputed brand

+on the prone animal.</p>

+

+<p>The smell of burning flesh and hair rose from the

+branding-pen and mingled with the stench of the

+herds in one noisome compound. The yells of the

+cow-punchers, each having its different bearing on

+the work in hand, were all but lost in the dull,

+steady roar of the cattle, bellowing in a chorus of

+<pb n="179" />

+<anchor id="Pg179" />

+fear, rage, and pain. And still the work of sorting,

+branding, cutting-out, went steadily on. Though

+an outsider would not have perceived it, the work

+was as crisp-cut and exact in its methods as the

+work in a counting-house. One of the cow-boys, in

+hot pursuit of a fractious heifer, encountered a

+gopher-hole, and horse and rider were down in a

+heap. In a second a dozen helping hands were

+dragging him from under the horse. He limped

+painfully, but stooped to examine his horse. The

+beast had broken a leg, and turned on the man eyes

+almost human in their pain.</p>

+

+<p>"Bob, Bob!" The cow-puncher went down on

+his knees and put his arms about the neck of his

+pet. "My God!" he said, "me and Bob was just

+like brothers. Everybody knowed that." He uncinched

+the saddle with clumsy tenderness; not a man

+thought a whit less of him because he could not see

+well at the moment. He turned his head away, that

+he might not see the well-aimed shot that would

+release his pet from pain. Then he limped away

+after another horse&mdash;it was all in the day's work.</p>

+

+<p>The beef contract called for a thousand steers,

+four and five years old, and these having been well

+and duly counted, and some dozen extra head added

+in case of accident, they were immediately started

+on the trail, as they could accomplish some seven or

+eight miles before being bedded down for the night.

+Hamilton, who had crossed to the beef side of the

+round-up to have a necessary word with the "Circle-Star"

+foreman, was amazed to find Simpson making

+ready to start with the trail herd. Peter inquired,

+<pb n="180" />

+<anchor id="Pg180" />

+with a few expletives, "how long he had been a

+cow-man, in good and regular standing?"</p>

+

+<p>"As far as the regularity is concerned, that would

+be a pretty hard thing to answer, but he's had an

+interest in the 'XXX' since&mdash;since&mdash;"</p>

+

+<p>"He drove Rodney's sheep over the cliff?"</p>

+

+<p>"Ain't you a little hard on the beginning of his

+cattle career? It usually goes by a more business-like

+name, but&mdash;" he shrugged his shoulders&mdash;"it's

+up to the 'XXX.' We wouldn't have him help

+to pull bogged cattle out of a creek."</p>

+

+<p>The beeves, hidden in a simoom of their own

+stamping, were gradually being pressed forward on

+the trail, a huge pawn, ignorant of its own strength,

+manipulated by a handful of men and horses. Its

+bellowing, like the tuning of a thousand bass-fiddles,

+shook the stillness like the long, sullen roar

+of the sea, as out of the plain they thundered, to

+feed the multitude.</p>

+

+<p>"Well, there goes as pretty a bunch of porterhouses

+as I'd want to put tooth to. If I get away

+from here within the next two months, as I'm expecting,

+doubtless I'll meet some of you again with

+your personality somewhat obscured by reason of

+fried onions."</p>

+

+<p>The foreman of the "Circle-Star" waved his hand

+after the slowly moving herd that gradually pressed

+forward like an army in loose marching order. Outriders

+galloped ahead, like darting insects, and pointing

+the lumbering mass that trailed its half-mile

+length at a snail's-pace. The great column steadily

+advanced, checked, turned, led as easily as a child

+<pb n="181" />

+<anchor id="Pg181" />

+trails his little steam-cars after him on the nursery

+floor, and always by the little force of a handful of

+men and a few horses.</p>

+

+<p>After supper came general relaxation around the

+camp-fire. The men, who had all day been strung

+to a keen pitch of nervous energy, lounged in loose,

+picturesque uncouthness, while each began to unravel

+his own lively miscellany of information or

+invention. There was jest, laughter, spinning of

+yarns, singing of songs. As Peter lay in the fire-light,

+smoking his brier-wood, he noticed that the

+man next him spent a great deal of time poring

+over a letter, holding it close to the blaze, now at

+arm's-length, which was hardly surprising, considering

+the penmanship of the more common

+variety of <hi rend="font-style: italic">billet-doux</hi>. The man was plainly disappointed

+that Peter would not notice or comment.

+Finally he folded it up, and with sentimental significance

+returned it to the left side pocket of his

+flannel shirt, and remarked to Peter, "It's from

+her."</p>

+

+<p>"Indeed," said Peter, who had not the faintest

+notion who "her" could be. "Let me congratulate

+you."</p>

+

+<p>"Yes, sir," and there was conviction in the cow-puncher's

+tone; "it's from old man Kinson's girl, up

+to the Basin, and the parson's goin' to give us the

+life sentence soon. A man gets sick o' helling it all

+over creation." He rolled a cigarette, lit it, took

+a puff or two, then turned to Peter, as one whose

+acquaintance with the broader side of life entitled

+him to speak with a certain authority. "Is it that,

+<pb n="182" />

+<anchor id="Pg182" />

+or is it that we're getting on, a little long in the

+tooth, logy in our movements?"</p>

+

+<p>"I think we're just sick of helling it." Peter

+looked towards the star that last night had been

+the beacon towards which he and Judith had

+scaled the heights. "Yes, we get sick of helling it

+after we've turned thirty."</p>

+

+<p>"Then I can't be making a mistake. If I thought

+it was because I was getting on, I'd stampede this

+here range. It don't seem fair to a girl to allow

+that you're broke, tamed, and know the way to the

+corral, when it's just that you're needin' to go to an

+old man's home."</p>

+

+<p>"Now this is really love," said Peter to himself,

+with interest. "This is humility." A sympathetic

+liking for the self-distrustful lover surged hot and

+generous into Peter's heart, and he continued to

+himself: "Now that's what Judith would appreciate

+in a man, some directness, some humility!" Poor

+Judith! Poor burden-bearer! Who was to love

+her as she deserved to be loved, even as old man

+Kinson's girl, of the Basin, was loved? Yet suppose

+some one did love her in such fashion and she returned

+it? It was a picture Peter had never conjured

+up before. Nonsense! he was accustomed to

+think of Judith a great deal, and that was not the

+way to think of her. "Dear Judith!" said Peter,

+half unconsciously to himself, and looked again at

+the fellow, who had gone back to his dingy letter and

+continued to reread it in the fire-light as if he hoped

+to extract some further meaning from the now

+familiar words. Nature had fitted him out with a

+<pb n="183" />

+<anchor id="Pg183" />

+rag-bag assortment of features&mdash;the nose of a clown,

+the eyes of a ferret, the mouth that hangs agape

+like a badly hinged door, the mouth of the incessant

+talker. And withal, as he lounged in the fire-light,

+dreamily turning his love-letter, he had a sort of

+superphysical beauty, reflected of the glow that

+many waters cannot quench.</p>

+

+<p>Costigan, who had led the merriment against

+Simpson at Mrs. Clark's eating-house, was playing

+"mumbly-peg" with Texas Tyler. They had been

+working like Trojans all day at the round-up, but

+they pitched their pocket-knives with as keen a zest

+as school-boys, bickering over points in the game,

+accusing each other of cheating, calling on the

+rest of the company to umpire some disputed

+point.</p>

+

+<p>But presently, from the opposite side of the fire,

+some one began to sing, in a rich barytone, a dirgelike

+thing that caught the attention of first one then

+another of the men, making them stop their yarning

+and knife-throwing to listen. The tune, in its homely

+power to evoke the image of the ceremonial of

+death, was more or less familiar to most of them.

+There was a conscious funeral pageantry in the ring

+of its measured phrases that recalled to many

+burials of the dead that had taken place in their

+widely scattered homes. Mrs. Barbauld's hymn,

+"Flee as a Bird to the Mountain," are the words

+usually sung to the air.</p>

+

+<p>Costigan presently cut across the dirgelike refrain

+with: "Phwat th' divil is ut about that

+chune that Oi'm thinkin' of?"</p>

+<pb n="184" />

+<anchor id="Pg184" />

+

+<p>"This," said the man with the barytone voice,

+"is the tune that Nick Steele saved his neck to."</p>

+

+<p>"Begorra, that's ut. I wasn't there mesilf, but

+Oi've heard th' story told more times than Oi've

+years to me credit."</p>

+

+<p>"My father was in that necktie party," spoke up

+a young cow-puncher, "and I've heard him tell the

+story scores of times, and he always wondered why

+the devil they let Steele off. Never could understand

+it after the thing was done. He was talking

+of it once to a man who was a sharp on things like

+mesmerism, and the man called it hypnotic suggestion.

+Said that Steele got control of the whole

+outfit and mesmerized 'em so they couldn't do a

+thing to him."</p>

+

+<p>Several of the men asked for the story, echoes of

+which had come down through all the forty years

+since its happening. And the cow-puncher, lighting

+a cigarette, began:</p>

+

+<p>"It was in the good old forty-nine days in

+California, when gold was sometimes more plentiful

+than bread, and women were so scarce that one

+day when they found a girl's shoe on the trail they

+fitted a gold heel to it and put it up in camp to

+worship. But sentiment wasn't exactly their long

+suit, and any little difficulties that cropped up were

+straightened out by the vigilance committee&mdash;and

+a rope. One day a saddle, or maybe it was a gun,

+that didn't belong to him, was found among this

+man Steele's traps, and though he swore that some

+one had put it there for a grudge, the committee

+thought that a hemp necktie was the easiest way

+<pb n="185" />

+<anchor id="Pg185" />

+out of the argument. And this here Steele party

+finds himself, at the age of twenty-four, with something

+like thirty minutes of life to his credit. He

+don't take on none, nor make a play for mercy, nor

+try any fancy speech-making. He just waits round,

+kinder pale, but seemin' indifferent, considerin' it

+was his funeral that was impendin'. I've heard

+my father say that he was a tall, slim boy, with a

+kind of girlish prettiness, and the committee looked

+some for hysterics and they didn't get none. The

+noose was made ready and they told Steele he could

+have five minutes to pray, if he wanted to, or he

+could take it out in cursing, just as he chose. The

+boy said he felt that he hadn't quite all that was

+coming to him in the way of enjoyment, and that

+while he was far from criticising the vigilance

+committee, he was not altogether partial to the

+nature of his demise, and if it was just the same to

+them, instead of praying or cursing, he'd take that

+five minutes for a song.</p>

+

+<p>"They was agreeable, and he up and steps on the

+scaffold, what they was mighty proud of, it bein'

+about the only substantial structure the town could

+boast. He began to sing that thing you've all

+been listening to, and he had a voice like water

+falling light and fine in a pool below. They crowded

+up close about the scaffold and listened. The

+words he put to it were his own story, just like those

+old minstrels that you read about, and at the end

+of each verse came the chorus, slow and solemn as

+the moment after something great has happened.

+There wasn't a hangin'-face in the crowd after he

+<pb n="186" />

+<anchor id="Pg186" />

+was started. At some time or other every man had

+heard somebody he thought a heap of, buried to

+that tune, and his voice got to workin' on their

+imaginations and turned their hearts to water. I

+don't remember anything but the chorus&mdash;that went

+like this:</p>

+

+<lg>

+<l rend="margin-left: 2">"'Who'll weep for me, on the gallows tree,</l>

+<l rend="margin-left: 4">As I sway in the wind and swing?</l>

+<l rend="margin-left: 2">Is there never a tear to be shed for me,</l>

+<l rend="margin-left: 4">As I swing by a hempen string?</l>

+<l rend="margin-left: 2">Who'll weep, who'll keep</l>

+<l rend="margin-left: 2">Watch, as I'm rocked to sleep,</l>

+<l rend="margin-left: 4">Rocked by a hempen string?'"</l>

+</lg>

+

+<p>There was a long silence, broken only by the

+crackle of the logs in the camp-fire and the night

+sounds of the lonely plain. The leaping flames

+showed a group of thoughtful faces. Finally, Costigan

+broke the silence with:</p>

+

+<p>"Begorra, 'tis some av thim 'ud be doin' well to

+be lukin' to their music-lessons about here, Oi'm

+thinkin', afther th' day's wurruk."</p>

+

+<p>The Irishman, with his instinctive loquacity, had

+expressed what none of the rest would have considered

+politic to hint. It was like the giving way

+of the pebble that starts the avalanche. Soon they

+were deep in tales of lynchings. Peter knew only too

+well the trend of their talk, the "XXX" men were

+feeling the public pulse, as it were. Now, according

+to the unwritten code of the plains, lynching was

+"meet, right, just, and available" for the cattle-thief.

+And Peter felt himself false to his creed, false

+<pb n="187" />

+<anchor id="Pg187" />

+to his employer, false to himself, in seeking to evade

+the question. And yet that pitiful cabin, the white-faced

+woman running to the door so often that

+she knew not what she did, and the little rosy boy,

+who had put out his arms so trustfully! Peter

+broke into their grewsome yarning. "Lord, but

+you're like a lot of old women just come from a

+funeral!"</p>

+

+<p>"Whin the carpse died hard, and th' wake was

+a success." Costigan turned over. "Werra, werra,

+but we'll be seein' fairies the night!"</p>

+

+<p>A "XXX" man turned his head with a deliberate

+slowness and regarded Peter with narrowing eyes:

+"If the subject of cattle-thieves and their punishment

+is unpleasant to the gentleman from New

+York, perhaps he will favor us with something more

+cheerful." It was the same man who had given the

+two definitions of the "H L" brand that morning

+at the round-up.</p>

+

+<p>"Delighted," said Peter, affecting not to notice

+the significance of the man's remark. "Did you

+ever hear of the time that Tony Neville was burned

+with snow?"</p>

+

+<p>The "XXX" man yawned long and audibly.

+No one seemed especially interested in Tony Neville's

+having been burned with snow, but Peter struck

+out manfully, just in time to head off a man who

+said that he had seen Jim Rodney or some one

+who looked like him, following the trail-herd.</p>

+

+<p>"Once on a time, when it paid to be a cattle-man,"

+began Peter, "there was an outfit near Laramie that

+hailed from the United Kingdom, every mother's

+<pb n="188" />

+<anchor id="Pg188" />

+son of them. A fine, manly lot of fellows, but

+wedded to calamity along of their cooks&mdash;not the

+revered range article," and Peter waved his hand

+towards the "W-square" cook, who was one of the

+party, "but the pampered ranch article that boasts

+a real stove, planted in a real kitchen, the spoiled

+darling that never has to light a fire out of wet wood

+in the rain.</p>

+

+<p>"These unhappy Britons had every species of ill

+luck that could befall an outfit, in the way of cooks;

+they were of every nationality, age, and sex, and they

+stole, drank, quarrelled, till the outfit determined

+to sweep the house clear of them and do its own

+cooking. Every man was to have a turn at it for a

+week. There was a Scotchman, who gave them

+something called 'pease bannocks,' three times a day;

+followed by an Irishman, who breakfasted them

+on potatoes and whiskey. There was an Englishman,

+who had a beef slaughtered every time he

+fancied a tenderloin. There was a Welshman, who

+sang as he cooked. There were as many different

+kinds of indigestion as there were men in the outfit.

+They would beg to do night-herding, anything to get

+them away from that ranch. Finally, when their

+little tummies got so bad that their overcoats

+thickened, or wore through, or whatever happens to

+stomachs' overcoats that are treated unkindly, some

+one's maiden aunt sent him a tract saying that rice

+was the salvation of the human race, as witness the

+Chinese. Whosever turn it was to cook that week

+determined to try the old lady's prescription. Rice

+was procured, about a peck, I think; and the man

+<pb n="189" />

+<anchor id="Pg189" />

+who was cooking, pro tem, put the entire quantity

+on to boil in a huge ham-boiler, over a slow fire, as

+per the directions of the maiden aunt. The rice

+seemed to be doing nicely, when some one came in

+and said that a bunch of antelope was over on the

+hills and there was a good chance to get a couple.

+Every man got his gun, all but the cook, and he

+looked at the rice, that hadn't done a thing over

+the slow fire, in a way that would melt your heart.

+'Just my luck that it should be my week to pot-wrestle

+when there's good hunting right at one's

+front door.'</p>

+

+<p>"'Oh, come on,' some one said. 'Didn't Kellett's

+aunt say the rice ought to be cooked over a slow

+fire? Kellett, get your aunt's letter and read the

+directions for cooking that rice again.'</p>

+

+<p>"The cook didn't need a second invitation, and

+they got into their saddles, cook and all, and went

+for the antelope.</p>

+

+<p>"Now antelope are not like stationary wash-tubs;

+they move about. And when that particular outfit

+arrived at the spot where those antelope were

+last seen, they had moved, but the boys found

+traces of them, and continued on their trail. They

+went in the foot-hills and they searched for those

+antelope all day. They caught up with old man

+Hall's outfit at dinner-time and were invited to take

+a bite. Coming home by way of the 'Circle-Star'

+ranch, Colonel Semmes asked them in to have a

+mint-julep; the colonel was a South Carolinian, and

+he had just succeeded in raising some mint. They

+had several&mdash;I fear more than several&mdash;drinks before

+<pb n="190" />

+<anchor id="Pg190" />

+leaving for home, with never a trace of antelope nor

+a thought of the rice cooking over the slow fire.

+The colonel remembered some hard cider that he

+had, and topping off on that, they set out. The

+weather was pretty warm, and on their way home

+they experienced some remorse over the hard cider.

+Now hard cider is an accumulative drink; it piles

+up interest like debt or unpaid taxes. And by the

+time those Englishmen had turned the little lane

+leading into their home corral, they saw a sight that

+made their sombreros rise. As I have said before,

+it was hot, being somewhere in the month of August.

+Gentlemen, I hardly expect you to believe

+me when I say it was snowing on their house,

+and not on another God blessed thing in the landscape.</p>

+

+<p>"The blame thing about it was, that every man

+took the phenomenon to be his own private view

+of snakes, or their bibulous equivalent, manifested

+in another and more terrifying form. Here was the

+August sun pouring down on the plain where their

+ranch-house was situated; everything in sight hot

+and dry as a lime-kiln, grasshoppers chirping in a

+hot-wave prophecy, and snow covering the house

+and the ground, about to what seemed a depth of

+four inches. Every one of them felt sensitive about

+mentioning what he saw to the others. You see,

+gentlemen, being unfamiliar with American drinks,

+and especially old Massachusetts cider, they merely

+looked to keep their saddles and no questions

+asked.</p>

+

+<p>"But when they got a bit closer the horror increased.

+<pb n="191" />

+<anchor id="Pg191" />

+Flying right out of their windows were

+perfect drifts of snow, banks of it, gentlemen, and

+the thermometer up past a hundred. One of the

+men looked about him and noticed the pallor on the

+faces of the rest:</p>

+

+<p>"'Do you notice anything strange, old chap?

+These cursed American drinks!'</p>

+

+<p>"'Strange!'&mdash;the boy he had spoken to was about

+eighteen, a nice, red-cheeked English lad out with

+his uncle learning the cattle business. 'Good God!'

+the boy said. 'I've always tried to lead a good

+life, and here I am a paretic before I've come of

+age.'</p>

+

+<p>"They halted their horses and held a consultation.

+The boss came to the conclusion that since they

+had all seen it, there was nothing to do but continue

+the investigation and send the details to the

+'Society for Psychical Research,' when he got down

+from his horse and walked towards the door of the

+house. At his approach, as if to rebuke his wanton

+curiosity, a great blast of snow blew out of the

+window and got him full in the face. He howled&mdash;the

+snow was scalding hot.</p>

+

+<p>"Then they remembered the rice."</p>

+

+<p>"Is that all?" demanded the man who had

+wanted to talk about rustling.</p>

+

+<p>"Isn't it enough?" said Peter, who could afford

+to be magnanimous, now that he had accomplished

+his point.</p>

+

+<p>"When I first heard that story, 'bout ten years

+ago, it ended with the Britishers riding like hell

+over to the Wolcott ranch to borrow umbrellas to

+<pb n="192" />

+<anchor id="Pg192" />

+keep off the hot rice while they got into the house,"

+said the man, still sulky.</p>

+

+<p>"That's the way they tell it to tenderfeet," and

+Peter turned on his heel. The story-telling for the

+evening was over, the boys got their blankets and

+set about making their beds for the night.</p>

+<pb n="193" />

+<anchor id="Pg193" />

+</div>

+

+<div rend="page-break-before: always">

+<head>XIII</head>

+<index index="pdf" /><index index="toc" level1="Mary's First Day In Camp" />

+<head type="sub">Mary's First Day In Camp</head>

+

+<p>The first day spent as governess to the family

+of Yellett reminded Mary Carmichael of those

+days mentioned in the opening chapter of Genesis,

+days wherein whole geological ages developed and

+decayed. Any era, geological or otherwise, she felt

+might have had its rise, decline, and fall during that

+first day spent in a sheep camp.</p>

+

+<p>She awoke to the sound of faint tinklings, and

+accepted the towering peaks of the Wind River

+mountains, with their snowy mantles all shadowy

+in the whitening dawn, and the warmer grays of

+huddling foot-hills, as one receives, without question,

+the fantastic visions of sleep. The faint tinkling

+grew nearer, mingled with a light pitter patter and

+a far off baa-ing and bleating; then, as shadowy as

+the sheep in dreams, a great flock came winding

+round the hill; in and out through the sage-brush

+they went and came, elusive as the early morning

+shadows they moved among. The air was crystalline

+and sparkling; creation's first morning could

+not have promised more. It would have been inconsistent

+in such a place to waken in a house; the

+desert, that seemed a lifeless sea, the sheep moving

+<pb n="194" />

+<anchor id="Pg194" />

+like gray shadows, were all parts of a big, new world

+that had no need of houses built by hands.</p>

+

+<p>Ben, oldest of the Brobdingnag tribe, who had

+greeted Mary's request to be directed to "the house"

+as a bit of dry Eastern humor, led the herd to

+pasture. Ben's right-hand man was "Stump,"

+the collie, so named because he had no tail worth

+mentioning, but otherwise in full possession of his

+faculties. Stump was newly broken to his official

+duties and authority sat heavily on him. Keenly

+alert, he flew hither and thither, first after one

+straying member of the herd, then another, barking

+an early morning roll-call as he went. Two other

+male Brobdingnags came from some sequestered spot

+in the landscape and joined Ben&mdash;Mary recognized

+two more pupils.</p>

+

+<p>Mrs. Yellett then unrolled the pillow constructed

+the night previous of such garments as she had been

+willing to dispense with, and put them on. The

+vastness of her surroundings did not prevent her

+from locating the minutest article, and Mary gave

+her the respectful admiration of a woman who has

+spent a great deal of time searching for things in an

+infinitely smaller space. The matriarch then called

+the remaining members of her household officially&mdash;the

+Misses Yellett accomplished their early morning

+toilets with the simplicity of young robins. Only

+the new governess hung back, but finally mustered

+up enough courage to say that if such

+a thing was possible she would like to have a

+bath.</p>

+

+<p>Mrs. Yellett greeted her request with the amused

+<pb n="195" />

+<anchor id="Pg195" />

+tolerance of one who has never given such a trifle

+a thought.</p>

+

+<p>"The habit of bathing," she commented, "is

+shore like religion: them that observes it wonders

+how them that neglects it gets along." She beckoned

+Mary to follow, and led the way to a bunch of

+willows that grew about a stone's-throw from the

+camp. "Here be a whole creek full of water, if

+you don't lack the fortitood. It's cold enough to

+sell for ten cents a glass down to Texas."</p>

+

+<p>Somewhat dismayed, Mary stepped gingerly into

+the creek. Its intense cold numbed her at first,

+but a second later awoke all her young lustiness, and

+she returned to camp in a fine glow of courage to

+encounter whatever else there might be of novelty.

+Mrs. Yellett was preparing breakfast at a sheet-iron

+stove, assisted by Cacta and Clematis.</p>

+

+<p>"Your hankering after a bath like this"&mdash;she added

+another handful of flour to the biscuit dough&mdash;"do

+shore remind me of an Englishman who come

+to visit near Laramie in the days of plenty, when

+steers had jumped to forty-five. This yere Britisher

+was exhibit stock, shore enough, being what's called

+a peer of the realm, which means, in his own country,

+that he is just nacherally entitled from the start

+to h'ist his nose high.</p>

+

+<p>"The outfit he was goin' to visit wasn't in the

+habit of havin' peers drop in on them casual, but

+they aimed to make him feel that he wasn't the

+first of the herd that headed that way by a

+quart"&mdash;she cut four biscuits with a tin cup, and

+resumed&mdash;"to which end they rounded up every

+<pb n="196" />

+<anchor id="Pg196" />

+specimen of canned food that's ever come across the

+Rockies.</p>

+

+<p>"'Let him ask for "salmon esplinade," let him

+ask for "chicken marine-go," let him ask for

+plum-pudding, let him ask for hair-oil or throat

+lozengers, this yere outfit calls his bluff,' says Billy

+Ames, who owns the 'twin star' outfit and is

+anticipatin' this peer as a guest.</p>

+

+<p>"Well, just as everything is ready, the can-opener,

+sharp as a razor, waitin' to open up such effete

+luxuries as the peer may demand, Bill Ames gets

+called to California by the sickness of his wife. He

+feels mean about abandonin' the peer, but he don't

+seem to have no choice, his wife bein' one of them

+women who shares her bad health pretty impartially

+round the family. So Billy he departs. But before

+he goes he expounds to Joplin Joe, his foreman, the

+nature of a peer and how his wants is apt to be

+a heap fashionable, and that when he asks for anything

+to grasp the can-opener and run to the store-house&mdash;Cacta,

+you put on the coffee!</p>

+

+<p>"That peer arrives in the afternoon, and he never

+makes a request any more than a corpse. Beyond

+a marked disposition to herd by himself and to

+maintain the greatest possible distance between his

+own person and a six-shooter, he don't vary none

+from the bulk of tenderfeet. At night, when all

+parties retires, and Joplin Joe ponders on them

+untouched, effete luxuries in the store-room, and

+how the can-opener 'ain't once been dimmed in the

+cause of hospitality, it frets him considerable, and he

+feels he ain't doin' his duty to the absent Billy Ames.</p>

+<pb n="197" />

+<anchor id="Pg197" />

+

+<p>"At sunrise he can stand it no longer. He thunders

+on the Britisher's door with the butt of his six-shooter,

+calling out:</p>

+

+<p>"'Peer, peer, be you awake?'</p>

+

+<p>"The peer allowed he was, though his teeth was

+rattling like broken crockery.</p>

+

+<p>"'Peer, would you relish some "salmon esplinade"?'</p>

+

+<p>"The peer allowed he wouldn't.</p>

+

+<p>"'Peer, would you relish some "chicken marine-go"?'</p>

+

+<p>"The peer allowed he shore wouldn't, and the

+crockery rattled harder than ever. Joplin Joe then

+tried him on the hair-oil and the throat lozengers,

+the peer declining each with thanks.</p>

+

+<p>"'Peer,' said Joplin Joe, fair busting with hospitality,

+'is there anything in this Gawd's world that

+you do want?'</p>

+

+<p>"The crockery rattled an interlood, then Joplin

+Joe made out:</p>

+

+<p>"'Thanks, very much. I should like a ba-ath'&mdash;Clematis,

+you see if them biscuits is brownin'.</p>

+

+<p>"Joe he ran to the store-room, and his eye encountered

+a barrel of corned-beef. He calls to a

+couple of cow-punchers, and the first thing you

+know that late corned steer is piled onto the prairie

+and them cow-punchers is hustling the empty

+barrel in to the peer. Next they detaches the steps

+from the kitchen door, ropes 'em to the barrel and

+introduces the peer to his bath. He's good people

+all right, and when he sees they calls his bluff he

+steps in all right and lets 'em soak him a couple of

+<pb n="198" />

+<anchor id="Pg198" />

+buckets. This here move restores all parties to a

+mutual understanding, and the peer he bathes in

+the corned-beef barrel regular durin' his stay&mdash;you

+see the habit had cinched him."</p>

+

+<p>Ned had shot an antelope a day or two previous,

+and antelope steak, broiled over a glowing bed of

+wood coals, with black coffee, stewed dried apples,

+and soda biscuit made up what Mary found to be

+an unexpectedly palatable breakfast. As camp did

+not include a cow, no milk or butter was served

+with meals. Nevertheless, the hungry tenderfoot

+was quite content, and missed none of the appurtenances

+she had been brought up to believe essential

+to a civilized meal, not even the little silver jug that

+Aunt Martha always insisted came over with William

+the Conqueror&mdash;Aunt Martha scorned the <hi rend="font-style: italic">May-flower</hi>

+contingent as parvenus.</p>

+

+<p>The family sat on the grass, tailor fashion, and

+every one helped himself to what appetite prompted,

+in a fashion that suggested brilliant gymnastic

+powers. To pass a dish to any one, the governess

+discovered, was construed as an evidence of mental

+weakness and eccentricity. The family satisfied

+its appetite without assistance or amenities, but

+with the skill of a troupe of jugglers.</p>

+

+<p>Breakfast was half over when Mrs. Yellett laid

+down her knife, which she had handled throughout

+the meal with masterly efficiency. Mary watched

+her in hopeless embarrassment, and wondered if

+her own timid use of a tin fork could be construed

+as an unfriendly comment upon the Yelletts' more

+simple and direct code of table etiquette.</p>

+<pb n="199" />

+<anchor id="Pg199" />

+

+<p>"Land's sakes! I just felt, all the time we've been

+eating, we was forgettin' something. You children

+ought to remember, I got so much on my mind."</p>

+

+<p>All eyes turned anxiously to the cooking-stove,

+while an expression of frank regret began to settle

+over the different faces. The backbone of their appetites

+had been broken, and there was something

+else, perhaps something even more appetizing, to

+come.</p>

+

+<p>Interpreting the trend of their glance and expression,

+up flared Mrs. Yellett, with as great a show

+of indignation as if some one had set a match to her

+petticoats.</p>

+

+<p>"I declare, I never see such children; no more

+nacheral feelin's than a herd of coyotes; never

+thinks of a plumb thing but grub. No, make no

+mistake about the character of the objec' we've forgot.

+'Tain't sweet pertaters, 'tain't molasses, 'tain't

+corn-bread&mdash;it's paw! It's your pore old paw&mdash;him

+settin' in the tent, forsook and neglected by his own

+children."</p>

+

+<p>All started up to remedy their filial neglect without

+loss of time, but Mrs. Yellett waved them back

+to their places.</p>

+

+<p>"Don't the whole posse of you go after him, like

+he'd done something and was to be apprehended.

+Ben, you go after your father."</p>

+

+<p>Ben strode over to the little white tent that

+Mary had noticed glimmering in the moonlight

+the preceding evening, and presently emerged, supporting

+on his arm a partially paralyzed old man,

+who might have been Rip Van Winkle in the worst

+<pb n="200" />

+<anchor id="Pg200" />

+of tempers. His white hair and beard encircled a

+shrivelled, hawklike face, the mouth was sucked

+back in a toothless eddy that brought tip of nose

+and tip of chin into whispering distance, the eyes

+glittered from behind the overhanging, ragged brows

+like those of a hungry animal searching through the

+brush for its prey.</p>

+

+<p>"If you've done eatin'," whispered Mrs. Yellett to

+Miss Carmichael, "you'd better run on. Paw's

+langwidge is simply awful when we forget to bring

+him to meals." Mary ran on.</p>

+

+<p>When, after the lapse of some thirty minutes or so,

+the stentorian voice of Mrs. Yellett recalled Mary to

+camp, she found that the tin breakfast service had

+been washed and returned to the mess-box, the beds

+had been neatly folded and piled in one of the wagons&mdash;in

+fact, the extremely simple tent-hold, to coin

+a word, was in absolute order. It was just 6 A.M.,

+and Mrs. Yellett thought it high time to begin school.

+Mary tried to convey to her that the hour was somewhat

+unusual, but she seemed to think that for pupils

+who were beginning their tasks comparatively late in

+life it would be impossible to start sufficiently early

+in the morning. So at this young and tender hour,

+with many misgivings, Mary set about preparing her

+<hi rend="font-style: italic">al fresco</hi> class-room.</p>

+

+<p>She chose a nice, flat little piece of the United

+States, situated in the shade of the clump of willows

+that bordered a trickling creek not far from her

+sylvan bath-room of the early morning. How she

+was to sit on the ground all day and yet preserve a

+properly pedagogical demeanor was the first question

+<pb n="201" />

+<anchor id="Pg201" />

+to be settled. That there was nothing even remotely

+resembling a chair in camp she felt reasonably

+assured, as "paw" was sitting on an inverted

+soap-box under a pine-tree, and "paw," by reason

+of age and infirmity, appropriated all luxuries. Mrs.

+Yellett, with her usual acumen, grasped the situation.</p>

+

+<p>"I'm figgerin'," she commented, "that there must

+be easier ways of governin' than sittin' up like a

+prairie-dog while you're at it."</p>

+

+<p>Mrs. Yellett took a hurried survey of the camp,

+lessening the distance between herself and one of

+the light wagons with a gait in which grace was

+entirely subservient to speed; then, with one capacious

+wrench of the arms, she loosened the spring seat

+from the wagon and bore it to the governess with an

+artless air of triumph. It was difficult, under these

+circumstances, to explain to Mrs. Yellett that without

+that symbol of scholastic authority, a desk, the

+wagon seat was useless. Nevertheless, Mary set

+forth, with all her eloquence, the mission of a desk.

+Mrs. Yellett was genuinely depressed. Had she imported

+the magician without his wand&mdash;Aladdin

+without his lamp? She proposed a bewildering

+choice&mdash;an inverted wash-tub, two buckets sustaining

+the relation of caryatides to a board, the sheet-iron

+cooking-stove. In an excess of solicitude she

+even suggested robbing "paw" of his soap-box.</p>

+

+<p>Mary chose the wash-tub on condition that Mrs.

+Yellett consented to sacrifice the handles in the

+cause of lower education. She felt that an inverted

+tub that was likely to see-saw during class hours

+<pb n="202" />

+<anchor id="Pg202" />

+would tend rather to develop a sense of humor in her

+pupils than to contribute to her pedagogical dignity.</p>

+

+<p>The camp, as may already have been inferred,

+enjoyed a matriarchal form of government. Its

+feminine dictator was no exception to the race of

+autocrats in that she was not an absolute stranger

+to the rosy byways of self-indulgence. There was a

+strenuous quality in her pleasuring perhaps not inconsistent

+in one whose daily tasks included sheep-herding,

+ditch-digging, varied by irrigating and

+shearing in their proper seasons. Under the circumstances,

+it was not surprising that her wash-tub

+bore about the same relationship to her real

+duties as does the crochet needle or embroidery

+hoop to the lives of less arduously engaged women.

+It was at once her fad and her relaxation, the dainty

+feminine accomplishment with which she whiled

+away the hours after a busy day spent with pick and

+shovel. Of all this Mary was ignorant when she proposed

+that Mrs. Yellett saw off the tub-handles in

+the cause of culture. However, Mrs. Yellett procured

+a saw, yet the hand that held it lingered in

+its descent on the handles. She contemplated the

+tub as affectionately as Hamlet regarding the skull

+of "Alas, poor Yorick!"</p>

+

+<p>"This," she observed, "is the only thing about

+camp that reminds me I'm a woman. I'd plumb

+forget it many a time if it warn't for this little tub.

+The identity of a woman is mighty apt to get

+mislaid when dooty compels her to assoome the

+pants cast aside by the nacheral head of the house

+in sickness or death. It's ben six years now since

+<pb n="203" />

+<anchor id="Pg203" />

+paw's done a thing but set 'round and wait for

+meals." Mrs. Yellett sighed laboriously. "Not

+that I'm holdin' it agin him none. When a man

+sees eighty, it's time he bedded himself down comfortable

+and waited for the nacheral course of events

+to weed him out. But when the boys get old

+enough to tend to herdin', irrigatin', and the work

+that God A'mighty provided that man might get the

+chance to sweat hisself for bread, accordin' to the

+Scriptures, I aim to indulge myself by doin' a wash

+of clothes every day, even if I have to take clean

+clothes and do 'em over again."</p>

+

+<p>The poor "gov'ment's" tender heart could not

+resist this presentation of the case.</p>

+

+<p>"We won't touch the handles, Mrs. Yellett," she

+laughed. "I'm glad you told me you had a personal

+sentiment for the tub. There are some things

+I should feel the same way about&mdash;my hoe and rake,

+for instance, that I care for my garden with, at

+home. And that suggests to me, why not dig two

+little trenches for the handles and plant the tub?

+Then I shall have an even firmer foundation on

+which to arrange the&mdash;the&mdash;the educational miscellany."</p>

+

+<p>The suggestion of this harmless expedient was

+gratefully received, and the "desk" duly implanted,

+whereupon Mary pathetically sought to embellish

+her "class-room" from such scanty materials as happened

+to be at hand. A hemstitched bureau scarf

+that she had tucked in her trunk, in unquestioning

+faith in the bureau that was to be part of the

+ranch equipment, took the "raw edge," as it were,

+<pb n="204" />

+<anchor id="Pg204" />

+off the desk. A bunch of prairie flowers, flaming

+cactus blossoms in scarlet and yellow, ox-eyed

+daisies, white clematis from the creek, seemed none

+the less decorative for the tin cup that held them.

+Mary grimly told herself that her school was to

+have refining influences, even if it had no furniture.</p>

+

+<p>The books, pencils, and paper arranged in decorous

+little piles, Miss Carmichael announced to her

+patroness that school was ready to open. Mrs.

+Yellett, who had never heard that "a soft voice is

+an excellent thing in woman," and whose chest-notes

+were not unlike those of a Durham in sustained

+volume of sound, made the valley of the Wind River

+echo with the summons of the pupils to school, upon

+which the teacher herself was overcome by the absurdity

+of the situation and had barely time to escape

+back of the willows, where she laughed till she

+cried.</p>

+

+<p>As the pupils trooped obediently to school, Mary

+noted that they carried no flowers to their dear

+teacher, but that Ben, the oldest pupil, twenty-one

+years old, six feet four inches in height and deeply

+saturnine in manner, carried a six-shooter in his

+cartridge-belt. The teacher felt that she was the

+last to deny a pupil any reasonable palliative of the

+tedium of class-hours&mdash;the nearness of her own

+school-days inclined her to leniency in this particular&mdash;but

+she was hardly prepared to condone a six-shooter,

+and confided her fears to Mrs. Yellett, who

+received them with the indulgent tolerance a strong-minded

+woman might extend to the feminine flutter

+aroused by a mouse. She explained that Ben did

+<pb n="205" />

+<anchor id="Pg205" />

+not shoot for "glory," but to defend the herd from

+the casual calls of mountain-lions, bears, and coyotes.

+Jack and Ned, who were very nearly as tall as their

+older brother, carried similar weapons. Mary prayed

+that a fraternal spirit might dwell among her

+pupils.</p>

+

+<p>The Misses Yellett were hardly less terrifying than

+their brothers. They had their father's fierce, hawklike

+profile, softened by youth, and the appalling

+height and robustness due to the freedom and fresh

+air of a nomadic existence. Their costumes might,

+Mary thought, have been fashioned out of gunny-sacks

+by the simple expedient of cutting holes for

+the head and arms. The description of the dress

+worn by the charcoal-burner's daughter in any

+mediaeval novel of modern construction would approximate

+fairly well the school toilets of these

+young lady pupils. The boys wore overalls and

+flannel shirts, which, in contrast to the sketchy

+effects of their sisters' costumes, seemed almost

+modish. Mrs. Yellett then left the "class-room,"

+saying she must take Ben's place with the sheep.</p>

+

+<p>The Brobdingnags, huge of stature, sinister of

+aspect, deeply distrustful of the rites in which they

+were about to participate, closed in about their

+teacher. From the pigeon-holes of memory Mary

+drew forth the academic smile with which a certain

+teacher of hers had invariably opened school. The

+pupils greeted the academic smile with obvious

+suspicion. No one smiled in camp. When anything

+according with their conception of the humorous

+happened, they laughed uproariously. Thus,

+<pb n="206" />

+<anchor id="Pg206" />

+early in the morning, on his way to breakfast, Ned

+had stumbled over an ax and severely cut his head.

+Every one but Ned saw the point of this joke immediately,

+and hearty guffaws testified to their

+appreciation.</p>

+

+<p>Miss Carmichael took her place behind the upturned

+tub.</p>

+

+<p>"Will you please be seated?" she said.</p>

+

+<p>The class complied with the instantaneous precision

+of automata newly greased and in excellent

+working order. Their abrupt obedience was

+disconcerting. Some one must have been drilling

+them, thought their anxious teacher, in the art of

+simultaneous squatting. The temper of the class

+respecting scholastic deportment leaned towards

+rigidity bordering on self-torture.</p>

+

+<p>Mary made out a roll-call, and by unanimous

+consent it was agreed to arrange the class as it then

+stood, or rather squatted, with the Herculean Ben

+at the top, and gradually diminishing in size till it

+reached the vanishing point with Cacta, who was

+ten and the least terrifying of all.</p>

+

+<p>"And now," ventured the teacher, with the

+courage of a white rabbit, "what have you been in

+the habit of studying?"</p>

+

+<p>Absolute silence on the part of the class, which

+confronted its questioner straight as a row of

+bottles, presenting faces imperturbable as so many

+sphinxes.</p>

+

+<p>Other questions met with an equally disheartening

+response. Miss Carmichael sat up straight, pushed

+back the persistent curls from her face, and bent

+<pb n="207" />

+<anchor id="Pg207" />

+every energy towards the achievement of a "firm"

+demeanor.</p>

+

+<p>"Clematis," said she, wisely selecting perhaps the

+least formidable of the class, "I want you to give

+me some idea of the kind of work you have been

+doing, so that we may all be able to understand each

+other. Now, in your mathematics, for instance,

+which of you have finished with your arithmetic,

+and which&mdash;"</p>

+

+<p>"What do you mean?" begged Clematis, somewhat

+tearful.</p>

+

+<p>"Where are you in your arithmetic?</p>

+

+<p>"Nowhere, ma'am."</p>

+

+<p>"Do you mean you have never learned any?"

+Mary Carmichael shuddered as she icily put the

+question.</p>

+

+<p>"Yes, ma'am."</p>

+

+<p>"Is that the case with all of you?"</p>

+

+<p>Emphatic nods left no room for doubt.</p>

+

+<p>"Then we'll leave that for the present. If you

+will tell me, Clematis, what kind of work you have

+been doing in your history and English, we will get

+to work on those to-day. What books have you

+been using?"</p>

+

+<p>Not unnaturally, Clematis, who was emotional

+and easily impressed, began to feel as though she

+were a criminal. She sobbed in a helpless, feminine

+way. Ben spoke up, fearsomely, from the top of the

+class.</p>

+

+<p>"We 'ain't got no books," said he, in grim rebuke,

+as though to put an end to a profitless discussion.</p>

+

+<p>"Do you wish me to understand," quavered Mary,

+<pb n="208" />

+<anchor id="Pg208" />

+"that you have had no studies&mdash;that you&mdash;can't

+read?&mdash;that you&mdash;don't know&mdash;anything?"</p>

+

+<p>"That's it," said Ben, with the nearest approach

+to cheerfulness he had yet manifested.</p>

+

+<p>Meanwhile there lay on the teacher's "desk" copies

+of Clodd's <hi rend="font-style: italic">Childhood of the World</hi>, two of that

+excellent series of <hi rend="font-style: italic">History Primers</hi>, and <hi rend="font-style: italic">The Young

+Geologist</hi>, all carefully selected, in the fulness of

+Mary's ignorance, for the little pupils of her imagination.

+She had brought no primer, as Mrs. Yellett's

+letter had distinctly said that the youngest child

+was ten and that all were comparatively advanced

+in their studies. More than ever Mary longed to

+penetrate the mystery of that Irish linen decoy, for

+without doubt it was to be her melancholy fate to

+conduct this giant band through the alphabet!</p>

+

+<p>Accordingly she wrote out the letters of the alphabet

+with large simplicity and a sublime renunciation

+of flourish. The class received it tepidly. Mary

+grew eloquent over its unswerving verities. The

+class remained lukewarm. The difference between

+a and b was a matter of indifference to the house of

+Yellett. They regarded their teacher's strenuous efforts

+to furnish a key to the acquirement of the alphabet

+with the amused superiority of "grown-ups"

+watching infant antics with pencil and paper. Meanwhile

+her fear of the class increased in proportion as

+her ability to hold its attention diminished. The

+backbone of the school was plainly wilting. The little

+scholars, armed to the teeth, no longer sat up

+straight as tenpins. After twenty-five minutes of

+educational experience, satiety bowled them over.</p>

+<pb n="209" />

+<anchor id="Pg209" />

+

+<p>A single glance had convinced Ben that the alphabet

+was beneath contempt. He yawned automatically

+at regular intervals&mdash;long, dismal yawns

+that threatened to terminate in a howl, the unchecked,

+primitive type of yawn that one hears in

+the cages of the zoological gardens on a dull day.

+Miss Carmichael raised interrogatory eyebrows, but

+she might as well have looked reproof at a Bengal

+tiger.</p>

+

+<p>The class was rapidly promoted to c-a-t, cat; but

+these dizzy intellectual heights left them cold and

+dull. Ben began to clean his revolver, and on being

+asked why he did not pay attention to his lessons,

+answered, briefly:</p>

+

+<p>"It's all d&mdash;&mdash;d foolishness."</p>

+

+<p>Cacta and Clem were pulling each other's hair.

+Mary affected not to see this sisterly exchange of

+torture. Ned whittled a stick; and, in chorus, when

+their teacher told them that d-o-g spelled dog, they

+shouted derision, and affirmed that they had no

+difficulty in compelling the obedience of Stump even

+without this particular bit of erudition. Though

+Mary had always abhorred corporal punishment, she

+began to see arguments in its favor.</p>

+

+<p>With the handleless tub as an elbow-rest the teacher

+took counsel with herself. Strategy must be employed

+with the intellectual conquest of the Brobdingnags.

+Summoning all the pedagogical dignity

+of which she was capable, she asked:</p>

+

+<p>"Boys, don't you want to know how to read?"</p>

+

+<p>"Noap," responded the head of the class.</p>

+

+<p>"Don't you want to know how to write?"</p>

+<pb n="210" />

+<anchor id="Pg210" />

+

+<p>"Noap."</p>

+

+<p>"But, my dear boy, what would you do if you

+left here and went out into the world, where every

+one knows these things and your ignorance would

+be evident at every turn. What would you do?"</p>

+

+<p>"Slug the whole blamed outfit!"</p>

+

+<p>Mary looked at her watch. School had lasted just

+forty-five minutes. Had time become petrified?</p>

+<pb n="211" />

+<anchor id="Pg211" />

+</div>

+

+<div rend="page-break-before: always">

+<head>XIV</head>

+<index index="pdf" /><index index="toc" level1="Judith Adjusts The Situation" />

+<head type="sub">Judith Adjusts The Situation</head>

+

+<p>Mary had been a member of the Yellett household

+for something over a week, and the intellectual

+conquest of her Brobdingnag pupils seemed

+as hopeless as on that first day. School seemed

+to be regarded by them as a sort of neutral territory,

+admirably adapted for the settlement of long-standing

+grudges, the pleasant exchange of practical jokes,

+peace and war conferences; also as a mart of trade,

+where fire-arms, knives, bear and elk teeth might

+be swapped with a greater expenditure of time and

+conversation than under the maternal eye. "Teacher,"

+as she was understood and accepted by the

+house of Yellett, undoubtedly filled a long-felt want.

+Presiding over a school of six-imp power for a week,

+however, had humbled Mary to the point of seriously

+considering a letter to the home government,

+meekly asking for return transportation. But this

+was before feminine wile had struggled with feminine

+vanity, and feminine wile won the day.

+School still continued to open at six, from which

+early and unusual hour it continued, without recess

+or interruption, till noon, when dinner pleasantly

+<pb n="212" />

+<anchor id="Pg212" />

+invaded the scholastic monotony, to the infinite

+relief of all parties concerned.</p>

+

+<p>Mary had dismissed her pupils a few minutes

+before the usual hour, on a particularly bad day,

+that she might rally her scattered faculties and

+present something of a countenance to the watchful

+eye of Mrs. Yellett. Every element of humor had

+vanished from the situation. The inverted tub was

+no longer a theme for merriment in her diary; home-life

+without a house was no longer a diverting

+epigram; she had closed her eyes that she might

+not see the mountains in all their grandeur. In her

+present mood of abject homesickness the white-capped

+peaks were part and parcel of the affront.

+With head sunk in the palms of her hands, and

+elbows resting on the inverted tub, Mary presented

+a picture of woe, in which the wicked element of

+comedy was not wholly lacking. Looking up suddenly,

+she saw Judith Rodney advancing. The

+first glimpse of her put Mary in a more rational

+mood.</p>

+

+<p>"I'm so glad to see you! Behold my class-room

+appointments! They may seem a trifle novel,

+but, for that matter, so are my pupils," began Mary,

+determining to present the same front to Judith

+that she had to Mrs. Yellett. But Judith was not

+to be put off. She looked into Mary's eyes and

+did not relax her gaze until she was rewarded with

+an answering twinkle. Then Mary laughed long

+and merrily, the first good, hearty laugh since the

+beginning of her teaching.</p>

+

+<p>"Tell me," Mary broke out, suddenly, "or the

+<pb n="213" />

+<anchor id="Pg213" />

+suspense will kill me, who wrote that lovely letter&mdash;on

+such good quality Irish linen, too? Snob that

+I was, it was the letter that did it."</p>

+

+<p>"So you have your suspicions that it was not a

+home product?"</p>

+

+<p>"You didn't do it, did you?"</p>

+

+<p>"Oh no; though I was asked, and so was Miss

+Wetmore, I believe. Of course poor Mrs. Yellett

+had no other recourse, as I suppose you know. I

+chose to be disobliging that time, and was sorry

+for it afterwards&mdash;sorry when I heard about the

+letter that really went! Do you find the sheep-wagon

+so very dreadful?"</p>

+

+<p>"I thought," laughed Mary, "that it was going

+to be like a picture I saw in a magazine, Mexican

+hammocks, grass cushions, and a lady pouring tea

+from a samovar; instead it was the sheep-wagon

+and 'Do you sleep light or dark?' There is Mrs.

+Yellett calling us to dinner. Shall I have a chance

+to talk to you alone afterwards?"</p>

+

+<p>"I've come all the way from Dax's to see you,"

+explained Judith, with characteristic directness.

+"We have all the afternoon."</p>

+

+<p>"Really!" Mary displayed a flash of school-girl

+enthusiasm. "I feel as if I could almost bear the

+scenery."</p>

+

+<p>Presumably Judith was a favorite guest of the

+Yellett household, and not without reason. She

+took her place in the circle about the homely,

+steaming fare, with an ease and grace that suggested

+that dining off the ground was an every-day

+affair with her, and chairs and tables undreamed-of

+<pb n="214" />

+<anchor id="Pg214" />

+luxuries. Mary envied her ready tact. Why

+could she not meet these people with Judith's

+poise&mdash;bring out the best of them, as she did?

+The boys talked readily and naturally&mdash;there was

+even a flavor to what they said. As for herself,

+try never so conscientiously and she would be

+confronted by frank amusement or shy distrust.

+Even "paw" beamed at Judith appreciatively as

+he consumed his meal with infinite, toothless labor.

+The Spartan family became almost sprightly

+under the pleasantly stimulating influence of its

+guest.</p>

+

+<p>"What kind of basques are they wearing this

+summer, Judy?" inquired Mrs. Yellett, regarding

+her guest's trim shirt-waist judicially. "I reckon

+them loose, meal-sack things must be all the go

+since you and Miss Mary both have 'em; but give

+me a good, tight-fittin' basque, every time. How's

+any one to know whether you got a figure or not,

+in a thing that never hits you anywhere?" questioned

+the matriarch, not without a touch of pride

+anent her own fine proportions.</p>

+

+<p>"You really ought to have a shirt-waist, Mrs.

+Yellett. You've no idea of the comfort of them,

+till you've worn them."</p>

+

+<p>"I don't see but I'll have to come to it." Her

+tone was frankly regretful, as one who feels obliged

+to follow the behests of fashion, yet, in so doing,

+sacrifices a cherished ideal. Mary Carmichael choked

+over her coffee in an abortive attempt to restrain

+her audible hilarity. Judith, without a trace of

+amusement, was discussing materials, cut, and

+<pb n="215" />

+<anchor id="Pg215" />

+buttons; the plainswoman had proved herself the

+better gentlewoman of the two.</p>

+

+<p>"Get me a spotty calico, white, with a red dot,

+will you, the next time you're over to Ervay?

+Buttons accordin' to your judgment; but if you

+could get some white chiny with a red ring, I think

+they'd match it handsome." She frowned reflectively.

+"You're sure one of them loose, hangy

+things 'd become me? Then you can bring it over

+Tuesday, when you come to the hunt."</p>

+

+<p>"What hunt?" asked Judith, in all simplicity.</p>

+

+<p>"Why, the wolf-hunt. Peter Hamilton come

+here three days ago and made arrangements for 'em

+all to have supper here after it was done. 'Lowed

+there was a young Eastern lady in the party, Miss

+Colebrooke, who couldn't wait to meet me. Course

+you're goin', Judy? You've plumb forgot it, or

+somethin' happened to the messenger. Who ever

+hyeard tell of anythin' happenin' in this yere county

+'thout you bein' the very axle of it?"</p>

+

+<p>Judith had not betrayed her chagrin by the least

+change of countenance. To the most searching

+glance every faculty was intent on the shirt-waist

+with the ringed buttons. Yet both women felt&mdash;by

+a species of telepathy wholly feminine&mdash;that

+Judith was deeply wounded. Loyal Sarah Yellett

+decided that Hamilton's guests would get but a

+scant supper from her if her friend Judith was to be

+unfavored with an invitation, while Judith, in her

+own warm heart, resented as deeply as Peter's

+slight of herself, his tale of Miss Colebrooke's impatience

+to meet Mrs. Yellett. The matriarch's

+<pb n="216" />

+<anchor id="Pg216" />

+dominant personality evoked many a smile even

+from those most deeply conscious of her worth;

+but it wasn't like Peter to make a spectacle of his

+ruggedly honest neighbor. Nevertheless she remarked,

+coolly:</p>

+

+<p>"I sha'n't be able to bring your shirt-waist things

+up Tuesday, I'm afraid, Mrs. Yellett, but I'll try to

+bring them towards the end of the week." Then,

+with a swift change of subject, "How are the

+boys getting on with their education, Miss Carmichael?"</p>

+

+<p>The boys looked at Mary out of the corners of

+their eyes. Their prowess in the field of letters

+had not been publicly discussed before. Mary

+Carmichael, emboldened by Judith's presence, looked

+at her tormentors with a judicious glance.</p>

+

+<p>"The girls are doing fairly well," she replied,

+suppressing the mischief in her eyes, "but the boys,

+poor fellows, I think something must be the matter

+with them. Did they ever fall on their heads when

+they were babies, Mrs. Yellett?"</p>

+

+<p>"Not more than common. All babies fall on

+their heads; it's as common as colic."</p>

+

+<p>"Poor boys!" said Mary, with a manner that suggested

+they were miles away, rather than within a

+few feet of her. "Poor boys! I've never seen anything

+like it. They try so hard, too, yet they can

+make nothing of work that would be play for a

+child of three. They must have fallen on their

+heads harder than you supposed, Mrs. Yellett."</p>

+

+<p>"Perhaps their skulls were a heap frailer than I

+allowed for at the time," said Mrs. Yellett, with

+<pb n="217" />

+<anchor id="Pg217" />

+similar remoteness, yet with a twinkle that showed

+Mary she understood the situation.</p>

+

+<p>"An infant's skull doesn't stand much knocking

+about, I suppose, Mrs. Yellett?"</p>

+

+<p>"Not a great deal, if there ain't plenty of vinegar

+and brown paper handy, and I seldom had such

+fancy fixings in camp. It's too bad my boys should

+be dumb 'n account of a little thing like vinegar and

+brown paper."</p>

+

+<p>"Maw, they be dumb as Injuns," declared Cacta,

+preening herself, while the Messrs. Yellett reapplied

+themselves to their dinner with ostentatious interest.</p>

+

+<p>"Well, well!" said Mrs. Yellett; "it be a hard

+blow to me to know that my sons are lackings;

+there's mothers I know as would give vent to their

+disapp'inted ambition in ways I'd consider crool to

+the absent-minded. Now hearken, the whole outfit

+of you! Any offspring of mine now present and

+forever after holding his peace, who proves feebleminded

+by the end of the coming week, takes over

+all the work, labor, and chores of such offspring as

+demonstrates himself in full possession of his

+faculties, the matter to be reported on by the

+gov'ment."</p>

+

+<p>No sovereign, issuing a proclamation of war,

+could have assumed a more formidable mien than

+Mrs. Yellett, squatting erect on the prairie, crowned

+by her rabbit-skin cap. Mary and Judith, with

+bland, impassive expressions, noted the effect of the

+mandate. There was not the faintest symptom of

+rebellion; each Brobdingnag accepted the matriarch's

+edict without a murmur.</p>

+<pb n="218" />

+<anchor id="Pg218" />

+

+<p>With an air of further meditation on the efficacy

+of brown paper and vinegar at the crucial moment,

+Mrs. Yellett suddenly observed:</p>

+

+<p>"The lacking, like the dog, may be taught to

+fetch and carry a book; but to learn it he is unable."</p>

+

+<p>"Maw, does it say that in the Book of Hiram?"

+asked Clematis.</p>

+

+<p>"It says that, an' more, too. It says, 'The words

+of the wise are an expense, but the lovin' parent

+don't grudge 'em.'"</p>

+

+<p>Mary Carmichael had noticed, as her alien presence

+came to be less of a check on Mrs. Yellett's

+natural medium of expression, that she was much

+addicted to a species of quotation with which she

+impartially adorned her conversation, pointed family

+morals, or administered an occasional reproof. These

+family aphorisms were sometimes semi-legal, sometimes

+semi-scriptural in turn of phrase, and built

+on a foundation of homely philosophy. They were

+ascribed to the "Book of Hiram" and never failed

+of salutary effect in the family circle. But the apt

+quotations that she had just heard piqued Mary's

+curiosity more than before.</p>

+

+<p>"Do you happen to have a copy of the Book

+of Hiram, Mrs. Yellett?" she asked, in all innocence,

+supposing that the 'homely apothegms were to be

+found at the back of some patent-medicine almanac.

+Judith Rodney listened in wonder. The question

+had never before been asked in her hearing.</p>

+

+<p>"I lost mine." Mrs. Yellett folded her arms and

+looked at her questioner with something of a

+challenging mien.</p>

+<pb n="219" />

+<anchor id="Pg219" />

+

+<p>"What a pity! I've been so interested in the

+quotations I've heard you make from it."</p>

+

+<p>"What's the matter with 'em?" she demanded,

+pride and apprehension equally commingled.</p>

+

+<p>Judith Rodney rushed to the rescue:</p>

+

+<p>"Nothing is the matter with them, Mrs. Yellett,"

+she said, with her disarming smile, "except that

+there is not quite enough to go around."</p>

+

+<p>The matriarch had the air of gathering herself together

+for something really worth while. Then she

+tossed off:</p>

+

+<p>"''Tain't always the quality of the grub that

+confers the flavor, but sometimes the scarcity

+thereof.'"</p>

+

+<p>Perhaps it has been the good-fortune of some of

+us to say a word of praise to an author, while unconscious

+of his relationship to the book praised.

+Mark the genial glow radiating from every feature

+of our auditor! How we feel ourselves anointed

+with his approval, our good taste and critical faculty

+how commended! It is a luxury that goes a long

+way towards mitigating the discomfitures caused by

+the reverse of this unctuous blunder.</p>

+

+<p>"The Book of Hiram," said Mrs. Yellett, angling

+for time, "is a book&mdash;it do surprise me that it escapes

+your notice back East. You ever heard tell

+of the Book of Mormon?"</p>

+

+<p>Mary assented.</p>

+

+<p>"Well, the Book of Hiram is like the Book of

+Mormon, only a heap more undefiled. The youngest

+child can read it without asking a single embarrassing

+question of its elder, and the oldest sinner

+<pb n="220" />

+<anchor id="Pg220" />

+can read it without having any fleshly meditations

+intrudin' on his piety."</p>

+

+<p>The Yellett family had by this time dispersed

+itself for the afternoon, and the matriarch and the

+two girls started in to clear away the meal and wash

+the dishes.</p>

+

+<p>"That's the kind of book for me," continued

+Mrs. Yellett, vigorously swishing about in the soapy

+water. "Story-books don't count none with me

+these days. It's my opinion that things are snarled

+up a whole lot too much in real life without pestering

+over the anguish of print folks. Flesh and blood suffering

+goes without a groan of sympathy from the

+on-lookers, while novel characters wade to the neck

+in compassion. I've pondered on that a whole lot,

+seem' a heap of indifference to every-day calamity,

+and the way I assay it is like this: print folks has

+terrible fanciful layouts given to their griefs and

+worriments by the authors of their being. The trimmings

+to their troubles is mighty attractive. Don't

+you reckon I'd be willin' to have a spell of trouble

+if I had a sweeping black velvet dress to do it in?

+Yes, indeed, I'd be willin' to turn a few of them

+shades of anguish, 'gray's ashes,' 'pale as death,'

+and so on, if they'd give me the dress novel ladies

+seems to have for them special occasions."</p>

+

+<p>"But you used to like novels, you know you did,

+Mrs. Yellett," observed Judith Rodney.</p>

+

+<p>"Yes, I didn't always entertain these views concernin'

+romance. You wouldn't believe it, but there

+was a time when I just nacherally went careerin'

+round enveloped in fantasies. I was young then&mdash;just

+<pb n="221" />

+<anchor id="Pg221" />

+about the time I married paw. Every novel

+that was read to me, I mean that I read"&mdash;Mrs.

+Yellett blushed a deep copper color through her

+many coats of tan&mdash;"convinced me that I was the

+heroine thereof. And, nacherally, I turned over to

+paw the feachers and characteristics of the hero in

+said book I happened to be enjoyin' at the time.

+Paw never knew it, but sometimes he was a dook,

+and it was plumb hard work. Just about as hard

+as ropin' a mountain-lion an' sayin', 'remember,

+you are a sheep from this time henceforth, and

+trim your action accordin'.' I'd say to paw, 'Let's

+walk together in the gloaming, here in this deserted

+garden'; and paw would say, 'Name o' Gawd,

+woman, have you lost your mind? It's plumb three

+hundred and fifty miles to the Tivoli beer-garden in

+Cheyenne, and it ain't deserted, either!'</p>

+

+<p>"Then I'd wring my hands in anguish, same as

+the Lady Mary, an' paw would declare I was locoed.

+He seemed a heap more nacheral when I pretended

+he was 'Black Ranger, the Pirate King.' His language

+came in handy, and his cartridge-belt and

+pistol all came in Black Ranger's outfit. Yes, it

+was a heap easier playing he was a pirate than a

+dook. All this happened back to Salt Lake, where

+me an' paw was married."</p>

+

+<p>Mrs. Yellett looked towards the mountain-range

+that separated her from the Mormon country, and

+her listeners realized that she was verging perilously

+close to confidences. Mary Carmichael, who dreaded

+missing any detail of the chronicle that dealt with

+paw in the rÃīle of apocryphal duke, hastened to say:</p>

+<pb n="222" />

+<anchor id="Pg222" />

+

+<p>"And you lost your taste for romance, finally?"</p>

+

+<p>"In Salt Lake I was left to myself a whole lot-there

+was reasons why I didn't mingle with the Mormon

+herd. Paw was mighty attentive to me, but

+them was troublous times for paw. I pastures myself

+with the fleetin' figures of romance the endoorin'

+time and enjoys myself a heap. When paw wasn't

+a dook or a pirate king, unbeknownst to himself, like

+as not he was Sir Marmaduke Trevelyun, or somebody

+entitled to the same amount of dog.</p>

+

+<p>"'Bout this time a little stranger was due in our

+midst, and the woman who came to take care of me

+was plumb locoed over novels, same as me, only

+worse. She just hungered for 'em, same as if she

+had a longin' for something out of season. She

+brought a batch of them with her in her trunk, we

+borrowed her a lot more, some I don't know how

+she come by. But they didn't have no effect; it

+was like feedin' an' Injun&mdash;you couldn't strike

+bottom. She read out of 'em to me with disastrous

+results happenin', an' that cured me. The brand

+on this here book that effected my change of heart

+was <hi rend="font-style: italic">The Bride of the Tomb</hi>. I forget the name of

+the girl in that romance, but she was in hard luck

+from the start. She couldn't head off the man

+pursooin' her, any way she turned. She'd wheel

+out of his way cl'ar across country, but he'd land

+thar fust an' wait for her, a smile on his satanine

+feachers.</p>

+

+<p>"I got so wrought up along o' that book, an' worried

+as to the outcome, 'most as bad as the girl. Think

+of it! An' me with only three baby-shirts an' a flannel

+<pb n="223" />

+<anchor id="Pg223" />

+petticoat made at the time! Seemed 's if I couldn't

+hustle my meals fast enough, I just hankered so

+to know what was goin' to happen next! I plumb

+detested the man with the handsome feachers, same

+as the girl. Me an' her felt precisely alike about

+him. And when he shut her up in the family vault

+I just giv' up an' was took then an' there, an' me

+without so much as finishin' the flannel petticoat!

+I never could endure the sight of a novel since.

+Perhaps that's why Ben is so dumb about his books&mdash;just

+holds a nacheral grudge against 'em along of

+my havin' to borrow slips for him."</p>

+

+<p>"Has the Book of Hiram anything to say against

+the habit of novel reading, Mrs. Yellett?" inquired

+Judith, demurely.</p>

+

+<p>She paused for a moment. "It's mighty inconvenient

+that I should have mislaid that book,

+but rounding up my recollections of it, I recall

+something like this: 'Romance is the loco-weed

+of humanity.'"</p>

+

+<p>"So you don't approve of the Mormon Bible?"

+ventured Mary.</p>

+

+<p>"I jest nacherally execrates Mormonism, spoken,

+printed, or in action," she said, with an emphasis

+that suggested the subject had a strong personal

+bearing. "I recall a text from the Book of Hiram

+touching on Mormon deportment in particklar an'

+human nature at large. It says, 'Where several

+women and one man are gathered together for the

+purpose of serving the Lord, the man gets the bulk

+of the service."</p>

+

+<p>She broke off suddenly, as if she feared she had

+<pb n="224" />

+<anchor id="Pg224" />

+said too much. "Judy," she demanded, "is Mis'

+Dax busy with Leander now?"</p>

+

+<p>"Not more than usual," smiled Judith.</p>

+

+<p>"Jest tell her for me, will you, that I want to hire

+her husband to do some herdin'; Leander's handy,

+'n' can work good an' sharp, if he is an infidel. An'

+I like to have him over now an' then, as you know,

+Judy. As the Book of Hiram says, 'It's neighborly

+to ease the check-rein of a gentled husband.' But

+you tell him I don't want to hear any of his ever-lastin'

+fool argufyin' 'bout religion. Leander 'd stop

+in the middle of shearin' a sheep to argue that

+Jonah never came out o' the whale's belly. I ain't

+no use for infidels, 'less they're muzzled, which

+Leander mos' generally is."</p>

+

+<p>With the feeling that there was an excellent

+though unspoken understanding between them, the

+two girls walked together to the top of the path

+that wandered away from camp towards a bluff

+overlooking wave after wave of foot-hills, lying blue

+and still like a petrified sea.</p>

+

+<p>"I'm still dying to know who wrote that letter,"

+begged Mary.</p>

+

+<p>"It was written by a lady who is very anxious to

+return to Washington, and she took that means of

+getting one more vote. Her husband is going to run

+for the Senate next term. We hear a good deal of

+that side of politics, you know."</p>

+

+<p>"It was certainly convincing," remarked the

+victim of the letter. "My aunts detected many

+virtues in the handwriting."</p>

+

+<p>"But now that you are really here, isn't it splendid?

+<pb n="225" />

+<anchor id="Pg225" />

+Mountains are such good neighbors. They

+give you their great company and yet leave you

+your own little reservations."</p>

+

+<p>"But I fear I can never feel at home out-of-doors,"

+Mary announced, with such a rueful expression that

+they both smiled.</p>

+

+<p>"Perhaps, then, it depends on the frame of mind.

+I've had longer than you to cultivate it."</p>

+

+<p>Mary looked towards the mountains, serene in

+their strength. "Awesome as they are," she laughed,

+"they don't frighten me nearly as much as Ben

+and Ned. They are really very difficile, my pupils,

+and I feel so ridiculous sitting up back of that tub,

+teaching them letters and the spelling of foolish

+words, when they know things I've never dreamed

+of. The other day, out of a few scratches in the

+dust that I should never have given a second glance,

+one of them made out that some one's horses had

+broken the corral and one was trailing a rope.

+Whereupon my pupil got on a horse, went in search

+of the strays, and returned them to men going to a

+round-up. After that, the spelling of cat didn't

+seem quite so much of an achievement as it had

+before."</p>

+

+<p>"But they need the spelling of cat so much more

+than you need to understand trail-marks. Why

+don't you try a little strategy with them? Perhaps

+a bribe, even? It seems to me I remember something

+in history about the part played in colonization

+by the bright-colored bead."</p>

+

+<p>Sundry wood-cuts from a long-forgotten primer

+history of the United States came back to Mary.

+<pb n="226" />

+<anchor id="Pg226" />

+In that tear-stained, dog-eared volume, all explorers,

+from Columbus down to Lewis and Clarke, were

+unfailingly depicted in the attitude of salesmen displaying

+squares of cloth to savages apparently in

+urgent need of them.</p>

+

+<p>"How stupid of me not to remember Father

+Marquette concluding negotiations with a necklace!"</p>

+

+<p>"Frankly plagiarize the terms of your treaty

+from PÃĻre Marquette, and there you are!"</p>

+

+<p>"You are so splendid!" said Mary, impulsively,

+remembering Judith's own sorrows and the smiling

+fortitude with which she kept them hidden. "You

+make me feel like a horrid little girl that has been

+whining."</p>

+

+<p>Judith looked towards the mountains a long time

+without speaking.</p>

+

+<p>"When you know them well, they whisper great

+things that little folk can't take away."</p>

+

+<p>She turned back towards camp, walking lightly,

+with head thrown back. Mary watched her. Yes,

+the mountains might have admitted her to their

+company.</p>

+<pb n="227" />

+<anchor id="Pg227" />

+</div>

+

+<div rend="page-break-before: always">

+<head>XV</head>

+<index index="pdf" /><index index="toc" level1="The Wolf-hunt" />

+<head type="sub">The Wolf-hunt</head>

+

+<p>Judith awakened with all the starry infinitude

+of sky for a canopy. In the distance loomed the

+foot-hills, watchful sentinels of her slumbers; and,

+sloping gently away from them, rolled the plain, like

+some smooth, dark sea flowing deep and silently.

+Judith, a solitary figure adrift in that still ocean of

+space, sat up and watched the stars fade and saw

+the young day peer timorously at the world that lay

+before it. Her mind, refreshed by long hours of

+dreamless sleep, turned to the problem of impending

+things, serenely contemplative. The passing of

+many mornings and many peoples had the mountains

+seen as the wreathed mists came and went

+about their brows, and to all who knew the value of

+the gift they gave their great company, and to such

+as could hear, they told their great secrets. Judith's

+prayer was an outflowing of soul to the great forces

+about her, a wish to be in harmony with them, to

+remember her kinship, to keep some measure of

+their serenity in the press of burdens. The way

+of the Indian was ever her way when circumstance

+raised no barriers; the four walls of a house were

+a prison to her after the days lengthened and the

+<pb n="228" />

+<anchor id="Pg228" />

+summer nights grew warm. To the infinite disapproval

+of that custodian of propriety, Mrs. Dax, she

+would make her bed beneath the stars, night after

+night, and bathe in the cold, clear waters of the

+stream that purled from the white-capped crest of

+the mountains.</p>

+

+<p>"Nasty Injun ways!" scoffed Leander's masterful

+lady, consciously superior from the intrenchment

+of her stuffy bedroom, that boasted crochet-work

+on the backs of the chairs and a scant lace

+curtain at its solitary window.</p>

+

+<p>Judith, going to her favorite pool to bathe, saw

+that it had shrunk till it seemed but a fairy well hid

+among the willows. A quarter of a mile above was

+another pool, hidden like a jewel in its case of green,

+broidered with scarlet roseberries and white clematis;

+and towards this she bent her steps, as time was

+a-plenty that morning. She kept to the stones of the

+creek for a pathway, jumping lightly from those

+that were moss-grown to those that hid their nakedness

+in the dark, velvet shadows of early morning,

+her white feet touching the shallow stream like pale

+gulls that dipped and skimmed. "Diana's Pool,"

+as she called it, was always clear. It lay half hid

+beneath a shelving rock, a fount for the tiny, white

+fall that crooned and sang as it fell. And here

+she bathed, as the east flamed where the mountains

+blackened against it. Gold halos tipped the clouds,

+that melted presently into fiery waves, then burst

+into one great aureole through which the sun rode

+triumphant, and it was day.</p>

+

+<p>She had kept post-office the day before, and it

+<pb n="229" />

+<anchor id="Pg229" />

+would not be till day after to-morrow that the

+squires of the lariat would come again to offer their

+hearts, their worldly goods, their complete reformation,

+if she would only change her mind. It was all

+such an old story that she had grown to regard

+them with a tenderness almost maternal. But to-day

+was all her own, and the spirit of adventure

+swelled high in her bosom as she thought of what

+she had planned. It was warm and close and still

+in the Dax house as Judith made her way softly to

+her own room and began her preparations for the

+long journey she was to take afoot. To walk in

+the abominations devised by the white man for

+the purpose of cramping his feet would have been

+a serious handicap to Judith. The twenty miles

+that she would walk before nightfall was no very

+great undertaking to her, but it was part of her

+primitive directness to accomplish it with as little expenditure

+of fatigue and comfort as possible. Moreover,

+who could steal through the forest in those

+heeled things without announcing his coming and

+frightening the forest folk, and sending them skurrying?

+And Judith loved to surprise them and

+see them busy with their affairs&mdash;to creep along

+in her soft, elk-hide moccasins and catch their

+watchful eyes and see the things that were not for

+the heavy-booted white man.</p>

+

+<p>She might have inspired Kitty Colebrooke to a

+sonnet as she stepped out into the glad morning

+light, in short skirt and jacket, green-clad as the

+pines that girdled the mountains, with a knapsack

+with rations of bread and meat and the wherewithal

+<pb n="230" />

+<anchor id="Pg230" />

+to build a fire should she wander belated. She

+softly closed the door, not to awaken Leander and

+his slumbering lady, and broke into the running gait

+that the Indians use on their all-day journeys, the

+elk-hide moccasins falling soft as snow-flakes on the

+trail. Dolly she missed chiefly for her companionship,

+for Judith had not the white man's utter helplessness

+without a horse in this country of high

+altitudes. When she walked she breathed, carried

+herself, covered ground like her mother's people,

+and loved the inspiration of it.</p>

+

+<p>The eerie shadows of the desert drew back and

+hid themselves in the mountains. The day began

+with splendid promise&mdash;the day of the wolf-hunt,

+of which no word had been spoken to her by Peter.

+She, too, was going hunting, but silently and unbidden

+she would steal through the forest and see

+this mysterious woman who played fast and loose

+with Peter, who loved her apparently all the better

+for the game she played. What manner of woman

+could do these things? What manner of woman could

+be indifferent to Peter? Judith was consumingly

+curious to see. And, apart from this naked and

+unashamed curiosity, there was the possibility that

+at sight of Miss Colebrooke there might come a

+relaxation of Peter's tyrannous hold upon her

+thoughts, her life, her very heart's blood. Would

+her loyalty bear the test of seeing Peter made a fool

+of by a woman she could dismiss with a shrug&mdash;a

+softly speaking shrew, perhaps, who played a waiting

+game with her finger on the pulse of Peter's

+prospects? For there was talk of a partnership

+<pb n="231" />

+<anchor id="Pg231" />

+with the Wetmores. Or a fool, perhaps, for all her

+sonneting, for there are men who relish a weak

+headpiece as the chiefest ornament of women,

+especially when its indeterminate vagaries boast an

+escape-valve remotely connected with the fine arts.

+Or a devil-woman, perhaps&mdash;an upright wanton who

+could think no wrong from very poverty of temperament,

+yet kept him dangling. The possibility

+of Kitty's honesty, Judith in her jealousy would

+not admit. Had she gone to the devil for him,

+stood and faced the drift of opinion for his sake, that

+Judith could have understood. But what was the

+spinning of verses to a woman's portion of loving

+and being loved? Even Alida, through all her distracting

+anxieties, had in her heart the thrice-blessed

+leaven, reasoned the woman of the plains, who

+might, according to modern standards, be reckoned

+a trifle primitive in her psychological deductions.

+And, withal, Judith was forced to admit that there

+was something simple and true about a man who

+would let a woman make a fool of him, whoever

+the woman was.</p>

+

+<p>Perhaps with this hunting would end the long

+reign of Peter as a divinity. Judith was tired, not

+in her vigorous young body, because that was strong

+and healthful as the hill wind, but tired in heart and

+mind and life. Her destiny had not been beautiful

+or happy before he invaded it, but it had been calm,

+and now serenity seemed the worthiest gift of the

+gods. It was not that she loved him less, but that

+she had so long reflected upon him that her imagination

+was numb; her thoughts, arid, unfruitful

+<pb n="232" />

+<anchor id="Pg232" />

+as the desert, turned from him to the problems that

+beset her, and from them back to him again, in dull,

+subconscious yearning. She could no longer project

+an anguished consciousness to those scenes wherein

+he walked and talked with Kitty. Her Indian

+fatalism had intervened. "Life was life," to be

+lived or left. And yet she felt herself a poor creature,

+one who had lived long on illusion, who had

+bent her neck to the yoke of arid unrealities. The

+pale-haired woman who kept him with her miserliness

+of self, who intruded no sombre tragedy

+of loving, was well worth a trip across the foot-hills

+to see. And yet, Judith reflected, it was the portion

+of her mother's daughter to make of loving

+the whole business of life, even if she rebelled and

+fought against it as an accursed destiny. It was in

+her inheritance to know and live for the wild thrill

+of ecstasy in her pulses, to feel trembling joy and

+despair and frantic hope, that exacted its tribute

+hardly less poignant; as it was, also, to feel a shivering

+sensitiveness in regard to the loneliness and

+bitterness of her life, to have the same measureless

+capacity for sorrow that she had for loving, to

+have a soul attuned to the tragedy of things, to love

+the mighty forces about her, to feel the reflection

+of all their moods in her heart, and, lastly, it was her

+destiny to be the daughter of a half-Sioux and a border

+adventurer, and to feel the counter influences

+of the two races make forever of her heart a battleground.</p>

+

+<p>Her light feet scarcely touched the ground as she

+sped swiftly through all the network of the hills;

+<pb n="233" />

+<anchor id="Pg233" />

+and more than once her woman's heart asked the

+question, "And, prithee, Judith, if from henceforth

+you are only to hold fellowship with the stars and

+have no part in the ways of men, why do you walk

+a day's journey to catch a glimpse of a pale-haired

+woman?"</p>

+

+<p>She knew the probable course of the wolf-hunt.

+She had been on scores of them, galloped with Peter

+after the fleeing gray thing that swept along the

+ground like the nucleus of a whirling dust-devil.

+At least she was sure of the place of their nooning&mdash;a

+limpid stream that ran close to many young

+pine-trees. Here was a pause in the rugged ascent,

+a level space of open green, thick with buffalo grass.

+Many times had she been here with Peter, sometimes

+with many other people on the chase&mdash;sometimes,

+and these occasions were enshrined in her

+memory, each with its own particular halo, with

+Peter alone; and they had fished for trout and

+cooked their supper on the grassy levels. It was

+in Judith's planning to arrive before the hunting-party,

+to hide among the thickets of scrub pine

+that grew along the steep cliffs and overlooked the

+grassy level, to take her fill of looking at the pale-haired

+girl and the hunters at their merrymaking,

+and, when she had seen, to steal back across the

+trail to the Daxes'. They would not penetrate the

+thickets where she meant to hide, and, should they,

+she was prepared for that contingency, too. She

+had brought with her a bright-colored shawl that

+she would throw over her head, and with the start

+of them she could outrun them all, even Peter.

+<pb n="234" />

+<anchor id="Pg234" />

+Had she not outdistanced him easily, many times,

+in fun? Through the tangle of tree-trunks that

+grew not far from the thicket, they would think she

+was but a poor Shoshone squaw lying in wait for

+the broken meat of the revellers.</p>

+

+<p>By crossing and recrossing the tiny creeks that

+trickled slow and obstructed through the gaunt

+levels of plain and foot-hill, she had come by a

+direct route to the fringes of the pine country. And

+here she found a world dim, green, and mysterious.

+It was wellnigh inconceivable that the land of sage-brush

+and silence could, within walking distance of

+desolation, show such wealth of young timber, such

+shade and beauty. Her noiseless footfalls scarce

+startled a sage-hen that, realizing too late her presence,

+froze to the dead stump&mdash;a ruffled gray excrescence

+with glittering bead eyes that stared at

+her furtively, the one live thing in the tense body.</p>

+

+<p>The sun wanted an hour of noon when Judith

+rested by the stream, bathed her face and hands,

+flushed from the long walk, ate the bread and meat,

+then lay on the bed of pine-needles, brown and soft

+from the weathering of many suns and snows. She

+had been all day in the company she loved best&mdash;the

+earth, the sky, the sun and wind&mdash;and in her

+heart at last was a deep tranquillity. Thus she

+could face life and ask nothing but to watch the

+cloud fleeces as they are spun and heaped high in

+the long days of summer; in soberer moods to watch

+the thoughts of the Great Mystery as He reveals them

+in the shifting cloud shapes; to penetrate further

+and further into the councils of the great forces.

+<pb n="235" />

+<anchor id="Pg235" />

+Thus did she dream the moments away till the sun

+was high in the blue and threw long, yellow splashes

+of light on her still body, on the soft pine-needles,

+beneath the boughs. But there was no time for

+further day-dreams if she intended to forestall the

+hunters at the place of nooning. She followed a

+game trail that lay along the stream, ascending

+through the dense growths till she reached the top

+of the jutting rocks. Her hair was loosened, her

+skirt awry, and the pine-needles stood out from it

+as from a cushion. Much of the way she gained by

+creeping beneath the low branches on her hands and

+knees. No white woman would be likely to follow

+her reasoned the daughter of the plains. It would

+be a little too hard on her appearance. And here,

+by lying flat and hanging over the jutting knob of

+rock, with a pine branch in her hand, she could see

+this mysterious woman and Peter and the hunters.</p>

+

+<p>She broke a branch to shade her face, she looked

+down on the grassy level. She waited, but there

+was no sound of hoofs falling muffled on the soft

+ground. The shadows of the pines contended with

+the splashes of sunlight for the little world beneath

+the trees. They trembled in mimic battle, then the

+shadows stole the sunlight, bit by bit, till all was

+pale-green twilight, and there was no sound of the

+hunters.</p>

+

+<lb />

+

+<p>The hunters, meanwhile, had not been altogether

+successful in the chase. The necessary wolf had

+been coy, and they, perforce, had to compromise

+with his poor relation, the coyote&mdash;a poor relation,

+<pb n="236" />

+<anchor id="Pg236" />

+indeed, whose shabby coat, thinned by the process

+of summer shedding, made it an unworthy souvenir

+to Miss Colebrooke. But it was not the lack of a

+wolf that robbed the hunting-party of its zest for

+Kitty. She could not tell what it was, but something

+seemed to have gone wrong with the day from

+the beginning. She rode beside her cavalier in a

+habit the like of which the country had never before

+seen, and Peter, usually the most observant of men,

+had no word for its multitude of perfections. In the

+first realization of disappointment with the day, the

+hunt, the hardships of the long ride, her perturbed

+consciousness took up the problem of this missing

+element and tried to adjust itself to the irritating

+absence. Kitty wondered if it were something she

+had forgotten. No, there were her two little cambric

+pocket-handkerchiefs, remotely suggestive of orris,

+and bearing her monogram delicately wrought and

+characteristic. It was not her watch, the ribbon

+fob of which fluttered now and then in the breeze.

+It was not veil nor scarf-pin nor any of the paraphernalia

+of the properly garbed horsewoman. And yet

+there was something missing, something she should

+have had with her, something the absence of which

+was taking the savor from the day's hunting.</p>

+

+<p>It must be the very bigness of this great, splendid

+world that gave her the sense of being alone at sea.

+Intuitively she turned and looked at Peter riding

+beside her. There was something in his face that

+made her look again before accepting the realization

+at first incredulously, then with frank amusement.

+Peter had scarcely spoken since they left the ranch.

+<pb n="237" />

+<anchor id="Pg237" />

+She had come down to breakfast so sure of her new

+riding-habit. The Wetmore girls had been moved

+to hyperboles about its cut and fit and the trim

+shortness of the skirt&mdash;short riding-skirts were something

+of a novelty then. The fine gold hair, twisted

+tight at the back of the shapely head, was like a

+coiled mass of burnished metal, some safe-keeping

+device of mint or gold-worker till the season of

+coining or fashioning should come round. The translucent

+flesh-tints, pearl-white flushing into pink&mdash;"Bouguereau

+realized at last," as Nannie Wetmore

+was in the habit of summing up her cousin's complexion&mdash;was

+as marvellous as ever. The delicate

+firmness of profile gave to the face the artificial

+perfection of an old miniature, rather than of a

+flesh-and-blood countenance, and all these were

+there as of yore, but the marvel of them failed of the

+customary tribute. Kitty, on scanty reflection, was

+at no loss to translate Peter's reserve into a language

+at once flattering and retributive. In her scheme

+of life he was always to be her devoted cavalier, as

+indeed he had been from the beginning. She loved

+her own small eminence too well to imperil her

+tenure of it by sharing its pretty view of men and

+things with any one. In country house parties she

+loved the mild wonder that the successful <hi rend="font-style: italic">littÃĐrateuse</hi>

+could fight and play and win her social triumphs so

+well. She loved the star part, and next to playing

+it she enjoyed wresting it from other women or

+eclipsing them completely in some conspicuously

+minor rÃīle, while, in the matter of dress, Miss

+Colebrooke went beyond the point decreed by the

+<pb n="238" />

+<anchor id="Pg238" />

+most exigent mandates of fashion. When hats were

+worn over the face, her admirers had to content

+themselves with a glimpse of her charming mouth

+and chin. When they flared, hers fairly challenged

+the laws of equilibrium. She danced with the same

+facility with which she rode, swam, and played

+tennis. In doing these things supremely well she

+felt that she vindicated the position of the woman

+of letters. Why should one be a frump because one

+wrote?</p>

+

+<p>Her friendship with Peter was to endure to greenest

+old age, more platonic, perhaps, than that of

+Madame RÃĐcamier and Chateaubriand. It was to be

+fruitful in letters that would compare favorably

+with the best of the seventeenth century series.

+Even now her own letters to Peter were no sprightly

+scrawl of passing events, but efforts whose seriousness

+suggested, at least in their carefully elaborated

+stages of structure, the letters of the ladies of

+Cranford.</p>

+

+<p>But in the course of these Western wanderings,

+undertaken not wholly without consideration of

+Peter, there had appeared in the maplike exactness

+of her plans an indefinite territory that threatened

+undreamed-of proportions. It menaced the scheme

+of the letters, it shook the foundations of the

+Chateaubriand-RÃĐcamier friendship. The unknown

+quantity was none other than the frequent and irritating

+mention of one Judith Rodney, who, from

+all accounts, appeared a half-breed. Her name, her

+beauty, some intrinsic charm of personality made

+her an all too frequent topic, except in the case of

+<pb n="239" />

+<anchor id="Pg239" />

+Peter. He had been singularly keen in scenting

+any interrogatory venue that led to the mysterious

+half-breed; when questioned he persistently refused

+to exhibit her as a type.</p>

+

+<p>Kitty knew that she had treated her long-suffering

+cavalier with scant consideration the day he

+had spurred across the desert to see her. True, she

+had written him on her arrival, but, with feminine

+perversity of logic, thought it a trifle inconsiderate

+of him to come so soon after that trying railroad

+journey. An ardent resumption of his suit&mdash;and

+Peter could be depended on for renewing it early and

+often&mdash;was farthest from her inclination at that

+particular time. She intended to salve her conscience

+at the wolf-hunt for her casual reception of

+his impetuous visit. But apparently Peter did not

+intend to be prodigal of opportunity.</p>

+

+<p>"How garrulous you people are this morning!"

+Nannie Wetmore challenged them. Peter came out

+of his brown study with the look of one who has

+again returned to earth.</p>

+

+<p>"You don't find it like the drop-curtain of a

+theatre, now that you've seen it?" he questioned

+Kitty. For she had doubted her pleasure in the

+mountains, in the conviction that they would be too

+dramatic for her simple taste.</p>

+

+<p>Kitty closed her eyes and sighted the peaks as if

+she were getting the color scheme for an afternoon

+toilet.</p>

+

+<p>"Mass, bulk, rather than line&mdash;no, it's not like a

+drop-curtain, but it's distinctly 'hand-painted.' All

+it needs is a stag surveying the prospect from that

+<pb n="240" />

+<anchor id="Pg240" />

+great cliff. It's the kind of thing that would sound

+well in a description. Oh, I assure you I intend to

+make lavish use of it, but it leaves nothing to one's

+poor imagination!"</p>

+

+<p>Peter had a distinct feeling of being annoyed.

+No, she could not appreciate the mountains any

+more than they could appreciate her. They were

+incongruous, antipathetic, antipodal. Kitty, in her

+pink and white and flaxen prettiness and her trim

+habit, was in harmony with the bridle-path of a city

+park; in this great, lonely country she was an alien.

+He thought of Judith and the night they had climbed

+Horse-Thief Trail, of her quiet endurance, her keen

+pleasure in the wild beauty of the night, her quality

+of companionship, her loyalty, her silent bearing

+of many burdens. Yet until he had seen them both

+against the same relentless background, he had

+never been conscious of comparing the two women.</p>

+

+<p>Nannie Wetmore had fallen behind. She was

+riding with a bronzed young lieutenant from Fort

+Washakie. The two ahead rode long without speaking.

+Then Peter broke the silence impatiently:</p>

+

+<p>"You did not really mean that, did you?" He

+was boyishly hurt at her flippant summing up of his

+beloved blue country. And Kitty, tired with the

+long, hard ride, and missing that something in Peter

+that had always been hers, turned on him a pair of

+blue eyes in which the tears were brimming suspiciously.

+They were well out of sight of the others,

+and had come to the heavy fringes of a pine wood.

+Was it the psychological moment at last? Then

+suddenly their horses, that had been sniffing the

+<pb n="241" />

+<anchor id="Pg241" />

+air suspiciously, stopped. Kitty's horse, which was

+in advance of Peter's, rushed towards the thicker

+growth of pines as if all Bedlam were in pursuit.

+Peter's horse, swerving from the cause of alarm,

+bolted back across the trail over which they had

+just made their way. A large brown bear, feeding

+with her cub, and hidden by the trees till they were

+directly in front of her, had caused the alarm.</p>

+

+<p>And presently the hush of the shadowy green

+world in which Judith lay was broken by a light,

+sobbing sound. It had been so still that, lying on

+her bed of pine-needles, she had likened it to great

+waves of silence, rolling up from the valley, breaking

+over her and sweeping back again, noiseless,

+green from the billowing ocean of pine branches, and

+sunlit. Judith bent over the rocky ledge and saw a

+girl making her way down the game trail, dishevelled

+and tearful. Her hat was gone, her pale-yellow

+hair, that in shadow had the greenish tinge of corn-silk,

+blew about her shoulders, her trim skirt was

+torn and dusty, and she looked about, bewildered,

+hardly realizing that through the unexpected course

+of things she had been stranded in this great world

+of sunlit splendor and loneliness. She closed her

+eyes. The awful vastness and solitude oppressed

+her with a deepening sense of calamity. Suppose

+they never found her? How could she find her way

+in this endless wilderness, afoot? She sank to the

+turf and began to cry hysterically.</p>

+

+<p>Judith knew in a flash of instant cognition that

+this was Miss Colebrooke. Amazement seemed to

+<pb n="242" />

+<anchor id="Pg242" />

+have dulled her powers of action&mdash;amazement that

+she, who had stolen to this place and crouched close

+to earth that she might see the triumph of this

+preferred woman, and, having seen and paid her

+grievous dole, steal away and take up the thread

+of endless little things that spun for her the web of

+life, was forced instead to be an unwilling witness

+of the other's distress. Judith had risen with her

+first impulse, which had been to go to Kitty, but

+half-way through the thicket she hesitated and

+reconsidered. Undoubtedly Peter would come soon,

+and Peter's consolation would be more potent than

+any she could offer. She shrank in shuddering self-consciousness

+at the thought of her presence at

+their meeting, the uninvited guest, the outgrown

+friend and confidante, blundering in at such a time,

+pitifully full of good intentions. She recoiled from

+the picture as from a precipice that all unwittingly

+she had escaped. What madness had induced her

+to come on this expedition? A sudden panic at

+the possibility of discovery possessed her; suppose

+Peter should find her skulking like a beggar, waiting

+for broken meats? She looked at the image of

+herself that she carried in her heart. It was that

+of a proud woman who made no moan at the scourge

+of the inevitable. Many burdens had she carried

+in her proud, lonely heart, but of them her lips gave

+no sign. In her contemplative stoicism she felt

+with pride that she was no unworthy daughter of

+her mother's people, and catching a glimpse through

+the trees of the abjectly waiting woman who, though

+safe and sound, could but wait, wretched and dispirited,

+<pb n="243" />

+<anchor id="Pg243" />

+for some one to come and adjust her to the

+situation, Judith felt for her a wondering pity at her

+helplessness. She waited, expectant, for the sound

+of Peter's horse. Surely he must come at any

+moment, overcome with apologies, and she&mdash;Judith

+hid her face in her hands at the thought&mdash;she

+would steal away through the thicket at the first

+sound of hoofs. But as the minutes slipped by and

+still no sign of Peter, a sickening anxiety began to

+gnaw at her heart. Had something happened to

+him?</p>

+

+<p>She did not wait to ask herself the question twice.

+She crawled the length of the thicket with incredible

+rapidity, gained the pine forest, and made

+her way beneath the low-hanging boughs; without

+stopping to protect herself from them she gained

+the open space and ran quickly to Kitty.</p>

+

+<p>"Are you hurt? What has happened?"</p>

+

+<p>Kitty looked up, startled at the voice. She had

+not heard the sound of the moccasined feet. Her

+wandering, forlorn thoughts crystallized at sight of

+the woman before her. A new lightning leaped into

+her eyes as she recognized Judith. There was between

+them a thrilling consciousness that gave to

+their mutual perception a something sharp and fine,

+that grasped the drama of the moment with the

+precision and fidelity of a camera. And through

+all the wonder of the meeting there was in the heart

+of each an outflowing that met and mingled and

+understood the potential tragedy element of the

+situation.</p>

+

+<p>"You are Miss Rodney, I believe?"</p>

+<pb n="244" />

+<anchor id="Pg244" />

+

+<p>Kitty was conscious of something strange in her

+voice as she looked into the dark eyes, wide with

+questioning fear. Ah, but she had amazing beauty,

+and a something that seemed of the very essence of

+deep-souled womanliness! The two women presented

+a fine bit of antithesis, Kitty, flower-like,

+small, delicately wrought, the finished product of

+the town, exotic as some rare transplanted orchid

+growth. And in Judith there was a gemlike quality:

+it was in the bloom of her skin, the iridescent

+radiance of her hair, that was bluish, like a plum in

+sunlight; it was in the warm, red life in her lips, in

+the pulsing vitality of the slim, brown throat; in

+every line was sensuous force restrained by spiritual

+passion.</p>

+

+<p>Kitty told of the accident in which her horse had

+thrown her and disappeared in the pine fringes,

+leaving her stunned for a moment or two; and how

+she had finally pulled herself together and followed

+what appeared to be a trail, in the hope of finding

+some one. She dwelt long on the details of the

+accident.</p>

+

+<p>"Yes, but Peter, what has happened him?"

+Judith chose her words impatiently. She was

+racked with anxiety at his long delay, and now

+she hung over Kitty, waiting for her answer, without

+the semblance of a cloak for her alarm.</p>

+

+<p>There was reproof in Kitty's amendment. "I

+don't know which way Mr. Hamilton's horse went.

+It started back over the trail, I think."</p>

+

+<p>Judith clasped her hands. "Let us go and look

+for him. Why do we waste time?" But Kitty

+<pb n="245" />

+<anchor id="Pg245" />

+hung back. She was shaken from her fall, and upset

+by the events of the morning. Besides, her faith in

+Peter's ability to cope with all the exigencies of this

+country was supreme. And chiefest reason of all

+for her not going was a something within her that

+winced at the thought of this fellowship that had

+for its object the quest of Peter.</p>

+

+<p>"Oh, don't you see," pleaded Judith, "that if

+something had not happened to him he would have

+been here long ago?"</p>

+

+<p>Judith's anxiety awoke in Kitty a new consciousness.

+What was she to him, that at the possibility

+of harm, a fear not shared by Kitty, she should

+throw off a reserve that every line of her face pronounced

+habitual? In her very energy of attitude,

+an energy that all unconsciously communicated

+itself to Kitty, there was the power that belongs to

+all elemental human emotion&mdash;the power that compels.

+Kitty rose to follow Judith, then hesitated.</p>

+

+<p>"I'm sure nothing has happened him. No, I'm

+really too unstrung by my fall to walk." She

+sank again to the bowlder on which she had been

+sitting.</p>

+

+<p>To the woman of the world, Judith's ingenuous

+display of feeling had in its very sincerity a something

+pitiable. How could she strip from her soul

+every fold of reserve and stand unloved and unashamed,

+sanctified, as it were, by the very hopelessness

+of her passion? How could women make

+of their whole existence a thing to be rejected,

+reflected Kitty, who, giving nothing, could not

+understand. She looked again at the bronzed face

+<pb n="246" />

+<anchor id="Pg246" />

+beside her, so bold in outline, so expressive in detail.

+Yes, she was beautiful, and yet, what had her beauty

+availed her? The thought that she herself was the

+preferred woman throbbed through her for a moment

+with a sense of exaltation. The next moment a

+haunting doubt laid hold of her heart, held up

+mockingly the little that she and Peter had lived

+through together, the lofty plane of friendship along

+which she had tried to lead his unwilling feet

+sedately, his protests, his frank amusement at her

+serious pretensions to a career. How much fuller

+might not have been the intercourse between him

+and this woman, who, in all probability, had been

+his comrade for years? And she had been idealizing

+him, and his love for her, and his loneliness! Kitty

+stood with eyes cast down, while images crowded

+upon her, leaving her cold and smiling.</p>

+

+<p>"But think," pleaded Judith; "if you don't come

+it will take me longer to search the trail-marks.

+You could show me just where the horses ran&mdash;"</p>

+

+<p>Kitty's eyes were still on the ground. She did not

+lift them, and Judith, realizing that further appeal

+was but a waste of time, turned and ran swiftly

+down the trail.</p>

+

+<p>"He is her lover," said Kitty; and all the wilderness

+before her was no lonelier than her heart.</p>

+

+<p>Swift, intent, Judith traced Kitty's footprints.

+They followed the game trail, the one she herself

+had taken earlier in the day. She traced them

+back through the pine wood about a hundred rods,

+and then the trail-marks grew confused. This was

+unquestionably the place where the horses had taken

+<pb n="247" />

+<anchor id="Pg247" />

+fright, circled, reared, then dashed in different

+directions. She traced the other horse, whose

+tracks led under low-hanging boughs. It would

+have been a difficult matter for a horse with a rider

+to clear; and now the impression of the horse's shoes

+grew fainter, from the lighter footfalls of a horse

+at full gallop.</p>

+

+<p>"Ah!" A cry broke from her as she saw the marks

+had become almost eliminated by something that

+had dragged, something heavy. Those long-drawn

+lines were finger-prints, where a hand had dragged

+in its vain endeavor to grasp at something. A

+sickening image came persistently before her eyes&mdash;Peter's

+upturned face, blood-smeared and disfigured.</p>

+

+<p>"Sh-sh-sh!" She put her hand to her breast to

+still the beating of her heart. She could hear the

+sound of hoofs falling muffled on the soft ground,

+and a man's voice speaking in a soothing sing-song.

+She listened. It was Peter's voice, reassuring the

+horse, asking him what kind of a bag of nerves he

+was for a cow pony, to get frightened at a bear?

+Judith stood tall and straight among the pines.

+Surely he could not blindly pass her by. He must

+feel the joy in her heart that all was well with him.

+The hoofs came nearer, the man's voice sounded

+but intermittently, as he got his horse under better

+control. She felt as if he must come to her, as if

+some overpowering consciousness of her presence

+would speak from her heart to his; but his eyes

+scanned the distant trail for a glimpse of Kitty or

+Kitty's horse. Judith saw that his head was bound

+<pb n="248" />

+<anchor id="Pg248" />

+in something white and that it bore a red stain, but

+he held himself well in the saddle. He was not the

+man to heed a tumble. He urged the horse forward,

+never looking towards the tree-trunks, his face

+white and strained with anxiety as he scoured

+the trail for evidences of Kitty. The horse, with

+a keener sense than his master, shied slightly as

+he passed the group of pines where Judith stood;

+but Peter's glance was for the open trail, and as she

+heard him canter by, so close that she could have

+touched his stirrup with her hand, it seemed as if

+he must hear the beating of her heart.</p>

+

+<p>"Oh, blind eyes, and ears that will not hear, and

+heart that has forgotten how to beat! Yes, go to

+that pale, cold girl! You speak one language, and

+life for you is the way of little things!"</p>

+

+<p>She waited till the last sound of the horse's hoofs

+had died away and all was still in the tremulous

+green of the forest. Judith's mind was busy with

+the image of their meeting, the man bringing the

+joy of his youth to the calm divinity who could feel

+no thrill of fear in his absence. She broke into the

+running gait and hurried through the forest to the

+Daxes'.</p>

+<pb n="249" />

+<anchor id="Pg249" />

+</div>

+

+<div rend="page-break-before: always">

+<head>XVI</head>

+<index index="pdf" /><index index="toc" level1="In The Land Of The Red Silence" />

+<head type="sub">In The Land Of The Red Silence</head>

+

+<p>The beef-herd, that had been the pivotal point

+of the round-up and had made the mighty

+plain echo to its stampings and bellowings, beating

+up simooms that choked it with thirst, blinded it

+with dust, confounding itself on every side by the

+very fury of its blind force, had trailed for a week,

+tractable as toys in the hands of children. Little

+had happened to vary the monotony for the cow-punchers

+that handled the herd&mdash;they grazed,

+guarded, watered, night-herded the cattle day after

+day, night after night. Pasturage had been sufficient,

+if not abundant. The creeks were running

+low and slimy with the advance of summer, but

+there had been sufficient water to let the herd drink

+its fill at least once a day.</p>

+

+<p>The outfit ate its "sow-belly," soda-biscuit, and

+coffee three times a day, and smoked its pipes, but

+was a little shy on yarns round the camp-fire.</p>

+

+<p>"This yere outfit don't lather none," commented

+the cook to the horse-wrangler, over the smoke of

+an early morning fire.</p>

+

+<p>"Don't lather no more than a chunk of wood,"

+agreed the horse-wrangler. "That's the trouble

+<pb n="250" />

+<anchor id="Pg250" />

+with a picked-up outfit like this. Catch 'W-square'

+men kowtowing to a 'XXX' boss, even if he is only

+acting foreman."</p>

+

+<p>Simpson, the origin of whose connection with the

+"XXX" was rather a sensitive subject with that

+outfit, had begun to take his duties as a cattle-man

+with grim seriousness; he was untiring in his

+labors; he spent long hours in the saddle, he took

+his turn at night herding, though he was old for

+this kind of work. He condemned the sheep-men

+with foul-mouthed denunciations, scoffed at their

+range-rights, said the sheep question should be

+dealt with in the business-like manner in which

+the Indian question had been settled. He was an

+advocate of violence&mdash;in short, a swaggering, bombastic

+wind-bag. He talked much of "his outfit"

+and "his men." "What was good enough for them

+was good enough for him," he would announce at

+meal-time, in a snivelling tone, when the food happened

+to be particularly bad. He split the temporary

+outfit, brought together for the purpose of

+handling the beef-herd, into factions. He put the

+"XXX" in worse repute than it already enjoyed&mdash;he

+was, in fact, the discordant spirit of the expedition.

+The men attended to their work sullenly.

+Discord was rife. The one thought they shared in

+common was that of the wages that would come to

+them at the end of the drive; of the feverish joy of

+"blowing in," in a single night; perchance, of forgetting,

+in one long, riotous evening, the monotony,

+the hardship, the lack of comradery that made

+this particular drive one long to be remembered

+<pb n="251" />

+<anchor id="Pg251" />

+in the mind of every man who had taken part

+in it.</p>

+

+<p>Meanwhile the herd trailed its half-mile length

+to the slaughtering pens day after day, all unconscious

+of its power. When the steers had trailed

+for about a fortnight, the question of finding sufficient

+water for them began to be a serious one.

+The preceding winter had been unusually mild,

+the snow-fall on the mountains averaging less than

+in the recollection of the oldest plains-man. Summer

+had begun early and waxed hot and dry. The earth

+began to wrinkle, and cracked into trenches, like

+gaping mouths, thirsty for the water that came not.

+Such streams as had not dried shrank and crawled

+among the willows like slimy things, that the herd,

+thirsty though it was from the long drives, had to

+be coaxed to drink from.</p>

+

+<p>Discontent grew. The acting foreman, who was

+a "XXX" man, and a comparative stranger to

+that part of the country, refused to consult with the

+"W-square" men in the outfit, who knew every

+inch of the ground. The acting foreman thought

+the Wetmore men looked down on him, "put on

+dog"; and, to flaunt his authority, he ordered the

+herd driven due west instead of skirting to the

+north by the longer route, where they would have

+had the advantage of drinking at several creeks

+before crossing Green River. Moreover, the acting

+foreman was drinking hard, and he insisted upon his

+order in spite of the Wetmore men's protestations.</p>

+

+<p>The character of the country began to change, the

+soil took on the color of blood, even the omnipresent

+<pb n="252" />

+<anchor id="Pg252" />

+sage-brush began to fail the landscape; sun-bleached

+bones glistened on the red soil, white as ulcers.

+All the animal trails led back from the country into

+which they were proceeding. The sky, a vivid,

+cloudless blue, paled as it dipped earthward. The

+sun looked down, a flaming copper shield. There

+was no sign of life in all the land. Even the grasshoppers

+had left it to the sun, the silence, and the

+desolation. To ears accustomed to the incessant

+shrilling of the insects, the cessation was ominous,

+like the sudden stopping of a clock in a chamber

+of death. Above the angry bellow of the thirsty

+herd the men strained their ears again and again

+for this familiar sound of life, but there was nothing

+but the bellowing of the cattle, the trampling of

+their hoofs, and sometimes the long, squealing

+whinny of a horse as he threw back his head in

+seeming demand to know the justice of this thing.</p>

+

+<p>Across the red plain snailed the herd, like a

+many-jointed, prehistoric reptile wandering over

+the limitless spaces of some primeval world. A

+cloud of red dust hung over them in a dense haze,

+trailed after them a weary length, then all was

+featureless monotony as before. What were a thousand

+steers, a handful of men and horses, in the

+land of the red silence? It had seen the comings

+and goings of many peoples, and once it had flowed

+with streams; but that was before the curse of God

+came upon it, and in its harsh, dry barrenness it

+grew to be a menace to living things.</p>

+

+<p>The saddle-stock had been watered at some

+fetid alkali holes that had scarce given enough to

+<pb n="253" />

+<anchor id="Pg253" />

+slake their thirst. The effect of the water had

+weakened them, and the steers that had been without

+water for thirty-six hours were being pushed on

+a course slightly northwest as rapidly as the enfeebled

+condition of the saddle-horses would permit.

+Creek after creek that they had made for proved to

+be but a dry bed.</p>

+

+<p>The glare of the red earth, under the scourge of

+the flaming sun, tormented the eyes of the men into

+strange illusions. The naked red plain stretched

+flat like the colossal background of a screen, over

+which writhed a huge dragon, spined with many

+horns, headless, trailing its tortuous way over the

+red world. Sometimes it was as unreal as a fever-haunted

+dream, a drug-inspired nightmare, when a

+Chinese screen, perchance, has stood at the foot of

+the sleeper's bed. Sometimes the dragon curled

+itself into a ball, and the foreman sung out that they

+were milling, and the men turned and rode away

+from it, then dashed back at it, after getting the

+necessary momentum, entered like a flying wedge,

+fought their way into the rocking sea of surging

+bodies, shouted from their thirst-parched throats

+imprecations that were lost in the dull, sullen roar.

+Then the dragon would uncoil and again trail its

+way over the red waste-lands.</p>

+

+<p>A red sun had begun to set over a red earth, and

+the men who had been out since noon-scouring the

+country for water, returned to say that none had

+been found, and they began to look into each

+other's faces for the answer that none could give.

+At sunset they made a dry camp; there was but

+<pb n="254" />

+<anchor id="Pg254" />

+enough water left to cook with. Each man received,

+as a thirst-quenching ration, a can of tomatoes.

+After supper they consulted, and it was agreed to

+trail the herd till midnight, taking advantage of

+the coolness to hurry them on as fast as possible

+to Green River. The grave nature of their plight

+was indicated by the fact that no one smoked after

+supper. Silent, sullen, they sat round, waiting for

+the foreman to give the order to advance. He

+waited for the moon to come up. Slowly it rose

+over the Bad Land Hills and hung round and full

+like a gigantic lantern. The watches were arranged

+for the night with a double guard. Every man in

+the outfit was beginning to have a feeling of panic

+that communicated itself to every other man, and

+as they looked at the herd, tractable now no longer,

+but a blind force that they must take chances with

+through the long watches of the night, while the

+thirst grew in the beasts' parched throats, they

+foresaw what would in all probability happen; they

+thought of their women, of all that most strongly

+bound them to life, and they sat and waited

+dumbly.</p>

+

+<p>The moon that night was too brilliant for benisons;

+the gaunt, red world lay naked and unshriven for the

+sin that long ago had brought upon it the wrath of

+God. The picture was still that of the grotesque

+Chinese screen, with the headless dragon crawling

+endlessly; but the dream was long, centuries long,

+it seemed to the men listening to the bellowing of

+the herd. And while they waited, the red grew

+dull and the dragon dingy, and its fury made its

+<pb n="255" />

+<anchor id="Pg255" />

+contortions the more horrible; and that was all

+the difference between day and night in the land of

+the red silence. Sometimes the dragon split, and

+joints of it tried to turn back to the last water it

+had drunk; for cattle, though blinded with thirst,

+never forget the last stream at which they have

+quenched thirst, and will turn back to it, though

+they drop on the way. But the men pressed them

+farther and farther, and for yet a little while the

+cattle yielded.</p>

+

+<p>At midnight the saddle-stock was incapable of

+moving farther. One horse had fallen and lay too

+weak to rise. The others, limping and foot-sore,

+no longer responded to quirt and rowel. The foreman

+ordered the herd thrown on the bed ground

+for the night. The herders for the first watch

+began to circle. The rest of the outfit took to its

+blankets to snatch a little rest for the double duty

+that awaited every man that night. Now it is a

+time-honored belief among cow-men that the herd

+must be sung to, particularly when it is restless,

+and to-night they tried all the old favorites, the

+"Cow-boy's Lament" being chief among them. But

+the herd refused to be soothed, and round and

+round it circled; not once would it lie down.</p>

+

+<p>The moon gleamed almost brazen, showing the

+cruel scars, the trenches torn by cloud-bursts, the

+lines wrought by the long, patient waiting of the

+earth for the lifting of the wrath of God. Imperishable

+grief was writ on the land as on a human face.

+The night wore on, the watches changed, the herd

+continued restless; not more than a third of it had

+<pb n="256" />

+<anchor id="Pg256" />

+bedded down. The third watch was from one

+o'clock to half-past three in the morning. Simpson

+and another "XXX" man, with two of the Wetmore

+outfit, made up a double watch, and rode,

+singing, about the herd, as the long, dreary watch

+wore away. The cattle's lowing had taken on a

+gasping, cracked sound that was more frightful

+than the maddened bellow of the early evening.

+Simpson, who was past the age when men live the

+life of the saddle, felt the hardship keenly. He had

+ridden since sunrise, but for the respite at noon

+and the scant time at the dry camp while the evening

+meal was being eaten. He was more than

+half asleep now, as he lurched heavily in the saddle,

+crossing and recrossing his partner in the half-circle

+they completed about the herd. Suddenly

+the sharp yelp of a coyote rang out; it seemed to

+come from no farther than twenty yards away.

+The cattle heard it, too, and a wave of panic swept

+through them. Simpson stiffened in his saddle.

+The sound, which was repeated, was an exact reproduction

+of a coyote's yelp, yet he knew that it

+was not a coyote.</p>

+

+<p>The herd rose to its feet as a single steer, and for a

+second stood undetermined. From a clump of sage-brush

+not more than two feet high fluttered something

+long and white like a sheet. It waved in the

+wind as the cry was repeated. The herd crashed

+forward in a stampede, Simpson in the lead on a

+tired horse, but a scant length ahead of a thousand

+maddened steers bolting in a panic of thirst and

+fear.</p>

+<pb n="257" />

+<anchor id="Pg257" />

+

+<p>"Hell's loose!" yelled the men in their blankets,

+making for the temporary rope corral to secure

+horses. Simpson, tallow-colored with fear, clung

+like a cat to his horse, and dug the rowels in the

+beast's flanks till they were bloody and dripping.

+He had seen Jim Rodney's face above the white

+cloth as it fluttered in the face of the herd that came

+pounding behind him with the rumble of nearing

+thunder. He was too close to them to attempt

+to fire his revolver in the air in the hope of turning

+them, but the boys had evidently got into their

+saddles, to judge by the volley of shots that rang out

+and were answered. Simpson alone rode ahead of

+the herd that tore after him, ripping up the earth

+as it came, bellowing in its blind fury. His horse,

+a thoroughly seasoned cow-pony, sniffed the bedlam

+and responded to the goading spur. She had been

+in cattle stampedes before, and, though every fibre

+ached with fatigue, she flattened out her lean body

+and covered ground to the length of her stride at

+each gallop. The herd was so close that Simpson

+could smell the stench of their sweating bodies,

+taste their dust, and feel the scorch of their breath.

+The sound of their hoofs was like the pounding of a

+thousand propellers. From above looked the moon,

+round and serene; she had watched the passing of

+many peoples in the land of the red silence. The

+horse seemed to be gaining. A few more lengths

+ahead and Simpson could turn her to one side and

+let the maddened cattle race to their own destruction.

+All he asked of God was to escape their trampling

+hoofs, and though he gained he dug the rowel

+<pb n="258" />

+<anchor id="Pg258" />

+and plied the quirt, unmindful of what he did. On

+they came; the chorus of their fear swelled like the

+voice of a mighty cataract, the pound, pound, pound

+of their hoofs ringing like mighty sledge-hammers.</p>

+

+<p>Suddenly he felt himself sinking, horribly, irresistibly.

+"God! What is it?" as his horse went

+down with her foreleg in a gopher-hole. "Up, up,

+you damned brute!" but the mare's leg had cracked

+like a pipe-stem. In his fury at the beast Simpson

+began kicking her, then started to run as the cattle

+swept forward like a black storm-cloud.</p>

+

+<p>The next second the great sea of cattle had broken

+over horse and rider. When it had passed there

+was not enough left of either to warrant burial or to

+furnish a feast for the buzzards. A few shreds of

+clothes, that had once been a man, lay scattered

+there; a something that had been a horse.</p>

+<pb n="259" />

+<anchor id="Pg259" />

+</div>

+

+<div rend="page-break-before: always">

+<head>XVII</head>

+<index index="pdf" /><index index="toc" level1="Mrs. Yellett Contends With A Cloudburst" />

+<head type="sub">Mrs. Yellett Contends With A Cloudburst</head>

+

+<p>The matriarch had delayed longer in moving

+camp than was consistent with her habitual

+watchfulness where the interests of the sheep were

+involved. Mary Carmichael, who had already become

+inured to the experience of moving, was even

+conscious of a certain impatience at the delay, and

+could only explain the apathy with which Mrs. Yellett

+received reports of the dearth of pasturage on

+the ground that she wished each fresh educational

+germ to take as deep root as possible before transplantation.

+So that when Mrs. Yellett, shortly after

+Leander Dax's arrival at camp in the capacity of

+herder, announced that she and Leander were to

+make a trip to the dipping-vat that had kept Ben

+from his classes for the past ten days, and invited

+the "gov'ment" to join the expedition, Mary accepted

+with fervor.</p>

+

+<p>The Yelletts' "bunch" of sheep did not exceed

+three thousand head, and the matriarch had wisely

+decreed that it should be restricted to that number,

+as she wished always to give the flock her personal

+supervision.</p>

+<pb n="260" />

+<anchor id="Pg260" />

+

+<p>"'The hen that's the surest of her chicks is the one

+that does her own settin','" was the adage from the

+Book of Hiram with which Mrs. Yellett succinctly

+summed up the case.</p>

+

+<p>Each autumn, therefore, the wethers and the

+dry-bag ewes were sent to the market, and as the

+result of continual weeding of the stock the matriarch

+had as promising a herd of its size as could

+be found in Wyoming. Often she had explained to

+Mary, who was learning of the wonders of this new

+world with remarkable aptness, that she had constantly

+to fight against the inclination to increase

+her business of sheep-raising, but that as soon as she

+should begin to hire herders or depend on strangers

+things would go wrong. With the assistance of her

+sons, she therefore managed the entire details of the

+herd, with the exception of those occasions on which

+Leander lent his semi-professional co-operation.</p>

+

+<p>As a workman Leander was, considering his size

+and apparent weakness, surprisingly efficient. It

+was as a dispenser of anti-theological doctrine that

+Mrs. Dax's husband annoyed his temporary employer.

+Freed from his wife's masterful presence,

+Leander dared to be an "agnostic," as he called

+himself, of an unprecedentedly violent order. His

+iconoclasm was not of a pattern with paw's gusty

+protests against life in general, but it was Leander's

+way of asserting himself, on the rare occasions when

+he got a chance, to deny clamorously every tenet

+advanced by every religion. The mere use of certain

+familiar expletives drove him, ordinarily mild and

+submissive though he was, to frantic gesticulation

+<pb n="261" />

+<anchor id="Pg261" />

+and diatribe. Mary Carmichael could not make out,

+as she watched the comedy with growing amusement,

+whether poor Leander really believed that he

+was the first of doubting Thomases, or whether

+he took an unfair advantage of the lack of general

+information in his casual audiences to set forth

+well-known opinions as his own. Whatever its

+basis may have been, Leander sustained the rÃīle

+of doubter with passionate zeal, wearing himself

+to tatters of rage and hoarseness over arguments

+maliciously contrived beforehand by cow-punchers

+and sheep-herders in need of amusement; and yet

+he never saw the traps, going out of his way, apparently,

+to fall into them, tumbling headlong into

+the identical pits time after time. Jonah and the

+whale constituted one bait by means of which Leander

+could be lured from food, sleep, or work of the

+most pressing nature.</p>

+

+<p>"The poor fool would stop in the middle of shearing

+a sheep to argue that Jonah never come out of the

+whale's belly," the matriarch had told Mary Carmichael,

+in summing up Leander's disadvantages as a

+herder. And the first remark she had addressed to

+him on his arrival was: "Leander Dax, you'd have

+to be made over, and made different, to keep you

+from bein' a infidel, but there's one p'int on which

+you are particularly locoed, and that's Jonah and

+the whale. Now at this particular time in the hist'ry

+of the United States, nobody in his faculties has

+got no call to fret hisself over Jonah and his whereabouts&mdash;none

+whatever. There's a lot of business

+round this here camp that's a heap more pressin'.

+<pb n="262" />

+<anchor id="Pg262" />

+Now, Leander Dax, if I do hereby undertake to hire,

+engage, and employ you to herd sheep, do you agree

+to renounce discussions, arguments, and debates

+on the late Jonah and his whereabouts durin' them

+three days? God A'mighty, man, any one would

+think you was Jonah's wife, the interest you have

+in his absence!"</p>

+

+<p>"I come here to herd sheep," Leander had brazenly

+retaliated. "I 'ain't come to try to make you

+think."</p>

+

+<p>Nevertheless, he appeared docile enough as the

+time came for the journey to the dipping-vat, and

+did his part in making ready. The wagon was

+the rudest of structures; it consisted merely of one

+long, stout pole. Though she saw the horses being

+harnessed to this pole, Mary Carmichael, discreetly

+exercising her newly acquired wisdom, forbore to

+ask where she was going to sit, and listened with

+interest to a discussion between Mrs. Yellett and

+Leander as to the number of horses it would take to

+get the dip up the mountain. Leander, who loved

+pomp and splendor, was for taking six, but Mrs.

+Yellett, who carried simplicity to a fault, was in

+favor of only two. They finally compromised on

+four, and Leander went to fetch the extra two.</p>

+

+<p>Mrs. Yellett, ever economical of the flitting moment,

+took advantage of the delay to give Mr. Yellett

+a dose of "Brainard's Beneficial Blackthorn."</p>

+

+<p>"Paw's as hard to manage as a bent pin," she

+remarked, in an aside to Mary, while he protested

+and fought her off with his stick. But she, with the

+agility of an acrobat, got directly back of him, took

+<pb n="263" />

+<anchor id="Pg263" />

+his head under her arm, pried open his mouth, and

+poured down the unwelcome, if beneficial, dose.</p>

+

+<p>"There, there, paw," she said, wiping his mouth

+as if he had been a baby, "don't take on so! It's

+all gone, and I can't have you sick on my hands."</p>

+

+<p>But Mr. Yellett continued to splutter and flare

+and use violent language, whereupon the matriarch

+went into the tent and returned with a drink of

+condensed-milk and water, "to wash down the

+nasty taste," she told him, soothingly.</p>

+

+<p>A moment afterwards she and Leander were engaged

+in rolling the barrels of sheep-dip to the wagon,

+Mary Carmichael helplessly looking on while

+Mrs. Yellett looked doubtfully at a "gov'ment"

+who could not handle barrels. Finally, under the

+skilful manipulation of Mrs. Yellett and Leander,

+the long pole took on the aspect of a colossal vertebral

+column, from which huge barrel-ribs projected

+horizontally, leaving at the rear a foot or so of bare

+pole as a smart caudal appendage, bearing about the

+same proportion to the wagon as the neatly bitten

+tail of a fox-terrier does to the dog.</p>

+

+<p>Mrs. Yellett kissed "paw" good-bye, explaining

+to Mary, in extenuation of her weakness, that she

+would never forgive herself if she neglected it and

+anything happened to him during her absence. She

+then climbed to the front barrel and secured the

+ribbons. Leander had brought out three rolls of

+bedding of the inevitable bed-quilt variety, but

+Mrs. Yellett scorned such luxury while driving,

+and accordingly gave hers to the "gov'ment" for a

+back-rest. Mary sat on the lower row of barrels,

+<pb n="264" />

+<anchor id="Pg264" />

+with her feet dangling, using one roll of bedding for

+a seat and the other comfortably arranged at her

+back as a cushion.</p>

+

+<p>Madam called sharply to the horses, "Hi-hi-hi-kerat!

+hi-kerat-kerat!" and they started off at

+a rattling pace, the barrels of dip creaking and

+squeaking as they swayed under their rope lashings.

+Mary bounced about like a bean in a bag, working

+loose from between the bed-quilt rolls at each gulley,

+clinging frantically to barrel ends, shaken back

+and forth like a shuttle. Indeed, the drive seemed

+to combine every known form of physical exercise.

+Mrs. Yellett herself was in fine fettle; she drove

+sitting for a while, then rose, standing on a narrow

+ledge while she held the four ribbons lightly in one

+hand and tickled the leaders with a long whip carried

+in the other. She drove her four horses over

+the rough road with the skill of a circus equestrienne,

+balancing easily on the crazy ledge, shifting her

+weight from side to side as the wagon rattled down

+gullies and up ridges, the horses responding gallantly

+to the shrill "Hi-hi-kerat! hi-kerat! hi-kerat!"

+Her costume on this occasion represented joint concessions

+to her sex and the work that was before her,

+as the head of a family at the dipping-vat. She

+still wore the drum-shaped rabbit-skin cap pulled

+well down over her forehead for driving. The great,

+cable-like braids of hair stood out well below the

+cap, giving her head an appearance of denseness

+and solidity, but the rambling curls were still blowing

+about her face, perhaps adding to the sum total

+of grotesqueness. She wore a man's shirt of gray

+<pb n="265" />

+<anchor id="Pg265" />

+flannel, well open at the neck, from which the

+bronzed column of the throat rose in austere dignity.

+A pair of Mr. Yellett's trousers, stuffed into high,

+cow-puncher's boots, that met the hem of a skirt

+coming barely to the knees, contributed to the

+originality of her dress.</p>

+

+<p>The wagon had been pitching like a ship at sea

+through the desert dreariness for about an hour,

+when Mary Carmichael suddenly became conscious

+that the prods she had been receiving from time to

+time in her back were not due either to their manner

+of locomotion or to the freight carried. Clinging

+to two barrels, she waited for the next lurch of the

+wagon to shake her free from the rolls of bedding,

+and, at the peril of life and limb, looked round.

+Leander hung over the top row of barrels, gesticulating

+wildly. The change in the man, since leaving

+camp some two hours previous, was appalling. He

+seemed to have shrivelled away to a wraith of his

+former self. His cheeks, his chin, had waned to the

+vanishing point. He opened his lips and mouthed

+horribly, yet his frightful grimacings conveyed no

+meaning. Mary called to Mrs. Yellett, but her

+voice was drowned in the rattle of the wagon, the

+clatter of four horses' hoofs, and the continual

+"Hi-hi-hi-kerat! hi-kerat!" of the driver. In the

+mean time Leander pointed to his mouth and back

+to the road in indescribably pathetic pantomime.

+"Perhaps the poor creature wants to turn back and

+die in his bed, like a Christian, even if he isn't one,"

+thought Mary, as she called and called, Leander still

+emitting the most inhuman of cries, like the sounds

+<pb n="266" />

+<anchor id="Pg266" />

+made by deaf mutes in distress. Presently Mrs.

+Yellett drew up, and asked in the name of many

+profane things what was the matter with her

+companions.</p>

+

+<p>Leander resumed his mouthings and his dumb

+show, but Mrs. Yellett proved a better interpreter

+than Mary Carmichael.</p>

+

+<p>"God A'mighty!" she said, "he's lost his false

+teeth!" And without another word she turned the

+four horses and the wagon with a skill that fell little

+short of sleight-of-hand.</p>

+

+<p>The dialogue that followed between Mrs. Yellett

+and Leander as to how far back he had dropped his

+teeth, cannot be given, owing to the inadequacy of

+the English language to reproduce his toothless

+enunciation. Catching, as Mary did, the meaning

+of Mrs. Yellett's remarks only, she received something

+of the one-sided impression given by overhearing

+a telephone conversation:</p>

+

+<p>"What did you have 'em out for?... You didn't

+have 'em out?... I just shook 'em out? Then

+what made you have your mouth open? Ef your

+mouth had been shut, you couldn't have lost 'em.... You

+was a-yawnin', eh? Well, you are a plumb

+fool to yawn on this kind of a waggin, with your

+mouth full o' china teeth. Your yawnin' 'll put us

+back a good hour an' we won't reach camp before

+sundown."</p>

+

+<p>At this point of the diatribe the Infidel left the

+wagon and began to search along the road. He said

+he had noticed a buffalo skull near the place where

+he had dropped the teeth, and thought he could

+<pb n="267" />

+<anchor id="Pg267" />

+trace them by this landmark. Mrs. Yellett held

+the ribbons and suggested that Mary get down

+"and help to prospect for them teeth." As Mary

+clambered down she heard a fragment of the matriarch's

+monologue, which, being duly expurgated

+for polite ears, was to the effect that she would

+rather take ten babies anywhere than one grown

+man, and that as for getting in the way, hindering,

+obstructing, and being a nuisance, generally speaking,

+man had not his counterpart in the scheme of

+creation.</p>

+

+<p>"Talk about a woman bein' at the bottom of

+everything!" sniffed Mrs. Yellett; "I be so sick of

+always hearin' about 'the woman in the case!' Half

+the time the case would be a blame sight worse if it

+was left exclusive to the men. The Book of Hiram

+says: 'A skunk may have his good p'ints, but few

+folks is takin' the risk of waitin' round to get acquainted

+with 'em.'"</p>

+

+<p>While Mary was still "prospecting," a glad cry

+roused her attention, and Leander came up smiling,

+with his dental treasures nicely adjusted.</p>

+

+<p>"Quit smilin' like a rattlesnake, you plumb fool!"

+called out Mrs. Yellett. "Do you want to lose 'em

+again?"</p>

+

+<p>So, curtailing the muscular contraction indicative

+of his pleasure, the Infidel again took his place among

+the bed-quilts and the journey was resumed.</p>

+

+<p>It was now about five in the afternoon. The

+heat, which had been oppressive all day, suddenly

+relaxed its blistering grip, and a keenly penetrating

+dampness, not unlike that of a sea-fog, came from

+<pb n="268" />

+<anchor id="Pg268" />

+some unknown quarter of the arid wastes and

+chilled the three travellers to the marrow. The

+horses flung up their heads and sniffed it, rearing

+and plunging as if they had scent of something

+menacing. Across the horizon a dark cloud scudded,

+no bigger than your hand.</p>

+

+<p>"Cloud-burst!" announced Mrs. Yellett.</p>

+

+<p>"Cloud-burst, all right enough," agreed Leander,

+and he turned up his coat-collar in simple preparation

+for the deluge.</p>

+

+<p>There flashed into Mary Carmichael's mind a

+sentence from her physical geography that she had

+been obliged to commit to heart in her school-days:

+"A cloud-burst is a sudden, capricious rainfall, as

+if the whole cloud had been precipitated at once."

+She wanted to question her companions as to the

+accuracy of this definition, but before she had time

+to frame a sentence the real cloud-burst came, with

+a splitting crack of thunder; then the lightning

+flashed out its message in the short-hand of the

+storm, across the inky blackness, and the water fell

+as if the ocean had been inverted. In the fraction

+of a second all three were drenched to the skin, the

+water pouring from them in sheets, as if they had

+been some slight obstruction in the path of a waterfall.

+The wagon was soon in a deep gully, with

+frothing, foaming, yellow water up to the hubs of

+the wheels. Mrs. Yellett, like some goddess of the

+storm, lashed her horses forward to keep them from

+foundering in the mud, and the wagon creaked and

+groaned in all its timbers as it lurched and jolted

+through the angry torrents.</p>

+<pb n="269" />

+<anchor id="Pg269" />

+

+<p>Each moment Mary expected to be flung from the

+barrels, and clung till her finger-tips were white and

+aching. From the drenched red bedquilts a sticky

+crimson trail ran over the barrel heads, as well as

+over Mary's hands, face, and dress. Still they forged

+on through the deluge, Mrs. Yellett shouting and

+lashing the horses, holding them erect and safe with

+the skill she never lost. The fur on her rabbit-skin

+cap was beaten flat. The great, wet braids had fallen

+from the force of the water and hung straight and

+black, like huge snakes uncoiled. She was far from

+losing her grip on either the horses or the situation,

+and from the inspiring ring of her voice as she urged

+them forward it was plain that she took a fierce

+joy in this conflict of the elements.</p>

+

+<p>It was bitterly cold, and Mary reflected that if

+Leander's teeth chattered half as hard as hers did,

+without breaking, they must, indeed, be of excellent

+quality. The storm began to abate, and the sky

+became lighter, though the water still poured in

+torrents. As soon as her responsibility as driver

+left her time to speak, Mrs. Yellett lost no time in

+fastening the cloud-burst to Leander.</p>

+

+<p>"This here is what comes of settin' up your back

+against God A'mighty and encouragin' the heathen

+and the infidel in his idolatry. I might 'a' knowed

+somethin' would happen, takin' you along! 'And

+the heathen and the infidel went out, and the Lord

+God sent a cloud-burst to wet him,'" quoted Mrs.

+Yellett from the apocryphal Scriptures that never

+yet failed to furnish her with verse and text.</p>

+

+<p>The infidel, from his side of the wagon, began to

+<pb n="270" />

+<anchor id="Pg270" />

+display agitation. His jaws worked, but he said

+nothing.</p>

+

+<p>"You 'ain't lost them teeth again, have you?"</p>

+

+<p>He nodded his head wretchedly.</p>

+

+<p>"'And the Lord took away the teeth of his enemy,

+so that he could neither bite nor talk,'" quoted Mrs.

+Yellett to the miserable man, who could make no

+reply.</p>

+

+<p>"Wonder you wouldn't see the foolishness o'

+being a heathen and a infidel, and turn to the

+Lord! You 'ain't got no teeth, and it takes your

+wife to herd you. 'And the Lord multiplied the

+tribulations of his enemy.' You got no more show

+standin' up agin the Lord than an insect would have

+standin' up agin me."</p>

+

+<p>She had Leander, at last, just where she wanted

+him. He was forced to listen, and he could make

+no reply. She alternately abused him for his lack

+of faith and urged him to repentance. Leander

+raged, gesticulated, turned his back on her, mouthed,

+and finally put his fingers in his ears. But nothing

+stemmed the tide of Mrs. Yellett's eloquence; it

+was as inexhaustible and as remorseless as the

+cloud-burst.</p>

+

+<p>It continued bitterly cold, even after the rain had

+stopped falling, and the heap of sodden bedclothes

+furnished no protection against the chilling dampness.

+It was growing dark; there was no red in the

+sunset, only a streak of vivid orange along the

+horizon, chill and clear as the empty, soulless flame

+of burning paper. There were no deep, glowing

+coals, no amethystine opalescence, fading into gold

+<pb n="271" />

+<anchor id="Pg271" />

+and violet. All was cold and subdued, and the

+scrub pines on the mountain-tops stood out sharply

+against this cold background like an etching on

+yellow paper.</p>

+

+<p>Mrs. Yellett's self-inspired scriptural maxims were

+discontinued after a while, either because she could

+think of no more, or because the rain-soaked,

+shivering, chattering object towards which they

+were directed was too abject to inspire further

+efforts. Leander huddled on the barrel that was

+farthest from Mrs. Yellett, and wrapped himself in

+the soaked red bedquilt. The dye smeared his

+face till he looked like an Indian brave ready for

+battle, but there was no further suggestion of the

+fighting red man in the utter desolation of his

+attitude. Mary Carmichael, on her barrel, shivered

+with grim patience and longed for a cup of tea. Only

+Mrs. Yellett gave no sign of anxiety or discomfort;

+she drove along, sometimes whistling, sometimes

+swearing, erect as an Indian, and to all appearances

+as oblivious of cold and wet as if she were in her

+own home.</p>

+

+<p>The gathering darkness into which the horses were

+plunging was mysterious and appalling. Objects

+stood out enormously magnified, or distorted grotesquely,

+in the uncertain light. It was like penetrating

+into the real Inferno, like stumbling across

+the inspiration of Dante in all its sinister splendor.

+It was the Inferno of his dream rather than the

+Inferno of his poem; it had the ghastly reality of

+the unreal.</p>

+

+<p>"It wouldn't surprise me if we had a smash-up in

+<pb n="272" />

+<anchor id="Pg272" />

+Clear Creek," said Mrs. Yellett, just by way of

+adding her quota of cheerful speculation. She

+ducked her head and whispered in Mary's ear:</p>

+

+<p>"It's all along of me hirin' <hi rend="font-style: italic">him</hi>! I wouldn't be

+surprised if paw died. I'm thinkin' of shakin' him

+out after his teeth. 'Take not up with the enemy

+of the Lord, lest he make of you also an enemy.'"</p>

+

+<p>But there was no accent of apprehension in Mrs.

+Yellett's dismal prognostications of the evil that

+might befall her for employing Leander. She spoke

+more with the air of one who produces incidents to

+prove an argument than of one who anticipates a

+calamity.</p>

+

+<p>Leander, toothless and wretched, sitting on the

+side of the wagon, began to show symptoms of joy

+comparable to that of the vanguard of the Israelites,

+catching their first glimpse of the Promised Land.

+Touching Mary Carmichael on the shoulder, he

+pointed to a white tent and the remains of a camp-fire.

+Already Mrs. Yellett had begun to "Hallo,

+Ben!" But Ben was at work at the vat, which was

+still a quarter of a mile further up the mountain; so

+Mrs. Yellett, throwing the reins to Leander and

+bidding him turn out the horses, lost no time in

+building a fire, putting on coffee, and making her

+little party comfortable. So various was her efficiency

+that she seemed no less at home in these

+simple domestic tasks than when guiding her horses,

+goddess-like, through the cloud-burst. And Mary

+Carmichael, succumbing gradually to the revivifying

+influence of the fire and the hot coffee, acknowledged

+honestly to herself a warmth of affection for her

+<pb n="273" />

+<anchor id="Pg273" />

+hostess and for the atmosphere Mrs. Yellett created

+about her that made even Virginia and her aunts

+seem less the only pivot of rational existence. She

+felt that she had come West with but one eye, as it

+were, and countless prejudices, whereas her powers

+of vision were fast becoming increased a hundredfold.

+How very tame life must be, she reflected,

+as she sat smiling to herself, to those who did not

+know Mrs. Yellett, how over-serious to those who

+did not know Leander! Yet, after all, she knew

+that the real basis of her readjusted vision was her

+brief but illuminating acquaintance with Judith

+Rodney. To Mary, freed for the first time in her

+life from the most elegantly provincial of surroundings,

+Judith seemed the incarnation of all the

+splendor and heroism of the West. And in the

+glow of her enthusiasm she decided then and there

+not to abandon the Yellett educational problem till

+she should have solved it successfully. She might

+not be born to valiant achievement, like these

+sturdy folk about her, but she might as well prove

+to them that an Eastern tenderfoot was not all

+feebleness and inefficiency.</p>

+

+<p>"Leander!" called Mrs. Yellett. "Just act as if

+you was to home and wash up these dishes."</p>

+<pb n="274" />

+<anchor id="Pg274" />

+</div>

+

+<div rend="page-break-before: always">

+<head>XVIII</head>

+<index index="pdf" /><index index="toc" level1="Foreshadowed" />

+<head type="sub">Foreshadowed</head>

+

+<p>Alida awoke, knowing what was to happen.

+She had dreamed of it, just before daylight,

+and lay in bed stupefied by the horror of it, living,

+again and again, through each frightful detail. It

+had happened&mdash;there, in the very room, and before

+the children; the noise of it had startled them; and

+then she woke and knew she had been dreaming.

+In the dream the noise had wakened the children&mdash;when

+it really happened they must never know.

+It wouldn't be fair to them; they needed a "clean

+start."</p>

+

+<p>What had she done to keep them quiet? There

+had been a thunderous knocking at the door. She

+had expected it and was prepared; because the lock

+was feeble, she had shoved the old brown bureau

+against the door.</p>

+

+<p>Nothing had happened. What a fool she was to

+lie there and think of it! There was the brown

+bureau against the wall; she could hear the deep

+breathing of Jim in the room beyond. Jim had

+been unequal to the task of conventionally going

+to bed the night before, and she had put a pillow

+under his head and a quilt over him. She was the

+<pb n="275" />

+<anchor id="Pg275" />

+last woman in the world to worry about Jim, drunk,

+or to nag him for it when sober. But she didn't like

+the children to see him that way.</p>

+

+<p>What was it that she had done to quiet the children

+when "they" rode up? She had done something

+and they had gone to sleep again, and she&mdash;and she&mdash;oh

+no, it hadn't happened. What a fool she was

+to lie there thinking! There were the children to

+rouse and dress, and breakfast to cook, and Jim&mdash;Jim

+would be feeling pretty mean this morning;

+he'd like a good cup of coffee. She was glad he was

+alive to make coffee for.</p>

+

+<p>She got up and, in the uncertainty bred of the

+dream, felt the brown bureau, felt it hungrily, almost

+incredulously. The brown bureau had been pushed

+against the door when they had come, and knocked

+and knocked. Then they had thundered with the

+butts of their six-shooters, and the children had

+wakened, and she had called out to them:</p>

+

+<p>"Sh-sh! It's only a bad dream. Mammy will

+give you some dough to bake to-morrow."</p>

+

+<p>And she had gone to press her face flat to the

+thin wall, and call, "For God's sake, don't wake the

+children!"</p>

+

+<p>And they had called out, "Let him come out

+quiet, then."</p>

+

+<p>And then she could feel that they put their

+shoulders to the door&mdash;the weather-beaten door&mdash;with

+its crazy lock that didn't half catch. The

+brown bureau had spun across the floor like a top,

+and they had crowded in. Then she had done

+something to quiet the children&mdash;it was queer that

+<pb n="276" />

+<anchor id="Pg276" />

+she could not remember what it was, when everything

+else in the dream still lived within her, horribly

+distinct and real.</p>

+

+<p>What a fool she was, with Jim asleep in the next

+room; she would not think about it another minute.

+She began to dress, but her fingers were heavy,

+and the vague oppression of nightmare blocked her

+efficiency. Repeatedly she would detect herself subconsciously

+brooding over some one of the links in

+that pitiless memory&mdash;what they had said to Jim;

+his undaunted replies; how she had left him and

+gone into the next room because Jim had told her to.</p>

+

+<p>She called the children, but the sight of them,

+happy and flushed with sleep, did not reassure her.</p>

+

+<p>"Mammy," said Topeka, eldest of the family, and

+lately on the invalid list, the victim of a cactus

+thorn, "my toe's all well; can I go barefoot?"</p>

+

+<p>"Topeka Rodney, what kind of feet do you

+expect to have when you are a young lady, if you

+run barefoot now?"</p>

+

+<p>Topeka, sitting on the side of the bed, with tousled

+hair, put her small feet together and contemplated

+them. The toe was still suspiciously inflamed for

+perfect convalescence, although Topeka, with a

+Spartan courage that won her a place in the annals

+of household valor, had the day before allowed

+her mother to pick out with a needle the torturing

+cactus thorn, scorning to shed a tear during the

+operation, though afterwards she had taken the

+piece of dried apple that was offered her and devoured

+it to the last bite, as only just compensation

+for her sufferings.</p>

+<pb n="277" />

+<anchor id="Pg277" />

+

+<p>"Dimmy dot a tore toe, too." But Jimmy

+showed a strange reticence about offering proofs of

+his affliction. At the peril of his equilibrium, he

+clasped the allegedly injured member in his chubby

+hand and rolled over on the bed in apparent

+anguish.</p>

+

+<p>"Less see, Jimmy," asked his mother, anxiously.</p>

+

+<p>"Don't bleeve him, mammy. He 'ain't ever cried.

+He'd a cried, for sure, if his toe was sore." At the

+age of five, little Judith, namesake of her aunt, was

+something of a doubting Thomas.</p>

+

+<p>"Let mammy see, Jimmy," and Alida bent over

+her son and heir.</p>

+

+<p>"Doth Dimmy det any apple?" The wee man

+sometimes succeeded in making terms with his

+mother, when the other children were not present.

+Though feeling himself a trifle over-confident, he

+held the disputed toe with the air of one keeping

+back a trump card, and looked his mother squarely

+in the eyes.</p>

+

+<p>She struggled with the temptation to give him

+the apple. He had lifted the horrors of her dream

+as nothing else could have done, but she answered

+him with quiet firmness.</p>

+

+<p>"Jimmy must not tell stories."</p>

+

+<p>"Less see," insisted Topeka.</p>

+

+<p>"He dassent," affirmed Judith, junior, of little

+faith.</p>

+

+<p>"It hurths me," and Jimmy tried to squeeze out a

+tear. "It hurths me, my tore toe!"</p>

+

+<p>His mother tipped him over on his fat little back

+and opened the chubby hand that held the trump

+<pb n="278" />

+<anchor id="Pg278" />

+toe. It was white from the pressure applied by the

+infant dissembler, but there was no trace of the

+treacherous cactus thorn. She gave him an affectionate

+spank and went into the kitchen to make

+coffee.</p>

+

+<p>"I with I had a tore toe," he crooned, quite unabashed

+at the discovery of his deception. "I with

+I toud det a tore toe 'thout the hurt."</p>

+

+<p>But the horror of the dream gripped her when

+she found herself alone in the kitchen; and she

+remembered she had not told the children not to

+go into the room where their father was sleeping.

+She went back and found that Jimmy had not left

+his post on the side of the bed, where he still regretted

+that his perfectly well toe did not entitle him to

+gastronomic consideration. Topeka, who had arrived

+at an age where little girls, in the first subconscious

+attempt at adornment, know no keener

+delight than plastering their heads with a wet hairbrush,

+till they present an appearance of slippery

+rotundity equalled only by a peeled onion, put

+down the brush with guilty haste at sight of her

+mother.</p>

+

+<p>"I'm goin' to dress him soon as I've done my

+hair."</p>

+

+<p>"Any one think you was goin' to be married, the

+time you've took to it."</p>

+

+<p>"It's gettin' so long," urged Topeka.</p>

+

+<p>"I wouldn't give it a chance to grow no longer

+while Jimmy was waitin' to get dressed. And don't

+go into the front room. Your father's gettin' his

+sleep out."</p>

+<pb n="279" />

+<anchor id="Pg279" />

+

+<p>Topeka opened her round eyes. There was always

+something suspicious about that sleep her

+father had to get out, but she felt it was something

+she must not ask questions about. Her mother

+lingered; she dreaded to be alone in the kitchen.

+The little, familiar intimacies between herself and

+her children scattered the horrors of the dream

+which would come back to her when she was again

+at the mercy of her thoughts.</p>

+

+<p>"Judy, s'pose you dress Jimmy this morning! I

+want Topeka to help me get breakfast."</p>

+

+<p>"Yessum," said Judith, dutifully. "Is he to have

+his face washed?"</p>

+

+<p>"He certainly is, Judy. I's ashamed to have you

+ask such a question. 'Ain't you all been brought up

+to have your faces washed?"</p>

+

+<p>But young Judith seemed disinclined to take up

+this phase of family superiority. She merely inquired

+further:</p>

+

+<p>"Is he to have it washed with soap, maw?"</p>

+

+<p>"He shore is. Any one would think you had been

+born and raised in Arizony or Nebrasky, to hear

+you talk. I'm plumb ashamed of you, Judy."</p>

+

+<p>"But, 'deed, maw, I ain't big enough to wash

+his face with soap. It takes Topeka to hold his

+head."</p>

+

+<p>The subject of the discussion still sat on the edge

+of the bed, a small lord of creation, letting his women

+folk arrange among themselves who should minister

+to his wants. As an instrument of torture the washcloth,

+in the hands of his sister Judy, was no ignoble

+rival of the cactus thorn. The question of making

+<pb n="280" />

+<anchor id="Pg280" />

+terms for his sufferings again appealed to him in the

+light of a feasible business proposition.</p>

+

+<p>"Muvvy, tan't I have the apple? Judy hurts me

+a lot when she wathes my face wis soap."</p>

+

+<p>"Yes, you can have the apple, honey; and, Judy,

+you be gentle with him. Don't rub his features up,

+and be careful and don't get soap in his eyes."</p>

+

+<p>"No'm." And Judy heroically stifled the longing

+to slick her hair, like Topeka's, with the wet hairbrush.

+There were easier tasks than washing the

+face of her younger brother.</p>

+

+<p>When Topeka and her mother were alone in the

+kitchen, Topeka grinding the coffee and all unconsciously

+working her jaw in an accompaniment to

+the coffee-mill, her mother bent over her and said:</p>

+

+<p>"Did you dream of anything last night?"</p>

+

+<p>Topeka simultaneously stopped working the coffee-mill

+and her jaw, and regarded her mother solemnly.

+She did not remember having been thus questioned

+about her dreams before.</p>

+

+<p>"No'm," she answered, after laborious consideration.

+But something in her mother's face held her.</p>

+

+<p>"You're sure you didn't dream nothing?"</p>

+

+<p>"Yes, maw."</p>

+

+<p>"Did Judy or Jim say that they dreamed anything?"</p>

+

+<p>"Jim said he dreamed he had a pup."</p>

+

+<p>"Was that all? Think hard, Topeka!"</p>

+

+<p>Topeka held the handle of the coffee-mill in her

+hand; her jaw continued to work with the labor of

+her mental process. "I've thought hard, maw, and

+all he told was about the pup."</p>

+<pb n="281" />

+<anchor id="Pg281" />

+

+<p>Alida went back to her bedroom and again felt

+the brown bureau. "What's the matter with me,

+anyhow? It's the lonesomeness, and they bein' agin

+Jim the way they are. God, this country's hard on

+women and horses!"</p>

+

+<p>When breakfast was over, and young Jim had

+received the reward of his valor in presenting a

+brave face to his ablution, and Judith the reward

+of her skill, the evidence of which almost prevented

+the young martyr from smiling while he enjoyed his

+treat, their mother sent them all to play in the

+caÃąon. She told them not to come home till she

+should come for them, and if any one should ask

+about their father, to say that he was away from

+home. And this, as well as the mystery of her

+father's "getting his sleep out," roused some slight

+apprehension in Topeka, who was old for her age.

+They were seldom sent to the caÃąon to play. Topeka

+looked at her mother as she had when questioned

+about the dream, but there was no further confidence

+between them.</p>

+

+<p>"You do as your sister Topeka tells you, and

+remember what I said about your papa," Alida said

+to the younger children. Jim and Judy clasped each

+other's hands in mute compact at the edict. Their

+sister Topeka had a real genius for authority; they

+were minded all too well when she swayed the

+maternal sceptre vicariously.</p>

+

+<p>Alida made fresh coffee for Jim when the children

+had gone. She made it carefully; there was this

+morning, unconsciously, about each little thing that

+<pb n="282" />

+<anchor id="Pg282" />

+she did for him, the solemnity of a funeral rite.

+Struggle as she would, she could not divest her

+mind of the conviction that what she did this day

+she did for the dead. She would go to the door and

+listen to his breathing, and tell herself that she was a

+fool, then wring her hands at the remembrance of

+the dream.</p>

+

+<p>As he tossed, half waking, she heard him groan

+and curse the cattle-men with oaths that made her

+glad she had sent the children from home. Then

+she bent over him and woke him from his uneasy

+slumber.</p>

+

+<p>"Jim, don't you want me to bathe your head?

+And here's some nice, hot coffee all ready for you."</p>

+

+<p>Jim woke slowly to a realization of his troubles

+and his blessings. His wife was bathing his head

+with hands that trembled. Not always had she

+greeted his indiscretions with such loving forbearance.

+He noticed, though his waking faculties were

+not over-keen, that her face was pale and frightened,

+and that her eyes, meeting his, held a dumb,

+measureless affection.</p>

+

+<p>"What th' hell are you babying me for?" But

+his roughness did not deceive her woman's wits.

+He was not getting the lecture he anticipated, and

+this was his way of showing that he was not embarrassed

+by her kindness. The morning sunlight

+was pitilessly frank in its exposure of the grim pinch

+of poverty in the mean little room, but the woman

+was unconscious of these things; what she saw was

+that Jim, the reckless, Jim, the dare-devil terror of

+the country, Jim, who had married and settled with

+<pb n="283" />

+<anchor id="Pg283" />

+her into home-keeping respectability, Jim, who had

+struggled with misfortune and fallen, had, young as

+he was, lost every look of youth; that hope had gone

+from his dull eyes, and that his face had become

+drawn until the death's-head grinned beneath the

+scant padding of flesh. But he was to-day, as

+always, the one man in the world for her. In

+making a world of their own and reducing their

+parents to supplementary consideration, their children,

+whom she had sent away that she might be

+alone with him, had given a different quality to the

+love of this pair that had known so many curious

+vicissitudes. The responsibilities of parenthood

+had placed them on a tenderer, as well as a securer

+footing; and as she saw his age and weariness,

+he recognized hers, and both felt a self-accusing

+twinge.</p>

+

+<p>"That's a blamed good cup of coffee," he said,

+by way of relieving the tension that had crept into

+the situation. "Any one would think you was settin'

+your cap for me 'stead of us being married for

+years."</p>

+

+<p>Alida sighed. "It's better to end than to begin

+like this," she said, in the far-away voice of one who

+thinks aloud. The word "end" had slipped out

+before she realized what she was saying, and the

+knowledge haunted her as an omen. She glanced

+at him quickly, to see if he had noticed it.</p>

+

+<p>"Why did you say end?" He saw that her eyes

+were full of tears and chafed her. "You ain't

+thinking of divorcing me, like Mountain Pink done

+Bosky?"</p>

+<pb n="284" />

+<anchor id="Pg284" />

+

+<p>"Oh, Jim," she said, and her face was all

+aquiver, "I never could divorce you, no matter what

+you done." And then the grim philosophy of the

+plains-woman asserted itself. "I never can understand

+why women feed their pride on their

+heart's blood; it never was my way."</p>

+

+<p>He did not like to remember that he had given

+her cause for a way. "There's a lot of women

+as wouldn't exactly regard me as a Merino, or a

+Southdown, either;" he gulped the coffee to ease

+the tightness in his throat.</p>

+

+<p>"They'd be women of no judgment, then," she

+said, with conviction.</p>

+

+<p>Jim's head was tilted back, resting in the palm

+of his hand. His profile, sharpened by anxiety,

+more than suggested his quarter-strain of Sioux

+blood. He might almost have been old Chief

+Flying Hawk himself, as he looked steadily at the

+woman who had been a young girl and reckless,

+when he had been a boy and reckless; who had

+paid her woman's penalty and come into her woman's

+kingdom; who had made a man of him by the

+mystery of her motherhood, and who had uncomplainingly

+gone with him into the wilderness

+and become an alien and an outcast.</p>

+

+<p>These things unmanned him as the sight of the

+gallows and the rope for his hanging could not have

+done. Shielding himself with an affected roughness,

+he asked:</p>

+

+<p>"What the hell's the matter with you? I've been

+drinking like a beast of an Indian, and you give me

+coffee instead of a tongue-lashing."</p>

+<pb n="285" />

+<anchor id="Pg285" />

+

+<p>The color had all gone out of her face. She

+gasped the words:</p>

+

+<p>"Jim, I dreamed it last night&mdash;they came for

+you!"</p>

+

+<p>She cowered at the recollection.</p>

+

+<p>"Did they get me?" he asked. There was no

+surprise in his tone. He spoke as one who knew

+the answer.</p>

+

+<p>"Yes, the children saw. The noise woke them."</p>

+

+<p>"You mustn't let 'em see, when&mdash;they come.

+They've a right to a fair start; we didn't get it, old

+girl."</p>

+

+<p>"The children gave it to us," and she faced him.</p>

+

+<p>"Yes, yes, but we want them to have it from the

+start, like good folks."</p>

+

+<p>They looked into each other's eyes. The memory

+of dead and gone madness twinkled there a moment,

+then each remembered:</p>

+

+<p>"You must hurry, Jim. You haven't a moment

+to lose. I dreamed it was to be to-night&mdash;they'll

+come to-night!"</p>

+

+<p>"The game's all up, old girl! If I had a month I

+couldn't get away. Morrison's been looking for me

+over to the Owl Creek Range; he's back&mdash;Stevens

+told me yesterday. He'll be heading here soon.

+The price on my head is a strain on friendship."</p>

+

+<p>"Have the sheep-men gone back on you?"</p>

+

+<p>"Yes, damn them! A thousand dollars is big

+money, and they've had hard luck!"</p>

+

+<p>"They deserve it; I hope every herd in the State

+dies of scab."</p>

+

+<p>"There wasn't a scabby sheep in our bunch.

+<pb n="286" />

+<anchor id="Pg286" />

+What a sight they were, loaded with tallow! There

+wasn't one of them that couldn't have weathered

+a blizzard; they could have lived on their own tallow

+for a month."</p>

+

+<p>She tried to divert his attention from his lost

+flock. When he began to talk about them the

+despair of his loss drove him to drink. She was

+ground between the millstones of his going or staying.

+If he stayed they would come for him; if he

+went, they would apprehend him before he was ten

+miles from the house.</p>

+

+<p>"Jim, we got to think. If there's a chance in a

+thousand that you can get away, you got to take it;

+if there ain't, the children mustn't know. We got

+to think it out!"</p>

+

+<p>"There ain't a chance in a thousand, old girl.

+There ain't one in a million. They're circling round

+in the hills out here now, waitin' for me, like

+buzzards waitin' for the eyes of a dyin' horse."</p>

+

+<p>She rocked herself, and the clutching fingers left

+white marks on her face, but the eyes that met his

+glittered tearless:</p>

+

+<p>"Then there ain't nothing left but to face it like a

+man?"</p>

+

+<p>"That's all there be." He might have been giving

+an opinion on a matter in which he had no interest.</p>

+

+<p>"Then there ain't no use in our having any more

+talk about it?"</p>

+

+<p>"'Tain't just what you'd call an agreeable subject,"

+he answered, with the sinister humor of the

+frontiersman who has learned to make a crony of

+death.</p>

+<pb n="287" />

+<anchor id="Pg287" />

+

+<p>She was tempted to kiss him&mdash;they were not given

+to demonstrations, this pair&mdash;then decided it were

+kinder to him, less suggestive of what they anticipated,

+not to deviate from their undemonstrative

+marital routine.</p>

+

+<p>"Do you want your breakfast now?"</p>

+

+<p>"I guess you might bring it along."</p>

+

+<p>And for the same reason that she refrained from

+kissing him, she repressed a desire to wring the neck

+of a young broiler and cook it for his breakfast,

+remembering that she had heard they gave folks

+pretty much what they wanted when they wouldn't

+want it long. So Jim got his usual breakfast of

+bacon, uncooked canned tomatoes, soda-biscuit, and

+coffee. She sat with him while he ate, but they spoke

+no more of "them" or of how soon "they" might be

+expected. She told him that young Jim had pretended

+that morning that he had a cactus thorn in

+his foot, so that he might have a piece of dried

+apple. And old Jim, in an excess of parental

+fondness and pride, said: "The damned little liar,

+he'll get to Congress yet!"</p>

+

+<p>But the children were a dangerous topic for overstrained

+nerves at this particular time, so Alida

+told Jim that she had put the black hen to set and

+she thought they'd have some chickens at last.

+Jim smoked while Alida washed the dishes, and when

+Jim's back was turned she examined the lock on the

+door&mdash;a good push would open it. Then she looked

+at the brown bureau, and the recklessness of despair

+came into her eyes. In the room beyond, Jim

+was reading a two weeks' old newspaper and smoking.

+<pb n="288" />

+<anchor id="Pg288" />

+He looked like a lazy ranchman taking his

+ease.</p>

+

+<p>As she went about her household tasks that

+morning, Alida noticed things as she had never

+noticed them before. A sunbeam came through

+the shutterless window of the house and writhed

+and quivered on the wall as if it were a live thing.

+She read a warning in this, and in the color of the

+sun, that was red, like blood, and in the whirr of the

+grasshoppers, that was sinister and threatening.

+The creeks had dried, and their slimy beds crept

+along the willows like sluggish snakes. Gaunt range-cattle

+bellowed in their thirst, and the parched

+earth crackled beneath the sun that hung above the

+house like a flaming disk. Sometimes she sank

+beneath the burden of it; then she would wring

+her hands and call on God to help them; they were

+beyond human power. She and Jim were alone all

+the morning; they did not again refer to what they

+knew would happen. He read his old paper and she

+put her house in order. She did it with especial care.

+It was meet to have things seemly in the house of

+the dead. And every time she glanced at Jim

+she repressed the desire to fling herself on his breast

+and cry out the anguish that consumed her.</p>

+

+<p>At noon she brought the children home to dinner,

+and afterwards Jim taught them to throw the lasso

+and played buffalo with them. Alida did not trust

+herself to watch them; she stayed in the kitchen

+and saw the sunbeam grow pale with the waning

+of the day, the day whose minutes dragged like

+lead, yet had rushed from her, leaving her the night

+<pb n="289" />

+<anchor id="Pg289" />

+to face. At sundown she cooked supper, but she no

+longer knew what she did. A crazy agility had

+taken possession of her and she spun about the

+kitchen, doing the same errand many times, finding

+herself doing always something different from that

+she had set about doing. The molten day was

+burning itself out like a fever; hot gusts of air beat

+up from the earth, but the woman who waited

+felt chilled to the marrow, and took a cloak down

+from a peg and wrapped it about her while she

+waited for the biscuit to bake. At supper they sat

+down together, the man and his wife and their

+three children. The children were in fine spirits

+from the fun they had had that afternoon. Never

+had daddy been so nice to them. He had taught

+Topeka to throw the lasso so well that she had

+caught the cat once and little Jim twice; and daddy

+had played he was a buffalo and had charged them

+all with his head down, till they screamed in terror.

+But daddy seemed more quiet through the meal, and

+once mother started up and cried:</p>

+

+<p>"What's that?"</p>

+

+<p>She ran to the door with her hand pressed to her

+side, but daddy called after her:</p>

+

+<p>"Don't you know the cowards better than that?

+They'll wait for nightfall."</p>

+

+<p>But these things had not worried the children,

+with their heads full of playing buffalo and throwing

+the lariat.</p>

+

+<p>"Jim," said his father, before they went to bed,

+"remember you are the man of the family." But

+young Jim was already nodding with sleep. Topeka

+<pb n="290" />

+<anchor id="Pg290" />

+and Judith were sleepy, too; they kissed their father

+and were glad to go to bed.</p>

+

+<p>The night began menacingly to close over the

+wilderness. Where the sun had hung above the

+mountain a moment before there glowed a great

+pool of red that dripped across the blackness in faint

+tricklings. The outlines of the foot-hills loomed

+huge, formless, uncouth. In the half-light it seemed

+a world struggling in the birth-throes. All day

+the dry, burning heat had quivered over the desert,

+like hot-air waves flickering over a bed of live coals,

+and now the very earth seemed to palpitate with the

+intensity of its fever. The bellowing of the thirst-maddened

+cattle had not stopped with the twilight

+that brought no dew to slake their parched throats.

+In the hills the coyotes wailed like lost souls. It

+was night bereft of benisons, day made frightful by

+darkness. All the heat of a cycle of desert summers

+seemed concentrated in that house in the valley

+where the man and his wife waited. Each sound of

+the desert night Alida translated into the trampling

+of horses' feet; then, as the sound would die away,

+or prove to be but some night noise of the wilderness,

+the pallor would lose its pinch on her features, and

+she would stare into her husband's face with eyes

+that did not see. Jim smoked his pipe and refilled

+it, smoked and filled again, but gave no sign of the

+object of his waiting.</p>

+

+<p>"Jim," she said, when the clock had struck ten,

+then eleven, "I am going to fasten up the house."</p>

+

+<p>"Do you hear them?" he asked, without emotion,

+but as one who deferred to the finer senses of women.</p>

+<pb n="291" />

+<anchor id="Pg291" />

+

+<p>She shook her head, not trusting herself to speak.</p>

+

+<p>He looked at the door that was shrunken and

+warped from the heat till it barely held together,

+and there was no measure to the tenderness he put

+into:</p>

+

+<p>"Oh, you poor little fool, do you think you could

+keep them out by fastening that?"</p>

+

+<p>"Jim, I must," and her voice broke. "They may

+think you are not here, that it's only me and the

+children, and that's why the house is fastened."

+She got up and began to move about as though

+her thoughts scourged her to action, even if futile.

+He shook the ashes from his pipe.</p>

+

+<p>"Do anything you blame please," he said, more

+by way of humoring her than from faith in her stratagem.

+He felt strong enough to face his destiny, to

+meet it in a way worthy of his mother's people.</p>

+

+<p>Alida seemed under a spell in her preparations

+for the night. Each thing she did as she had done

+it in her dream the night before; it was as if she

+were constrained by a power greater than her will

+to fulfil a sinister prophecy. Yet now and then

+she would stop and wonder if she might not break

+the spell by doing things differently from the way

+she had dreamed them. Her hand grasped the

+knob of the door uncertainly, and she swung it to

+and fro on its creaking hinges, while her mind seemed

+likewise to sway hither and thither. Should she

+fasten the door and push the bureau against it, as it

+had been in the dream, or should she leave door

+and windows gaping wide for them? And then, as

+one who walks and does familiar things in sleep,

+<pb n="292" />

+<anchor id="Pg292" />

+she shut the door and turned the key. Jim smiled

+at her, but she could no longer look at him. One

+of the children wailed fretfully from the room beyond.

+Sleep had become a scourge in the stifling

+heat. One by one she lowered the windows and

+nailed them down; then she dragged the brown bureau

+against the door, took the brace of six-shooters

+from the wall, and sat down with Jim to wait.</p>

+

+<p>"What are you going to do with them toys?" he

+asked, as he saw her examine the chambers of one

+of the six-shooters.</p>

+

+<p>"You ain't going to let yourself be caught like

+a rat in a hole, are you?" she reproached him.</p>

+

+<p>"'Ain't we agreed that it's best to keep onpleasant

+family matters from the kids?" He smiled at her

+bravely. "The remembrance of what we're anticipatin'

+ain't going to help young Jim to get to

+Congress when his time comes, nor it ain't going to

+help the girls get good husbands, either. This here

+country ain't what it was in the way of liberality

+since it's got to be a State."</p>

+

+<p>"Sh-sh-sh!" she said. "Is that the range-cattle

+stampedin' after water, or is it&mdash;" They listened.

+The furniture in the room crackled; there was not

+a fibre of it to which the resistless heat had not

+penetrated. On the range the cattle bellowed in

+their thirst-torture; in the intervals of their cries

+sounded something far off, but regular as the thumping

+of a ship's screw. The woman did not need an

+answer to her question. The steady trampling of

+hoofs came muffled through the dead air, but the

+sound was unmistakable. She put her arms about

+<pb n="293" />

+<anchor id="Pg293" />

+the man's neck and crushed him to her with all her

+woman strength. "Oh, Jim, you've been a good

+man to me!"</p>

+

+<p>"Steady&mdash;steady." He strained her close to him.

+"They'd be, by the sound of them, on the straight

+bit of road now, before the turn. Soon we'll hear

+their hoofs ring hollow as they cross the plank

+bridge."</p>

+

+<p>His plainsman's faculty was as keen as ever;

+his calculation of the horsemen's distance was made

+as though he were the least concerned. All Alida's

+courage had gone, with the dread thing at hand.

+She clung to him, dazed.</p>

+

+<p>"They're sober, all right enough."</p>

+

+<p>"How do you know?"</p>

+

+<p>"They'd be cursing and bellowing if they were

+drunk."</p>

+

+<p>The hoofs rang hollow on the little plank bridge

+that crossed the ditch about a stone's-throw from

+the door. Not a word was said either within or

+without. The lynchers seemed to have drilled for

+their part; there was no whispering, no deferring

+to a leader. On they came, so close that Jim and

+Alida could hear the creaking of their saddles.

+There was the clank of spurs and the straining of

+leather as they dismounted, then some one knocked

+at the door till the warped boards rattled.</p>

+

+<p>Jim could feel the thudding of Alida's heart as

+she clung to him, but when the knock was repeated

+a new courage came to her, and she left Jim and

+went on her knees close to the outer wall.</p>

+

+<p>"Jim, is that you?" she called, and now every

+<pb n="294" />

+<anchor id="Pg294" />

+sense was trained to battle; her voice had even a

+sleepy cadence, as if she had been suddenly roused.</p>

+

+<p>"That won't do at all, Miz Rodney. We know

+you got Jim in there, just as certain as we're out

+here, and we want him to come out and we'll do the

+thing square, otherwise he can take the consequences."</p>

+

+<p>Jim opened his mouth to speak, but she, still on

+her knees beside the wall, gained his silence by one

+supplicating gesture. There was a sleepy, fretful

+cry from the room beyond&mdash;the noise had roused

+one of the children.</p>

+

+<p>"Sh-sh, dear," she called. "It's only a bad

+dream. Go to sleep again; mother is here."</p>

+

+<p>Through the warped door came sounds of the

+whispering voices without, drowned by the shrieking

+bellow of the cattle. There was not a breath

+of air in the suffocating room. Jim bent towards

+Alida:</p>

+

+<p>"I'm goin out to 'em. They'll do it square, over

+on the cotton-woods; this rumpus'll only wake the

+kids."</p>

+

+<p>But she shook her head imploringly, putting her

+finger to her lips as a sign that he was not to speak,

+and he had not the heart to refuse, though knowing

+that she made a desperate situation worse.</p>

+

+<p>"Gentlemen"&mdash;she spoke in a low, distinct voice&mdash;"Jim

+ain't here. He's been away from home five

+days. There's no one here but me and the children;

+you've woke them up and frightened them by

+pounding on the door. I ask you to go away."</p>

+

+<p>"If he ain't in there, will you let us search the

+<pb n="295" />

+<anchor id="Pg295" />

+house?" It was Henderson that spoke, Henderson,

+foreman of the "XXX" outfit.</p>

+

+<p>"I can't have them frightened; please take my

+word and go away."</p>

+

+<p>"Whas er matter, muvvy?" called Judith, sleepily.

+Young Jim was by this time crying lustily. Only

+Topeka said nothing. With the precocity of a

+frontier child, she half realized the truth. She tried

+to comfort little Jim, though her teeth chattered in

+fear and she felt cold in the hot, still room. Then

+Judith called out, "Make papa send them away."</p>

+

+<p>"Your papa ain't here, Judith." But the fight

+had all gone out of Alida's voice; it was the groan

+of an animal in a trap.</p>

+

+<p>"Where's papa gone to?"</p>

+

+<p>"Sh-sh, Judith! Topeka, keep your sister quiet."</p>

+

+<p>It was absolutely still, within and without, for a

+full minute. Then Alida heard the shoving of

+shoulders against the door. Once, twice, thrice the

+lock resisted them. The brown bureau spun across

+the room like a child's toy. The lynchers, bursting

+in, saw Alida with her arms around Jim. When the

+last hope had gone it was instinct with her to protect

+him with her own body.</p>

+

+<p>"Go into the kids, old girl, this is no place for you."

+And there was that in his voice that made her obey.</p>

+

+<p>Something of the glory of old Chief Flying Hawk,

+riding to battle, was in the face of his grandson.</p>

+

+<p>"Remember, the children ain't to know," he said

+to his wife; and to the lynchers, "Gentlemen, I'm

+ready."</p>

+<pb n="296" />

+<anchor id="Pg296" />

+</div>

+

+<div rend="page-break-before: always">

+<head>XIX</head>

+<index index="pdf" /><index index="toc" level1="&quot;Rocked By A Hempen String&quot;" />

+<head type="sub">"Rocked By A Hempen String"</head>

+

+<p>Alida heard the mingled sounds of footsteps

+and hoofs grow fainter on the trail. The

+children looked at her to tell them why this night

+was different from all others&mdash;what was happening.

+But she could only cower among them, more terrified

+than they. She seemed to be shrunken from the

+happenings of that day. They hardly knew the

+little, shrivelled, gray woman who looked at them

+with unfamiliar eyes. Alida gazed at the little

+Judith, and there was something in her mother's

+glance that made the little one hide her face in her

+sister's shoulder. Young Judith it was who all unwittingly

+had told the lynchers that her father was

+at home, and in Alida's heart there was towards this

+child a blind, unreasoning hate. Better had she

+never been born than live to do this thing!</p>

+

+<p>It was the wee man, Jim, who first began to

+reflect resentfully on this intrusion on his slumbers.

+He had been sleeping well and comfortably when

+some grown-ups came with a lot of noise, and his

+father had gone away with them. It had frightened

+him, but his mother was here, and why should she

+not put him to sleep again?</p>

+<pb n="297" />

+<anchor id="Pg297" />

+

+<p>"Muvvy, sing 'Dway Wolf.'" And as she paid

+no heed, but looked at him, white-faced and strange,

+he again repeated, with his most insinuating and

+beguiling tricks of eye and smile:</p>

+

+<p>"Muvvy, sing 'Dway Wolf' for Dimmy."</p>

+

+<p>The child put his head in his mother's lap, and

+Alida began, scarce knowing what she did:</p>

+

+<lg>

+<l rend="margin-left: 2">"'The gray wolves are coming fast over the hill,</l>

+<l rend="margin-left: 4">Run fast, little lamb, do not baa, do not bleat,</l>

+<l rend="margin-left: 2">For the gray wolves are hungry, they come here to kill,</l>

+<l rend="margin-left: 4">And the lambs shall be scattered&mdash;'</l>

+</lg>

+

+<p>"No, no, Jimmy, muvvy cannot sing. Oh, can't you

+feel, child? Judith, Judith, why were you ever born?"</p>

+

+<p>It was still in the valley. Had they come to the

+dead cotton-woods yet? Had they begun it? The

+children shrank from this gray-faced woman whom

+they did not know and but yet a little while had

+been their mother. An awful silence had fallen on

+the night. The range-cattle no longer bellowed in

+their thirst; the hot wind no longer blew from the

+desert. A hush not of earth nor air nor the things

+that were of her ken seemed to have fallen about

+them, muffing the dark loneliness as by invisible

+flakes. The children had crouched close together for

+comfort. They feared the little, gray-faced woman

+who seemed to have stolen into their mother's place

+and looked at them with strange eyes.</p>

+

+<p>Jimmy looked at the woman who held him, hoping

+his mother would come, and he could see them both.

+And while he waited he dropped off to sleep; and

+little Judith, hiding her head on Topeka's shoulder,

+<pb n="298" />

+<anchor id="Pg298" />

+that she might not see the look in those accusing

+eyes, presently dreamed that all was well with her

+again; and Topeka reflected that if her mother

+should ask her in the morning whether she had

+dreamed last night, she would have a fine tale to

+tell of men riding up, and loud voices, and trying

+of the door, and father going away with them.

+Her mother had questioned her this morning when

+nothing had happened to warrant it. Surely she

+would ask again to-morrow, and Topeka could tell&mdash;she

+could tell&mdash;all.</p>

+

+<p>Alida looked at her three sleeping children&mdash;his

+children, and yet they could sleep. Into her mind

+came that cry of utter desolation, "Could ye not

+watch with me one hour?" And God had been

+deaf to Him, His son, even as He was deaf to her.</p>

+

+<p>The children were sleeping easily. The hush that

+had hung like a pall over the valley had not lifted.

+Had they done it? Was it over yet? She went to

+the door and listened. Surely the silence that

+wrapped the valley was a thing apart. It was as no

+other silence that she could remember. It was still,

+still, and yet there was vibration to it, like the

+muffled roar within a shell. She strained her ears&mdash;was

+that the sound of horsemen going down the

+trail? No, no, it was only the beating of her foolish

+heart that would not be still, but beat and fluttered

+and would not let her hear. Yes, surely, that was

+the sound of hoofs. It was over then&mdash;they were

+going.</p>

+

+<p>She would go and look for him. Perhaps it would

+not be too late&mdash;she had heard of such things.

+<pb n="299" />

+<anchor id="Pg299" />

+A dynamic force consumed her. She had no consciousness

+of her body. Her feet and hands did

+things with incredible swiftness&mdash;lighted a lantern,

+selected a knife, ran to the corral for an old ladder

+that had been there when they took possession of

+the deserted house; and through all her frantic

+haste she could feel this new force, as it were, lick

+up the red blood in her veins, burn her body to

+ashes as it gave her new power. She felt that

+never again would she have need of meat and

+drink and sleep. This force would abide with her

+till all was over, then leave her, like the whitened

+bones of the desert.</p>

+

+<p>It was dark in the valley, but the menacing

+stillness seemed to be lifting. The range-cattle

+had again taken up their plaint, the sounds of the

+desert night swept across the stony walls of the

+caÃąon. Alida knew that it must have happened

+at the dead cotton-woods. There were no other

+high trees about for miles. Again she listened before

+advancing. There was no sound of hoof or

+champing bit or men moving quickly. They had

+gone their way into the valley. She ran swiftly, her

+lantern throwing its beam across the scrubby inequalities

+of ground, but for her there was no need

+of its beacon. To-night she was beyond the halting,

+stumbling uncertainties of tread to which man is

+subject. There was magic in her feet and in her

+hands and brain. Like the wind she ran, the wind

+on the great plain where there are no foot-hills to

+hinder its course. The black, dead trees stood out

+distinctly against the starry sky, and from a cross-limb

+<pb n="300" />

+<anchor id="Pg300" />

+of one of them dangled something with head

+awry, like a broken jumping-jack, something that

+had once been a man&mdash;and her husband. She could

+touch the feet of this frightful thing and feel its

+human warmth. A wind came up from the desert

+and blew across the caÃąon's rocky walls into the

+valley, and the parody of a man swayed to it.</p>

+

+<p>She had been expecting this thing. For weeks

+the image of it had been graven on her heart.

+Sleeping or waking, she had seen nothing but his

+dangling body from the cross-limb. Yet with the

+actual consummation before her, she felt its hideous

+novelty as though it were unexpected. At sight of

+it the force that had borne her up through the

+happenings of that day went out of her, and as

+she stood with the knife and the rope, that she

+had brought in the hope of cheating the lynchers,

+dangling from her nerveless hand her helplessness

+overcame her. Again and again she called to the

+dead man for help, called to him as she had been

+accustomed to call when her woman's strength had

+been unequal to some heavy household task.</p>

+

+<p>Far down the trail she could hear the gallop of a

+horse coming closer, and mingled with the sounds of

+its flying feet was a voice urging the horse to greater

+speed in the shrill cabalistic "Hi-hi-hi-ki!" of the

+plains-man. What was it&mdash;one of them returning

+to see that she did not cheat the rope of its due?&mdash;to

+hang her beside him, as an after-thought, as they

+hanged Kate Watson beside her man? Let them.

+She was standing near the swaying thing when horse

+and rider gained the ground beside her, and what

+<pb n="301" />

+<anchor id="Pg301" />

+was left to her of consciousness made out that the

+rider was Judith. She pointed to it, and stood

+helpless with the dangling rope in her hand.</p>

+

+<p>"Are we too late?" Judith almost whispered, as

+she caught Alida's cold, inert hands. "I dreamed

+it all and came. If I could have dreamed it sooner!"</p>

+

+<p>Alida did not seem to hear, neither could she

+speak. She only pointed again to the thing beside

+her.</p>

+

+<p>Judith understood. The women had a task to

+share, and in silence they began it. The lynchers

+had done their work all too well. Again and again

+the women strove with all their strength to take

+down the dangling parody of a man, which in its

+dead-weight resistance seemed in league with the

+forces against them. At last the thing was done.

+Down to a pale world, that in the haggard gray of

+morning seemed to bear in its countenance something

+of the pinch of death, Judith lowered the

+thing that had so lately been a man. She cut the

+rope away from the neck, she straightened the wry

+neck that seemed to wag in pantomimic representation

+of the last word to the lynchers. They'd have

+to reckon with him on dark nights, and when the

+wind wailed like a famished wolf and when things

+not to be explained lurked in the shadows of the

+desert.</p>

+

+<p>The morning stillness came flooding into the

+cup-shaped valley like a soft, resistless wave. Something

+had come to the gray, old earth&mdash;another day,

+with all its human gift of joy and woe, and the

+earth welcomed it though it had known so many.

+<pb n="302" />

+<anchor id="Pg302" />

+The sun burst through the gold-tipped aureole of

+cloud, scattering far and wide lavish promises of a

+perfect day. The earth seemed to respond with a

+thrill. No longer was the pinch of death in her

+countenance. The valley, the mountains, the invisible

+wind, even the dead cotton-woods, seemed

+endowed with throbbing life that contrasted fearsomely

+with the terrible nullity of this thing that

+once had been Jim Rodney.</p>

+

+<p>Alida had ceased to take any part in the hideous

+drama. She sat on the ground, a crouching thing

+with glittering eyes. It was past comprehension

+that the sun could shine and the world go on with

+her man dead before her. Judith had become the

+force that planned and did to save the family pride.

+While her hands were busy with preparations for

+the dead, she rehearsed what she would say to this

+and that one to account for Jim's absence. The

+silence of the men who had done this thing would

+be as steadfast as their own.</p>

+

+<p>And there were the children. Through all her

+frantic search for things in the house, Judith remembered

+that she must step softly and not waken

+the children. With each turn of the screw, as her

+numbed consciousness rallied and responded afresh

+to the hideous realization of this thing, there came

+no release from the tyrannous hold of petty detail.

+She remembered that she must be back at noon to

+hold post-office, and there would be the endless

+comedy to be played once more with her cavaliers.

+They must never suspect from word or look of hers.

+And there was the dance to-night at the Benton

+<pb n="303" />

+<anchor id="Pg303" />

+ranch&mdash;she hid her face in her hands. Ah, no, she

+could not do this thing! And yet they must not

+suspect. She must contrive to give the impression

+that Jim had cheated the rope. Yes, she must

+go and dance, and, if need be, dance with his very

+murderers. Jim's children were to have the "clean

+start" that he intended, and they would have to

+get it here. There was no money for an exodus and

+a beginning elsewhere.</p>

+

+<p>Alida still crouched beside the long, even tarpaulin

+roll that Judith had prepared with hands

+that knew not what they did. But now Judith

+gently roused her and put in her hand a spade;

+already she herself had begun. But Alida stared

+at it dully, as if she did not understand. Then

+Judith pointed to something black that had begun

+to wheel in the sky, wheel, and with each circular

+swoop come closer to the roll of tarpaulin. Then

+Alida knew, and, taking the spade, she and Judith

+began to dig the grave.</p>

+<pb n="304" />

+<anchor id="Pg304" />

+</div>

+

+<div rend="page-break-before: always">

+<head>XX</head>

+<index index="pdf" /><index index="toc" level1="The Ball" />

+<head type="sub">The Ball</head>

+

+<p>The dance in the Benton ranch was the great

+social event of the midsummer season. The

+Bentons had begun to give dances in the days of

+plenty, when the cattle industry had been at its

+dizziest height; and they had continued to give

+dances through all the depressing fluctuations of

+the trade, perhaps in much the same spirit as one

+whistles in the dark to keep up his courage. Thus,

+though cattle fell and continued to fall in the

+scale of prices till the end no man dared surmise,

+the Benton "boys"&mdash;they were two brothers, aged

+respectively forty-five and fifty years&mdash;continued

+to hold out facilities to dance and be merry.</p>

+

+<p>All day strange wagons&mdash;ludicrous, makeshift

+things&mdash;had been discharging loads of women and

+children at the Benton ranch, tired mothers and

+their insistent offspring. To the women this strenuous

+relaxation came as manna in the wilderness.

+What was the dreary round of washing, ironing,

+baking, and the chain of household tasks that

+must be done as primitively as in Genesis, if only

+they might dance and forget? So the mothers came

+early and stayed late, and the primary sessions of

+<pb n="305" />

+<anchor id="Pg305" />

+the dances fulfilled all the functions of the latter-day

+mothers' congresses&mdash;there were infant ailments

+to be discussed, there were the questions of food

+and of teething, of paregoric and of flannel bands,

+which, strange heresy, seemed to be "going out,"

+according to the latest advices from those compendiums

+of all domestic information, the "Woman's

+Pages" of the daily papers.</p>

+

+<p>Inasmuch as these more than punctual debaters

+must be cooked for, there was, to speak plainly,

+"feeling" on the part of the housekeeper at the

+Bentons'. Wasn't it enough for folks to come to a

+dance and get a good supper, and go away like

+Christians when the thing was over, instead of

+coming a day before it began and lingering on as

+if they had no home to go to? This, at least, was

+the housekeeper's point of view, a crochety one,

+be it said, not shared by the brothers Benton,

+whose hospitality was as genuine as it was primitive.

+To this same difficult lady the infants, who were

+too tender in years to be separated from their

+mothers, were as productive of anxiety as their

+elders. A room had been set apart for their especial

+accommodation, the floor of which, carefully spread

+with bed-quilts and pillows, prevented any great

+damage from happening to the more tender of the

+guests; and they rolled and crooned and dug their

+small fists into each other's faces while their mothers

+danced in the room beyond.</p>

+

+<p>By nightfall the Benton ranch gleamed on the

+dark prairie like a constellation. Lights burned at

+every window; a broad beam issued from the door

+<pb n="306" />

+<anchor id="Pg306" />

+and threw a welcoming beacon across the darkness

+and silence of the night. The scraping of fiddles

+mingled with the rhythmic scuffle of feet and the

+singsong of the words that the dancers sung as they

+whirled through the figures of the quadrille and

+lancers. About the walls of the room where the

+dancing was in progress stood a fringe of gallants,

+their heads newly oiled, and proclaiming the fact

+in a bewildering variety of strong perfumes. Red

+silk neckerchiefs knotted with elaborate carelessness

+displayed to advantage bronzed throats; new overalls,

+and of the shaggiest species, amply testified to

+the social importance of the Benton dance.</p>

+

+<p>As yet the dancing was but intermittent and was

+engaged in chiefly by the mothers with large progeny,

+who felt that after the arrival of a greater number

+of guests, and among them the unmarried girls, their

+opportunities might not be as plentiful as at present.

+One or two cow-punchers, in an excess of civility

+at the presence of the fair, had insisted on giving

+up their six-shooters, mumbling something about

+"there being ladies present and a man being hasty

+at times." In the "bunk-room," which did duty

+as a gentleman's cloak-room, things were really

+warming up. There was much drinking of healths,

+as the brothers Benton had thoughtfully provided

+the wherewithal, and that in excellent quality.</p>

+

+<p>Costigan was there, and Texas Tyler, who had

+ridden sixty miles to "swing a petticoat," or, if there

+were not enough to go round, to dance with a

+handkerchief tied to some fellow's sleeve. By

+"swinging a petticoat" it was perfectly understood

+<pb n="307" />

+<anchor id="Pg307" />

+among all his friends that he meant a chance to

+dance with Judith Rodney. Year in and year out

+Texas never failed to present himself at the post-office

+on mail-days, if his work took him within a

+radius of fifty miles of the Daxes. No dance where

+the possibility of seeing Judith was even remote was

+too long a ride for him to undertake, even when it

+took him across the dreariest wastes of the desert.

+Texas had been devoted to Judith since she had

+left the convent, and sometimes, perhaps twice a

+year, she told him that she valued his friendship.

+On all other occasions she rejected his suit as if his

+continual pressing of it were something in the nature

+of an affront. Yet Texas persevered.</p>

+

+<p>"Well, here's lukin' at you, since in the way of a

+frind there's nothing better to look at!" and Costigan

+drained a tin cup at Texas Tyler.</p>

+

+<p>"Your very good health," said Texas, who was

+somewhat embarrassed by what was regarded as

+Costigan's "floweriness."</p>

+

+<p>"Begorra, is that Hinderson or the ghost av the

+b'y?" Costigan's roving eye was arrested by the

+foreman of the "XXX," who stood drinking with

+two or three men of his outfit. He was pale and

+ill-looking. He drank several times in succession,

+as if he needed the stimulant, and without the

+formality of drinking to any one. The two or three

+"XXX" men who were with him seemed to be

+equally in need of restoratives.</p>

+

+<p>They talked of the cattle stampede in which

+several of the outfits had been heavy losers. Some

+nine hundred head of cattle had been recovered, and

+<pb n="308" />

+<anchor id="Pg308" />

+members of the different outfits were still scouring

+the Red Desert for strays.</p>

+

+<p>Something in the nature of a sensation was created

+by the arrival of the Wetmore party. The

+women were frankly interested in the clothes, bearing,

+and general deportment of the New-Yorkers.

+Rumors of Miss Colebrooke's beauty were rife, and

+there was a general inclination to compare her with

+local belles. Such exotic types&mdash;they had seen

+these city beauties before&mdash;were as a rule too colorless

+for their appreciation. They liked faces that

+had "more go to them," was the verdict passed upon

+one famous beauty who had visited the Wetmores

+the year before. In arrangement of the hair, perhaps,

+in matters of dress, the judges were willing

+to concede the laurels to city damsels, but there

+concession stopped. But evidently Kitty, to judge

+from the elaboration of her toilet, did not intend

+to be dismissed thus cursorily. She herself was

+delicately, palely pretty, as always, but her hair

+was tortured to a fashionable fluffiness, and the

+simplicity of her green muslin gown was only in

+the name. It was muslin disguised, elaborated,

+beribboned, lace-trimmed till its identity was all

+but lost in the multitude of pretty complications.</p>

+

+<p>"Did you know that old Ma'am Yellett had a

+school-marm up to her place?" asked one of the

+men, apropos of Eastern prettiness.</p>

+

+<p>"Well, well," Costigan reminisced, "'tis some av

+thim Yillitt lambs thot's six fut in their shtockings,

+if Oi be rimimbering right. Sure, the tacher ought

+to be something av a pugilist, Oi'm thinkin'."</p>

+<pb n="309" />

+<anchor id="Pg309" />

+

+<p>"I seen her the other day, and a neater little

+heifer never turned out to pasture. Lord, I'd like

+to be gnawing the corners of the primer right now,

+if she was there to whale the ruler."</p>

+

+<p>"Arrah," bayed Costigan, "but the women question

+is gittin' complicated ontoirely, wid Miss

+Rodney&mdash;an' herself lukin' loike a saint in a church

+window&mdash;dalin' the mails an' th' other wan tachin'

+in the mountains. Sure, this place is gittin' to be

+but a sorry shpot for bachelors loike mesilf."</p>

+

+<p>"I ain't mentionin' no names, but there's a man

+here ain't treatin' a mighty fine woman square and

+accordin' to the way she ought to be treated."</p>

+

+<p>The information ran through the circle like an

+electric shock. Men stopped in the act of pledging

+each other's healths to listen. Loungers straightened

+up; every topic was dropped. The man who

+had made the statement was the loose-lipped busybody

+who had suggested to his host that he give up

+his six-shooter since there were "ladies present."</p>

+

+<p>"What the hell are you waiting for?" queried

+Texas Tyler, savagely. "You've cracked your whip,

+made your bow, and got our attention; why the hell

+don't you go on?"</p>

+

+<p>The man looked about nervously. He was rather

+alarmed at the interest he had excited. The next

+moment Peter Hamilton had walked into the room.

+There was something crucial in his entrance at this

+particular time; it crystallized suspicion. The gossip

+took advantage of the greetings to Hamilton to make

+his escape. Texas Tyler left the bunk-room immediately

+and looked for him in the room with the

+<pb n="310" />

+<anchor id="Pg310" />

+dancers. The fiddles, in the hands of a couple of

+Mexicans, had set the whole room whirling as if

+by magic. As they danced they sang, joining with

+the "caller-out," who held his vociferous post between

+the rooms, till the room was full of singing,

+dancing men and women, who spun and pirouetted

+as if they had not a care in the world. But Texas

+Tyler was not of these, as he looked through the

+dancers for his man. There was a red flash in the

+pupils of his eyes, and he told himself that he was

+going to do things the way they did them in Texas,

+for, of course, he knew that the loose-lipped idiot

+had meant Judith Rodney and Peter Hamilton.

+Never before had such an idea occurred to him,

+and now that it had been presented to his mind's

+eye, he wondered why he had been such a blind fool.

+Never had the singing to these dances seemed so

+absurd.</p>

+

+<lg>

+<l rend="margin-left: 2">"Hawk hop out and the crow hop in,</l>

+<l rend="margin-left: 2">Three hands round and go it ag'in.</l>

+<l rend="margin-left: 2">Allemane left, back to the missus,</l>

+<l rend="margin-left: 2">Grande right and left and sneak a few kisses."</l>

+</lg>

+

+<p>He rushed from the room and down to the stable.

+At sight of him some one leaped on a horse and rode

+out into the darkness.</p>

+

+<p>"Who was that?" asked Texas of a man lounging

+by the corral.</p>

+

+<p>"That was&mdash;" and he gave the name of the loose-lipped

+man.</p>

+

+<p>Texas cursed long and picturesquely. Then he

+went back to the bunk-room and tried to pick a

+<pb n="311" />

+<anchor id="Pg311" />

+quarrel with Peter Hamilton, who good-naturedly

+assumed that his old friend had been drinking and

+refused to take offence.</p>

+

+<p>Peter went in to ask Kitty to dance with him.

+All that evening he had been waiting anxiously for

+Judith. Meanwhile he had used all his influence as

+a newly appointed member of the Wetmore outfit

+to soothe the ruffled feelings of the cattle-men.

+Of the tragedy in the valley he had heard no

+rumor.</p>

+

+<p>Kitty had come to the point where she was willing

+to waive the RÃĐcamier-Chateaubriand friendship

+in favor of one more personal and ordinary.

+In fact, as Peter showed a disposition to regard as

+final her answer to him on the day he had spurred

+across the desert, Kitty, with true feminine perversity,

+inclined to permit him to resume his suit.

+His acquiescence in her refusal she had at first

+regarded as the turning of the worm; after the wolf-hunt,

+however, her meditations were more disturbing.

+She had never told Peter of that strange

+woodland meeting with Judith, yet Judith's beauty,

+her probable hold over Peter, the degree of his

+affection for her were rankling questions in Kitty's

+consciousness. In the stress of these considerations

+Kitty lost her head completely for so old a campaigner.

+She drew the apron-string tight&mdash;attempted

+force instead of strategy.</p>

+

+<p>Kitty and Peter finished their waltz, one of the

+few round dances of the evening.</p>

+

+<p>"How perfectly you dance, Kitty! It's a long

+time since we've had a waltz together."</p>

+<pb n="312" />

+<anchor id="Pg312" />

+

+<p>The cow-punchers looked at Kitty as if she were

+not quite flesh and blood. Such flaxen daintiness,

+femininty etherealized to angelic perfection, was new

+to them, but their admiration was like that given to

+a delicate exotic which, wonderful as it is, one is

+well pleased to view through the glass of the florist's

+window.</p>

+

+<p>Peter was deferentially attentive and zealous to

+make the Wetmore party have a thoroughly good

+time, yet he did all these things, as it were, with

+his eye on the door. He was not obviously distrait;

+he was the man of the world, talking, making himself

+agreeable, "doing his duty," while his subconsciousness

+was busy with other matters. It was

+rather through telepathy than through any lack

+of attention paid to her that Kitty realized the

+state of things, and in proportion to her realization

+came a feeling of helplessness; it was so new, so

+unexpected, so cruel. He seemed drifting away

+from her on some tide of affairs of the very existence

+of which she had been unconscious. Further and

+further he had drifted, till intelligible speech no

+longer seemed possible between them. They said

+the foolish, empty things that people call out as the

+boat glides away from the shore, the things that

+all the world may hear, and in his eyes there was

+only that smiling kindness. How had it come about

+after all these years? What was it that had first

+cut the cable that sent him drifting? What was it?

+She must think. Oh, who could think with that

+noise! How silly was their singing as they danced,

+how uncouth!</p>

+<pb n="313" />

+<anchor id="Pg313" />

+

+<lg>

+<l rend="margin-left: 2">"All dance as pretty as you can,</l>

+<l rend="margin-left: 2">Turn your toes and left alleman;</l>

+<l rend="margin-left: 4">First gent sashay to the right,</l>

+<l rend="margin-left: 2">Now swing the girl you last swung about,</l>

+<l rend="margin-left: 2">And now the one that's cut her out,</l>

+<l rend="margin-left: 4">And now the one that's dressed in white,</l>

+<l rend="margin-left: 2">And now the belle of the ball."</l>

+</lg>

+

+<p>The dancers seemed bitten to the quick with the

+tarantula of an ecstatic hilarity; their bodies swayed

+in perfect harmony to the swing of the fiddles

+and the swell of the chorus. The most uncouth

+of them came under the spell of that mad magic.

+Their movements, that in the beginning of the

+dance had been shy and awkward, became almost

+beautiful; they forgot arms, hands, feet; their bodies

+had become like the strings of some skilfully played

+instrument, obediently responsive to rhythm,

+and in that composite blending of races each in his

+dancing brought some of the poetry of his own far

+land. The scene was amazing in its beauty and

+simplicity, like the strong, inspirational power and

+rugged rhythm of some old border minstrel. One

+by one the dancers glowed with better understanding;

+discordant elements, alien nations were

+fused to harmony in this vivid picture.</p>

+

+<p>Peter turned to Kitty, expecting to see her face

+aglow with the warmth of it. She stood beside

+him, the one unresponsive soul in the room, on her

+lips a pale, tolerant smile.</p>

+

+<p>"Aren't they splendid, Kitty, these women?

+More than half of them work like beavers all day,

+and they have young children and dozens of worries,

+<pb n="314" />

+<anchor id="Pg314" />

+but would you suspect it? They're just the women

+for this country."</p>

+

+<p>Now in the present state of affairs almost any

+other subject would have been better calculated

+to promote good feeling than the one on which

+Peter had alighted. Kitty's thoughts had perversely

+lingered about one who, though not one with these

+women, had yet their sturdy self-reliance, their

+acquiescence in grim conditions, their pleasure in

+simple things. Kitty's apprehension, slow to kindle,

+had taken fire like a forest, and by its blaze she saw

+things in a distorted light; her present vision

+magnified the relations of Peter and Judith to a

+degree that a month ago she would have regarded

+as impossible. "He is her lover!" was the accusation

+that suddenly flashed through her mind, and

+with the thought an overwhelming desire to say

+something unkind, something that should hurt him,

+supplanted all judgment and reason.</p>

+

+<p>"Oh, it's a decidedly remarkable scene, pictorially,

+I agree with you. And an artist, of course&mdash;but

+isn't it a trifle quixotic, Peter, to idealize them because

+they are having a good time? There's no

+virtue in it. It is conceivable that they might

+have to work just as hard and have just as many

+little children to look after, and yet not have these

+dances you praise them for coming to."</p>

+

+<p>"I'm afraid you find us and our amusements a

+little crude. Evidently the spirit of our dances

+does not appeal to you; but I did not suppose it

+necessary to remind you that they should not

+be judged by the standard of conventional evening

+<pb n="315" />

+<anchor id="Pg315" />

+parties," said Peter, hurt and angry in his

+turn.</p>

+

+<p>"Us, our amusements, our dances? So you are

+quite identified with these people, my dear Peter,

+and I had thought you an ornament of cotillions and

+country clubs. I can only infer that it is somebody

+in particular who has brought about your

+change of heart."</p>

+

+<p>Peter flushed a little, and Kitty kept on: "Some

+of the native belles are quite wonderful, I believe.

+Nannie Wetmore tells of a half-breed who is very

+handsome."</p>

+

+<p>Peter set his lips. "At the expense of spoiling

+Nannie's pretty romance, I must tell you that the

+lady she refers to is not only the most beautiful of

+women, but she would be at ease in any drawing-room.

+It would be as ridiculous to apply the petty

+standards of ladyhood to her as it would to&mdash;well,

+imagine some foolish girl bringing up the question at

+a woman's club&mdash;'Was Joan of Arc a lady?'" Peter

+spoke without calculating the conviction that his

+words carried. He was angry, and his manner,

+voice, intonation showed it.</p>

+

+<p>Kitty, now that her most unworthy suspicions

+had been confirmed by Peter's ardent championing

+of Judith, lost her discretion in the pang that

+gnawed her little soul: "I beg your pardon, Peter.

+When I spoke I did not, of course, know that this

+young woman was anything to you."</p>

+

+<p>"Anything to me? My dear Kitty, I've never

+had a better friend than Judith Rodney."</p>

+

+<p>The dance was at its flood-tide. The exhilaration

+<pb n="316" />

+<anchor id="Pg316" />

+had grown with each sweep of the fiddle-bow, with

+the sorcery of sinuous, swaying bodies, with the song

+of the dancers as they joined in the calling out of the

+figures, with the rhythmic shuffle of feet, with the

+hum of the pulses, with the leaping of blood to

+cheek and heart till the dancers whirled as leaves

+circling towards the eddies of a whirlpool. The

+dancing Mrs. Dax split her favors into infinitesimal

+fragments, for each measure of which her long list of

+waiting gallants stood ready to pick a quarrel if

+need be. Her dancing, in the splendor of its

+spontaneity, had something of the surge of the west

+wind sweeping over a field of grain. Sometimes

+she waved back her partner and alone danced a

+figure, putting to the music her own interpretation&mdash;barbaric,

+passionate, rude, but magnificently vivid.

+And the dancers would stop and crowd about her,

+clapping hands and stamping feet to the rhyming

+movement of her body, while against the wall her

+hostile sister-in-law, Mrs. Leander, stood and glared

+in a fury of disapproval, Leander himself smiling

+broadly meanwhile and exercising the utmost restraint

+to keep from joining Mrs. Johnnie's train.</p>

+

+<p>The "XXX" men, who had remained aloof from

+the dancers and the merriment, keeping a faithful

+vigil in the bunk-room, where the hospitable bottles

+were to be found, seemed to awaken from the spell

+that had bound them all day. Henderson, the

+foreman, whose face had not lost its tallow paleness

+despite the number of his potations, put his head

+through the door to have a look at the dancing Mrs.

+Dax, was caught in the outermost eddy of the

+<pb n="317" />

+<anchor id="Pg317" />

+whirling throng, and was soon dancing as madly as

+the others. The rest of the "XXX" party still

+hugged the bunk-room, where the bottles gleamed

+hospitable. They were still dusty from their long

+ride of the early morning, and more than once their

+fear-quickened imaginations had been haunted by

+the spectre of the dead cotton-woods, from which

+something heavy and limp and warm had been

+swaying when they left it. Henderson had secured

+the dancing Mrs. Dax for a partner. The "caller-out,"

+stationed between the two rooms, warmed to

+his genial task. He improvised, he put a wealth

+of imagination and personality into his work, he

+showered compliments on the nimbleness of Mrs.

+Dax's feet, he joked Henderson on his pallor, he

+attempted a florid venture at Kitty. Miguel put

+fresh magic into his bowing, JosÃĐ's fiddle rioted with

+the madness of it.</p>

+

+<p>Judith stood for a moment in the kindly enveloping

+darkness, and her heart cried out in protest at

+the thing she must do. It was the utmost cruelty

+of fate that forced her here to dance on the evening

+of the day that they had killed him. But she must

+do it, that his children might evade the stigma of

+"cattle-thief," that the shadow of the gallows-tree

+might not fall across their young lives, that the

+neighbors might give credence to the tale of Jim's

+escape from his enemies, that Alida and she might

+earn the pittance that would give the children the

+"clean start" that Jim had set his heart on so

+confidently. And she must dance and be the

+merriest of them all that these things might happen,

+<pb n="318" />

+<anchor id="Pg318" />

+but again and again she deferred the dread moment.

+The light, the music, the voices, the shuffle of the

+feet came to her as she stood forlorn in the grateful

+darkness. On the wall the shadows of the dancers,

+magnified and grotesque, parodied their movements,

+as they contended there, monstrous, uncouth shapes,

+like prehistoric monsters gripping, clinching in some

+mighty struggle; and above it all sang out the wild

+rhythm of Miguel's fiddle, and young JosÃĐ's bow

+capered madly.</p>

+

+<p>Judith drew close to the window, and the merriment

+struck chill at her heart like the tolling of a

+knell. She saw the pale face of Henderson gleam

+yellow-white among the dancers, and, watching him,

+the blood-lust of the Indian woke in her heart.

+The rest of the room was but a blur; the dancers

+faded into swaying shadows; she saw nothing but

+Henderson as he danced that he might forget the

+gray of morning, the black, dead trees, and the

+grotesque thing with head awry that swayed in the

+breeze like a pendulum. He dreaded the long, black

+ride that would bring him to his camp, for he alone

+of the lynchers remained. Something was drawing

+his gaze out into the blackness of the night. He

+struggled against the temptation to look towards

+the window. He whirled the Dax woman till her

+twinkling feet cleared the floor. He sang to the

+accompaniment of Miguel's fiddle. He was outwitting

+the thing that dangled before his eyes,

+having the incontrovertible last word with a vengeance.

+And as he danced and swayed, all unwittingly

+his glance fell on the window opposite,

+<pb n="319" />

+<anchor id="Pg319" />

+and Jim Rodney's face looked in at him, beautiful

+in its ecstasy of hate&mdash;Rodney's face, refined,

+sharpened, tried in some bitter crucible, but

+Rodney's face! Henderson could not withdraw his

+fascinated gaze. He stood in the midst of the

+dancers like a man turned to stone. He put up his

+hand to his eyes as if to brush away a cloud of

+swarming gnats, then threw up his arms and rushed

+from the room. The dancers paused in their mad

+whirl. Miguel's bow stopped with a wailing shriek.

+Every eye turned towards the window for an explanation

+of Henderson's sudden panic, but all

+was dark without on the prairie. The magic had

+gone from the dance, the whirlwind of drapery that

+had swung like flags in a breeze dropped in dead

+air. "What was it?" the dancers asked one another

+in whispers.</p>

+

+<p>And for answer Judith entered, but a Judith

+that was strange to them. There was about her a

+white radiance that kept the dancers back, and in

+her eyes something of Mary's look, as she turned

+from Calvary. The dancers still kept the position

+of the figures, the men with their arms about their

+partners' waists, the women stepping forward; they

+were like the painted figures of dancers in a fresco.

+And among them stood Judith, waiting to play her

+part, waiting to show her world that she could

+dance and be merry because all was well with her

+and hers. But the bronzed sons of the saddle hung

+back, they who a day before would have quarrelled

+for the honor of a dance. They were afraid of her;

+it would be like dancing with the death angel.

+<pb n="320" />

+<anchor id="Pg320" />

+She looked from face to face. Surely some one

+would ask her to dance, and her eyes fell on Henderson,

+returning from the bottled courage in the

+bunk-room. Some word was due from him to

+explain his terror of a moment ago.</p>

+

+<p>"Oh, Miss Judith, I thought you was a ghost

+when I seen you at the window."</p>

+

+<p>"A ghost that's ready to dance." She held out

+her hand to him. In her gesture there was something

+of royal command, and Henderson, reading

+the meaning in her eyes, stepped forward. Her

+face, almost a perfect replica of the dead man's,

+looked at him.</p>

+

+<p>"I bring you greeting from my brother," she said.

+"He has gone on a long journey."</p>

+

+<p>Henderson started. Through the still room ran

+the murmur, "Rodney's outwitted them; he's

+played a joke on the rope!" And Judith, his dare-devil

+sister, had come with his greetings to Henderson,

+leader of the faction against him! The

+tide had turned. The applause that is ever the

+meed of the winner was hers to command. The

+cattle faction were ready to sing the praises of her

+splendid audacity. In their hearts they were glad

+in the thought that Jim had outwitted them.</p>

+

+<p>Miguel's bow dashed across the strings, and he

+drew from the little brown fiddle music that again

+made them merry and glowing. The magic came

+back to the dance, the blood leaped again with

+the merry madness, and they swept to the bowing

+like leaves when the first faint wail of winter cries

+in the trees.</p>

+<pb n="321" />

+<anchor id="Pg321" />

+

+<p>Hamilton, standing apart with Kitty Colebrooke,

+had been a dazed witness of the scene. With the

+rest he had watched the entrance of Judith, had

+been stunned by the change in her appearance, had

+seen her triumph and heard the rumor of Jim's

+escape, and his heart had warmed with the good

+word. She had probably managed the plan, and

+had come to-night, in the joy of her triumph, to hurl

+in their faces that she had outwitted them. And

+she had paid the penalty of her courage&mdash;her face

+told that. What a woman she was! Her heart

+would pay the penalty to the last throb, and yet she

+could dance with the merriest of them. And as she

+danced she seemed to Peter Hamilton, in her white

+draperies, like a cloud of whirling snow-flakes drifting

+across the silence of the desert night. She was

+the one woman in all the world for him, though his

+blind eyes had faced the light for years and had not

+known it. He had squandered the strength of his

+youth in the pursuit of a little wax light, and had

+not marked the serene shining of the moon.</p>

+

+<p>"And a man there was and he made his prayer&mdash;"

+he quoted to himself. Well, thank God that it had

+not been answered. He would take her away from

+here. She could take her place in his family and

+reflect credit on his choice. His family, his friends&mdash;he

+winced at the thought of their possible reception

+of the news. But Judith's presence would

+adjust these difficulties. He would present her to

+Kitty now, that his old friend might see what

+manner of woman she was. Kitty, he felt, would

+be kind in memory of the old days. She would

+<pb n="322" />

+<anchor id="Pg322" />

+give to them both in friendship what she had

+denied him in love. And as he warmed to the

+thought he turned to the woman of his youth.

+And she read a look in his face that had not been

+there in a long time. Had he, then, come back to

+her? Was the distance from bark to shore lessening

+as the sea of misunderstanding diminished?</p>

+

+<p>"Kitty, we were speaking a moment ago of Miss

+Rodney. You would like to know her, I'm sure.

+We've been such good friends all these years while

+you were deciding that what I wanted was not

+good for us&mdash;and deciding wisely, as I know now.

+Look at her! You'll understand how she has helped

+me keep the balance of things. When she's finished

+dancing you'll let me bring her to you, won't you?"</p>

+

+<p>And Kitty, who had expected much different words,

+struggled with the meaning of these unexpected

+ones. The strangeness of the pain bewildered her.

+Her dazed consciousness refused to accept that Peter

+was asking permission to present to her a woman

+whom she thought should not have been permitted

+to enter her presence. There was about her a white

+flame of anger that seemed to lick up the red blood

+in her veins as she turned to answer:</p>

+

+<p>"She is undeniably handsome, Peter, but I do

+not care to meet your mistress."</p>

+

+<p>He bowed low to her as Lieutenant Swift, of Fort

+Washakie, who was of the Wetmore party, came to

+claim Kitty's hand for the next dance. Judith and

+Henderson were leading the last figure, their hands

+clasped high in an arch through which the dancers

+trooped in couples. Again and again he tried to

+<pb n="323" />

+<anchor id="Pg323" />

+catch Judith's eye, but her glance never once met

+his. Her great, wide eyes had a far-away look as

+if they saw some tragedy, the shadow of which

+would never fall from her. She was, indeed, the

+tragic muse in her floating white drapery, the

+tragic muse whose grief is too deep for tears. He

+watched her as she swept towards him in the figure

+of the dance, the head thrown back, slightly foreshortened,

+the mouth smiling with the smile that

+knows all things, the eyes holy wells of truth. He

+saw in her something of the tenderness of Eve, for

+all the blending of the calm modern woman, capable

+in affairs, equal to emergency. It was like her to

+contrive her brother's escape and then to dance with

+the very men who had knotted the noose for his

+hanging. Henderson was bowing to her, the dance

+was over, and the next moment she was alone.</p>

+

+<p>"Is it you, Peter?" She thrust a strand of hair

+back from her temple. Her eyes rested on him for

+a moment, then wandered, till in their absent look

+was the rapt expression of the sleep-walker. The

+dark-rimmed eyes had in their depths the quiet of a

+conflagration, and Peter, seeing these things, and

+knowing the gamut of all her moods, saw that he

+had been mistaken. She had not come, to dance in

+triumph, in the face of her brother's enemies. There

+was no triumph in her face, but white, consuming

+despair.</p>

+

+<p>"Did you ask me to dance?" Again she put back

+the strand of hair. "Forgive me for being so

+stupid, but I've kept post-office to-day, and had a

+long ride, and I danced with Henderson."</p>

+<pb n="324" />

+<anchor id="Pg324" />

+

+<p>He drew her arm within his and led the way out

+through the crowd of dancers to the star-strewn night.

+She did not speak again, nor did she seem to notice

+that they had left the room with the dancers. She

+turned her face towards the lonely valley, where the

+drama of her brother's passing had been consummated,

+and something there was in her look as it

+turned towards the hills that told Peter.</p>

+

+<p>"Tell me, Judith, 'what has happened?"</p>

+

+<p>For answer she pointed towards the valley. "They

+did it last night at the dead cotton-woods. Henderson

+led them. I could not stay with Alida.

+I had to come here to dance that no one might

+suspect."</p>

+

+<p>Her voice was steady, but low and thrilling.

+In its deep resonance was the echo of all human

+sorrow. There was no hint of accusation, yet Peter

+felt accused. He felt, now when it was too late,

+that his position had been one of almost pusillanimous

+negligence. From the beginning he had taken

+a firm stand against violent measures. He had

+talked, argued, reasoned, inveighed against violence;

+no later than a week ago he had ridden across the

+desert to tell Henderson that the Wetmore outfit

+would take no part in violence of any sort, and that

+the cattle outfit that did resort to extreme measures

+would miss the support of the "W-Square" in any

+future range business. But it had not been enough.

+He should have made plain his position in regard to

+Judith. With her as his future wife the tragedy

+of the valley would not have been possible.</p>

+

+<p>From the ranch-house came the swell of the

+<pb n="325" />

+<anchor id="Pg325" />

+fiddles, the rhythmic shuffle of feet, the song of the

+dancers, dulled by distance. Beside him was Judith,

+a white spirit, the woman in her dead of grief. And

+yet, through all the grim horror of the tragedy she

+remembered the part that had been allotted to her,

+threw all the weight of her personality on the side

+of the game she was playing.</p>

+

+<p>"You must be on our side, Peter, and when there

+is talk of Jim's absence you must imply that he is

+East somewhere. You will know how to meet such

+inquiries better than we women. Henderson will

+be only too glad. You should have seen the wretch

+when I held out my hand to him and told him to

+dance with me. He came, white and shambling;

+we have nothing to fear from Henderson. Alida

+has no money to go away with. She and I must

+stay here and make a beginning for the children,

+and, Peter, we want you to help us."</p>

+

+<p>He had no voice to answer her brave words for a

+minute, and then his sentences came uncertain and

+halting.</p>

+

+<p>"You must think me a poor sort of friend, Judith,

+one who has been blind till the eleventh hour and

+is then found wanting. I feel so guilty to you, to

+your brother's wife, to that little child who put out

+his arms so trustfully to me that night, but I never

+imagined that things would come to such a pass as

+this. The smaller cattle outfits have been doing a

+good deal of blustering, but the more conservative

+element supposed that they had them in check, and

+did not for a moment think that they would take

+the law into their own hands. Believe me, this lawlessness

+<pb n="326" />

+<anchor id="Pg326" />

+has been in the face of every influence

+that could be brought to bear, and it shall not go

+unpunished."</p>

+

+<p>She spoke to him from the darkness, as the spirit

+of grief might speak. "An eye for an eye, a tooth

+for a tooth, that is the justice of the plains. But,

+Peter, it is but poor justice. What's done is done,

+and fresh violence will not give back Alida her

+husband nor the little ones their father. What we

+need is friends, one or two loyal souls who, though

+knowing the hideous truth of this thing, will stand

+by us in our pitiful falsehood. I have told no one,

+nor shall I, but you and&mdash;Peter, you must not laugh

+at your fellow-conspirator&mdash;Leander."</p>

+

+<p>He took her hands in his and pressed them; big

+hands they were, and hardened by many a homely

+task, but withal tender and with the healing quality

+of womanliness in the touch of their warm, supple

+fingers. But to-night she did not seem to know that

+he held them, nor to be conscious of his presence.

+The woman in her was dead of grief. The white

+spirit in her place, that plotted and planned that

+Jim's children and Jim's wife might not from henceforth

+walk in the shadow of the gallows, was beyond

+the prompting of the flesh. And again she spoke

+to him in the same far-away voice, with the same

+far-away look in her eyes.</p>

+

+<p>"You must know, Peter, that Leander is at heart

+of the salt of the earth. I told him about it all, and

+he asked to be given the commission to deal with the

+men. He has risen to his post magnificently. I

+heard him swear the wretches to secrecy, hint to

+<pb n="327" />

+<anchor id="Pg327" />

+them that he had a great story to tell them. They

+were frightened, and listened. And the poor little

+man that we have so despised told them convincingly

+how Jim had made good his escape&mdash;even Henderson

+half believes we saved him."</p>

+

+<p>Peter hoped that she would accuse him of his half-heartedness

+indirectly, if not openly. It would

+have made his conscience more comfortable, and his

+conscience troubled him sorely to-night. It was

+that fatal habit of procrastination that had brought

+this thing about. He had hesitated all these weeks

+about Judith, and while he had threshed out the

+pro and con of her disadvantageous family connection,

+this hideous tragedy had happened.</p>

+

+<p>"Peter"&mdash;and now her eyes seemed to come back

+to earth again, to lose something of the far-away look

+of the sleep-walker&mdash;"Peter, I'm cruel to speak to

+you of these things now. When your heart is full

+of your own happiness, I come to you like a dark

+shadow with this tragedy. But I am glad for the

+good that has come to you, Peter. Perhaps Miss

+Colebrooke told you of the day I met her in the

+wood, the day of the wolf-hunt. She was so

+beautiful, I understood&mdash;"</p>

+

+<p>"Judith, I hardly know how to say what I am

+going to, I feel that I have been such a bad friend

+to you, but you must hear me patiently. Together,

+if you are willing, after knowing all of me that you

+do, we must look after your brother's children.

+That night in the little house in the valley, when

+the little chap came to me, don't you remember,

+there was something fine and fearless in the way

+<pb n="328" />

+<anchor id="Pg328" />

+he did it. 'You may belong to the cattle side of

+the argument,' he seemed to say, 'but I trust you.'

+Now, Judith dear, that boy's faith in me is not

+going to be shaken. We must look after them

+together. It is a very little thing you have asked

+of me, my dearest, but a very big one that I am

+asking of you. Do you understand, my Judith,

+it is <hi rend="font-style: italic">you</hi> that I want? Don't think of me as I have

+been, Judith, but as you are going to make me. I

+want you to give me the right now, this evening,

+to share all this trouble with you. Do we understand

+each other, Judith? Is it to be? And

+will you come back with me now, into the room

+where they are dancing, and let me present you to

+them, to the Wetmores, as <hi rend="font-style: italic">my</hi> Judith, my betrothed?"</p>

+

+<p>"But, Peter, I don't understand. I&mdash;I thought

+you and Miss Colebrooke were&mdash;"</p>

+

+<p>"That's all over, Judith. I did love her once.

+Oh, you dear, brave woman, I'm not a hero from any

+point of view, and you know it. It's but a sorry

+lover that's making his prayer to you, my dearest;

+but you won't judge, I know, beloved, you will

+love me instead?"</p>

+

+<p>Judith turned towards the valley. Her whole

+being throbbed with a passionate response to the

+man who stood so humbly before her, but there

+were duties that came first. Her mind was full of

+Alida and her children, and her eyes still sought

+Peter's imploringly.</p>

+

+<p>"You will be a good friend to them, Peter&mdash;to

+Jim's people? I cannot talk to you of anything

+<pb n="329" />

+<anchor id="Pg329" />

+else to-night. Your heart is big, Peter, but you

+cannot feel, perhaps&mdash;"</p>

+

+<p>"Listen, Judith. Whatever friendship and protection

+I can give your family you may count

+upon from now till the end of time. I will be theirs

+as I am yours. I feel your grief, but I want to

+soothe it, too. And if you love me, and I feel,

+Judith, that you do, you must let them all see to-night,

+these people who know us both, that we

+stand together before all the world for better or

+worse. Think, Judith, and you will see that you

+owe it to yourself, to me, to all these men, who

+reverence you as the one woman, the one ideal in

+their lonely lives."</p>

+

+<p>She could not speak. The moment was too full,

+the strain had been too great; but she smiled

+surrender, and Peter caught her tenderly in his

+arms and kissed her once&mdash;his Judith she was

+now, his heroine. Then, without another word,

+he drew her arm through his and led her back to

+the lights, where the dancers still held high carnival.</p>

+

+<p>Judith's half-sister, Eudora, was making a pretty

+quarrel by perversely forgetting the order in which

+she had given her dances. The girl was so undeniably

+happy that Judith dreaded the grim news she

+must tell her. Eudora blushed as she encountered

+Judith's eye. Her half-sister ever offered a check

+on Eudora's exuberant coquetry, with its precipitation

+of discussions that often ended in bullets.

+Leander stood on the outermost fringe of Eudora's

+potential partners. He would not have dared to

+<pb n="330" />

+<anchor id="Pg330" />

+maintain it openly, yet he was sure the pretty minx

+had promised that dance to him.</p>

+

+<p>"Dance with Leander, dear, and don't let those

+men begin quarrelling. I've something to tell you,

+presently," said Judith.</p>

+

+<p>Texas Tyler stood glowering at them from the

+doorway. He would not catch Judith's eye as she

+tried to speak to him. Kitty sat alone for the

+moment. She had sent the young lieutenant to

+fetch her a cup of coffee, but as Peter approached

+with Judith she averted her eyes.</p>

+

+<p>"Kitty, may I present to you my fiancÃĐe, Miss

+Rodney?"</p>

+

+<p>Kitty rose superbly to the situation. She might,

+indeed, have made the match she was so overjoyed

+in the good-fortune of her old friend Peter. She

+made no reference to the woodland meeting&mdash;she

+hoped for the happiness of seeing them in town.

+And she bade Peter tell the good news to Nannie

+Wetmore, they would be so glad. Nannie swallowed

+a grimace and proffered a cousinly hand. She

+had suspected some such news as this when she saw

+that things were not going well with Kitty and

+Peter.</p>

+

+<p>"Better one dance with a good partner that can

+swing ye than several with a feeble partner that

+leaves ye to swing your own corners!"</p>

+

+<p>Judith looked up, smiling. She recognized the

+characteristic utterance of her old friend Mrs.

+Yellett. The matriarch had sustained a breakdown,

+and arrived, in consequence, when the dance was

+half over, but she was philosophical, as always, in

+<pb n="331" />

+<anchor id="Pg331" />

+the face of misfortune, and loudly attested her

+pleasure in the renowned pedal feats of her partner,

+Costigan.</p>

+

+<p>Behind came Mary Carmichael, looking brown

+and happy. From the attitude of the group around

+Judith and Peter Mary divined what had happened,

+and came to add her congratulations. Even Mrs.

+Yellett forgot to choose an axiom as her medium

+of expression, and kissed Judith publicly, with

+affectionate unction. Henderson had effaced himself,

+and Leander, proud of his triumph and Judith's

+commendation, sat in a corner and smiled contentedly.

+Ignorant of the drama to which they had

+played chorus, the dancers still riotously swung one

+another up and down the length of the room, and

+from the little brown fiddles came the gay music

+of Judith's betrothal.</p>

+

+

+<p rend="text-align: center"><hi rend="font-weight: bold">THE END</hi></p>

+</div>

+</body>

+<back>
+

+<div rend="page-break-before: right">

+  <divGen type="pgfooter" />
+</div>

+</back>

+</text>

+</TEI.2>

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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Judith Of The Plains by Marie Manning
+
+
+
+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 http://www.gutenberg.org/license
+
+
+
+Title: Judith Of The Plains
+
+Author: Marie Manning
+
+Release Date: April 2005 [Ebook #15573]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: US-ASCII
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JUDITH OF THE PLAINS***
+
+
+
+
+
+Judith Of The Plains
+By Marie Manning
+
+Harper & Brothers Publishers
+New York And London
+
+Copyright, 1903. By Harper & Brothers
+
+Printed In The United States Of America
+
+
+
+
+
+                                [Image #1]
+
+Peter's Hand Sought Hers, And All Her Woman's Fear Of The Vague Terrors Of
+      The Dreadful Night Spoke In Her Answering Pressure--See p. 154.
+
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+"Town"
+The Encounter
+Leander And His Lady
+Judith, The Postmistress
+The Trail Of Sentiment
+A Daughter Of The Desert
+Chugg Takes The Ribbons
+The Rodneys At Home
+Mrs. Yellett And Her "Gov'ment"
+On Horse-thief Trail
+The Cabin In The Valley
+The Round-up
+Mary's First Day In Camp
+Judith Adjusts The Situation
+The Wolf-hunt
+In The Land Of The Red Silence
+Mrs. Yellett Contends With A Cloudburst
+Foreshadowed
+"Rocked By A Hempen String"
+The Ball
+
+
+
+
+
+
+JUDITH OF THE PLAINS
+
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+                                  "Town"
+
+
+It was June, and a little past sunrise, but there was no hint of early
+summer freshness in the noxious air of the sleeping-car as it toiled like
+a snail over the infinity of prairie. From behind the green-striped
+curtains of the berths, now the sound of restless turning and now a
+long-drawn sigh signified the uneasy slumber due to stifling air and
+discomfort.
+
+The only passenger stirring was a girl whose youth drooped under the
+unfavorable influences of foul air, fatigue, and a strained anxiety to
+come to the end of this fateful journey. She had been up while it was yet
+dark, and her hand--luggage, locked, strapped, and as pitifully new at the
+art of travelling as the girl herself, clustered about the hem of her blue
+serge skirt like chicks about a hen. The engine shrieked, but its voice
+sounded weak and far off in that still ocean of space; the girl tightened
+her grasp on the largest of the satchels and looked at the approaching
+porter tentatively.
+
+"We're late twenty-fi'e minutes," he reassured her, with the hopeless
+patience of one who has lost heart in curbing travellers' enthusiasms.
+
+She turned towards the window a pair of shoulders plainly significant of
+the burdensome last straw.
+
+"Four days and nights in this train"--they were slower in those days--"and
+now this extra twenty-five minutes!"
+
+Miss Carmichael's famous dimple hid itself in disgust. The demure lines of
+mouth and chin, that could always be relied upon for special pleading when
+sentence was about to be passed on the dimple by those who disapproved of
+dimples, drooped with disappointment. But the light-brown hair continued
+to curl facetiously--it was the sort of hair whose spontaneous rippling
+conveys to the seeing eye a sense of humor.
+
+The train plodded across the spacious vacancy that unrolled itself farther
+and farther in quest of the fugitive horizon. The scrap of view that came
+within a closer range of vision spun past the car windows like a bit of
+stage mechanism, a gigantic panorama rotating to simulate a race at
+breakneck speed. But Miss Carmichael looked with unseeing eyes; the
+whirling prairie with its golden flecks of cactus bloom was but part of
+the universal strangeness, and the dull ache of homesickness was in it
+all.
+
+"My dear! my dear!"--a head in crimpers was thrust from between the
+curtains of the section opposite--"I've been awake half the night. I was so
+afraid I wouldn't see you before you got off."
+
+The head was followed, almost instinctively, by a hand travelling
+furtively to the crimpers that gripped the lady's brow like barnacles
+clinging to a keel.
+
+Mary expressed a grieved appreciation at the loss of rest in behalf of her
+early departure, and conspicuously forbore to glance in the direction of
+the barnacles, that being a first principle as between woman and woman.
+
+"And, oh, my dear, it gets worse and worse. I've looked at it this
+morning, and it's worse in Wyoming than it was in Colorado. What it 'll be
+before I reach California, I shudder to think."
+
+"It's bound to improve," suggested Mary, with the easy optimism of one who
+was leaving it. "It couldn't be any worse than this, could it?"
+
+The neuter pronoun, it might be well to state, signified the prairie; its
+melancholy personality having penetrated the very marrow of their train
+existence, they had come to refer to it by the monosyllable, as in certain
+nether circles the head of the house receives his superlative distinction
+in "He."
+
+Again the locomotive shrieked, again the girl mechanically clutched the
+suit-case, as presenting the most difficult item in the problem of
+transportation, and this time the shriek was not an idle formality. The
+train slowed down; the uneasy sleepers behind the green-striped curtains
+stirred restlessly with the lessening motion of their uncouth cradle. The
+porter came to help her, with the chastened mien of one whose hopes of
+largess are small, the lady with the barnacles called after her redundant
+farewells, and a moment later Miss Carmichael was standing on the station
+platform looking helplessly after the train that toiled and puffed, yet
+seemed, in that crystalline atmosphere, still within arm's-reach. She
+watched it till its floating pennant of smoke was nothing but a gray
+feather blowing farther and farther out of sight on the flat prairie.
+
+The town--it would be unkind to mention its name--had made merry the night
+before at the comprehensive invitation of a sheepman who had just disposed
+of his wool-clip, and who said, by way of general summons, "What's the use
+of temptin' the bank?" "Town," therefore, when Mary Carmichael first made
+its acquaintance, was still sleeping the sleep of the unjust. Those among
+last night's roisterers who had had to make an early start for their camps
+were well into the foot-hills by this time, and would remember with
+exhilaration the cracked tinkle of the dance-hall piano as inspiring music
+when the lonesomeness of the desert menaced and the young blood again
+clamored for its own.
+
+"Town"--it contained in all some two dozen buildings--was very unlovely in
+slumber. It sprawled in the lap of the prairies, a grimy-faced urchin,
+with the lines of dismal sophistication writ deep. Yet where in all the
+"health resorts" of the East did air sweep from the clean hill-country
+with such revivifying power? It seemed a glad world of abiding youth.
+Surely "Town" was but a dreary illusion, a mirage that hung in the
+unmapped spaces of this new world that God had made and called good; an
+omen of the abominations that men would make when they grew blind to the
+beauty of God's world.
+
+Mary Carmichael, with much the feelings of a cat in a strange garret,
+wandered about the sluggard town; and presently the blue-and-white sign of
+a telegraph office, with the mythological figure of a hastening messenger,
+suggested to her that a reassuring telegram was only Aunt Adelaide's due.
+Whereupon she began to rap on the door of the office, a scared pianissimo
+which naturally had little effect on the operator, who was at home and
+asleep some three blocks distant. But the West is the place for woman if
+she would be waited upon. No seven-to-one ratio of the sexes has tempered
+the chivalry of her sons of the saddle. A loitering something in a
+sombrero saw rather than heard the rapping, and, at the sight, went in
+quest of the dreaming operator without so much as embarrassing Miss
+Carmichael with an offer of his services. And presently the operator,
+whose official day did not begin for some two hours yet, appeared, much
+dishevelled from running and the cursory nature of his toilet, prepared to
+receive a message of life and death.
+
+The wire to Aunt Adelaide ran:
+
+
+    "Practically at end of journey. Take stage to Lost Trail this
+    morning. Am well. Don't worry about me.
+
+                                                               "MARY."
+
+
+And the telegraph operator, dimly remembering that he had heard Lost Trail
+was a "pizen mean country," and that it was tucked some two hundred miles
+back in the foot-hills, did not find it very hard to forgive the girl, who
+was "practically at end of journey," particularly as the dimple had come
+out of hiding, and he had never been called upon to telegraph the word
+"practically" before. He was a progressive man and liked to extend his
+experiences.
+
+After sending the telegram, Miss Carmichael, quite herself by reason of
+the hill air, felt that she was getting along famously as a traveller, but
+that it was an expensive business, and she was glad to be "practically" at
+the end of her journey. And, drawing from her pocket a square envelope of
+heavy Irish linen, a little worn from much reading, but primarily an
+envelope that bespoke elegance of taste on the part of her correspondent,
+she read:
+
+
+                                                 "LOST TRAIL, WYOMING.
+
+    "My Dear Miss Carmichael,--Pray let me assure you of my
+    gratification that the preliminaries have been so satisfactorily
+    arranged, and that we are to have you with us by the end of June.
+    The children are profiting from the very anticipation of it, and
+    it will be most refreshing to all us isolated ones to be able to
+    welcome an Eastern girl as a member of our family.
+
+    "Although the long journey across the continent is trying,
+    particularly to one who has not made it before, I hope you may not
+    find it utterly fatiguing. Please remember that after leaving the
+    train, it will be necessary to take a stage to Lost Trail. If it
+    is possible, I shall meet you with the buckboard at one of the
+    stage stations; otherwise, keep to the stage route, being careful
+    to change at Dax's Ranch.
+
+    "Unfortunately, the children vary so in their accomplishments that
+    I fear I can make no suggestions as to what you may need to bring
+    with you in the way of text-books. But I think you will find them
+    fairly well grounded.
+
+    "I had a charming letter from Mrs. Kirkland, who said the
+    pleasantest things possible of you. I am glad the wife of our
+    Senator was able conscientiously to commend us.
+
+    "With our most cordial good wishes for a safe journey, believe me,
+    dear Miss Carmichael,
+
+                                                     "Sincerely yours,
+
+                                                      "SARAH YELLETT."
+
+
+In the mean time, "Town" came yawning to breakfast. It was not so prankish
+as it had been the night before, when it accepted the sheepman's
+broad-gauge hospitality and made merry till the sun winked from behind the
+mountains. It made its way to the low, shedlike eating-house with a
+pre-breakfast solemnity bordering on sulkiness. Not a petticoat was in
+sight to offset the spurs and sombreros that filed into breakfast from
+every point in the compass, prepared to eat primitively, joke broadly, and
+quarrel speedily if that sensitive and often inconsistent something they
+called honor should be brushed however lightly.
+
+But the eternal feminine was within, and, discovering it, the temper of
+"Town" was changed; it ate self-consciously, made jokes meet for the ears
+of ladies, and was more interested in the girl in the sailor-hat than it
+was in remembering old feuds or laying the foundations of new.
+
+In its interior aspect, the eating-house conveyed no subtle invitation to
+eat, drink, and be merry. On the contrary, its mission seemed to be that
+of confounding appetite at every turn. A long, shedlike room it was, with
+walls of unpainted pine, still sweating from the axe. Festoons of
+scalloped paper, in conflicting shades, hung from the ceiling, a menace to
+the taller of the guests. On the rough walls some one, either prompted by
+a latent spirit of aestheticism or with an idea of abetting the town
+towards merrymaking--an encouragement it hardly required--had tacked posters
+of shows, mainly representing the tank-and-sawmill school of drama.
+
+Miss Carmichael sat at the extreme end of the long, oilcloth-covered
+table, on which a straggling army of salt and pepper shakers, catsup
+bottles, and divers commercial condiments seemed to pause in a discouraged
+march. A plague of flies was on everything, and the food was a threat to
+the hardiest appetite. One man summed up the steak with, "You got to work
+your jaw so hard to eat it that it ain't fair to the next meal."
+
+His neighbor heaved a sigh. "This here formation, whatever it be"--and he
+turned the meat over for better inspection--"do shore remind me of an
+indestructible doll that an old maid aunt of mine giv' my sister when we
+was kids. That doll sort of challenged me, settin' round oncapable o'
+bein' destroyed, and one day I ups an' has a chaw at her. She war
+ondestructible, all right; 'fore that I concluded my speriments I had left
+a couple o' teeth in her."
+
+"Well, I discyards the steak and draw to a pair of aces," and the first
+man helped himself to a couple of biscuits.
+
+Miss Carmichael knew, by the continual scraping of chairs across the
+gritty floor, that the places at the table must be nearly all taken; and
+while she anticipated, with an utterly unreasonable terror, any further
+invasion of her seclusion at the end of the table, still she could not
+persuade herself to raise her eyes to detect the progress of the enemy,
+even in the interest of the diary she had kept so conscientiously for the
+past three days; which was something of a loss to the diary, as those
+untamed, manly faces were well worth looking at. Reckless they were in
+many instances, and sometimes the lines of hardship were cruelly writ
+across young faces that had not yet lost the down of adolescence, but
+there were humor and endurance and the courage that knows how to make a
+crony of death and get right good sport from the comradeship. Their faults
+were the faults of lusty, red-blooded youth, and their virtues the
+open-handed generosity, the ready sympathy of those uncertain tilters at
+life who ride or fall in the tourney of a new country.
+
+At present, "the yearling," drinking her execrable coffee in an agony of
+embarrassment, weighed heavily on their minds. They would have liked to
+rise as a man and ask if there was anything they could do for her. But as
+a glance towards the end of the table seemed to increase her discomfiture
+tenfold, they did the kindest and for them the most difficult thing and
+looked in every direction but Miss Carmichael's. With a delicacy of
+perception that the casual observer might not have given them credit for,
+they had refrained from taking seats directly opposite her, or those
+immediately on her right, which, as she occupied the last seat at the
+table, gave her at least a small degree of seclusion.
+
+As one after another of them came filing in, bronzed, rugged, radiating a
+beauty of youth and health that no sketchy exigence of apparel could
+obscure, some one already seated at the table would put a foot on a chair
+opposite him and send it spinning out into the middle of the floor as a
+hint to the new-comer that that was his reserved seat. And the
+cow-puncher, sheep-herder, prospector, or man about "Town," as the case
+might be, would take the hint and the chair, leaving the petticoat
+separated from the sombreros by a table-land of oilcloth and a range of
+four chairs.
+
+But now entered a man who failed to take the hint of the spinning chair.
+In fact, he entered the eating-house with the air of one who has dropped
+in casually to look for a friend and, incidentally, to eat his breakfast.
+He stopped in the doorway, scanned the table with deliberation, and
+started to make his way towards Mary Carmichael with something of a
+swagger. Some one kicked a chair towards him at the head of the table.
+Some one else nearly upset him with one before he reached the middle, and
+the Texan remarked, quite audibly, as he passed:
+
+"The damned razor-back!"
+
+But the man made his way to the end of the table and drew out the chair
+opposite Miss Carmichael with a degree of assurance that precipitated the
+rest of the table into a pretty pother.
+
+Suppose she should countenance his audacity? The fair have been known to
+succumb to the headlong force of a charge, when the persistence of a long
+siege has failed signally. What figures they would cut if she did!--and
+Simpson, of all men! A growing tension had crept into the atmosphere of
+the eating-house; knives and forks played but intermittently, and Mary,
+sitting at the end of the oilcloth-covered table, felt intuitively that
+she was the centre of the brewing storm. Oh, why hadn't she been contented
+to stay at home and make over her clothes and share the dwindling fortunes
+of her aunts, instead of coming to this savage place?
+
+"From the look of the yearling's chin, I think he'll get all that's coming
+to him," whispered the man who had nearly upset him with the second chair.
+
+"You're right, pard. If I'm any good at reading brands, she is as
+self-protective as the McKinley bill."
+
+The man Simpson was not a pleasant vis-a-vis. He wore the same picturesque
+ruffianliness of apparel as his fellows, but the resemblance stopped
+there. He lacked their dusky bloom, their clearness of eye, the suppleness
+and easy flow of muscle that is the hall-mark of these frontiersmen. He
+was fat and squat and had not the rich bronzing of wind, sun, and rain.
+His small, black eyes twinkled from his puffy, white face, like raisins in
+a dough-pudding.
+
+He was ogling Mary amiably when the woman who kept the eating-house
+brought him his breakfast. Mrs. Clark was a potent antidote for the
+prevailing spirit of romance, even in this woman-forsaken country. A good
+creature, all limp calico, Roman nose, and sharp elbows, she brought him
+his breakfast with an ill grace that she had not shown to the others. The
+men about the table gave him scant greeting, but the absence of enthusiasm
+didn't embarrass Simpson.
+
+He lounged expansively on the table, regarding Miss Carmichael attentively
+meanwhile; then favored her with the result of his observations, "From the
+East, I take it." And the dumpling face screwed into a smile whose mission
+was pacific.
+
+Every knife and fork in the room suspended action in anxiety to know how
+the "yearling" would take it. Would their chivalry, which strained at a
+gnat, be compelled to swallow such a conspicuous camel as the success of
+Simpson? With the attitude he had taken towards the girl, there had crept
+into the company an imperceptible change; deep-buried impulses sprang to
+the surface. If a scoundrel like Simpson was going to try his luck, why
+shouldn't they? They didn't see a pretty girl once in a blue moon. With
+the advent of the green-eyed monster at the board, each man unconsciously
+became the rival of his neighbor.
+
+But Miss Carmichael merely continued her breakfast, and if she heard the
+amiable deductions of Simpson regarding her, she gave no sign. But a
+rebuff to him was in the nature of an appetizer, a fillip to press the
+acquaintance. He encroached a bit farther on the narrow limits of the
+table and continued, "Nice weather we're having."
+
+Miss Carmichael gave her undivided attention to her coffee. The spurs and
+sombreros, that had not relaxed a muscle in their strained observation of
+the little drama, breathed reflectively. Perhaps it was just as well that
+they had not emulated Simpson in his brazen charge; the "yearling" was not
+to be surprised into talking, that was certain.
+
+"He shore is showing hisself to be a friendly native," commented the man
+who had sacrificed milk-teeth investigating the indestructible doll.
+
+"Seems to me that the system he's playing lacks a heap of science. My
+money's on the yearling." And the man who had "discarded the steak and
+drawn to the biscuits" leaned a little forward that he might better watch
+developments.
+
+Simpson by this time fully realized his error, but failure before all
+these bantering youngsters was a contingency not to be accepted lightly.
+As he phrased it to himself, it was worth "another throw." "Seems kind o'
+lonesome not having any one to talk to while you're eatin', don't it?"
+
+Miss Carmichael's air of perfect composure seemed a trifle out of tune
+with her surroundings; the nice elevation of eyebrow, the slightly
+questioning curl of the lip as she, for the first time apparently, became
+aware of the man opposite, seemed to demand a prim drawing-room rather
+than the atmosphere of the slouching eating-house.
+
+"Well, really, I've hardly had a chance of finding out." And her eyes were
+again on her coffee-cup. And there was joy among the men at table that
+they had not rushed in after the manner of those who have a greater
+courage than the angels.
+
+"No offence meant," deprecated Simpson, with an uneasy glance towards the
+other end of the table, where the men sat with necks craned forward in an
+attitude uncomfortably suggestive of hounds straining at the leash.
+Simpson felt rather than saw that something was afoot among the sombreros.
+There was a crowding together in whispered colloquy, and in a flash some
+half-dozen of them were on their feet as a man. Descending upon Simpson,
+they lifted him, chair and all, to the other end of the table, as far
+removed as possible from Miss Carmichael.
+
+The man who thought Simpson's system lacked science rubbed his hands in
+delight. "She took the trick all right; swept his hand clean off the
+board!"
+
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+                              The Encounter
+
+
+Simpson, from the seat to which he had been so rapidly transplanted,
+looked about him with blinking anxiety. It was more than probable that the
+boys intended "to have fun with him," though his talking, or rather trying
+to talk, to a girl that sat opposite him at an eating-house table was,
+according to his ethics, plainly none of their business. He knew he wasn't
+popular since he had done for Jim Rodney's sheep, though the crime had
+never been laid at his door, officially. He had his way to make, the same
+as the next one; and, all said and done, the cattle-men were glad to get
+Jim Rodney's sheep off the range, even if they treated him as a felon for
+the part he had played in their extermination.
+
+Thus reasoned Simpson, while he marked with an uneasy eye that the temper
+of the company had grown decidedly prankish with the exit of the girl,
+who, after having caused all the trouble, had, with an irritating quality
+peculiar to her sex, vanished through the kitchen door.
+
+Some three or four of the boys now ran to Simpson's former seat at the
+table and rushed towards him with his half-eaten breakfast, as if the
+errand had been one of life and death. They showered him with mock
+attentions, waiting on him with an exaggerated deference, and the pale,
+fat man, remembering the hideousness of some of their manifestations of a
+sense of humor, breathed hard and felt a falling-off of appetite.
+
+Costigan, the cattle-man, a strapping Irish giant, was clearing his throat
+with ominous sounds that suggested the tuning-up of a bass fiddle.
+
+"Sure, Simpson, me lad, if ye happen to have a matther av fifty dollars,
+'tis mesilf that can tell ye av an illegint invistmint."
+
+Simpson looked up warily, but Costigan's broad countenance did not harbor
+the wraith of a smile. "What kin I git for fifty chips? 'Tain't much,"
+mused the pariah, with the prompt inclination to spend that stamps the
+comparative stranger to ready money.
+
+"Ye can git a parrut, man--a grane parrut--to kape ye coompany while ye're
+aiting--"
+
+Simpson interrupted with an oath.
+
+"Don't be hard on old Simmy; remember he's studied for the ministry! How
+did I savey that Simpson aimed to be a sharp on doctrine?" A cow-puncher
+with a squint addressed the table in general. "I scents the aroma of dogma
+about Simpson in the way he throwed his conversational lariat at the
+yearling. He urbanes at her, and then comes his 'firstly,' it being a
+speculation as to her late grazing-ground, which he concludes to be the
+East. His 'secondly' ain't nothing startling, words familiar to us all
+from our mother's knee--'nice weather'--the congregation ain't visibly
+moved. His 'thirdly' is insinuating. In it he hints that it ain't good for
+man to be alone at meals--"
+
+"'Twas the congregation that added the 'foinelly,' though, before hastily
+leaving be the back door!" and Costigan slapped his thigh.
+
+"The gentleman in question don't seem to be makin' much use of his present
+conversational opportunities. I'm feelin' kinder turned down myself"; and
+the Texan began to look over his six-shooter.
+
+The man with the squint looked up and down the board.
+
+"Gentlemen, I believe the foregoing expresses the sentiment of this
+company, which, while it incloodes many foreign and frequent-warring
+elements, is at present held together by the natchral tie of eating."
+
+Thumping with knife and fork handles, stamping of feet, cries of "Hear!
+hear!" with at least three cow-boy yells, argued well for a resumption of
+last night's festivities. Simpson glowered, but said nothing.
+
+"Seems to me you-all goin' the wrong way 'bout drawin' Mistu' Simpson out.
+He is shy an' has to be played fo' like a trout, an' heah you-all come at
+him like a cattle stampede." The big Texan leaned towards Simpson. "Now
+you-all watch my methods. Mistu' Simpson, seh, what du think of the
+prospects of rain?"
+
+There was a general recommendation from Simpson that the entire company go
+to a locality below the rain-belt.
+
+A boy, plainly "from the East," and looking as if the ink on his
+graduating thesis had scarce had time to dry, was on his feet, swaggering;
+he would not have swapped his newly acquired _camaraderie_ with these
+bronzed Westerners for the Presidency.
+
+"Gentlemen, you have all heard Simpson say it is lonesome having no one to
+talk to during meals. We sympathized with him and offered him a choice of
+subjects. He greets our remarks by a conspicuous silence, varied by
+profanity. This, gentlemen, reflects on us, and is a matter demanding
+public satisfaction. All who feel that their powers as conversationalists
+have been impugned by the silence of Simpson, please say 'Ay.'"
+
+"Ay" was howled, sung, and roared in every note of the gamut.
+
+"If me yoong frind here an me roight"--and Costigan jerked a shoulder
+towards the boy--"will be afther closin' that silf-feeding automatic
+dictionary av his for a moment, I shud be glad to call the attintion av
+the coomp'ny to somethin' in the nature av an ixtinuatin' circoomsthance
+in the case av Simpson."
+
+"Hear! hear!" they shouted. The broad countenance of Costigan beamed with
+joy at what he was about to say. "Gintlemin, the silence av Mr. Simpson is
+jew in all probabilitee to a certain ivint recalled by many here prisint,
+an' more that's absent, an' amicablee settled out av coort--"
+
+Up to this time the unhappy Simpson had shown an almost superhuman
+endurance. Now he bristled--and after looking up and down the board for a
+sympathetic face, and not finding one, he declared, loudly and generally,
+"'Tain't so!"
+
+"Ye may have noticed that frind Simpson do be t'reatened wid lockjaw in
+the societee av min, but in the prisince av a female ye can't count on
+him. Now, talk wid a female is an agreeable, if not a profitable, way av
+passin' the toime, but sure ye niver know where it will ind--as witness
+Simpson. This lady I'm recallin'--'tis a matther av two years ago--followed
+the ancient and honorable profission av biscuit shootin' not far from
+Caspar. Siz Simpson to the lady some such passin' civilitee as,
+'Good-marnin'; plisent weather we're havin'.' Whereupon the lady filt a
+damage to her affictions an' sued him for breach av promise."
+
+"'Twan't that way, at all!" screamed Simpson. "'Sall a lie!"
+
+"Yu ought er said 'Good-evenin'' to the lady, Mistu Simpson; hit make a
+diffunce," drawled the man from Texas, pleasantly.
+
+"But 'twas 'Good-marnin'' Simpson made chyce av," resumed Costigan. "An'
+the lady replied, 'You've broke my heart.' Whereupon Simpson, havin' a
+matther av t'ree thousand dollars to pay for his passin' civilitee,
+learned thot silince was goolden."
+
+They all remembered the incident in question, and thundered applause at
+the reappearance of an old favorite. Without warning, a shadow fell across
+the sunlight-flooded room, and, as one after another of the men glanced up
+from the table, they saw standing in the doorway a man of such malignant
+aspect that his look fell across the company like a menace. The swing of
+their banter slowed suddenly; it was as if the cold of a new-turned grave
+had struck across the June sunshine checking their roughshod fun. None of
+them had the hardihood to joke with a man that stood in the shadow of
+death; and hate and murder looked from the eyes of the man in the doorway
+and looked towards Simpson. One by one they perceived the man of the
+shadow, all but Simpson, eating steak drowned in Worcestershire.
+
+The man in the doorway was tall and lean, and the prison blench upon his
+face was in unpleasant contrast to the ruddy tan of the faces about the
+table. His sombrero was tipped back and the hair hung dank about the pale,
+sweating forehead, suggestive of sickness. But weak health did not imply
+weak purpose; every feature in that hawk-like face was sharp with hatred,
+and in the narrowing eye was vengeance that is sweet.
+
+He stood still; there was in his hatred a something hypnotic that grew
+imperceptibly and imperceptibly communicated itself to the men at table.
+He gloated over the eating fat man as if he had dwelt much in imagination
+on the sight and was in no hurry to curtail his joy at the reality. The
+men began to get restless, shuffle their feet, moisten their lips; only
+the college boy spoke, and then from a wealth of ignorance, knowing
+nothing of the rugged, give-and-take justice of the plains--an eye for an
+eye, a tooth for a tooth, and the law and the courts go hang while a man's
+got a right arm to pull a trigger. Not one in all that company, even the
+cattle-men whose interests were opposed to Rodney's, but felt the justice
+of his errand.
+
+"When did they let him out?" whispered the college boy; and then,
+"Oughtn't we to do something?"
+
+"Yis, me son," whispered Costigan. "We ought to sit still and learn a
+thing or two."
+
+The fat man cleaned his plate with a crust of bread stuck on the point of
+a knife. There was nothing more to eat in the way of substantials, and he
+debated pouring a little more of the sauce on his plate and mopping it
+with a bit of bread still uneaten. Considering the pro and con of this
+extra tid-bit, he glanced up and saw the gaunt man standing in the
+doorway.
+
+Simpson dropped the knife from his shaking hand and started up with a cry
+that died away in a gurgle, an inhuman, nightmare croak. He looked about
+wildly, like a rat in a trap, then backed towards the wall. The men about
+the table got up, then cleared away in a circle, leaving the fat man. It
+was all like a dream to the college boy, who had never seen a thing of the
+kind before and could not realize now that it was happening. Rodney
+advanced, never once relaxing the look in which he seemed to hold his
+enemy as in a vise. Simpson was like a man bewitched. Once, twice, he made
+a grab for his revolver, but his right hand seemed to have lost power to
+heed the bidding of his will. Rodney, now well towards the centre of the
+room, waited, with a suggestion of ceremony, for Simpson to get his
+six-shooter.
+
+It was one of those moments in which time seems to have become petrified.
+The limp-clad proprietress of the eating-house, made curious by the sudden
+silence, looked in from the kitchen. Simpson, his eyes wandering like a
+trapped rat, saw, and called, through teeth that chattered in an ague of
+fear, "Ree--memm--her thth--there's la--dies p--present! For Gawd's sake,
+remember t--there's ladies p--present!"
+
+The pale man looked towards the kitchen, and, seeing the woman, he gave
+Simpson a look in which there was only contempt. "You've hid behind the
+law once, and this time it's petticoats. The open don't seem to have no
+charm for you. But--" He didn't finish, there was no need to. Every one
+knew and understood. He put up his revolver and walked into the street.
+
+The men broke into shouts of laughter, loud and ringing, then doubled up
+and had it out all over again. And their noisy merriment was as clear an
+indication of the suddenly lifted strain, at the averted shooting, as it
+was of their enjoyment of the farce. Simpson, relieved of the fear of
+sudden death, now sought to put a better face on his cowardice. Now that
+his enemy was well out of sight, Simpson handled his revolver with easy
+assurance.
+
+"Put ut up," shouted Costigan, above the general uproar. "'Tis toime to
+fear a revolver in the hands av Simpson whin he's no intinsions av
+shootin'."
+
+Simpson still attempted to harangue the crowd, but his voice was lost in
+the general thigh-slapping and the shouts and roars that showed no signs
+of abating. But when he caught a man by the coat lapel in his efforts to
+secure a hearing, that was another matter, and the man shook him off as if
+his touch were contagion. Simpson, craving mercy on account of petticoats,
+evading a meeting that was "up to him," they were willing to stand as a
+laughing-stock, but Simpson as an equal, grasping the lapels of their
+coats, they would have none of.
+
+He slunk away from them to a corner of the eating-house, feeling the
+stigma of their contempt, yet afraid to go out into the street where his
+enemy might be waiting for him. Much of death and blood and recklessness
+"Town" had seen and condoned, but cowardice was the unforgivable sin. It
+balked the rude justice of these frontiersmen and tampered with their
+code, and Simpson knew that the game had gone against him.
+
+"What was it all about? Were they in earnest, or was it only their way of
+amusing themselves?" inquired Mary Carmichael, who had slipped into Mrs.
+Clark's kitchen after the men at the table had taken things in hand.
+
+"Jim Rodney was in earnest, an' he had reason to be. That man Simpson was
+paid by a cattle outfit--now, mind, I ain't sayin' which--to get Jim
+Rodney's sheep off the range. They had threatened him and cut the throats
+of two hundred of his herd as a warning, but Jim went right on grazin'
+'em, same as he had always been in the habit of doing. Well, I'm told they
+up and makes Simpson an offer to get rid of the sheep. Jim has over five
+thousand, an' it's just before lambing, and them pore ewes, all heavy, is
+being druv' down to Watson's shearing-pens, that Jim always shears at. Jim
+an' two herders and a couple of dawgs--least, this is the way I heard it--is
+drivin' 'em easy, 'cause, as I said before, it's just before lambing. It
+does now seem awful cruel to me to shear just before lambing, but that's
+their way out here.
+
+"Well, nothing happens, and Jim ain't more'n two hours from the pens an'
+he comes to that place on the road that branches out over the top of a
+canon, and there some one springs out of a clump of willows an' dashes
+into the herd and drives the wether that's leading right over the cliff.
+The leaders begin to follow that wether, and they go right over the cliff
+like the pore fools they are. The herder fired and tried to drive 'em
+back, they tell me, an' he an' the dawg were shot at from the clump of
+willows by some one else who was there. Three hundred sheep had gone over
+the cliff before Jim knew what was happening. He rode like mad right
+through the herd to try and head 'em off; but you know what sheep is
+like--they're like lost souls headin' for damnation. Nothing can stop 'em
+when they're once started. And Jim lost every head--started for the
+shearing-pens a rich man--rich for Jim--an' seen everything he had swept
+away before his eyes, his wife an' children made paupers. My son he come
+by and found him. He said that Jim was sittin' huddled up in a heap, his
+knees drawed up under his chin, starin' straight up into the noonday sky,
+same as if he was askin' God how He could be so cruel. His dead dawg, that
+they had shot, was by the side of him. The herder that was with Jim had
+taken the one that was shot into Watson's, so when my son found Jim he was
+alone, sittin' on the edge of the cliff with his dead dawg, an' the sky
+about was black with buzzards; an' Jim he just sat an' stared up at 'em,
+and when my son spoke to him he never answered any more than a dead man.
+He shuck him by the arm, but Jim just sat there, watchin' the sun, the
+buzzards, and the dead sheep."
+
+"Was nothing done to this man Simpson?"
+
+"The cattle outfit that he done the dirty work for swore an alibi for him.
+Jim has been in hard luck ever since. He's been rustlin' cattle right
+along; but Lord, who can blame him? He got into some trouble down to
+Rawlins--shot a man he thought was with Simpson, but who wasn't--and he's
+been in jail ever since. Course now that he's out Simpson's bound to get
+peppered. Glad it didn't happen here, though. 'Twould be a kind of
+unpleasant thing to have connected with a eating-house, don't you think
+so?" she inquired, with the grim philosophy of the country.
+
+The eating-house patrons had gone their several ways, and the quiet of the
+dining-room was oppressive by contrast with its late boisterousness. Mrs.
+Clark, her hands imprisoned in bread-dough, begged Mary to look over the
+screen door and see if anything was happening. "I'm always suspicious when
+it's quiet. I know they're in deviltry of some sort."
+
+Mary tiptoed to the door and peeped over, but the room was deserted, save
+for Simpson, huddled in a corner, biting his finger-nails. "The nasty
+thing!" exploded Mrs. Clark, when she had received the bulletin. "I'd turn
+him out if it wasn't for the notoriety he might bring my place in gettin'
+killed in front of it."
+
+"I dare say I'd better go and see after my trunk; it's still on the
+station platform." Mary wondered what her prim aunts would think of her
+for sitting in Mrs. Clark's kitchen, but it had seemed so much more of a
+refuge than the sordid streets of the hideous little town, with its droves
+of men and never a glimpse of a woman that she had been only too glad to
+avail herself of the invitation of the proprietress to "make herself at
+home till the stage left."
+
+"Well, good luck to you," said Mrs. Clark, wiping her hand only partially
+free from dough and presenting it to Miss Carmichael. She had not inquired
+where the girl was going, nor even hinted to discover where she came from,
+but she gave her the godspeed that the West knows how to give, and the
+girl felt better for it.
+
+At the station, where Mary shortly presented herself, in the interest of
+that old man of the sea of all travellers, luggage, she learned that the
+stage did not leave town for some three-quarters of an hour yet. A young
+man, manipulating many sheets of flimsy, yellow paper covered with large,
+flourishing handwriting, looked up in answer to her inquiries about Lost
+Trail. This young man, whose accent, clothes, and manner proclaimed him
+"from the East," whither, in all probability, he would shortly return if
+he did not mend his ways, disclaimed all knowledge of the place as if it
+were an undesirable acquaintance. But before he could deny it thrice, a
+man who had heard the cabalistic name was making his way towards the desk,
+the pride of the traveller radiating from every feature.
+
+The cosmopolite who knew Lost Trail was the type of man who is born to be
+a Kentucky colonel, and perhaps may have achieved his destiny before
+coming to this "No Man's Land," for reasons into which no one inquired,
+and which were obviously no one's business. They knew him here by the name
+of "Lone Tooth Hank," and he wore what had been, in the days of his
+colonelcy--or its equivalent--a frock-coat, restrained by the lower button,
+and thus establishing a waist-line long after nature had had the last word
+to say on the subject. With this he wore the sombrero of the country, and
+the combination carried a rakish effect that was positively sinister.
+
+The scornful clerk introduced Mary as a young lady inquiring about some
+place in the bad-lands. Off came the sombrero with a sweep, and Lone Tooth
+smiled in a way that accented the dental solitaire to which he owed his
+name. Miss Carmichael, concealing her terror of this casual cavalier,
+inquired if he could tell her the distance to Lost Trail.
+
+"I sho'ly can, and with, consid'able pleasure." The sombrero completed a
+semicircular sweep and arrived in the neighborhood of Mr. Hank's heart in
+significance of his vassalage to the fair sex. He proceeded:
+
+"Lost Trail sutney is right lonesome. A friend of mine gets a little too
+playful fo' the evah-increasin' meetropolitan spirit of this yere camp,
+and tries a little tahget practice on the main bullyvard, an' finds the
+atmospheah onhealthful in consequence. Hearin' that the quiet solitude of
+Lost Trail is what he needs, he lit out with the following circumstance
+thereof happenin'. One day something in his harness giv' way--and he
+recollects seein' a boot sunnin' itself back in the road 'bout a quartah
+of a mile. An' he figgahs he'll borry a strip of leather off the boot to
+mend his harness. Back he goes and finds it has a kind of loaded feelin'.
+So my friend investigates--and I be blanked if there wasn't a foot and leg
+inside of it."
+
+Miss Carmichael had always exercised a super-feminine self-restraint in
+the case of casual mice, and it served her in the present instance.
+Instead of screaming, she said, after the suppression of a gasp or two:
+
+"Thank you so much, but I won't detain you any longer. Your information
+makes Lost Trail even more interesting than I had expected."
+
+Besides, Miss Carmichael had a faint suspicion that this might be a
+preconcerted plan to terrify the "lady tenderfoot," and she prided herself
+on being equal to the situation. The time at her disposal before the stage
+would embark on that unknown sea of prairies she spent in the delectable
+pastime of shopping. The financial and social interests of the town seemed
+to converge in Hugous & Co.'s "trading store," where Miss Carmichael
+invested in an extra package of needles for the mere excitement of being
+one of the shoppers, though her aunt Adelaide had stocked the little
+plaid-silk work-bag to repletion with every variety of needle known to
+woman. She pricked up her ears, meanwhile, at some of the purchases made
+by the cow-boys for their camp-larders--devilled ham, sardines, canned
+tomatoes heading the list as prime favorites. Did these strapping border
+lads live by the fruit of the tin alone? Apparently yes, with the
+sophisticated accompaniment of soda biscuit, to judge by the quantity of
+baking-powder they invested in--literally pounds of it. Men in any other
+condition of life would have died of slow poisoning as the result of it.
+
+There were other customers at Hugous' that morning besides the spurred and
+booted cow-puncher and his despised compeer, the sheep-herder. That
+restless emigrant class, whose origin, as a class, lay in the community of
+its own uncertain schemes of fortune; the West, with her splendid, lavish
+promises, called them from their thriftless farms in the South and their
+gray cabins in New England. They began their journeying towards the land
+of promise long before the Indians had ever seen the shrieking
+"fire-wagon." All day they would toil over the infinitude of prairie, the
+sun that hid nightly behind that maddeningly elusive vanishing-point, the
+horizon, their only guide. But the makeshifts of the wagon life were not
+without charm. They began to wander in quest of they knew not precisely
+what, and from these vague beginnings there had sprung into existence that
+nomadic population that was once such a feature of the far West, but is
+now going the way of the Indians and the cow-boys.
+
+This breathing-space in the long journey had for them the stimulus of a
+holiday-making. They bought their sides of bacon and their pounds of
+coffee as merrily as if they were playing a game of forfeits, the women
+fingering the calico they did not want for the joy of pricing and making
+shoppers' talk.
+
+The scene had a scriptural flavor that not even the blue overalls of the
+men nor the calico gowns of the women could altogether eliminate. Their
+wagons, bulging with household goods and trailing with kitchen utensils
+secured by bits of rope, were drawn up in front of the trading-store. From
+a pump, at some little distance, the pilgrims filled their stone
+water-bottles, for the wise traveller does not trust to the chance springs
+of the desert. Baskets of chickens were strapped to many of the wagons,
+but whether the unhappy fowls were designed to supply fresh eggs and an
+occasional fricassee, or were taken for the pleasure of their company,
+there was no means of determining short of impertinent cross-questioning.
+Sometimes a cow, and invariably a dog, formed one of the family party, and
+an edifying _esprit de corps_ seemed to dwell among them all.
+
+Lone Tooth Hank, in his capacity of man about town, stood on the steps of
+Hugous' watching the preparations; and, seeing Miss Carmichael, approached
+with the air of an old and tried family friend.
+
+"Do I obsehve yu regyarding oweh 'settleahs,' called settleahs 'cause they
+nevah settle?" Hank laughed gently, as one who has made a joke meet for
+ladies. "I've known whole famblies to bohn an' raise right in one of them
+wagons; and tuhn out a mighty fine, endurin' lot, too, this hyeh
+prospectin' round afteh somethin' they wouldn't reco'nize if they met.
+Gits to be a habit same as drink. They couldn't live in a house same as
+humans, not if yu filled their gyarden with nuggets an' their well with
+apple-jack."
+
+Miss Carmichael looked attentive but said nothing. In truth, she was more
+afraid of Hank, his obvious gallantry, and his grewsome tales of boots
+with legs in them than she was of the unknown terrors of Lost Trail.
+
+"I believe that is my stage," she said, as a red conveyance not unlike a
+circus wagon halted at some little distance from the trading-store. And as
+she spoke she saw four of her companions of the breakfast-table heading
+towards the stage, each with a piece of her precious luggage. Mary
+Carmichael was precipitated in a sudden panic; she had heard tales of the
+pranks of these playful Western squires--a little gun-play to induce the
+terrified tenderfoot to put a little more spirit into his Highland fling,
+"by request." She remembered their merrymaking with Simpson at breakfast.
+What did they intend to do with her belongings? And as she remembered the
+little plaid sewing-bag that Aunt Adelaide had made for
+her--surreptitiously drying her tears in the mean time--when she remembered
+that bag and the possibility of its being submitted to ignominy, she could
+have cried or done murder, she wasn't sure which.
+
+"Well, 'pon my wohd, heah ah the boys with yo' baggage. How time du fly!"
+
+"Oh!" she gasped, "what are they going to do with it?"
+
+"Place it on the stage, awaitin' yo' ohdahs." And to her expression of
+infinite relief--"Yo' didn't think any disrepec' would be shown the baggage
+of a lady honorin' this hyeh metropolis with her presence?"
+
+She thanked the knights of the lariat the more warmly for her unjust
+suspicions. They stowed away the luggage with the deft capacity of men who
+have returned to the primitive art of using their hands. She climbed
+beside the driver on the box of the stage. Lone Tooth Hank and the
+cow-punchers chivalrously raised their sombreros with a simultaneous
+spontaneity that suggested a flight of rockets. The driver cracked his
+whip and turned the horses' heads towards the billowing sea of foot-hills,
+and the last cable that bound Mary Carmichael to civilization was cut.
+
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+                           Leander And His Lady
+
+
+The only stage passenger besides Miss Carmichael was a fat lady, whose
+entire luggage seemed to consist of luncheon--pasteboard boxes of
+sandwiches, baskets of fruit, napkins of cake. These she began to dispose
+of, before the stage had fairly started, with an industry almost
+automatic, continuing faithful to her post as long as the supplies lasted.
+Then she dozed, sleeping the sleep of the just and those who keep their
+mouths open. From time to time the stage-driver invoked his team in
+cabalistic words, and each time the horses toiled forward with fresh
+energy; but progress became a mockery in that ocean of space, their
+driving seemed as futile as the sport of children who crack a whip and
+play at stage-coach with a couple of chairs; the mountains still mocked in
+the distance.
+
+A flat, unbroken sweep of country, a tangle of straggling sage-brush, a
+glimpse of foot-hills in the distance, was the outlook mile after mile.
+The day grew pitilessly hot. Clouds of alkaline dust swept aimlessly over
+the desert or whirled into spirals till lost in space. From horizon to
+horizon the sky was one cloudless span of blue that paled as it dipped
+earthward. Mary Carmichael dozed and wakened, but the prospect was always
+the same--the red stage crawling over the wilderness, making no evident
+progress, and always the sun, the sage-brush, and the silence.
+
+It was all so overwhelmingly different from the peaceful atmosphere of
+things at home. The mellow Virginia country, with its winding, red roads,
+wealth of woodland, and its grave old houses that were the more haughtily
+aloof for the poverty that gnawed at their vitals. This wilderness was so
+gaunt, so parched; she closed her eyes and thought of a bit of landscape
+at home. A young forest of silver beeches growing straight and fine as the
+threads on a loom; and through the gray perspective of their satin-smooth
+trunks you caught the white gleam of a fairy cascade as it tumbled over
+the moss-grown stones to the brook below. It was like a bit from a
+Japanese garden in its delicate artificiality.
+
+And harder to leave than these cherished bits of landscape had been the
+old house Runnymede, that always seemed dozing in the peaceful comatose of
+senility. It was beyond the worry of debt; the succession of mortgages
+that sapped its vitality and wrote anxious lines on the faces of Aunt
+Adelaide and Aunt Martha was nothing to the old house. Had it not
+sheltered Carmichaels for over a century?--it had faith in the name. But
+Mary could never remember when the need of money to pay the mortgage had
+not invaded the gentle routine of their home-life, robbing the sangaree of
+its delicate flavor in the long, sleepy summer afternoons, invading the
+very dining-room, an unwelcome guest at the old mahogany table, prompting
+Aunt Adelaide to cast anxious glances at the worn silver--would it go to
+pay that blood-sucking mortgage next?
+
+But hardest of all to leave had been Archie, best and most promising of
+young brothers--Archie, who had come out ahead of his class in the
+high-school, all ready to go to The University--the University of Virginia
+is always "The University"; but who, it had seemed at a certain dark
+season, must give up this long-cherished hope for lack of the wherewithal.
+Mary, being four years older than her brother and quite twenty, had long
+felt a maternal obligation to administer his affairs. If he did not go to
+the university, like his father and grandfather before him, it would be
+because she had failed in her duty. At this particular phase of the
+domestic problem there had appeared, in a certain churchly periodical, a
+carefully worded advertisement for a governess, and the subsequent
+business of references, salary, and information to be imparted and
+received proving eminently satisfactory, Mary had finally received a
+tearful permission from her aunts to depart for some place in Wyoming, the
+name of which was not even to be found on the map. She was to consider
+herself quite one of the family, and the compensation was to be fifty
+dollars a month. Archie would now be able to go to "The University."
+
+As the day wore on the sage-brush became scarcer and grayer, there were
+fewer flowering cacti, and the great white patches of alkali grew more and
+more frequent. In the distance there was a riot of rainbow tints--violet,
+pink, and pale orange. It seemed inconceivable that such barrenness could
+produce such wealth of color; nothing could have been more beautiful--not
+even the changing colors on a pigeon's neck--than the coppery iridescence,
+shading to cobalt and blue on some of the buttes.
+
+Night had fallen before they made the first break in their journey. The
+low, beetle-browed cabin that faced them in the wilderness carried in its
+rude completeness a hint of the prestidigitateur's art--a world of
+desolation, and behold a log cabin with smoke issuing from the chimney and
+curtains at the windows! The interior was unplastered, but this
+shortcoming was surmounted by tacking cheesecloth neatly over the logs, a
+device at once simple and strategic, as in the lamplight the effect was
+that of plaster. Miss Carmichael, suddenly released from the actual
+rumbling of the stage, felt its confused motion the more strongly in
+imagination, and hardly knew whether she was eating canned tomatoes,
+served uncooked directly from the tin, fried steak, black coffee, and soda
+biscuit, in company with the fat lady, the stage-driver, and the woman who
+kept the road ranch, or if it was all some Alice in Wonderland delusion.
+
+The fat lady had brought her own bedding--an apoplectic roll of
+bedquilts--and these she insisted on making a bed of, despite the protests
+of the ranch-woman, who seemed to detect a covert insinuation against her
+accommodations in the precedent. Miss Carmichael profited by the
+controversy. The landlady, touched no doubt by the simple faith of a
+traveller who trusted to the beds of a road-ranch, or because she was
+young or a girl, led the way in triumph to her own bedroom, and indicating
+an imposing affair with pillow-shams, she defied Miss Carmichael to find a
+more comfortable bed "in the East."
+
+In the unaccountable manner of these desert conveyances, that creak and
+groan across the arid wastes with an apparently lumbering inconsequence,
+the stage that brought the travellers to the Dax ranch left at sunrise to
+pursue a seemingly erratic career along the North Platte, while Miss
+Carmichael and the fat lady were to continue their journey with one Lemuel
+Chugg, who drove a stage northward towards the Red Desert, when he was
+sober enough to handle the ribbons.
+
+Breakfast was largely devoted to speculation regarding the approximate
+condition of Mr. Chugg--would he be wholly or partially incapacitated for
+his job? Mrs. Dax, flirting a feather-duster in the neighborhood of Miss
+Carmichael in a futile effort to beguile her into giving a reason for her
+solitary journey across the desert, took a gloomy view of the situation.
+
+But Miss Carmichael kept her own counsel. Not so the fat lady. Falling
+into the snare ingenuously set for another, she divulged her name, place
+of residence, and the object of her travels, which was to visit a son on
+Sweetwater. Furthermore, she stated the probable cause of every death in
+her family for the past thirty-five years. Miss Carmichael felt an
+especial interest in an Uncle Henry who "died of a Friday along of eating
+clams." He stood out with such refreshing vividness against a background
+of neutralities who succumbed to consumption, bile colic, and other more
+familiar ailments of the patent-medicine litany. But loquacity,
+apparently, like virtue, is its own reward, for the landlady scarce
+vouchsafed a comment on this dismal recitative, while Miss Carmichael
+remained the object of her persistent attentions.
+
+But there seemed to be no topic of universal interest but Chugg's
+condition, Mrs. Dax finally asserting, "Before I'd trust my precious neck
+to him, I'd get Mr. Dax to shoot me."
+
+Meditating on this Spartan statement, Mary and the fat lady became aware
+for the first time of a subtle, silent force in the domestic economy. But
+so unobtrusive was this influence that one had to scrutinize very closely,
+indeed, to detect the evanescent personality of Mrs. Dax's husband.
+Leander was his name, but it is safe to say that he swam no Hellesponts
+for the masterful wife of his bosom. Otherwise he was slender, willowy,
+bald; if he ever stood straight enough to get the habitually apologetic
+crooks out of his knees, he would be tall; but so in the habit was he of
+repressing himself in the marital presence that Leander passed for middle
+height. He waited on the table at breakfast with the dumb submissiveness
+of a trained dog that has been taught to give pathetic imitations of human
+servility. But no sooner had his lady left the room than Leander began
+quite brazenly to call attention to himself as a man and an individual,
+coughing, rattling his dishes, and clearing his throat. Mary and the fat
+lady, out of very pity, responded to these crude signals with overtures
+equally frank, and Leander ventured finally to inquire if they aimed to
+spend the night at his brother's ranch, it being the next mess-box between
+here and nowhere. They admitted that his brother's ranch was their next
+stopping-place, and Leander went through perfect contortions of apology
+and self-effacement before he could bring himself to ask them to do him a
+favor. It would have taken a very stern order of womankind to refuse
+anything so abject, and they blindly committed themselves to the pledge.
+
+"Tell him I send my compliments," he whispered, and, looking about him
+furtively, he repeated the blood-curdling request.
+
+"Is that all?" sniffed the fat lady, at no pains to conceal her
+disappointment.
+
+"It's enough, if it was known, to raise a war-whoop and stampede this yere
+family." His glance at the door through which his wife had disappeared was
+pregnant with meaning.
+
+"Family troubles?" asked the fat lady, as a gourmet might say "Truffles."
+
+"Looks like it," said Leander, dismally. "Me and Johnnie don't ask for
+nothin' better than to bask in each other's company; but our wives insists
+on keepin' up the manoeuvres of a war-dance the whole endoorin' time."
+
+"So," said the fat lady, as a gourmet might tell of a favorite way of
+preparing truffles, "it's a case of wives?"
+
+"Yes, marm, an' teeth an' nails an' husbands thrown in, when they get a
+sight of each other's petticoats."
+
+"I've known sisters-in-law not to agree," helped on the fat lady, by way
+of an encouraging parallel.
+
+"While I deplores usin' such a comparison to the refinin' and softenin'
+inflooance of wimmen, the meetin' of the Dax ladies by chanst anywheres
+has all the elements of danger and excitement that accompanies an Injun
+uprisin'."
+
+The travellers looked all manner of encouragement.
+
+"You see, my wife's a great housekeeper; her talent lies"--and here Leander
+winked knowingly--"in managin' the help."
+
+"Land's sake!" interrupted the fat lady. "Why don't you kick?"
+
+Leander sighed softly. "I tried to once. As an experiment it partook of
+the trustfulness of a mule kickin' against the stony walls of Badger
+Canon. But to resoom about the difficulties that split the Dax family.
+Before Johnnie got mislaid in that matrimonial landslide o' his, he herds
+with us. Me an' him does the work of this yere shack, and my wife just
+roominates and gives her accomplishments as manager full play. She never
+put her hand in dirty water any more than Mrs. Cleveland sittin' up in the
+White House parlor. Johnnie done the fancy cookin'; he could make a pie
+like any one's maw, and while you was lost to the world in the delights of
+masticatin' it, he'd have all his greasy dishes washed up and put away--"
+
+"No wonder she hated to lose a man like that," interrupted the fat lady,
+feelingly.
+
+"But he took to pinin' and proclaimin' that he shore was a lone maverick,
+and he just stampeded round lookin' for trouble and bleatin' a song that
+went:
+
+  "'No one to love,
+  None to caress.'
+
+"Well, the lady that answers his signal of distress don't bear none of the
+brands of this yere range. She lives back East, and him and her took up
+their claims in each other's affections through a matrimonial paper known
+as _The Heart and Hand_. So they takes their pens in hand and gets through
+a hard spell of courtin' on paper. Love plumb locoes Johnnie. His spellin'
+don't suit him, his handwritin' don't suit him, his natchral letters don't
+suit him. So off he sends to Denver for all the letter-writin' books he
+can buy--_Handbook of Correspondence, The Epistolary Guide, The Ready
+Letter-Writer_, and a stack more. There's no denyin' it, Johnnie certainly
+did sweat hisself over them letters."
+
+"Land's sakes!" said the fat lady.
+
+"Yes, marm; he used to read 'em to me, beginnin' how he had just seized
+five minutes to write to her, when he'd worked the whole day like a mule
+over it. She seemed to like the brand, an' when he sent her the money to
+come out here an' get married, she come as straight as if she had been
+mailed with a postage-stamp."
+
+"The brazen thing!" said the fat lady.
+
+"They stopped here, goin' home to their place. My Lord! warn't she a
+high-flyer! She done her hair like a tied-up horse-tail--my wife called it
+a Sikey knot--and it stood out a foot from her head. Some of the boys,
+kinder playful, wanted to throw a hat at it and see if it wouldn't hang,
+but they refrained, out of respect to the feelin's of the groom.
+
+"From the start," continued Leander, "the two Mrs. Daxes just hankered to
+get at each other; an' while I, as a slave to the fair sex"--here he bowed
+to the fat lady and to Miss Carmichael--"hesitates to use such langwidge in
+their presence, the attitood of them two female wimmin shorely reminds me
+of a couple of unfriendly dawgs just hankerin' to chaw each other.
+
+"At first, Johnnie waited on her hand an' foot, and she just read novels
+and played stylish all the time and danced. She was the hardest dancer
+that ever struck this yere trail, and she could give lessons to any old
+war-dancin' chief up to the reservation. No dance she ever heard of was
+too far for her to go to. She just went and danced till broad daylight.
+Many a man would have took to dissipation, in his circumstances, but
+Johnnie just lost heart and grew slatterly. Why, he'd leave his dishes go
+from one day till the next--"
+
+"There's more as would leave their dishes from one day till the next if
+they wasn't looked after." And the wife of his bosom stood in the door
+like a vengeful household goddess. Mr. Dax made a grab for the nearest
+plates.
+
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+                         Judith, The Postmistress
+
+
+The arrival of Chugg's stage with the mail should have been coincident
+with the departure of the stage that brought the travellers from "Town,"
+but Chugg was late--a tardiness ascribed to indulgence in local lethe
+waters, for Lemuel Chugg had survived a romance and drank to forget that
+woman is a variable and a changeable thing. In consequence of which the
+sober stage-driver departed without the mails, leaving Mary Carmichael and
+the fat lady to scan the horizon for the delinquent Chugg, and
+incidentally to hear a chapter of prairie romance.
+
+Some sort of revolution seemed to be in progress in the room in which the
+travellers had breakfasted. Mrs. Dax had assumed the office of dictator,
+with absolute sway. Leander, as aide-de-camp, courier, and staff, executed
+marvellous feats of domestic engineering. The late breakfast-table, swept
+and garnished with pigeon-holes, became a United States post-office,
+prepared to transact postal business, and for the time being to become the
+social centre of the surrounding country.
+
+Down the yellow road that climbed and dipped and climbed and dipped again
+over foot-hills and sprawling space till it was lost in a world without
+end, Mary Carmichael, standing in the doorway, watched an atom, so small
+that it might have been a leaf blowing along in the wind, turn into a
+horseman.
+
+There was inspiration for a hundred pictures in the way that horse was
+ridden. No flashes of daylight between saddle and rider in the jolting,
+Eastern fashion, but the long, easy sweep that covers ground imperceptibly
+and is a delight to the eye. It needed but the solitary figure to signify
+the infinitude of space in the background. In all that great, wide world
+the only hint of life was the galloping horseman, the only sound the
+rhythmical ring of the nearing hoofs. The rider, now close enough for Miss
+Carmichael to distinguish the features, was a thorough dandy of the
+saddle. No slouching garb of exigence and comfort this, but a pretty
+display of doeskin gaiter, varnished boot, and smart riding-breeches. The
+lad--he could not have been, Miss Carmichael thought, more than twenty--was
+tanned a splendid color not unlike the bloomy shading on a nasturtium. And
+when the doughty horseman made out the girl standing in the doorway, he
+smiled with a lack of formality not suggested by the town-cut of his
+trappings. Throwing the reins over the neck of the horse with the real
+Western fling, he slid from the saddle in a trice, and--Mary Carmichael
+experienced something of the gasping horror of a shocked old lady as she
+made out two splendid braids of thick, black hair. Her doughty cavalier
+was no cavalier at all, but a surprisingly handsome young woman.
+
+Miss Carmichael gasped a little even as she extended her hand, for the
+masquerader had pulled off her gauntlet and held out hers as if she was
+conferring the freedom of the wilderness. It was impossible for a homesick
+girl not to respond to such heartiness, though it was with difficulty at
+first that Mary kept her eyes on the girl's face. Curiosity, agreeably
+piqued, urged her to take another glimpse of the riding clothes that this
+young woman wore with such supreme unconcern.
+
+Now, "in the East" Mary Carmichael had not been in the habit of meeting
+black-haired goddesses who rode astride and whose assurance of the
+pleasure of meeting her made her as self-conscious as on her first day at
+dancing-school; and though she tried to prove her cosmopolitanism by not
+betraying this, the attempt was rather a failure.
+
+"Are you surprised that I did not wait for an introduction?" the girl in
+the riding clothes asked, noticing Mary's evident uneasiness; "but you
+don't know how good it is to see a girl. I'm so tired of spurs and
+sombreros and cattle and dust and distance, and there's nothing else
+here."
+
+"Where I come from it's just the other way--too many petticoats and
+hat-pins."
+
+The horseman who was no horseman dropped Miss Carmichael's hand and went
+into the house. Mary wondered if she ought to have been more cordial.
+
+From the back door came Leander, with dishcloths, which he began to hang
+on the line in a dumb, driven sort of way.
+
+"Who is she?" asked Mary.
+
+"Her?" he interrogated, jerking his head in the direction of the house.
+"The postmistress, Judith Rodney; yes, that's her name." He dropped his
+voice in the manner of one imparting momentous things. "She never wears a
+skirt ridin', any more than a man."
+
+Mary felt that she was tempting Leander into the paths of gossip,
+undoubtedly his besetting sin, but she could not resist the temptation to
+linger. He had disposed of his last dish-cloth, and he withdrew the
+remaining clothes-pin from his mouth in a way that was pathetically
+feminine.
+
+"She keeps the post-office here, since Mrs. Dax lost the job, and boards
+with us; p'r'aps it's because she is my wife's successor in office, or
+p'a'ps it's jest the natural grudge that wimmin seem to harbor agin each
+other, I dunno, but they don't sandwich none."
+
+Leander having disposed of his last dish-towel, squinted at it through his
+half-closed eyes, like an artist "sighting" a landscape, saw apparently
+that it was in drawing, and next brought his vision to bear on the back
+premises of his own dwelling, where he saw there was no wifely figure in
+evidence.
+
+"Sh-sh-h!" he said, creeping towards Mary, his dull face transfigured with
+the consciousness that he had news to tell. "Sh-sh--her brother's a
+rustler. If 'twan't for her"--Leander went through the grewsome pantomime
+of tying an imaginary rope round his neck and throwing it over the limb of
+an imaginary tree. "They're goin' to get him for shore this time, soon as
+he comes out of jail; but would you guess it from her bluff?"
+
+There was no mistaking the fate of a rustler after Mr. Dax's grisly
+demonstration, but of the quality of his calling Mary was as ignorant as
+before.
+
+"And why should they do that?" she inquired, with tenderfoot simplicity.
+
+"Stealin' cattle ain't good for the health hereabouts," said Leander, as
+one who spoke with authority. "It's apt to bring on throat trouble."
+
+But Mary did not find Leander's joke amusing. She had suddenly remembered
+the pale, gaunt man who had walked into the eating-house the previous
+morning and walked out again, his errand turned into farce-comedy by the
+cowardice of an unworthy antagonist. The pale man's grievance had had to
+do with sheep and cattle. His name had been Rodney, too. She understood
+now. He was Judith Rodney's brother, and he was in danger of being hanged.
+Mary Carmichael felt first the admiration of a girl, then the pity of a
+woman, for the brave young creature who so stoutly carried so unspeakable
+a burden. But she could not speak of her new knowledge to Leander.
+
+She glanced towards this childlike person and saw from his stealthy manner
+that he had more to impart. He walked towards the kitchen door, saw no
+one, and came back to Mary.
+
+"There ain't a man in this Gawd-forsaken country wouldn't lope at the
+chance to die for her--but the women!" Leander's pantomimic indication of
+absolute feminine antagonism was conclusive.
+
+"The wimmin treats her scabby--just scabby. Don't you go to thinkin' she
+ain't a good girl on that account"; and something like an attitude of
+chivalrous protection straightened the apologetic crook in his craven
+outline.
+
+"She's good, just good, and when a woman's that there's no use in sayin'
+it any more fanciful. As I says to my wife, every time she give me a
+chance, 'If Judy wasn't a good girl these boys about here would just
+natchrally become extinct shootin' each other upon account of her.' But
+she don't favor none enough to cause trouble."
+
+"Are the women jealous of her?"
+
+"It's her independence that riles 'em. They take on awful about her ridin'
+in pants, an' it certainly is a heap more modest than ridin' straddle in a
+hitched up caliker skirt, same as some of them do."
+
+"And do all the women out here ride astride?" Mary gasped.
+
+"A good many does, when you ain't watchin'; horses in these parts ain't
+broke for no such lopsided foolishness as side-saddles. But you see she
+does it becomin', and that's where the grudge comes in. You can't stir
+about these foot-hills without coming across a woman, like as not, holdin'
+on to a posse of kids, and ridin' clothes-pin fashion in a looped-up
+skirt; when she sees you comin' she'll p'r'aps upset a kid or two
+assoomin' a decorous attitood. That's feemi_nine_, and as such is approved
+by the ladies, but"--and here Leander put his head on one side and gave a
+grotesque impression of outraged decorum--"pants is considered unwomanly."
+
+"Leander! Leander!" came in accusing accents from the kitchen.
+
+"Run!" gasped Mrs. Dax's handmaiden; "don't let her catch us chinnin'."
+
+Mary Carmichael ran round one side of the house as she was bidden, but,
+like Lot's wife, could not resist the temptation of looking back. Leander,
+with incredible rapidity, grabbed two clothes-pins off the line, clutched
+a dish-towel, shook it. "Comin'! comin'!" he called, as he went through
+the farce of rehanging it.
+
+The lonesomeness of plain and foot-hill, the utter lack of the human
+element that gives to this country its character of penetrating
+desolation, had been changed while Mary Carmichael forgathered with
+Leander by the clothes-line. From the four quarters of the compass, men in
+sombreros, flannel shirts, and all manner of strange habiliments came
+galloping over the roads as if their horses were as keen on reaching Dax's
+as their riders. They came towards the house at full tilt, their horses
+stretching flat with ears laid back viciously, and Mary, who was unused to
+the tricks of cow-ponies, expected to see them ride through the front
+door, merely by way of demonstrating their sense of humor. Not so; the
+little pintos, buckskins, bays, and chestnuts dashed to the door and
+stopped short in a full gallop; as a bit of staccato equestrianism it was
+superb.
+
+And then the wherefore of all this dashing horsemanship, this curveting,
+prancing, galloping revival of knightly tourney effects was
+apparent--Judith Rodney had opened post-office. She had changed her riding
+clothes; or, rather, that portion of them to which the ladies took
+exception was now concealed by a long, black skirt. Her wonderful braids
+of black hair had been twisted high on her head. She was well worth a trip
+across the alkali wastes to see. The room was packed with men. One
+unconsciously got the impression that a fire, a fight, or some
+crowd-collecting casualty had happened. Above the continual clinking of
+spurs there arose every idiom and peculiarity of speech of which these
+United States are capable. There is no Western dialect, properly speaking.
+Men bring their modes of expression with them from Maine or Minnesota, as
+the case may be, but their figures of speech, which give an essential
+picturesqueness to their language, are almost entirely local--the cattle
+and sheep industries, prospecting, the Indians, poker, faro, the
+dance-halls, all contribute their printable or unprintable embellishment.
+
+Judith managed them all--cow-punchers, sheep-herders, prospectors,
+freighters--with an impersonal skill that suggested a little solitary
+exercise in the bowling-alley. The ten-pins took their tumbles in good
+part--no one could congratulate himself on escaping the levelling ball--and
+where there's a universal lack of luck, doubtless also there will be found
+a sort of grim fellowship.
+
+That they were all more or less in love with her there could be no doubt.
+As a matter of fact, Judith Rodney did not depend on the scarcity of women
+in the desert for her pre-eminence in the interests of this hot-headed
+group. Her personality--and through no conscious effort of hers--would have
+been pre-eminent anywhere. As it was, in this woman-forsaken wilderness
+she might have stirred up a modern edition of the Trojan war at any
+moment. That she did not, despite the lurking suggestion of temptation
+written all over her, brought back the words of Leander: "If Judy wasn't a
+good girl, these boys would just nacherally become extinct shooting each
+other upon account of her."
+
+And yet what a woman she was! It struck Miss Carmichael, as she watched
+Judith hold these warring elements in the hollow of her hand, that her
+interest might be due to a certain temperamental fusion; that there might
+lie, at the essence of her being, a subtle combination of saint and devil.
+One could fancy her leading an army on a crusade or provoking a bar-room
+brawl. The challenging quality of her beauty, the vividness of color, the
+suggestion of endurance and radiating health in every line, were
+comparable to the great primeval forces about her. She was cast to be the
+mother of men of brawn and muscle, who would make this vast, unclaimed
+wilderness subject to them.
+
+At present neither pole of her character, as it had been hastily
+estimated, was even remotely suggested. The atmosphere in the post-office
+was, considering the potential violence of its visitors, singularly calm.
+And Judith, feeding these wild border lads on scraps of chaff and banter,
+and retaining their absolute loyalty, was a sight worth seeing. She had
+the alertness of a lion-tamer locked in a cage with the lords of the
+jungle; the rashly confident she humbled, the meek she exalted, and all
+with such genuine good-fellowship, such an absence of coquetry in the
+genial game of give and take, that one ceased to wonder at even the
+devotion of Leander. And since they were to her, on her own confession,
+but "spurs and sombreros," one wondered at the elaboration of the comedy,
+the endless wire-pulling in the manipulation of these most picturesque
+marionettes--until one remembered the outlaw brother and felt that what she
+did she did for him.
+
+"You right shore there ain't a letter for me, Miss Judith. My creditors
+are pretty faithful 'bout bearing me in mind." It was the third time that
+the big, shambling Texan who had been one of the company at Mrs. Clark's
+eating-house had inquired for mail, and seemed so embarrassed by his own
+bulk that he moved cautiously, as if he might step on a fellow-creature
+and maim him. Each time he had asked for a letter he took his place at the
+end of the waiting-line and patiently bided his time for the chance of an
+extra word with the postmistress.
+
+"They've begun to lose hope, Texas."
+
+She shuffled the letters impartially, as a goddess dispensing fate, and
+barely glanced at the man who had ridden a hundred and fifty miles across
+sand and cactus to see her.
+
+"That's the difference between them and me." There was a grim finality in
+his tone.
+
+"What, you're going to take your place at the end of that line again! I'll
+try and find you a circular."
+
+He tried to look at her angrily, but she smiled at him with such
+good-fellowship that he went off singing significantly that universal
+anthem of the cow-puncher the West over:
+
+  "Oh, bury me not on the lone prairie,
+    In a narrow grave just six by three,
+    Where the wild coyotes will howl o'er me.
+  Oh, bury me not on the lone prairie."
+
+"Ain't there a love letter for me?" The young man who inquired seemed to
+belong to a different race from these bronzed squires of the saddle. He
+suggested over-crowded excursion boats on Sunday afternoons in swarming
+Eastern cities. He buttonholed every one and explained his presence in the
+West on the score of his health, as though leaving his native asphalt were
+a thing that demanded apology.
+
+"Yes," answered the postmistress, with a real motherly note, "here is one
+from Hugous & Co."
+
+A roar went up at this, and the blushing tenderfoot pocketed his third
+bill for the most theatrical style of Mexican sombrero; it had a brass
+snake coiled round the crown for a hat-band, and a cow-puncher in good and
+regular standing would have preferred going bareheaded to wearing it.
+
+"She seems to be pressing her suit, son; you better name the day," one of
+the loungers suggested.
+
+"The blamed thing ain't worth twenty-five dollars," the young man from the
+East declared. A conspicuous silence followed. It seemed to irritate the
+owner of the hat that no one would defend it. "It ain't worth it," he
+repeated.
+
+"I think you allowed you was out here for your health?" the big Texan, who
+had returned from the corral, inquired.
+
+"Betcher life," swaggered the man with the hat, "N'York's good enough for
+me."
+
+"But"--and the Texan smiled sweetly--"the man who sold you the hat ain't out
+here for his."
+
+Judith hid her head and stamped letters. The boys were suspiciously quiet,
+then some one began to chant:
+
+  "The devil examined the desert well,
+  And made up his mind 'twas too dry for hell;
+  He put up the prices his pockets to swell,
+  And called it a--heal-th resort."
+
+The postmistress waited for the last note of the chorus to die away, and
+read from a package she held in her hand--"'Mrs. Henry Lee, Deer Lodge,
+Wyoming.' Well, Henry, here's a wedding-present, I guess. And my
+congratulations, though you've hardly treated us well in never saying a
+word."
+
+The unfortunate Henry, who hadn't even a sweetheart, and who was noted as
+the shyest man in the "Goose Creek Outfit," had to submit to the mock
+congratulations of every man in the room and promise to set up the drinks
+later.
+
+"I never felt we'd keep you long, son; them golden curls seldom gets a
+chance to ripen singly."
+
+"Shoshone squaw, did you say she was, Henry? They ain't much for looks,
+but there's a heep of wear to 'em."
+
+"Oh, go on, now; you fellows know I ain't married." And the boy handled
+the package with a sort of dumb wonder, as if the superscription were
+indisputable evidence of a wife's existence.
+
+"Open it, Henry; you shore don't harbor sentiments of curiosity regarding
+the post-office dealings of your lady."
+
+"Now, old man, this here may be grounds for divorce."
+
+"See what the other fellow's sending your wife."
+
+Henry, badgered, jostled, the target of many a homely witticism, finally
+opened the package, which proved to be a sample bottle of baby food. At
+sight of it they howled like Apaches, and Henry was again forced to
+receive their congratulations. Judith, who had been an interested
+on-looker without joining in the merriment, now detected in the tenor of
+their humor a tendency towards breadth. In an instant her manner was
+official; rapping the table with her mailing-stamp, she announced:
+
+"Boys, this post-office closes in ten minutes, if you want to buy any
+stamps."
+
+The silence following this statement on the part of the postmistress was
+instantaneous. Henry took his mirth-provoking package and went his way;
+some of the more hilariously inclined followed him. The remainder confined
+themselves absolutely to business, scrawling postal-cards or reading their
+mail. The pounce of the official stamp on the letters, as the postmistress
+checked them off for the mail-bag, was the only sound in the hot
+stillness.
+
+A heavily built man, older than those who had been keeping the post-office
+lively, now took advantage of the lull to approach Judith. He had a
+twinkling face, all circles and pouches, but it grew graver as he spoke to
+the postmistress. He was Major Atkins, formerly a famous cavalry officer,
+but since his retirement a cattle-man whose herds grazed to the pan-handle
+of Texas. As he took his mail, talking meantime of politics, of the heat,
+of the lack of water, in the loud voice for which he was famous, he
+managed, with clumsy diplomacy, to interject a word or two for her own ear
+alone.
+
+"Jim's out," he conveyed to her, in a successfully muffled tone. "He's
+out, and they're after him, hot. Get him out of the State, Judy--get him
+out, _quick_. He tried to kill Simpson at Mrs. Clark's, in town,
+yesterday. The little Eastern girl that's here will tell you." Then the
+major was gone before Judith could perfectly realize the significance of
+what he had told her.
+
+She threw back her head and the pulse in her throat beat. Like a wild
+forest thing, at the first warning sound, she considered: Was it time for
+flight?--or was the warning but the crackling of a twig? Major Atkins was a
+cattle-man: her brother hated all cattle-men. How disinterested had been
+the major's warning! He had always been her friend. Mrs. Atkins had been
+one of the ladies at the post who had helped to send her to school to the
+nuns at Santa Fe. She despised herself for doubting; yet these were
+troublous times, and all was fair between sheep and cattle-men. Major
+Atkins had spoken of the Eastern girl; then that pretty, little,
+curly-haired creature, whom Judith had found standing in the sunshine, had
+seen Jim--had heard him threaten to kill. Should she ask her about
+it--consult her? Judith's training was not one to impel her to give her
+confidence to strangers, still she had liked the little Eastern girl.
+
+These were the perplexities that beset her, sweeping her thoughts hither
+and thither, as sea-weed is swept by the wash of the waves. She strove to
+collect her faculties. How should she rid the house of her cavaliers? She
+had regularly to refuse some half-dozen of them each day that she kept
+post-office.
+
+In a few minutes more the group in the post-office began to disperse under
+the skilful manipulation of the postmistress. To some she sold stamps with
+an air of "God speed you," and they were soon but dwindling specks on the
+horizon. To others she implied such friendly farewells that there was
+nothing to do but betake themselves to their saddles. Others had
+compromised with the saloon opposite, and their roaring mirth came in
+snatches of song and shouts of laughter. She fastened up the little pile
+of letters that had remained uncalled for with what seemed a deliberate
+slowness. Each time any one entered the room she looked up--then the hope
+died hard in her face. Leander came in with catlike tread and removed the
+pigeon-holes from the table. The post-office was closed. Family life had
+been resumed at the Daxes'.
+
+Judith left the room and stood in the blinding sunlight, basking in it as
+if she were cold. The mercury must have stood close to a hundred, and she
+was hatless. There was no trace of her ebullient spirits of the morning.
+Her head was sunk on her breast and she held her hands with locked fingers
+behind her. It was hot, hot as the breaths of a thousand belching
+furnaces. A white, burning glare had spread itself from horizon to
+horizon, and the earth wrinkled and cracked beneath it. From every corner
+of this parched wilderness came an ominous whirring, like the last
+wheezing gasp of an alarm-clock before striking the hour. This menacing
+orchestration was nothing more or less than millions of grasshoppers
+rasping legs and wings together in hoarse appreciation of the heat and
+glare; but it had a sound that boded evil. Again and again she turned
+towards the yellow road as it dipped over the hills; but there was never a
+glimpse of a horseman from that direction.
+
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+                          The Trail Of Sentiment
+
+
+Within the house the travellers had disposed themselves in a repressed and
+melancholy circle that suggested the suspended animation of a funeral
+gathering. The fat lady had turned back her skirt to save her travelling
+dress. The stage was late, and there was no good and sufficient reason for
+wearing it out. A similar consideration of economy led her to flirt off
+flies with her second best pocket-handkerchief. Mrs. Dax presided over the
+gathering with awful severity. Every one truckled to her shamefully,
+receiving her lightest remarks as if they were to be inscribed on tablets
+of bronze. Leander, his eyes bright with excitement at being received in
+the family circle on an equal footing, balanced perilously on the edge of
+his chair, anticipating dismissal.
+
+"Chugg's never ben so late as this," said Mrs. Dax, rocking herself
+furiously. She strongly resembled one of those mottled chargers of the
+nursery whose flaunting nostrils seem forever on the point of sending
+forth flame. Leander, the fat lady, and Miss Carmichael meekly murmured
+assent and condemnation.
+
+"And there ain't a sign of him," said Mrs. Dax, returning to the house
+after straining the landscape through her all-observant eye, and not
+detecting him in any of the remote pin-pricks on the horizon, in which
+these plainsfolk invariably decipher a herd of antelope, an elk or two, or
+a horseman.
+
+"Bet he had a woman in the stage and upset it with her," said Leander, in
+the animated manner of a poor relation currying favor with a bit of news.
+
+Mrs. Dax regarded him severely for a moment, then conspicuously addressed
+her next remark to the ladies. "Bet he had a woman in the stage, the old
+scoundrel!"
+
+"Wonder who she was?" said Leander, with the sparkling triumph of a poor
+relation whose surmise had been accepted. But Mrs. Dax had evidently
+decided that Leander had gone far enough.
+
+"Was you expectin' any of your lady friends by Chugg's stage that you are
+so frettin' anxious?" she inquired, and the poor relation collapsed
+miserably.
+
+"You've heard about Chugg's goin' on since 'Mountain Pink' jilted him?"
+inquired Mrs. Dax of the fat lady, as the only one of the party who might
+have kept abreast with the social chronicles of the neighborhood.
+
+"My land, yes," responded the fat lady, proud to be regarded as socially
+cognizant. "M' son says he's plumb locoed about it--didn't want me to
+travel by his stage. But I said he dassent upset a woman of my age--he just
+nacherally dassent!"
+
+Miss Carmichael, by dint of patient inquiry, finally got the story which
+was popularly supposed to account for the misdemeanors of the
+stage-driver, including his present delinquency that was delaying them on
+their journey.
+
+It appeared that Lemuel Chugg, then writhing in the coils of perverse
+romance, was among the last of those famous old stage-drivers whose
+talents combined skill at handling the ribbons with the diplomacy
+necessary to treat with a masked envoy on the road. His luck in these
+encounters was proverbial, and many were the hair-breadth escapes due to
+Chugg's ready wit and quick aim; and, to quote Leander, "while he had been
+shot as full of holes as a salt-shaker, there was a lot of fight in the
+old man yet."
+
+Chugg had had no loves, no hates, no virtues, no genial vices after the
+manner of these frontiersmen. Avarice had warmed the cockles of his heart,
+and the fetish he prayed to was an old gray woollen stocking, stuffed so
+full of twenty-dollar gold pieces that it presented the bulbous appearance
+of the "before treatment" view of a chiropodist's sign. This darling of
+his old age had been waxing fat since Chugg's earliest manhood. It had
+been his only love--till he met Mountain Pink.
+
+Mountain Pink's husband kept a road-ranch somewhere on Chugg's
+stage-route. She was of a buxom type whose red-and-white complexion had
+not yet surrendered to the winds, the biting dust, and the alkali water.
+Furthermore, she could "bring about a dried-apple pie" to make a man
+forget the cooking of his mother. Great was the havoc wrought by Mountain
+Pink's pies and complexion, but she followed the decorous precedent of
+Caesar's wife, and, like her pastry, remained above suspicion.
+
+Her husband, whose name was Jim Bosky, seemed, to the self-impanelled jury
+that spent its time sitting on the case, singularly insensible to his own
+advantages. Not only did he fail to take a proper pride in her beauty, but
+there were dark hints abroad that he had never tasted one of her pies.
+When delicately questioned on this point, at that stage of liquid
+refreshment that makes these little personalities not impossible, Bosky
+had grimly quoted the dearth of shoes among shoe-makers' children.
+
+Whatever were the facts of the case, Mountain Pink got the sympathy that
+might have been expected in a section of the country where the ratio of
+the sexes is fifty to one. Chugg, eating her pies regularly once a week on
+his stage-route, said nothing, but he presented her with a red plush
+photograph album with oxidized silver clasps, and by this first reckless
+expenditure of money in the life of Chugg, Natrona, Johnson, Converse, and
+Sweetwater counties knew that Cupid had at last found a vulnerable spot in
+the tough and weather-tanned hide of the old stage-driver.
+
+Nor did Cupid stop here with his pranks. Having inoculated the
+stage-driver with the virus of romance, madness began to work in the veins
+of Chugg. He presented Mountain Pink with the gray woollen stocking--not
+extracting a single coin--and urged her to get a divorce from the clodlike
+man who had never appreciated her and marry him.
+
+Mountain Pink coyly took the stocking so generously given for the divorce
+and subsequent trousseau, and Chugg continued to drive his stage with an
+Apollo-like abandon, whistling love-songs the while.
+
+Coincident with Mountain Pink's disappearance Dakotaward, in the interests
+of freedom, went also one Bob Catlin, a mule-wrangler. Bosky, with
+conspicuous pessimism, hoped for the worst from the beginning, and as time
+went on and nothing was heard of either of the wanderers, some of Mountain
+Pink's most loyal adherents confessed it looked "romancy." But crusty old
+Chugg remained true to his ideal. "She'll write when she gets good and
+ready," and then concluded, loyally, "Maybe she can't write, nohow," and
+nothing could shake his faith.
+
+When Mountain Pink and the mule-wrangler returned as bride and groom and
+set up housekeeping on the remainder of Chugg's stocking, and on his
+stage-route, too, so that he had to drive right past the honeymoon cottage
+every time he completed the circuit, they lost caste in Carbon County.
+Chugg never spoke of the faithlessness of Mountain Pink. His bitterness
+found vent in tipping over the stage when his passengers were confined to
+members of the former Mrs. Bosky's sex, and, as Leander said, "the flask
+in his innerds held more." And these were the only traces of tragedy in
+the life of Lemuel Chugg, stage-driver.
+
+Judith had continued her unquiet pacing in the blinding glare while the
+group within doors, somnolent from the heat and the incessant shrilling of
+the locusts, droningly discussed the faithlessness of Mountain Pink,
+dozed, and took up the thread of the romance. Each time she turned Judith
+would stop and scan the yellow road, shading her eyes with her hand, and
+each time she had turned away and resumed her walk. Mary, who gave the
+postmistress no unstinted share of admiration for the courage with which
+she faced her difficulties, and who had been seeking an opportunity to
+signify her friendship, and now that she saw the last of the gallants
+depart, inquired of Judith if she might join her.
+
+They walked without speaking for several minutes, enjoying a sense of
+comradeship hardly in keeping with the brevity of their acquaintance; a
+freedom from restraint spared them the necessity of exchanging small-talk,
+that frequently irritating toll exacted as tribute to possible friendship.
+
+The desert lay white and palpitating beneath the noonday glare, and from
+the outermost rim of desolation came dancing "dust-devils" whirling and
+gliding through the mazes of their eerie dance. "I think sometimes," said
+Judith, "that they are the ghosts of those who have died of thirst in the
+desert."
+
+Mary shuddered imperceptibly. "How do you stand it with never a glimpse of
+the sea?"
+
+"You'll love it, or hate it; the desert is too jealous for half measures.
+As for the sea"--Judith shrugged her fine shoulders--"from all I've heard of
+it, it must be very wet."
+
+Each felt a reticence about broaching the subject uppermost in her
+thoughts--Judith from the instinctive tendency towards secretiveness that
+was part of the heritage of her Indian blood; Mary because the subject so
+closely concerned this girl for whom she felt such genuine admiration.
+
+Judith finally brought up the matter with an abruptness that scarce
+concealed her anxiety.
+
+"You saw my brother yesterday at Mrs. Clark's eating-house; will you be
+good enough to tell me just what happened?"
+
+Mary related the incident in detail, Judith cross-examining her minutely
+as to the temper of the men at table towards Jim. Did she know if any
+cattle-men were present? Did she hear where her brother had gone?
+
+Mary had heard nothing further after he had left the eating-house; the
+only one she had talked to had been Mrs. Clark, whose sympathy had been
+entirely with Jim. Judith thanked her, but in reality she knew no more now
+than she had heard from Major Atkins.
+
+Judith now stopped in their walk and stood facing the road as it rolled
+over the foot-hills--a skein of yellow silk glimmering in the sun. Then
+Mary saw that the object spinning across it in the distance, hardly bigger
+than a doll's carriage, was the long-delayed stage. She spoke to the
+postmistress, but apparently she did not hear--Judith was watching the
+nearing stage as if it might bring some message of life and death. She
+stood still, and the drooping lines of her figure straightened, every
+fibre of her beauty kindled. She was like a flame, paling the sunlight.
+
+And presently was heard the uncouth music of sixteen iron-shod hoofs
+beating hard from the earth rhythmic notes which presently grew hollow and
+sonorous as they came rattling over the wooden bridge that spanned the
+creek.
+
+"Chugg!" exclaimed Leander, rushing to the door in a tumult. There was
+something crucial in the arrival of the delayed stage-driver. His
+delinquencies had deflected the course of the travellers, left them
+stranded in a remote corner of the wilderness; but now they should again
+resume the thread of things; Chugg's coming was an event.
+
+"'Tain't Chugg, by God!" said Leander, impelled to violent language by the
+unexpected.
+
+"It's Peter Hamilton!" exclaimed Mrs. Dax.
+
+"Land's sakes, the New-Yorker!" said the fat lady. Only Judith said
+nothing.
+
+Mr. Hamilton held the ribbons of that battered prairie-stage as if he had
+been driving past the judges' bench at the Horse Show. Furthermore, he
+wore blue overalls, a flannel shirt, and a sombrero, which sartorial
+inventory, while it highly became the slim young giant, added an extra
+comedy touch to his role of whip. He was as dusty as a miller;
+close-cropped, curly head, features, and clothes were covered with a fine
+alkali powdering; but he carried his youth as a banner streaming in the
+blue. And he swung from the stage with the easy flow of muscle that is the
+reward of those who live in the saddle and make a fine art of throwing the
+lariat.
+
+They greeted him heartily, all but Judith, who did not trust herself to
+speak to him before the prying eyes of Mrs. Dax, and escaped to the house.
+Chugg's latest excursion into oblivion had resulted in a fall from the
+box. He was not badly hurt, and recuperation was largely a matter of
+"sleeping it off," concluded Peter Hamilton's bulletin of the condition of
+the stage-driver. So the travellers were still marooned at Dax's, and the
+prospect of continuing their journey was as vague as ever.
+
+"Last I heard of you," said Mrs. Dax to Hamilton, with a sort of stone-age
+playfulness, "you was punching cows over to the Bitter Root."
+
+"That's true, Mrs. Dax"--he gave her his most winning smile--"but I could
+not stay away from you long."
+
+Leander grimaced and rubbed his hands in an ecstasy of delight at finding
+a man who had the temerity to bandy words with Mrs. Dax.
+
+"Hum-m-m-ph!" she whinnied, with equine coquetry. "Guess it was rustlers
+brought you back as much as me."
+
+Judith, who had entered the room in time to hear Mrs. Dax's last remark,
+greeted him casually, but her eyes, as they met his, were full of
+questioning fear. Had he come from the Bitter Root range to hunt down her
+brother? The thought was intolerable. Yet, when he had bade her good-bye
+some three weeks ago, he had told her that he did not expect to return
+much before the fall "round-up." She had heard, a day or two before, that
+he was again in the Wind River country, and her morning vigil beneath the
+glare of the desert sun had been for him.
+
+Mrs. Dax regarded them with the mercilessness of a death-watch; she
+remembered the time when Hamilton's excuses for his frequent presence at
+the post-office had been more voluble than logical. But now he no longer
+came, and Judith, for all her deliberate flow of spirits, did not quite
+convince the watchful eyes of Leander's lady--the postmistress was a trifle
+too cheerful.
+
+"Mrs. Dax," pleaded Peter, boyishly, "I'm perishing for a cup of coffee,
+and I've got to get back to my outfit before dark."
+
+"Oh, go on with you," whinnied the gorgon; but she left the room to make
+the coffee.
+
+Judith's eyes sought his. "Why don't you and Leander form a coalition for
+the overthrow of the enemy?" His voice had dropped a tone lower than in
+his parley with Mrs. Dax; it might have implied special devotion, or it
+might have implied but the passing tribute to a beautiful woman in a
+country where women were few--the generic admiration of all men for all
+women, ephemerally specialized by place and circumstance.
+
+But Judith, harassed at every turn, heart-sick with anxiety, had
+anticipated in Peter's coming, if not a solution of her troubles, at least
+some evidence of sustaining sympathy, and was in no mood for resuscitating
+the perennial pleasantries anent Leander and his masterful lady.
+
+The shrilling of the locusts emphasized their silence. She spoke to him
+casually of his change of plan, but he turned the subject, and Judith let
+the matter drop. She was too simple a woman to stoop to oblique measures
+for the gaining of her own ends. If he was here to hunt down her brother,
+if he was here to see the Eastern woman at the Wetmore ranch--well, "life
+was life," to be taken or left. Thus spoke the fatalism that was the
+heritage of her Indian blood.
+
+The thought of Miss Colebrooke at Wetmore's reminded her of a letter for
+Peter that had been brought that morning by one of the Wetmore cow-boys.
+
+"I forgot--there's a letter for you." She went to the pigeon-holes on the
+wall that held the flotsam and jetsam of unclaimed mail, and brought him a
+square, blue linen envelope--distinctly a lady's letter.
+
+Peter took it with rather a forced air of magnanimity, as if in neglecting
+to present it to him sooner she drew heavily on his reserve of patience.
+Tearing open the envelope, he read it voraciously, read it to the
+exclusion of his surroundings, the world at large, and--Judith. He strode
+up and down the floor two or three times, and called to Leander, who was
+passing:
+
+"Dax, I must have that gray mare of yours right away." He went in the
+direction of the stable, without a second glance at the postmistress, and
+presently they saw him galloping off in the opposite direction from which
+he had come. Mrs. Dax came in with a tray on which were a pot of coffee
+and sundry substantial delicacies.
+
+"Where's he gone?" she demanded, putting the tray down so hard that the
+coffee slopped.
+
+"I dunno," said Leander. "He said he'd got to have the gray mare, saddled
+her hisself, and rode off like hell."
+
+Mrs. Dax looked at them all savagely for the explanation that they could
+not give. In sending her out to make coffee she felt that Peter, whom she
+regarded in the light of a weakness, had taken advantage of her affections
+to dupe her in regard to his plans.
+
+"Take them things back to the kitchen," she commanded Leander.
+
+Mary Carmichael involuntarily glanced at Judith; the fall of the leaf was
+in her cheek.
+
+Peter Hamilton, bowed in his saddle and flogging forward inhumanely, bred
+rife speculation as to his destination among the group that watched him
+from the Daxes' front door. Mrs. Dax, who entertained so profound a
+respect for her own omniscience that she disdained to arrive at a
+conclusion by a logical process of deduction, was "plumb certain that he
+had gone after 'rustlers!'" Leander, who had held no opinions since his
+marriage except that first and all-comprehensive tenet of his creed--that
+his wife was a person to be loved, honored, and obeyed instantly--agreed
+with his lady by a process of reflex action. The fat lady, who had a
+commonplace for every occasion, didn't "know what we were all coming to."
+Miss Carmichael, who was beginning to find her capacity for amazement
+overstrained, alone accepted this last incident with apathy. Mr. Hamilton
+might have gone in swift pursuit of cattle thieves or he might be riding
+the mare to death for pure whimsy. Only Judith Rodney, who said nothing,
+felt that he was spurring across the wilderness at breakneck speed to see
+a girl at Wetmore's. But her lack of comment caused no ripple of surprise
+in the flow of loose-lipped speculation that served, for the time being,
+to inject a casual interest into the talk of these folk, bored to the
+verge of demoralization by long waiting for Chugg.
+
+Judith preferred to confirm her apprehensions regarding Hamilton's ride,
+alone. She knew--had not all her woman's intuitions risen in clamorous
+warning--and yet she hoped, hoped despairingly, even though the dread
+alternative to the girl at the Wetmore ranch threatened lynch law for her
+brother. Her very gait changed as she withdrew from the group about the
+door, covertly gaining her vantage-ground inch by inch. The heels of her
+riding-boots made no sound as she stole across the kitchen floor, toeing
+in like an Indian tracking an enemy through the forest. The small window
+at the back of the kitchen commanded a view of the road in all its
+sprawling circumlocution. Seen from this prospect, it had no more design
+than the idle scrawlings of a child on a bit of paper; but the choice of
+roads to Good and Evil was not fraught with more momentous consequences
+than was each prong of that fork towards which Hamilton was galloping.
+
+The right arm swung towards the Wetmore ranch, where at certain times
+during the course of the year a hundred cow-punchers reported on the stock
+that grazed in four States. At certain seasons, likewise, despite the fact
+that the ranch was well into the foot-hill country, there might be found a
+New York family playing at life primeval with the co-operation of
+porcelain bath-tubs, a French _chef_, and electric light.
+
+The left fork of the road had a meaner destiny. It dipped straight into
+desolation, penetrating a naked wilderness where bad men skulked till the
+evil they had done was forgotten in deeds that called afresh to Heaven for
+vengeance. It was well away on this west fork of the road that they
+lynched Kate Watson--"Cattle Kate"--for the crime of loyalty. It was she,
+intrepid and reckless, who threatened the horde of masked scoundrels when
+they came to lynch her man for the iniquity of raising a few vegetables on
+a strip of ground that cut into their grazing country. And when she,
+recognizing them, masked though they were, threatened them with the
+vengeance of the law, they hanged her with her man high as Haman.
+
+Judith watched Hamilton with narrowing eyes. And now she was all Indian,
+the white woman in her dead. Only the Sioux watched, and, in the patient,
+Indian style, bided its time. "Cattle thieves," "the girl at
+Wetmore's"--the words sang themselves in her head like an incantation.
+"Cattle thieves" meant her brother, their recognized leader--her brother,
+who was dearer to her than the heart in her breast, the eye in her head,
+the right hand that held together the shambling, uncertain destiny of her
+people. Would he turn to the left, Justice, on a pale horse, hunting her
+brother gallowsward? Would he turn towards the right, the impetuous lover
+spurring his steed that he might come swiftly to the woman. A pulse in her
+bosom rose slowly until her breath was suspended, then fell again; she was
+still watching, without an outward quiver, long after he had turned to the
+right--and the woman.
+
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+
+                         A Daughter Of The Desert
+
+
+Judith knew that the name of the girl whose letter sent Peter Hamilton
+vaulting to the saddle was Katherine Colebrooke. There had been a deal of
+letter-writing between her and the young cow-puncher of late, of which
+perforce, by a singular irony of fate, the postmistress had been the
+involuntary instrument. The correspondence had followed a recent hasty
+journey to New York, undertaken somewhat unwillingly by Hamilton in the
+interest of certain affairs connected with the settlement of an estate.
+
+The precipitancy of this latest turn of events bewildered Judith; but yet
+a little while--a matter of weeks and days--and her friendship with Hamilton
+had been of that pleasantly indefinite estate situated somewhere on the
+borderland of romance, a kingdom where there is no law but the mutual
+interest of the wayfarers. Judith and Peter had been pitifully new at the
+game of life when the gods vouchsafed them the equivocal blessing of
+propinquity. Judith was but lately come from the convent at Santa Fe, and
+Hamilton from the university whose honors availed him little in the
+trailing of cattle over the range or in the sweat and tumult of the
+branding-pen. It was a strange election of opportunity for a man who had
+been class poet and had rather conspicuously avoided athletics during his
+entire college course. In pursuing fortune westward Hamilton did not lack
+for chroniclers who would not have missed a good story for the want of an
+authentic dramatic interpretation of his plans. His uncle, said they, who
+had put him through college, was disposed to let him sink or swim by his
+own efforts; or, again, he had quarrelled with this same omnipotent uncle
+and walked from his presence with no prospects but those within grasp of
+his own hand. Again, he had taken the negative of a fair lady more to
+heart than two-and-twenty is in the habit of taking negatives. Peter made
+no confidences. He went West to punch cows for the Wetmore outfit; he was
+a distant connection of the Wetmores through his mother's side of the
+family.
+
+In those days Peter wore his rue--whether for lady fair or for towering
+prospects stricken down--with a tinge of wan melancholy not unbecoming to a
+gentle aquilinity of profile, softened by the grace of adolescence. His
+instinctive aristocracy of manners and taste would have availed him little
+with his new associates had he been a whit less manly. But as he shirked
+no part of the universal hardship, they left him his reticence. He even
+came to enjoy a sort of remote popularity as one who was conversant with
+the best--a nonchalant social connoisseur--yet who realized the stern
+primitive beauties of the range life.
+
+Judith's convent upbringing had conferred on her the doubtful advantage of
+a gentlewoman's tastes and bearing, making of her, therefore, an alien in
+her father's house. When Mrs. Atkins, who was responsible for her
+education, realized the equivocal good of these things, and saw moreover
+that the girl had grown to be a beauty, she offered to adopt her; but
+Judith, with the pitiful heroism of youth that understands little of what
+it is renouncing, thought herself strong enough to hold together a family,
+uncertain of purpose as quicksilver.
+
+In those tragic days of readjustment came Peter Hamilton, as strange to
+the bald conditions of frontier life as the girl herself. From the
+beginning there had been between them the barrier of circumstance.
+Hamilton was poor, Judith the mainstay of a household whose thriftlessness
+had become a proverb. He came of a family that numbered a signer of the
+Declaration of Independence, a famous chief-justice, and the dean of a
+great university; Judith was uncertain of her right to the very name she
+bore. And yet they were young, he a man, she a woman--eternal fountain of
+interest. A precocious sense of the fitness of things was the compass that
+enabled Peter to steer through the deep waters in the years that followed.
+But the girl paid the penalty of her great heart; in that troublous sea of
+friendship, she was soon adrift without rudder, sail, or compass.
+
+Judith was now eight-and-twenty, and a sculptor would have found a hundred
+statues in her. Long of limb, deep-bosomed, youth and health radiated from
+her as sparks fly upward. In sunlight, her black hair had the bluish
+iridescence of a ripe plum. The eyes were deep and questioning--the eyes of
+a young seraph whose wings had not yet brushed the far distant heights of
+paradise. Again, in her pagan gladness of living, she might have been a
+Valkyr come down from Valhalla on a shooting-star. And yet, in this
+wilderness that was famishing for woman's love and tears and laughter, by
+a very perversity of fate she walked alone.
+
+She was a true daughter of the desert, the child of stark, unlovely
+circumstance. No well-bred romance of book and bells and churchly
+benediction had ushered her into being. Her maternal grandfather had been
+the famous Sioux chief, Flying Hawk; her grandmother, a white woman, who
+knew no word of her people's tongue, nor yet her name or race. The Indians
+found the white baby sleeping by her dead mother after the massacre of an
+emigrant train. They took her with them and she grew up, in the Black Hill
+country, a white-skinned Sioux, marrying a chief of the people that had
+slain her people. She accepted her squaw's portion uncomplainingly; slaved
+cheerfully at squaw's work while her brave made war on the whites, hunted,
+and smoked. She reared her half-breed children in the legends of their
+father's people, and died, a withered crone, cursing the pale-faces who
+had robbed the Sioux of the buffalo and their hunting-ground.
+
+Her daughter, Singing Stream, who knew no word of English, but who could
+do better bead-work than any squaw in the tribe, went to live with Warren
+Rodney when he finished his cabin on Elder Creek. That was before the gold
+fever reached the Black Hills, and Rodney built the cabin that he might
+fish and hunt and forget the East and why he left it. There were reasons
+why he wanted to forget his identity as a white man in his play at being
+an Indian. In the first flare of youth and the joy of having come into her
+woman's kingdom, the half-breed squaw was pretty; she was proud, too, of
+her white man, the house he had built her, and the girl pappoose with blue
+eyes. Furthermore, she had been taught to serve man meekly, for he was the
+lord of creation.
+
+Rodney talked Sioux to her. He had all but forgotten he was a white man.
+The girl pappoose ran about the cabin, brown and bare, but for the bead
+jacket Singing Stream had made for her in the pride of her maternity.
+Rodney called the little girl "Judith." Her Indian mother never guessed
+the significance of the strange name that she could not say, but made at
+least ten soft singing syllables of, in the Indian way. The little Judith
+greeted her father in strange lispings; Warren Rodney was far from unhappy
+in playing at primitive man. This recessional into conditions primeval
+endured for "seven snows," as the Indian tongue hath it. Then the squaw
+began to break, after the manner of the women of her father's people. She
+had begun her race with time a decade after Warren Rodney, and she had
+outdistanced him by a decade.
+
+And then the Tumlins came from Tennessee to the Black Hills. They came in
+an ox-cart, and the days of their journey were more than two years. They
+had stopped in Ohio, and again in Illinois; and, behold! neither was the
+promised land, the land that their excited imaginations had painted from
+the large talk of returning travellers, and that was further glorified
+through their own thriftless discontent with conditions at home. They had
+travelled on and on across half a continent in the wake of a vanishing
+sky-line. The vague westward impulse was luring them to California, but
+they waited in Dakota that their starved stock might fatten, and while
+they rested themselves from the long journey, Warren Rodney made the
+acquaintance of Sally Tumlin, who rallied him on being a "squaw man."
+
+Warren Rodney had almost forgotten the sorceries of the women of his
+people; he had lived so long with a brown woman, who spread no silken
+snares. Sally's blushes stirred a multitude of dead things--the wiles of
+pale women, all strength in weakness, fragile flowers for tender
+handling--the squaw had grown as withered as a raisin.
+
+Now, Sally Tumlin had no convictions about life but that the world owed
+her "a home of her own." Her mother had forged the bolt of this particular
+maxim at an early date. And Sally saw from precocious observation that the
+business of women was home-getting, to which end they must be neat and
+sweet and sparing of speech. After the home was forthcoming, then, indeed,
+might a woman take ease in slippers and wrapper, and it is surely a wife's
+privilege to speak her mind. Sally knew that she hated travelling westward
+after the crawling oxen; each day the sun pursued them, caught up with
+them, outdistanced them, and at night left them stranded in the
+wilderness, and rose again and mocked them on the morrow. Her father and
+oafish brother loved the makeshifts of the wagon life, with its chance
+shots at fleeing antelope, scurrying sage-hens, and bounding cotton-tails;
+a chance parley with a stray Indian but added zest to the game of chance.
+But Sally hated it all. The cabin on Elder Creek had a tight roof; Warren
+Rodney had money in the bank. He had had uncommon luck at trapping. His
+talk to Sally was largely of his prospects.
+
+Sally knew that the world owed her "a home of her own"; and why should she
+let a squaw keep her from it? Sally's mother giggled when consulted. She
+plainly regarded the squaw as a rival of her daughter. The ethics of the
+case, as far as Mrs. Tumlin was concerned, was merely a question of white
+skin against brown, and which should carry the day. Singing Stream knew
+not one word of the talk, much of which occurred in her very presence,
+that threatened to pull her home about her ears, but she knew that Sally
+was taking her man from her. The white-skinned woman wore white ruffles
+about her neck and calico dresses that were the color of the wild roses
+that grew among the willows at the creek. Sally Tumlin's pink calico gowns
+sowed a crop of nettles in the mind of the squaw. It was the rainbow
+things, she felt, that were robbing her of her man. All her barbaric
+craving for glowing colors asserted itself as a means towards the one
+great end of keeping him. Singing Stream began to scheme schemes. One day
+Rodney was splitting wood at the Tumlin camp--though why he should split
+wood where there were two women puzzled the squaw. But the ways of the
+pale-faces were beyond her ken. She only knew that she must make herself
+beautiful in the eyes of Warren Rodney, like this devil woman, and then
+perhaps the pappoose that she expected with the first snowfall would be a
+man-child; and she hoped great things of this happening.
+
+With such primitive reasoning did Singing Stream put the horses to the
+light wagon, and, taking the little Judith with her, drove to Deadwood, a
+matter of two hundred miles, to buy the bright calicoes that were to make
+her like a white woman. It never occurred to the half-breed woman to make
+known her plans to Warren Rodney. In circumventing Sally Tumlin the man
+became the spoils of war, and it is not the Indian way to tell plans on
+the war-trail. So the squaw left her kingdom in the hands of the enemy,
+without a word.
+
+Sally Tumlin and Warren Rodney looked upon the disappearance of the squaw
+in the light of a providential solution of the difficulties attending
+their romance. They admitted it was square of her to "hit the trail," and
+they decided to lose no time in going to the army post, where a chaplain,
+an Indian missionary, happened to be staying at the time, and have a real
+wedding, with a ring and a fee to the parson. The wedding party started
+for the post, old mother Tumlin fluttering about the bride as complacently
+as if the ceremony had been the culmination of the most decorous
+courtship. The oafish brother drove the bridal party, making crude jests
+by-the-way, to the frank delight of the prospective groom and the giggling
+protestations of the bride. The chaplain at the post was disposed to ask
+few questions. Parsons made queer marriages in those tumultuous days, and
+it was regarded as a patent of worthy motives that the pair should call in
+the man of the gospel at all. To the question whether or not he had been
+married before, Rodney answered:
+
+"Well, parson, this is the first time I have ever stood up for a life
+sentence." And the ceremony proceeded.
+
+Some of the ladies at the post, hearing that there was to be a wedding,
+dropped in and added their smiles and flutterings to the rather grim
+party; among them, Mrs. Atkins, who had just come to the post as a bride.
+They even added a trifle or two from their own store of pretty things, as
+presents to Sally. And Miss Tumlin left the post Mrs. Warren Rodney, with
+"a home of her own" to go to.
+
+Singing Stream did not hasten in her quest for bright fabrics with which
+to stay the hand of fate. To the half-breed woman the journey to town was
+not without a certain revivifying pleasure. The Indian in her stirred to
+the call of the open country. The tight roof to the cabin on Elder Creek
+had not the attractions for her that it had for Sally Tumlin. She had
+chafed sometimes at a house with four walls. But now the dead and gone
+braves rose in her as she followed the old trail where they had so often
+crept to battle against their old enemies, the Crows, before the white
+man's army had scattered them. And as she drove through the foot-hill
+country, she told the solemn-eyed little Judith the story of the Sioux,
+and what a great fighting people they had been before Rodney's people
+drove them from their land. Judith was holding a doll dressed exactly like
+herself, in soft buckskin shirt, little trousers, and moccasins, all
+beautifully beaded. In her turn she told the story to the doll.
+
+Singing Stream told her daughter of the making of the world, as the Sioux
+believe the story of creation; of the "Four who Never Die"--Sharper, or
+Bladder, Rabbit, Turtle, and Monster; likewise of the coming of a mighty
+flood on which swam the Turtle and a water-fowl in whose bill was the
+earth atom, from which presently the world began to grow, Turtle
+supporting the bird on his great back, which was hard like rock. The rest
+of the myth, that deals with the rising and setting of the sun, Singing
+Stream could not tell her daughter, as the old Sioux chiefs did not think
+it wise to let their women folk know too much about matters of theology.
+Nor did they relate to squaws the sun myth, with its account of much
+cutting-off of heads--thinking, perhaps, with wisdom, that these good
+ladies saw enough of carnage in their every-day life without introducing
+it into their catechism.
+
+But Singing Stream knew the story of "Sharper," or "Bladder," as he is
+called by some of the people, because he is round and his grotesquely fat
+figure resembles a bladder blown to bursting. Bladder's province it is to
+make a fool of himself, diving into water after plums he sees reflected
+there from the branches of the trees. He dives again and again in his
+pursuit of folly, even tying stones to his wrists and ankles to keep
+himself down while he gathers the reflected fruit. After his rescue, which
+he fights against valiantly, as he lies gasping on the bank of the stream,
+he sees the fruit on the branches above his head. It is this same Bladder
+who is one of the _dramatis personae_ in the moon myth, and that is told to
+women as safely without the limits of that little learning that is a
+dangerous thing. Bladder met Rabbit hunting; and Bladder kept throwing his
+eye up into the tree-tops to look for game. The Rabbit watched him
+enviously, thinking what a saving of effort it would be if he could do the
+same thing. Wherefore Bladder promised to instruct him, telling him to
+change eyes after using one four times, but Rabbit did not think that the
+first time counted, as that was but a trial. So he lost his eye after
+throwing it up the fifth time. And the eye of the rabbit is the moon, and
+the face seen in the full moon is the reflection of the rabbit seen in his
+own eye as we see ourselves reflected in the eye of a friend if we look
+closely. The little girl was wonderfully impressed. She put her hand to
+her own eyes, but they were in tight, too tight to throw up to the
+tree-tops.
+
+Singing Stream also told little Judith that the Great Mystery had shown
+truths, hid to man, to the trees, the streams, the hills; and the clouds
+that shaped themselves, drifting hither and yon, were the Great Mystery's
+passing thoughts. But he had deprived all these things of speech, as he
+did not trust them fully, and they could only speak to man in dreams, or
+in some passing mood, when they could communicate to him the feeling of
+one of the Great Spirits, and warn man of what was about to befall him.
+Judith was not quite four when she took this memorable drive with her
+mother, but the impression of these things abided through all her years.
+It was to the measureless spaces of desert loneliness that she learned to
+bring her sorrows in the days of her arid youth, and to feel a kinship
+with all its moods and to hear in the voice of its silence a never-failing
+consolation.
+
+And when they had come within a mile of Warren Rodney's cabin on Elder
+Creek, Singing Stream halted and prepared for the great event of
+reinstatement. First she made a splendid toilet of purple calico torn into
+strips and tied about the waist to simulate the skirts of the devil woman.
+Over these she wore a shirt of buckskin, broidered with beads of many
+colors, and a necklace of elk teeth, wound twice about the throat. On her
+feet she wore new moccasins of tanned elk-hide, and these, too, were
+beaded in many colors. Her hair, now braided with strips of scarlet
+flannel, hung below the waist. And she walked to Rodney's cabin, not as an
+outgrown mistress, but as the daughter of a chief. The little Judith held
+up her head and clung tight to the doll. She knew that something of moment
+was about to happen.
+
+The gala trio, Singing Stream, Judith, and Judith's doll, presented
+themselves at Rodney's house, before which the bride was washing clothes,
+the day being fine. Sally, as usual, wore one of the rose-colored calicoes
+with the collar turned well in and the sleeves rolled above the elbows.
+She washed vigorously, with a steady splashing of suds. Sally enjoyed this
+home of her own and all the household duties appertaining to it. She was
+singing, and a strand of pale-brown hair, crinkly as sea-weed, had blown
+across the rose of her cheek, when she felt rather than saw a shadow fall
+across her path, and, glancing up, she saw facing her the woman whom she
+had supplanted, and the solemn-eyed little girl holding tight to her doll.
+Now, neither woman knew a word of the other's speech, but Sally was
+proficient in the language of femininity, and she was not at a loss to
+grasp the significance of the purple calico, the beaded buckskin shirt,
+and the necklace of elk teeth. The half-breed walked as a chief's daughter
+to the woman at the tub, and Sally grew sick and chill despite her white
+skin and the gold ring that made Warren Rodney her man in the face of the
+law. The dark woman held Judith proudly by the hand, as a sovereign might
+carry a sceptre. Judith was her staff of office, her emblem of authority
+in the house of Warren Rodney.
+
+Singing Stream held out her hands to Sally in a gesture of appeal--and
+blundered. Of the chief's daughter, walking proudly, Sally was afraid; but
+a supplicating half-breed in strips of purple calico, not even hemmed, was
+a matter for merriment. Sally put her hands on her hips, arms akimbo, and
+laughed a dry cackle. The light in the brown woman's eyes, as she looked
+at the white, was like prairie-fires rolling forward through darkness.
+There was no need of a common speech between them. The whole destiny of
+woman was in the laugh and the look that answered it.
+
+And the man they could have murdered for came from the house, an unheroic
+figure with suspenders dangling and a corncob pipe in his mouth, sullen,
+angry, and withal abjectly frightened, as mere man inevitably is when he
+sniffs a woman's battle in the air. The bride, at sight of her husband,
+took to hysterics. She wept, she laughed, and down tumbled her hair. She
+felt the situation demanded a scene. Rodney, with a marital brevity hardly
+to be expected so soon, commanded Sally to go into the house and to "shut
+up."
+
+Then he faced Singing Stream and said to her in her own language: "You
+must go away from here. The pale-faced woman is my wife by the white man's
+law--ring and Bible. No Indian marriage about this."
+
+But the brown woman only pointed to Judith. She asked Rodney had she not
+been a good squaw to him.
+
+And Rodney, who at best was but a poltroon, could only repeat: "You got to
+keep away from here. It's the white man's law--one squaw for one man."
+
+From within came the sound of Sally's lamentation as she called for her
+father and brother to take her from the squaw and contamination. Warren
+Rodney was a man of few words. It had become his unpleasant duty to act,
+and to act quickly. He snatched Judith from her mother and took her into
+the house, and he returned with his Winchester, which was not loaded, to
+Singing Stream.
+
+"You got to go," he said, and levelling the Winchester, he repeated the
+command. Singing Stream looked at him with the dumb wonder of a forest
+thing. "I was a good squaw to you," she said; and did not even curse him.
+And turning, she ran towards the foot-hills, with all the length of purple
+calico trailing.
+
+Now Mrs. Rodney, _nee_ Tumlin, was but human, and her cup of happiness as
+the wife of a "squaw man" was not the brimming beaker she had anticipated.
+The expulsion of her predecessor, at such a time, to make room for her own
+home-coming, was, it seemed, open to criticism. "The neighborhood"--it
+included perhaps five families living in a radius of as many hundred
+miles--felt that the Tumlins had established a bad precedent. A "squaw man"
+driving out a brown wife to make room for a white is not a heroic figure.
+It had been done before, but it would not hand down well in the traditions
+of the settling of this great country. Trespass of law and order, with
+their swift, red-handed reckoning, were but moves of the great game of
+colonization. But to shove out a brown woman for a white was a mean move.
+Few stopped at the Rodneys' ranch, though it marked the first break in the
+journey from town to the gold-mining country. Rodney had fallen from his
+estate as a pioneer; his political opinions were unsought in the conclaves
+that sat and spat at the stove, when business brought them to the joint
+saloon and post-office. The women dealt with the question more openly,
+scorning feminine subtlety at this pass as inadequate ammunition. When
+they met Mrs. Rodney they pulled aside their skirts and glared. This
+outrage against woman it was woman's work to settle.
+
+Mrs. Rodney, who had no more moral sense than a rabbit, felt that she was
+the victim of persecution. She knew she was a good woman. Hadn't she a
+husband? Had there ever been a word against her character? What was the
+use of making all that fuss over a squaw? It was not as if she was a white
+woman. The injustice of it preyed on the former Miss Tumlin. She took to
+the consolations of snuff-dipping and fell from her pink-and-white estate.
+
+The Tumlin family did not remain long enough in the Black Hill country to
+witness Sally's failure as the wife of a pioneer. The restlessness of the
+"settler," if the paradox be permissible, was in the marrow of their
+bones. The makeshifts of the wagon, the adventures of the road, were the
+only home they craved. The spring after Sally's marriage they set forth
+for California, the year following for New Mexico, and still sighed for
+new worlds to visit. They were happier now that Sally, the one element of
+discontent, had been removed from their perennial journeying by the
+merciful dispensation of marriage. Old Tumlin, his wife, and the son gave
+themselves up more than ever to the day-dreams of the road, the freedom of
+the open country, and the spirit of adventure.
+
+Rodney's squaw wife was taken in by some neighbors, good folk who were
+conversant with all phases of the romance. They stood by her in her hour
+of trial, and afterwards continued to keep her as a servant. Her son Jim
+grew up with their own children. When he was four years of age his mother,
+Singing Stream, died, and Sally persuaded her husband to take young Jim
+into their own home, partly as a sop to neighborly criticism, partly as a
+salve to her own conscience. Sally had children of her own, and looked at
+things differently now from the time when she fought the squaw for
+Rodney's favor.
+
+Jim's foster-parents were, in truth, glad to part with him. From his
+earliest babyhood he had been known as a "limb of Satan." He was an
+Ishmael by every instinct of his being. And Mrs. Warren Rodney, _nee_
+Tumlin, felt that in dealing with him, in her capacity of step-mother, she
+daily expiated any offence that she might have done to his mother.
+
+Sally grew slatternly with increasing maternity. She spent her time in a
+rocking-chair, dipping snuff--a consolation imported from her former
+home--and lamenting the bad marriage she had made. Rodney ascribed his
+ill-fortune to unjust neighborly criticism. He farmed a little, he raised
+a little stock, and he drank a great deal of whiskey. Sally hated the
+Black Hill country. She felt that it knew too much about her. The
+neighborly inquisition had fallen like a blight on the family fortunes. A
+vague migratory impulse was on her. She wanted to go somewhere and begin
+all over again. By dint of persistent nagging she persuaded her husband to
+move to Wyoming, then in the golden age of the cattle industry. Those were
+days when steers, to speak in the cow language, had "jumped to
+seventy-five." The wilderness grew light-headed with prosperity. Wonderful
+are the tales still told about those fat years in cattle-land. It was in
+those halcyon days of the Cheyenne Club that the members rode from the
+range, white with the dust of the desert, to enjoy greater luxuries than
+those procurable at their clubs in New York.
+
+Nor was it all feasting and merrymaking. A heroic band it was that battled
+with the wilderness, riding the range with heat and cold, starvation and
+death, and making small pin-pricks in that empty blotch of the United
+States map that is marked "Great Alkali Desert" blossom into settlements.
+When the last word has been said about the pioneers of these United
+States, let the cow-boy be remembered in the universal toast, that bronzed
+son of the saddle who lived his little day bravely and merrily, and whose
+real heroism is too often forgotten in the glamour of his own
+picturesqueness.
+
+Judith was ten years old when her father, his wife, and their children
+moved from Dakota--they were not so particular about North and South
+Dakota, in those days--to take up a claim on Sweetwater, Wyoming. Judith
+gave scant promise of the beauty that in later life became at once her
+dower and her misfortune, that which was as likely to bring wretchedness
+as happiness. In Wyoming she was destined to find an old friend, Mrs.
+Atkins, who, as the bride of the young lieutenant, had been present at the
+marriage of Sally Tumlin and Warren Rodney, and who had always felt a
+wholly unreasonable sense of guilt at witnessing the ceremony and
+contributing a lace handkerchief to the bride. Her husband, now Major
+Atkins, was stationed at Fort Washakie, Wyoming. Mrs. Atkins happening
+again on the Rodney family, and her husband having increased and
+multiplied his army pay many times over by a successful venture in cattle,
+the scheme of Judith's convent education was put through by the major's
+wife, who had kept her New England conscience, the discomforts of frontier
+posts notwithstanding.
+
+So Judith went to the nuns to school, and stayed with them till she was
+eighteen. Mrs. Atkins would have adopted her then; but Judith by this time
+knew her family history in all its sordid ramifications, and felt that
+duty called her to her brother, who had not improved his unfortunate start
+in life, though his step-mother did not spoil him for the staying of the
+rod.
+
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+
+                         Chugg Takes The Ribbons
+
+
+Chugg, comforted with liquids and stayed with a head-plaster, presented
+himself at the Dax ranch just twenty-four hours after he was due. His mien
+combined vagueness with hostility, and he harnessed up the stage that
+Peter Hamilton had driven over the day before, when his prospective
+passengers were looking, with a graphic pantomimic representation of "take
+it or leave it." Under the circumstances, Miss Carmichael and the fat lady
+consented to be passengers with much the same feeling of finality that one
+might have on embarking for the planet Mars in an air-ship.
+
+There was, furthermore, a suggestion of last rites in the farewells of the
+Daxes, each according to their respective personalities, that was far from
+reassuring.
+
+"Here's some bread and meat and a bottle of cold coffee, if you live to
+need it," was Mrs. Dax's grim prognostication of accident. Leander, being
+of an emotional nature, could scarce restrain his tears--the advent of the
+travellers had created a welcome variation in the monotony of his dutiful
+routine--he felt all the agitation of parting with life-long friends. Mary
+Carmichael and Judith promised to write--they had found a great deal to say
+to each other the preceding evening.
+
+Chugg cracked his whip ominously, the travellers got inside, not daring to
+trust themselves to the box.
+
+The journey with the misanthrope was but a repetition of that first day's
+staging--the sage-brush was scarcer, the mountains seemed as far off as
+ever, and the outlook was, if possible, more desolate. The entry in Miss
+Carmichael's diary, inscribed in malformed characters as the stage jolted
+over ruts and gullies, reads: "I do not mind telling you, in strictest
+confidence, 'Dere Diary'--as the little boy called you--that when I so
+lightly severed my connection with civilization, I had no idea to what an
+extent I was going in for the prairie primeval. How on earth does a woman
+who can write a letter like Mrs. Yellett stand it? And where on the map of
+North America is Lost Trail?"
+
+"Land sakes!" regretted the fat lady, "but I do wish I had a piece of that
+'boy's favorite' cake that I had for my lunch the day we left town. I just
+ate and ate it 'cause I hadn't another thing to do. If I hadn't been so
+greedy I could offer him a piece, just to show him that some women folk
+have kind hearts, and that the whole sect ain't like that Pink."
+
+"Boy's favorite," as adequate compensation for shattered ideals, a broken
+heart, and the savings of a lifetime, seemed to Mary Carmichael inadequate
+compensation, but she forbore to express her sentiments.
+
+The fat lady had never relaxed her gaze from Chugg's back since the stage
+had started. She peered at that broad expanse of flannel shirt through the
+tiny round window, like a careful sailing-master sweeping the horizon for
+possible storm-clouds. At every portion of the road presenting a steep
+decline she would prod Chugg in the back with the handle of her ample
+umbrella, and demand that he let her out, as she preferred walking. The
+stage-driver at first complied with these requests, but when he saw they
+threatened to become chronic, he would send his team galloping down grade
+at a rate to justify her liveliest fears.
+
+"Do you think you are a-picnicking, that you crave roominating round these
+yere solitoodes?" And the misanthrope cracked his whip and adjured his
+team with cabalistic imprecations.
+
+"Did you notice if Mrs. Dax giv' him any cold coffee, same as she did us?"
+anxiously inquired the fat lady from her lookout.
+
+Mary hadn't noticed.
+
+"He's drinking something out of a brown bottle--seems to relish it a heep
+more'n he would cold coffee," reported the watch. "Hi there! Hi! Mr.
+Chugg!" The stage-driver, thinking it was merely a request to be allowed
+to walk, continued to drive with one hand and hold the brown bottle with
+the other. But even his too solid flesh was not proof against the
+continued bombardment of the umbrella handle.
+
+"Um-m-m," he grunted savagely, applying a watery eye to the round window.
+
+"Nothing," answered the fat lady, quite satisfied at having her worst
+fears confirmed.
+
+Chugg returned to his driving, as one not above the weakness of seeing and
+hearing things.
+
+"'Tain't coffee."
+
+"Could you smell it?" questioned Mary, anxiously.
+
+"You never can tell that way, when they are plumb pickled in it, like
+him."
+
+"Then how did you know it wasn't coffee?"
+
+"His eyes had fresh watered."
+
+Mary collapsed under this expert testimony. "What are we going to do about
+it?"
+
+"Appeal to him as a gentleman," said the fat lady, not without dramatic
+intonation.
+
+"You appeal," counselled Mary; "I saw him look at you admiringly when you
+were walking down that steep grade."
+
+"Is that so?" said the fat lady, with a conspicuous lack of incredulity;
+and she put her hand involuntarily to her frizzes.
+
+This time she did not trust to the umbrella-handle as a medium of
+communication between the stage-driver and herself. Putting her hand
+through the port-hole she grasped Chugg's arm--the bottle arm--with no
+uncertain grip.
+
+"Why, Mr. Chugg, this yere place is getting to be a regular summer resort;
+think of two ladies trusting themselves to your protection and travelling
+out over this great lonesome desert."
+
+Chugg's mind, still submerged in local Lethe waters, grappled in silence
+with the problem of the feminine invasion, and then he muttered to himself
+rather than to the fat lady, "Nowhere's safe from 'em; women and
+house-flies is universally prevailing."
+
+The fat lady dropped his arm as if it had been a brand. "He's no
+gentleman. As for Mountain Pink, she was drove to it."
+
+All that day they toiled over sand and sage-brush; the sun hung like a
+molten disk, paling the blue of the sky; the grasshoppers kept up their
+shrill chirping--and the loneliness of that sun-scorched waste became a
+tangible thing.
+
+Chugg sipped and sipped, and sometimes swore and sometimes muttered, and
+as the day wore on his driving not only became a challenge to the
+endurance of the horses, but to the laws of gravitation. He lashed them up
+and down grade, he drove perilously close to shelving declivities, and
+sometimes he sang, with maudlin mournfulness:
+
+  "'Oh, bury me not on the lone prairie.'
+  The words came low and mournfully
+  From the cold, pale lips of a youth who lay
+  On his dying couch at the close of day."
+
+The fat lady reminded him that he was a gentleman and that he was driving
+ladies; she threatened him with her son on Sweetwater, who began, in the
+maternal chronicles, by being six feet in his stockings, and who steadily
+grew, as the scale of threats increased, till he reached the altitude of
+six feet four, growing hourly in height and fierceness.
+
+But Chugg gave no heed, and once he sang the "Ballad of the Mule-Skinner,"
+with what seemed to both terrified passengers an awful warning of their
+overthrow:
+
+  "As I was going down the road,
+  With a tired team and a heavy load,
+  I cracked my whip and the leaders sprung--
+  The fifth chain broke, and the wheelers hung,
+  The off-horse stepped on the wagon tongue--"
+
+This harrowing ballad was repeated with accompanying Delsarte at intervals
+during the afternoon, but as Mary and the fat lady managed to escape
+without accident, they began to feel that they bore charmed lives.
+
+At sundown they came to the road-ranch of Johnnie Dax, bearing Leander's
+compliments as a secret despatch. The outward aspect of the place was
+certainly an awful warning to trustful bachelors who make acquaintances
+through the columns of _The Heart and Hand_. The house stood solitary in
+that scourge of desolation. The windows and doors gaped wide like the
+unclosed eyes of a dead man on a battle-field. Chugg halloed, and an old
+white horse put his head out of the door, shook it upward as if in assent,
+then trotted off.
+
+"That's Jerry, and he's the intelligentest animal I ever see," remarked
+the stage-driver, sobering up to Jerry's good qualities, and presently
+Johnnie Dax and the white horse appeared together from around the corner
+of the house.
+
+This Mr. Dax was almost an exact replica of the other, even to the
+apologetic crook in the knees and a certain furtive way of glancing over
+the shoulder as if anticipating missiles.
+
+"Pshaw now, ladies! why didn't you let me know that you was coming? and
+I'd have tidied up the place and organized a few dried-apple pies."
+
+"Good house-keepers don't wait for company to come before they get to
+their work," rebukefully commented the fat lady.
+
+Mr. Dax, recognizing the voice of authority, seized a towel and began to
+beat out flies, chickens, and dogs, who left the premises with the ill
+grace of old residents. Two hogs, dormant, guarded either side of the
+door-step and refused so absolutely to be disturbed by the flicking of the
+towel that one was tempted to look twice to assure himself that they were
+not the fruits of the sculptor's chisel.
+
+"Where's your wife?" sternly demanded the fat lady.
+
+"Oh, my Lord! I presume she's dancin' a whole lot over to Ervay. She
+packed her ball-gown in a gripsack and lit out of here two days ago,
+p'inting that way. A locomotive couldn't stop her none if she got a chance
+to go cycloning round a dance."
+
+In the mean time, the two hogs having failed to grasp the fact that they
+were _de trop_, continued to doze.
+
+"Come, girls, get up," coaxed Johnnie, persuasively. "Maude, I don't know
+when I see you so lazy. Run on, honey--run on with Ethel." For Ethel, the
+piebald hog, finally did as she was bid.
+
+Mary Carmichael could not resist the temptation of asking how the hogs
+happened to have such unusual names.
+
+"To tell the truth, I done it to aggravate my wife. When I finds myself a
+discard in the matrimonial shuffle, I figgers on a new deal that's going
+to inclood one or two anxieties for my lady partner--to which end--viz.,
+namely, I calls one hawg Ethel and the other hawg Maude, allowing to my
+wife that they're named after lady friends in the East. Them lady friends
+might be the daughters of Ananias and Sapphira, for all they ever
+happened, but they answers the purpose of riling her same as if they were
+eating their three squares daily. I have hopes, everything else failing,
+that she may yet quit dancing and settle down to the sanctity of the home
+out of pure jealousy of them two proxy hawgs."
+
+"I can just tell you this," interrupted the fat lady: "I don't enjoy
+occupying premises after hawgs, no matter how fashionable you name 'em. A
+hawg's a hawg, with manners according, if it's named after the President
+of the United States or the King of England."
+
+"That's just what I used to think, marm, of all critters before I enjoyed
+that degree of friendliness that I'm now proud to own. Take Jerry now,
+that old white horse--why, me and him is just like brothers. When I have to
+leave the kid to his lonesome infant reflections and go off to chop wood,
+I just call Jerry in, and he assoomes the responsibility of nurse like he
+was going to draw wages for it."
+
+"I reckon there's faults on both sides," said the fat lady, impartially.
+"No natural woman would leave her baby to a horse to mind while she went
+off dancing. And no natural man would fill his house full of critters, and
+them with highfalutin names. Take my advice, turn 'em out."
+
+Mary did not wait to hear the continuation of the fat lady's advice. She
+went out on the desert to have one last look at the west. The sun had
+taken his plunge for the night, leaving his royal raiment of crimson and
+gold strewn above the mountain-tops.
+
+Her sunset reflections were presently interrupted by the fat lady, who
+proposed that they should walk till Mr. Dax had tidied up his house,
+observing, with logic, that it did not devolve on them to clean the place,
+since they were paying for supper and lodging. They had gone but a little
+way when sudden apprehension caused the fat lady to grasp Mary's arm. Miss
+Carmichael turned, expecting mountain-lions, rattlesnakes, or
+stage-robbers, but none of these casualties had come to pass.
+
+"Land sakes! Here we be parading round the prairie, and I never found out
+how that man cooked his coffee."
+
+"What difference does it make, if we can drink it?"
+
+"The ways of men cooks is a sealed book to you, I reckon, or you wouldn't
+be so unconcerned--'specially in the matter of coffee. All men has got the
+notion that coffee must be b'iled in a bag, and if they 'ain't got a
+regular bag real handy, they take what they can get. Oh, I've caught 'em,"
+went on the fat lady, darkly, "b'iling coffee in improvisations that'd
+turn your stomach."
+
+"Yes, yes," Mary hastily agreed, hoping against hope that she wasn't going
+to be more explicit.
+
+"And they are so cute about it, too; it's next to impossible to catch 'em.
+You ask a man if he b'iles his coffee loose or tight, and he'll declare he
+b'iles it loose, knowing well how suspicious and prone to investigate is
+the female mind. But you watch your chance and take a look in the
+coffee-pot, and maybe you'll find--"
+
+"Yes, yes, I've heard--"
+
+"I've seen--"
+
+"Let's hurry," implored Mary.
+
+"Have you made your coffee yet?" inquired the fat lady.
+
+"Yes, marm," promptly responded Johnnie.
+
+"I hope you b'iled it in a bag--it clears it beautiful, a bag does."
+
+Johnnie shifted uneasily. "No, marm, I b'iles it loose. You see, bags
+ain't always handy."
+
+The fat lady plied her eye as a weapon. No Dax could stand up before an
+accusing feminine eye. He quailed, made a grab for the coffee-pot, and
+rushed with it out into the night.
+
+"What did I tell you?" she asked, with an air of triumph.
+
+Johnnie returned with the empty coffee-pot. "To tell the truth, marm, I
+made a mistake. I 'ain't made the coffee. I plumb forgot it. P'raps you
+could be prevailed on to assist this yere outfit to coffee while I
+organizes a few sody-biscuits."
+
+After supper, when the fat lady was so busy talking "goo-goo" language to
+the baby as to be oblivious of everything else, Mary Carmichael took the
+opportunity to ask Johnnie if he knew anything about Lost Trail. The name
+of her destination had come to sound unpleasantly ominous in the ears of
+the tired young traveller, and she feared that her inquiry did not sound
+as casual as she tried to have it. Nor was Johnnie's candid reply
+reassuring.
+
+"It's a pizen-mean country, from all I ever heard tell. The citizens
+tharof consists mainly of coyotes and mountain-lions, with a few rattlers
+thrown in just to make things neighborly. This yere place"--waving his hand
+towards the arid wastes which night was making more desolate--"is a summer
+resort, with modern improvements, compared to it."
+
+Mary screwed her courage to a still more desperate point, and inquired if
+Mr. Dax knew a family named Yellett living in Lost Trail.
+
+"Never heard of no family living there, excepting the bluff at family life
+maintained by the wild beasts before referred to. See here, miss, I ain't
+makin' no play to inquire into your affairs, but you ain't thinkin' o'
+visitin' Lost Trail, be you?"
+
+"Perhaps," said Mary, faintly; and then she, too, talked "goo-goo" to the
+baby.
+
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+
+                           The Rodneys At Home
+
+
+All that long and never-to-be-forgotten night the stage lurched through
+the darkness with Mary Carmichael the solitary passenger. The fat lady had
+warned Johnnie Dax that he was on no account to replenish Chugg's flask,
+if he had the wherewithal for replenishment on the premises. Moreover, she
+threatened Dax with the fury of her son should he fail in this particular;
+and Johnnie, hurt to the quick by the unjust suspicion that he could fail
+so signally in his duty to a lady, not only refused to replenish the
+flask, but threatened Chugg with a conditional vengeance in the event of
+accident befalling the stage. It was with a partially sobered and
+much-threatened stage-driver, therefore, that Mary continued her journey
+after the supper at Johnnie Dax's, but the knowledge of it brought scant
+reassurance, and it is doubtful if the red stage ever harbored any one
+more wakeful than the pale, tired girl who watched all the changes from
+dark to dawn at the stage window.
+
+Once or twice she caught a glimpse of distant camp-fires burning and knew
+that some cattle outfit was camped there for the night; and once they
+drove so close that she could hear the cow-boys' voices, enriched and
+mellowed by distance, borne to them on the cool, evening wind. It gave a
+sense of security to know that these big-hearted, manly lads were within
+call, and she watched the dwindling spark of their camp-fires and strained
+her ears to catch the last note of their singing, with something of the
+feeling of severed comradeship. Range cattle, startled from sleep by the
+stage, scrambled to their feet and bolted headlong in the blind impulse of
+panic, their horns and the confused massing of their bodies showing in
+sharp silhouette against the horizon for a moment, then all would settle
+into quiet again. There was no moon that night, but the stars were sown
+broadcast--softly yellow stars, lighting the darkness with a shaded luster,
+like lamps veiled in pale-yellow gauze. The chill electric glitter of the
+stars, as we know it from between the roofs of high houses, this world of
+far-flung distance knows not. There the stars are big and still, like the
+eyes of a contented woman.
+
+The hoofs of the horses beat the night away as regularly as the ticking of
+a clock. It grew darker as the night wore on, and sometimes a coyote would
+yelp from the fringe of willows that bordered a creek in a way that made
+Mary recall tales of banshees. And once, when the first pale streak of
+dawn trembled in the east and the mountains looked like jagged rocks
+heaved against the sky and in danger of toppling, the whole dread picture
+brought before her one of Vedder's pictures that hung in the shabby old
+library at home.
+
+They breakfasted somewhere, and Chugg put fresh horses to the stage. She
+knew this from their difference of color; the horses that they had left
+the second Dax ranch with had been white, and these that now toiled over
+the sand and desolation were apparently brown. She could not be certain
+that they were brown, or that they were toiling over the sand and
+desolation, or that her name was Mary Carmichael, or indeed of anything.
+Four days in the train, and what seemed like four centuries in the stage,
+eliminated any certainty as to anything. She could only sit huddled into a
+heap and wait for things to become adjusted by time.
+
+Chugg was behaving in a most exemplary manner. He drove rigidly as an
+automaton, and apparently he looked no longer on the "lightning" when it
+was bottled. Once or twice he had applied his eye to the pane that
+separated him from his passenger, and asked questions relative to her
+comfort, but Mary was too utterly dejected to reply in more than
+monosyllables. As they crept along, the sun-dried timbers of the stage
+creaked and groaned in seeming protest at wearing its life away in endless
+journeyings over this desert waste, then settled down into one of those
+maddeningly monotonous reiterations to which certain inanimate things are
+given in seasons of nervous tension. This time it was: "All the world's--a
+stage--creak--screech--all--the world's a stage--creak--screech!" over and over
+till Mary found herself fast succumbing to the hypnotic effect of the
+constant repetition, listening for it, even, with the tyrannous eagerness
+of overwrought nerves, when the stage-driver broke the spell with, "This
+here stage gets to naggin' me along about here. She's hungry for her
+axle-grease--that's what ails her."
+
+"I suppose," Mary roused herself to say, "you have quite a feeling of
+comradeship for the stage."
+
+"Me and Clara"--the stage had this name painted on the side--"have been
+travelling together nigh onto four year. And while there's times that I
+would prefer a greater degree of reciprocity, these yere silent companions
+has their advantages. Why, compare Clara to them female blizzards--the two
+Mrs. Daxes--and you see Clara's good p'ints immejit. Yes, miss, the
+thirst-quenchers are on me if either one of the Dax boys wouldn't be glad
+to swap, but I'd have to be a heap more locoed than I am now to consent to
+the transaction."
+
+At sunset the interminable monotony of the wilderness was broken by a
+house of curious architecture, the like of which the tired young traveller
+had never seen before, and whose singular candor of design made her doubt
+the evidence of her own thoroughly exhausted faculties. The house seemed
+to consist of a series of rooms thrown, or rather blown, together by some
+force of nature rather than by formal design of builder or carpenter. The
+original log-cabin of this composite dwelling looked better built, more
+finished, neater of aspect than those they had previously stopped at in
+crossing the Desert. Springing from the main building, like claws from a
+crustacean, were a series of rooms minus either side walls or flooring.
+Indeed, they might easily have passed for porches of more than usually
+commodious size had it not been for the beds, bureaus, chairs, stove with
+attendant pots, kettles, and supper in the course of preparation. Seen
+from any vantage-point in the surrounding country, the effect was that of
+an interior on the stage--the background of some homely drama where pioneer
+life was being realistically depicted. The _dramatis persona_ who occupied
+the centre of the stage when Mary Carmichael drove up was an elderly woman
+in a rocking-chair. She was dressed in a faded pink calico gown, limp and
+bedraggled, whose color brought out the parchment-like hue and texture of
+her skin in merciless contrast. Perhaps because she still harbored
+illusions about the perishable quality of her complexion, which gave every
+evidence of having borne the brunt of merciless desert suns, snows,
+blizzards, and the ubiquitous alkali dust of all seasons, she wore a pink
+sun-bonnet, though the hour was one past sundown, and though she sat
+beneath her own roof-tree, even if lacking the protection of four walls.
+From the corner of her mouth protruded a snuff-brush, so constantly in
+this accustomed place that it had come to be regarded by members of her
+family as part and parcel of her attire--the first thing assumed in the
+morning, the last thing laid aside at night. Mary Carmichael had little
+difficulty in recognizing Judith Rodney's step-mother, _nee_ Tumlin--she
+who had been the heroine of the romance lately recorded.
+
+Mrs. Rodney's interest in the girl alighting from the stage was evinced in
+the palsied motion of the chair as it quivered slightly back and forth in
+place of the swinging seesaw with which she was wont to wear the hours
+away. The snuff-brush was brought into more fiercely active commission,
+but she said nothing till Mary Carmichael was within a few inches of her.
+Then, shifting the snuff-brush to a position more favorable to
+enunciation, she said: "Howdy? Ye be Miz Yellett's gov'ment, ain't ye?"
+There was something threatening in her aspect, as if the office of
+governess to the Yelletts carried some challenging quality.
+
+"Government?" repeated Mary, vaguely, her head still rumbling with the
+noise and motion of the stage; "I'm afraid I hardly understand."
+
+"Ain't you-uns goin' to teach the Yellett outfit ther spellin', writin',
+and about George Washington, an' how the Yankees kem along arter he was in
+his grave an' fit us and broke up the kentry so we had ter leave our home
+in Tennessee an' kem to this yere outdacious place, where nobody knows the
+diffunce between aig-bread an' corn-dodger? I war a Miss Tumlin from
+Tennessee."
+
+The rocking-chair now began to recover its accustomed momentum. This
+much-heralded educational expert was far from terrifying. Indeed, to Mrs.
+Rodney's hawklike gaze, that devoured every visible item of Mary's
+extremely modest travelling-dress, there was nothing so very wonderful
+about "the gov'ment from the East." With a deftness compatible only with
+long practice, Mrs. Rodney now put a foot on the round of an adjoining
+chair and shoved it towards Mary Carmichael in hospitable pantomime, never
+once relaxing her continual rocking the meantime. Mary took the chair, and
+Mrs. Rodney, after freshening up the snuff-brush from a small, tin box in
+her lap, put spurs to her rocking-chair, so to speak, and started off at a
+brisk canter.
+
+"I 'low it's mighty queer you-uns don't recognize the job you-uns kem out
+yere to take, when I call it by name." From the sheltering flap of the
+pink sun-bonnet she turned a pair of black eyes full of ill-concealed
+suspicion. "Miz Yellett givin' herself as many airs 'bout hirin' a
+gov'ment 's if she wuz goin' to Congress. Queer you don't know whether you
+be one or not!" She withdrew into the sun-bonnet, muttering to herself.
+She could not be more than fifty, Mary thought, but her habit of muttering
+and exhibiting her depopulated gums while she was in the act of
+revivifying the snuff-brush gave her a cronish aspect.
+
+A babel of voices came from the open-faced room on the opposite side of
+the house corresponding to the one in which Mary and Mrs. Rodney were
+sitting. Apparently supper was being prepared by some half-dozen young
+people, each of whom thought he or she was being imposed upon by the
+others. "Hand me that knife." "Git it yourself." "I'll tell maw how you
+air wolfing down the potatoes as fast as I can fry 'em." "Go on,
+tattle-tale." This was the repartee, mingled with the hiss of frying meat,
+the grinding of coffee, the thumping sound made by bread being hastily
+mixed in a wooden bowl standing on a wooden table. The babel grew in
+volume. Dogs added to it by yelping emotionally when the smell of the
+newly fried meat tempted them too near the platter and some one with a
+disengaged foot at his disposal would kick them out of doors.
+Personalities were exchanged more freely by members of the family, and the
+meat hissed harder as it was newly turned. "Laws-a-massy!" muttered Mrs.
+Rodney; and then, shoving back the sun-bonnet, she lifted her voice in a
+shrill, feminine shriek:
+
+"Eudory! Eu-dory! You-do-ry!"
+
+A Hebe-like creature, blond and pink-cheeked, in a blue-checked apron
+besmeared with grease and flour, came sulkily into her mother's presence.
+Seeing Mary Carmichael, she grasped the skirt of the greasy apron with the
+sleight of hand of a prestidigitateur and pleated it into a single
+handful. Her manner, too, was no slower of transformation. The family
+sulks were instantly replaced by a company bridle, aided and abetted by a
+company simper. "I didn't know the stage was in yet, maw. I been talking
+to Iry."
+
+"This here be Miz Yellett's gov'ment. Maybe she'd like to pearten up some
+before she eats." She started the rocking-chair at a gallop, to signify to
+her daughter that she washed her hands of further responsibility. Being
+proficient in the sign language of Mrs. Rodney's second self, as indeed
+was every member of the family, Eudora led Mary to a bench placed in one
+of the rooms enjoying the distinction of a side wall, and indicated a
+family toilet service, which displayed every indication of having lately
+seen active service. A roll-towel, more frankly significant of the
+multitude of the Rodneys than had been the babel of voices, a discouraged
+fragment of comb, a tin basin, a slippery atom of soap, these Eudora
+proffered with an unction worthy of better things. "I declare Mist' Chugg
+have scarce left any soap, an' I don't believe thar's 'nother bit in the
+house." Eudora's accent was but faintly reminiscent of her mother's strong
+Smoky Mountain dialect, as a crude feature is sometimes softened in the
+second generation. It was not unpleasing on her full, rosy mouth. The girl
+had the seductiveness of her half-sister, Judith, without a hint of
+Judith's spiritual quality.
+
+Mary told her not to mind about the soap, and went to fetch her hand-bag,
+which, consistent with the democratic spirit of its surroundings, was
+resting against a clump of sage-brush, whither it had been lifted by
+Chugg. Miss Carmichael's individual toilet service, which was neither
+handsome nor elaborate, impressed Eudora far more potently in ranking Mary
+as a personage than did her dignity of office as "gov'ment."
+
+"I reckon you-uns must have seen Sist' Judy up to Miz Dax's. I hope she
+war lookin' right well." There was in the inquiry an unmistakable note of
+pride. The connection was plainly one to be flaunted. Judith, with her
+gentle bearing and her simple, convent accomplishments, was plainly the
+_grande dame_ of the family. Eudora had now divested herself of the
+greasy, flour-smeared apron, flinging it under the wash-bench with a
+single all-sufficient movement, while Mary's look was directed towards her
+dressing-bag. In glancing up to make some remark about Judith, Mary was
+confronted by a radiant apparition whose lilac calico skirts looked fresh
+from the iron.
+
+At the side of the house languished a wretched, abortive garden, running
+over with weeds and sage-brush, and here a man pottered with the
+purposeless energy of old age, working with an ear cocked in the direction
+of the house, as he turned a spade of earth again and again in hopeless,
+pusillanimous industry. But when his strained attention was presently
+rewarded by a shouted summons to supper, and he stood erect but for the
+slouching droop of shoulders that was more a matter of temperament than of
+age, one saw a tall man of massive build, whose keen glance and slightly
+grizzled hair belied his groping, ineffectual labor. The head, and face
+were finely modelled. Unless nature had fashioned them in some vagrant,
+prankish mood, such elegance of line betokened prior generations in which
+gentlemen and scholars had played some part--the vagabond scion of a good
+family, perhaps. A multitude of such had grafted on the pioneer stock of
+the West, under names that carried no significance in the places whence
+they came.
+
+Weakness and self-indulgence there were, and those writ large and deep, on
+the face of Warren Rodney; and, in default of an expression of deeper
+significance, the wavering lines of instability produced a curiously
+ambiguous effect of a fine head modelled by a 'prentice hand; a lady's
+copy of the Belvidere, attempted in the ardors of the first lessons, might
+approximate it.
+
+A smoking kerosene lamp revealed a supper-table of almost institutional
+proportions. There were four sons and two daughters of the Tumlin union,
+strapping lads and lasses all of them, with more than a common dower of
+lusty health and a beauty that was something deeper than the perishable
+iridescence of youth. There was Fremont, named for the explorer-soldier;
+there was Orlando, named from his mother's vague, idle musings over
+paper-backed literature at certain "unchancy" seasons; there was Richards,
+named from pure policy, for a local great man of whom Warren Rodney had
+anticipated a helping hand at the time; there was Eudora, whose nominal
+origin was uncertain, unless it bore affiliation to that of Orlando; there
+was Sadie, thus termed to avoid the painful distinctions of "old Sally"
+and "young Sally"; and, lastly, like a postscript, came Dan--with him,
+fancy, in the matter of names, seemed to have failed. Dan was now six, a
+plump little caricature of a man in blue overalls, which, as they had
+descended to him from Richards in the nature of an heirloom, reached high
+under his armpits and shortened the function of his suspenders to the
+vanishing point.
+
+Eudora was now sixteen, and the woman-famine in all the land had gifted
+her with a surprising precocity. Eudora knew her value and meant to make
+the most of it. Unlike her mother in the old Black Hill days, she expected
+more than a "home of her own." To-night four suitors sat at table with
+Eudora, and she might have had forty had she desired it. Any one of the
+four would have cheerfully murdered the remaining three had opportunity
+presented itself. Supper was a mockery to them, a Barmecide feast. Each
+watched his rivals--and Eudora. This was a matter of life and death. There
+was no time for food. The girl revelled in the situation to the full of
+her untaught, unthinking, primitive nature. She gave the incident a
+tighter twist by languishing at them in turns. She smiled, she sighed, she
+drove them mad by taking crescent bites out of a slice of bread and
+exhibiting the havoc of her little, white teeth with a delectably dainty
+gluttony.
+
+Her mother, mumbling her supper with toothless impotency, renewed her
+youth vicariously, and, while she quarrelled with her daughter from the
+rising of the sun to the setting of the same, she added the last straw to
+the burden of the distracted suitors by announcing what a comfort Eudora
+was to her and how handy she was about the house.
+
+Warren Rodney supported the air of an exile at his own table. Beyond a
+preliminary greeting to his daughter's guests, he said nothing. His
+family, in their dealings with him, seemed to accord him the exemptions of
+extreme age. He ate with the enthusiasm of a man to whom meals have become
+the main business in life.
+
+"How's your mine up to Bad Water comin' along, Iry?" Orlando inquired, not
+from any hospitable interest in Ira's claim, but because he had sundry
+romantic interests in that neighborhood and hoped to make use of the young
+prospector's interest in his sister by securing an invitation to return
+with him. Ira regarded the inquiry in the light of a special providence.
+Here was his chance to impress Eudora with the splendor of his prospects
+and at the same time smite the claims of his rivals, and behold! a brother
+of his lady had led the way.
+
+Ira cleared his throat. "They tell me she air like to yield a million any
+day." At this Eudora gave him the wealth of her eyes, and her mother
+reached across two of the glowering suitors and dropped a hot flapjack on
+his plate.
+
+"Who sez that she air likely to yield a million any day?" inquired Ben
+Swift, openly flouting such prophecy. "Yes, who sez it?" inquired Hawks
+and Taylor, joining forces for the overthrow of the common enemy.
+
+"'They sez' is easy talkin', shore 'nuff," mumbled Mrs. Rodney, as she
+helped herself to butter with her own knife.
+
+"A sharp from the Smithsonian Institute at Washington, he said it, and he
+has taken back speciments with him."
+
+"Ye can't keep lackings from freightin' round speciments--naw, sir, ye
+can't, not till the fool-killer has finished his job." Ben Swift charged
+the table with the statement as the prosecution subtly appeals to the high
+grade of intelligence on the part of the jury. The point told. Eudora,
+wavering in her donation of hot flapjacks, gave them to Ben Swift.
+
+Hawks now leaned across the table with a sinuous, beguiling motion, and,
+extending his long neck towards the prospector, with the air of a
+turkey-gobbler about to peck, he crooned, softly: "Ira, it's a heap risky
+puttin' your faith in maverick sharps that trail around the country,
+God-a'mightying it, renaming little, old rocks into precious stones,
+seein' gold mines in every gopher-hole they come to. They names your
+backyard and the rocks appertainin' thereunto a heap fashionable, and like
+as not some sucker gives him good money to float the trash back East."
+
+Mrs. Rodney, whose partisanship in any discussion was analogous to the
+position of a hen perching on a fence unable to decide on which side to
+flutter, was visibly impressed by Hawks's presentation of the case.
+Looking towards her daughter from under the eaves of her sun-bonnet, she
+"'lowed she had hearn that Bad Water was hard on the skin, an' that it
+warn't much of a place arter all. Folks over thar war mostly half-livers."
+
+Ira, now losing all semblance of policy at being thus grievously put down
+by his possible mother-in-law, "reckoned that herdin' sheep over to the
+Basin was a heap easier on the skin than livin' in a comf'table house over
+to Bad Water"--this as a fling at Hawks, who herded a small bunch of sheep
+"over in the Basin."
+
+"Ai-yi," openly scoffed the former Miss Tumlin; "talk's cheap before--" She
+would have considered it indelicate to supply the word "marriage," but by
+breaking off her sentence before she came to the pith of it she continued
+to maintain the proprieties, and at the same time conveyed to her audience
+that she was too old and experienced to permit any fledgling from her nest
+to be caught, for want of a warning, by such obvious ante-matrimonial
+chaff as fair promises.
+
+"Laws a massy!" she continued, reminiscently, working her toothless jaw to
+free it from an escaped splinter from the snuff-brush. "When me an' paw
+war keepin' comp'ny, satin warn't good enough for me. He lowed I wuz to
+have half creation. Sence we wuz married he 'ain't never found time,
+endurin' all these years, to build me a bird-house."
+
+The unbuilt bird-house was the Banquo's ghost at the Rodney board, Mrs.
+Rodney hearkening back to it in and out of season. If the family made
+merry over a chance windfall of game or fresh vegetables, a prospect of
+possible employment for one of the boys, a donation of money from Judith,
+Mrs. Rodney remembered the unbuilt bird-house and indulged herself to the
+full of melancholy. It is not improbable that, if she had been asked to
+name the chiefest disappointment of her wretched married life, she would
+have mentioned the bird-house that was never built.
+
+At mention of it Warren Rodney murmured broken, deprecatory excuses. His
+dull eyes nervously travelled about the table for some one to make excuses
+for him. The family broke into hearty peals of laughter; the tragedy of
+the first generation had grown to be the unfailing source of merriment for
+the second.
+
+"Maw," began Orlando, "the reason you don't get no bird-house built out
+hyear is that they ain't no birds. We have offered time and time again to
+build you a house fo' buzzuds, they bein' the only birds hyearabouts, but
+you 'low that you ain't fav'ble to tamin' 'em."
+
+"I wuz raised in Tennessee, an' we-uns had a house for martins made out'n
+gourds, an' it was pearty." The pride with which she repeated this
+particular claim to honor in an alien land never diminished with
+repetition. As she advanced further through the dim perspective of years,
+the little mountain town in Tennessee became more and more the centre of
+cultivation and civic importance. The desolate cabin that she had left for
+the interminable journey westward was recalled flatteringly through the
+hallowing mists of time. The children, by reason of these chronicles, had
+grown to regard their mother as a sort of princess in exile.
+
+"Mrs. Rodney"--Swift leaned towards her and whispered something in her ear.
+She regarded him tentatively, then grinned. At her time of life, why
+should she put faith in the promises of men? "You fix it up, an' you get
+your bird-house," was the conclusion of his sentence.
+
+While this discussion had been in progress the viands had not been
+neglected except by such members of the company as had been bereft of
+appetite by loftier emotions--in consequence of which the table appeared to
+have sustained a visitation of seventeen-year locusts. Eudora, ever
+economic in the value she placed not only upon herself but her
+environment, proposed to her guests that they should wash the dishes, an
+art in which they were by no means deficient, being no exception to the
+majority of range bachelors in their skill in homely pursuits. And thus it
+came to pass that Eudora's suitors, swathed in aprons, meekly washed
+dishes shoulder to shoulder, while their souls craved the performance of
+valorous deeds.
+
+As this was the last stage station on the way to Lost Trail, Mary
+Carmichael was perforce obliged to content herself till Mrs. Yellett
+should call or send for her. After supper, Chugg, with fresh horses to the
+stage, left Rodney's, apparently for some port in that seemingly pathless
+sea of foot-hills. That there should be trails and defined routes over
+this vast, unvaried stretch of space seemed more wonderful to Mary than
+the charted high-roads of the Atlantic. The foot-hills seemed to have
+grown during the long journey till they were foot-hills no longer; they
+had come to be the smaller peaks of the towering range that had formed the
+spine of the desert. The air, that seemed to have lost some of its
+crystalline quality on the flat stretches of the plains, was again
+sparkling and heady in the clean hill country. It stirred the pulses like
+some rare vintage, some subtle distillation of sun-warmed fruit that had
+been mellowing for centuries.
+
+Very lonely seemed the Rodney home among the great company of mountains. A
+brooding desolation had settled on it at close of day, and all the
+laughter and light footsteps and gayly ringing voices of the young folk
+could not dispel the feeling of being adrift in a tiny shell on the black
+waters of some unknown sea; or thus it seemed to the stranger within their
+gate.
+
+Mrs. Rodney retired within the flap of her sun-bonnet after the evening
+meal, settling herself in the rocking-chair as if it were some sort of
+conveyance. Her family, who might have told the hour of day or her passing
+mood by the action of the chair, knew by her pacific gait that she would
+lament the unbuilt bird-house no more that night. The snuff-brush, newly
+replenished from the tin box, kept perfect time to the motion of the
+chair. With the lady of the house it was one of the brief seasons of
+passing content vouchsafed by an ample meal and a good digestion.
+
+Warren Rodney took down a gun from the wall and began to clean it. His
+hands had the fumbling, indefinite movements, the obscure action, directed
+by a brain already begun to crumble. His industry with the gun was of a
+part with the impotent dawdling in the garden. His eyes would seek for the
+rag or the bottle of oil in a dull, glazed way, and, having found them, he
+would forget the reason of his quest. Not once that evening had they
+rested on his wife or any member of his family. He had shown no interest
+in any of the small happenings of home, the frank rivalry of Eudora's
+suitors, the bickerings of the girls and boys over the division of
+household labor. The one thing that had momentarily aroused his somnolent
+intelligence was a revival of his wife's plaint anent the unbuilt
+bird-house. That, and a certain furtive anxiety during supper lest his
+daughter Eudora should forget to keep his plate piled high, were the only
+signs of a participation in the life about him.
+
+From one of the rooms that opened to the world like a stage to the
+audience, Mrs. Rodney kept her evening vigil. The last faint amethystine
+haze on the mountains was deepening. They towered about the valley where
+the house lay, with a challenging immensity, mocking the pitiful grasp of
+these pygmies on the thousand hills. The snow on the taller of the peaks
+still held the high lights. But all the valleys and the spaces between the
+mountains were wrapped in sombre shadows; the crazy house invading the
+great company of mountains, penetrating brazenly to the very threshold of
+their silent councils, seemed but a pitiful ant-hill at the mercy of some
+possible giant tread. The ill-adjusted family, disputing every inch of
+ground with the wilderness, became invested with a dignity quite out of
+keeping with its achievements. Their very weaknesses and vanities, old
+Sally still clinging to her sun-bonnet and her limp rose-colored skirts,
+an eternal requiem for the dead and gone complexion, lost the
+picturesqueness of the pioneer and ranked as universal qualities,
+admissible in the austerest setting. Perhaps in some far distant council
+of the Daughters of the Pioneers a prospective member of the house of
+Rodney would unctuously announce: "My great-great-grandmother was a Miss
+Tumlin of Tennessee; great-great-grandfather's first wife had been a Sioux
+squaw. Isn't it interesting and romantic?"
+
+Eudora now came to her mother with great news. Hawks had taken the first
+opportunity of being alone with her to tell her of Jim's release from jail
+and of his abortive encounter with Simpson in the eating-house. He had not
+deferred the telling from any feeling of reticence regarding the
+disclosure of family affairs before strangers. News travels in the desert
+by some unknown agency. Twenty-four hours after a thing happened it would
+be safe to assume that every cow and sheep outfit in a radius of three
+hundred miles would be discussing it over their camp-fires; and this long
+before there was an inch of telegraph wire or a railroad tire in the
+country. Hawks had merely reserved the news for Eudora's private ear
+because he hoped thus to gain an advantage over his three rivals.
+
+"Ai-yi!" said old Sally, sharply, and the chair came to an abrupt
+stand-still. "In the name o' Heaven, how kem they to let him out?" Mrs.
+Rodney's knowledge of the law was of the vaguest; and if incarceration
+would keep a prisoner out of more grievous trouble, she could not
+understand giving him his freedom. To her the case was analogous to
+releasing a child from the duress of a corner and turning him loose to
+play with matches. "How kem they to let him out?" she repeated, the still
+rocking-chair conveying the impersonal dignity of the pulpit or the
+justice-seat. "I 'ain't hearn tell of so pearty a couple as the jail an'
+Jim in years."
+
+The meaning that she put into her words belied their harsh face-value.
+With Jim in jail, her mind was comparatively at rest about him. She knew
+he had been branding other men's cattle since the destruction of his
+sheep, and she knew the fate of cattle-thieves, and that Jim would be no
+exception to the rule. With her purely instinctive maternity, she had been
+fond of Jim. He had been one more boy to mother. She harbored no
+ill-feeling towards him that he was not her own. Moreover, she wanted no
+gallows-tree intermingled with the annals of her family. It suited her
+convenience at this particular time that Jim should stay in jail. That he
+had been given his freedom loosed the phials of her condemnation on the
+incompetents that released him.
+
+"I 'low they wuz grudgin' him the mouthful they fed to him, that they ack
+so outdaciously plumb locoed as to tu'n a man out to get hisself hanged.
+An' Jim never wuz a hearty eater. He never seemed to relish his food, even
+when he wuz a growin' kid."
+
+A pale, twinkling point of light, faintly glimmering in the vast solitudes
+above the billowing peaks, suddenly burst into a dazzling constellation
+before the girl and her mother. "It's a warning!" shivered the old woman.
+"Some'um's bound to happen." She began to rock herself slowly. The thing
+she dreaded had already come to pass in her imagination. Jim a free man
+was Jim a dead man. He was so dead that already his step-mother was going
+on with a full acceptance of the idea. She reviewed her relationship to
+him. No, she had nothing to blame herself for. He had been more
+troublesome than any of her own children and for that reason she had been
+more liberal with the rod. And yet--the face of the squaw rose before her,
+wraithlike, accusing! "Ai-yi!" she said; but this time her favorite
+expletive was hardly more than a sigh.
+
+"I mind Jim when he first kem to us," she said, more to herself than to
+Eudora, who sat at her feet. The impending tragedy in the family had
+robbed her of all the joy in her suitors. They sat on a bench on the
+opposite side of the house, divided by the very nature of their interests
+yet companions in misery.
+
+"He wuz scarce four, an' yet he had never been broke of the habit of
+sucking his thumb. Ef he'd ben my child, I'd a lammed it out'n him before
+he'd a seen two, but seem' he was aged for an infant havin' such
+practices, I tried to shame him out'n it. But, Lord a massy, men folks is
+hard to shame even at four. I hissed at him like a gyander every time I
+seen him do it. Now I'd a knowed better--I'd a sewed it up in a pepper
+rag."
+
+"What's suckin' his thumb as an infant got to do with his gettin' lynched
+now?" demanded Eudora, with the scepticism of the second generation.
+
+"Wait till you-uns has children of your own," sniffed her mother, from the
+assured position of maternal experience, "an' see the infant that's
+allowed to suck its thumb has the makin's in him of a felon or a
+unfortunit." She rocked a slow accompaniment to her dismal, prophecy.
+
+Eudora's eyes, big with wonder, were fixed on the crouching flank of a
+distant mountain. Her mother broke the silence. Not often did they speak
+thus intimately. Old Sally belonged to that class of mothers who feel a
+pride in their reticent dealings with their daughters, and who consider
+the management of all affairs of the heart peculiarly the province of
+youth and inexperience.
+
+But to-night she was prompted by a force beyond her ken to speak to the
+girl. "Eudory, in pickin' out one of them men," she jerked her thumb
+towards the opposite side of the house, "git one tha's clar o' the trick
+o' stampedin' round other wimming. It's bound to kem back to ye, same as
+counterfeit money."
+
+Eudora giggled. She was of an age when the fascinations of curiosity as to
+the unknown male animal prompt lavish conjecture. "I 'lowed they all
+stampeded."
+
+"Yes," leered the old woman--and she grinned the whole horrid length of her
+empty gums--"the most of 'em does. But you must shet your eyes to it. The
+moment they know you swallow it, they's wuthless, like horses that has run
+away once."
+
+"Hark!" said Eudora. "Ain't that wheels?"
+
+"It be," answered her mother. "It be that old Ma'am Yellett after her
+gov'ment."
+
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+
+                     Mrs. Yellett And Her "Gov'ment"
+
+
+The buckboard drew up to the back or open-faced entrance of the Rodney
+house with a splendid sweep, terminating in a brilliantly staccato halt,
+as if to convey to the residents the flattering implication that their
+house was reached via a gravelled driveway, rather than across lumpish
+inequalities of prairie overgrown with cactus stumps and clumps of
+sage-brush. From the buckboard stepped a figure whose agility was
+compatible with her driving.
+
+No sketchy outline can do justice to Mrs. Yellett or her costume. Like the
+bee, the ant, and other wonders of the economy of nature, she was not to
+be disposed of with a glance. And yet there was no attempt at subtlety on
+her part; on the contrary, no one could have an appearance of greater
+candor than the lady whose children Mary Carmichael had come West to
+teach. Her costume was a thing apart, suggesting neither sex, epoch, nor
+personal vanity, but what it lacked of these more usual sartorial
+characteristics, it more than made up in a passionate individualism; an
+excessively short skirt, so innocent of "fit" or "hang" in its wavering,
+indeterminate outline as to suggest the possible workmanship of teeth
+rather than of scissors; and riding-boots coming well to the knee,
+displaying a well-shaped, ample foot, perched aloft on the usual high heel
+that cow-punchers affect as the expression of their chiefest vanity. But
+Mrs. Yellett was not wholly mannish in her tastes, and to offset the boots
+she wore a bodice of the type that a generation ago used to be known as a
+"basque." It fitted her ample form as a cover fits a pin-cushion, the row
+of jet buttons down the front looking as if a deep breath might cause them
+to shoot into space at any moment with the force of Mauser bullets.
+
+Such a garb was not, after all, incongruous with this original lady's
+weather-beaten face. Her skin was tanned to a fine russet, showing tiny,
+radiating lines about the eyes when they twinkled with laughter, which was
+often. No individual feature was especially striking, but the general
+impression of her countenance was of animation and activity, mingled with
+geniality and with native shrewdness.
+
+"Howdy, Miz Yellett," called out old Sally, hitching her rocker forward,
+in an excitement she could ill conceal. "You-uns' gov'ment come, an' she
+ain't much bigger'n a lettle green gourd. Don't seem to have drawed all
+the growth comin' to her yit."
+
+"In roundin' up the p'ints of my gov'ment, Mis' Rodney, you don't want to
+forget that green gourds and green grapes is mighty apt to belong to the
+sour fambly, when they hangs beyant your reach."
+
+"Ai-yi!" grimaced old Sally. "It's tol'able far to send East for green
+fruit. We can take our own pep'mint."
+
+The prospective advent of a governess in the Yellett family, moreover, one
+from that mysterious centre of culture, the East, had not only rent the
+neighborhood with bitter factions, but had submitted the Yelletts to the
+reproach of ostentation. In those days there were no schools in that
+portion of the Wind River country where the Yelletts grazed their flocks
+and herds. Parents anxious to obtain "educational advantages"--that was the
+term, irrespective of the age of the student or the school he
+attended--sent them, often, with parental blindness as to the equivocal
+nature of the blessing thus conferred, to visit friends in the neighboring
+towns while they "got their education." Or they went uneducated, or they
+picked up such crumbs of knowledge as fell from the scant parental board.
+But never, up to the present moment, had any one flown into the face of
+neighborly precedent except sturdy Sarah Yellett.
+
+Old Sally, in her eagerness to convey that she was in no degree impressed
+with the pedagogical importation, like many another belligerent lost the
+first round of the battle through an excess of personal feeling. But
+though down, Sally was by no means out, and after a brief session with the
+snuff-brush she returned to the field prepared to maintain that the
+Yellett children, for all their pampering in the matter of having a
+governess imported for their benefit, were no better off than her own
+brood, who had taken the learning the gods provided.
+
+"Too bad, Miz Yellett, that you-uns had to hire that gov'ment without
+lookin' over her p'ints. I've ben takin' her in durin' supper, and she'll
+never be able to thrash 'em past Clem. She mought be able to thrash Clem
+if she got plumb mad, these yere slim wimmin is tarrible wiry 'n' active
+at such times, but she'll never be able to thrash beyant her." And having
+injected the vitriolic drop in her neighbor's cup of happiness, Old Sally
+struck a gait on her chair which was the equivalent of a gallop.
+
+But Mrs. Yellett was not the sort of antagonist to be left gaping on the
+road, awed to silence by the action of a rocking-chair, no matter how
+brilliant.
+
+"I reckon I can thrash my own children when it's needed, without gettin'
+in help from the East, or hereabouts either, for that matter. If other
+folks would only take out their public-spirited reformin' tendencies on
+their own famblies, there'd be a heap less lynchin' likely to happen round
+the country in the course of the next ten years."
+
+Old Sally let the home-thrust pass. "Who ever hearn tell of a good teacher
+that wasn't a fine thrasher in the bargain?" She swung the chair about
+with a pivotal motion, as if she were addressing an assemblage instead of
+a single listener, and then, bethinking herself of a clinching
+illustration, she called aloud to her daughter to bear witness. "Eudory!
+Eu-do-ry! You-do-ry!"
+
+"Ye-'s ma'am," drawled the daughter, coming most unwillingly from the
+open-faced room opposite, where she had been inciting all four of the
+suitors to battle.
+
+"What was it they called that teacher down to Caspar that larruped the
+hide off'n the boys?"
+
+"A fine dis-a-_ply_-narian, maw."
+
+"Yes, that's it--a dis-a-_ply_-narian. What kin a lettle green gourd like
+her know 'bout dis-apply-in?"
+
+"Your remarks shore remind me of a sayin' that 'the discomfort of havin'
+to swallow other folks' dust causes a heap of anxiety over their reckless
+driving.'"
+
+Mrs. Yellett flicked her riding-boot with her whip. Her voice dropped a
+couple of tones, her accent became one of honeyed sweetness.
+
+"Your consumin' anxiety regardin' my gov'ment and my children shore
+reminds me of a narrative appertainin' to two dawgs. Them dawgs was
+neighbors, livin' in adj'inin' yards separated by a fence, and one day one
+of them got a good meaty bone and settled hisself down to the enj'yment
+thereof. And his intimate friend and neighbor on the other side of the
+fence, who had no bone to engage his faculties, he began to fret hisself
+'bout the business of his friend. S'pose he was to choke hisself over that
+bone. S'pose the meat disagreed with him. And he begins to bark warnin's,
+but the dawg with the bone he keeps right on. But the other dawg he dashes
+hisself again the fence and he scratches with his claws. He whines
+pitiful, he's that anxious about his friend. But the dawg with the bone he
+went right on till he gnawed it down to the last morsel, and, goin' to the
+hole in the fence whar his friend had kep' that anxious vigil, he says:
+'Friend, the only thing that consoled me while having to endure the
+anguish of eatin' that bone was the thought of your watchful sympathy!'
+Which bein' the case, I'd thank you to tell me whar I can find my
+gov'ment."
+
+"Ai-yi!" said old Sally. "I ain't seein' no bone this deal. Just a lettle
+green gourd 's all I see with my strongest specs."
+
+Mary Carmichael, in one of the inner rooms, was writing a home letter,
+which was chiefly remarkable for what it failed to relate. It gave long
+accounts of the scenery, it waxed didactic over the future of the country;
+but the adventures of the trip, with her incidental acquaintance with the
+Daxes and Chugg, were not recorded. Eudora announced the arrival of Mrs.
+Yellett, and Mary, at the news, dropped the contents of her portfolio and
+started up with much the feeling a marooned sailor might have on hearing a
+sail has been sighted. At this particular stage of her career Miss
+Carmichael had not developed the philosophy that later in life was
+destined to become her most valuable asset. Her sense of humor no longer
+responded to the vagaries of pioneer life. The comedy element was coming a
+little too thick and fast. She was getting a bit heart-sick for a glimpse
+of her own kind, a word with some one who spoke her language. And here, at
+last, was the woman who had written such a charming letter, who had so
+graciously intimated that there was room for her at the hearth-stone. Mary
+was, indeed, eager to make the acquaintance of Mrs. Yellett.
+
+To the end of her life she never forgot that first meeting--the perfect
+confidence with which she followed Eudora to the open room, the ensuing
+blank amazement, the utter inability to reconcile the Mrs. Yellett of the
+letter with the Mrs. Yellett of fact. The lamp on the table, burning
+feebly, seemed to burst into a thousand shooting-stars as the girl
+struggled with her tears. Home was so far, and Mrs. Yellett was so
+different from what she had expected! And yet, as she felt her fingers
+crush in the grip of that hard but not unkindly hand, there was in the
+woman's rugged personality a sustaining quality; and, thinking again of
+Archie's prospects, Mary was not altogether sorry that she had come.
+
+"You be a right smart young maverick not to get lost none on this long
+trail, and no one to p'int you right if you strayed," commented Mary's
+patroness, affably. "But we won't roominate here no longer than we can
+help. It's too hard on old Ma'am Rodney. She's just 'bout the color of
+withered cabbage now, 'long of me havin' you."
+
+While she talked, Mrs. Yellett picked up Mary's trunk and bags and stowed
+them in the back of the buckboard with the ease with which another woman
+might handle pasteboard boxes. One or two of the male Rodneys offered to
+help, but she waved them aside and lashed the luggage to the buckboard,
+handling the ropes with the skill of an old sailor. The entire Rodney
+family and the suitors of Eudora assembled to witness the departure. "It's
+a heap friendly of you to fret so," was the parting stab of Sarah Yellett
+to Sally Rodney; and she swung the backboard about, cleared the cactus
+stumps in the Rodney door-yard, and gained the mountain-road.
+
+"Ai-yi!" said old Sally. "What's this country comin' to?"
+
+"A few more women, thank God!" remarked Ira. Eudora had just snubbed him,
+and he put a wealth of meaning into his look after the vanishing
+buckboard.
+
+The night was magnificent. From horizon to horizon the sky was sown with
+quivering points of light. Each straggling clump of sage-brush, rocky
+ledge, and bowlder borrowed a beauty not its own from the yellow radiance
+of the stars.
+
+They had gone a good two miles before Mary's patroness broke the silence
+with, "Nothing plumb stampedes my temper like that Rodney outfit--old Sally
+buckin' an' pitchin' in her rockin'-chair same as if she was breakin' a
+bronco, an' that Eudory always corallin', deceivin', and jiltin' one
+outfit of men after another. If she was a daughter of mine, I'd medjure
+her length across my knee, full growed and courted though she is. The only
+one of the outfit that's wuth while is Judith, an' she ain't old woman
+Rodney's girl, neither. You hyeard that already, did you? Well, this yere
+country may be lackin' in population, but it's handy as a sewin'-circle in
+distributin' news."
+
+Mary mentioned Leander. "Yes," answered Mrs. Yellett, reflectively,
+"Leander's mouth do run about eight and a half octaves. Sometimes I don't
+blame his wife for bangin' down the lid."
+
+They talked of Jim Rodney's troubles, and the growing hatred between sheep
+and cattle men, because of range rights.
+
+"Now that pore Jim had a heap of good citizen in him, before that
+pestiferous cattle outfit druv' his sheep over the cliff. Relations 'twixt
+sheep and cattle men in this yere country is strained beyant the
+goin'-back place, I can tell you. My pistol-eye 'ain't had a wink of sleep
+for nigh on eighteen months, an' is broke to wakefulness same as a
+teethin' babe.
+
+"Jim was wild as a coyote 'fore he marries that girl. She come all the way
+from Topeka, Kansas, thinking she was goin' to find a respectable home,
+and when she come out hyear and found the place was a dance-hall, she
+cried all the time. She didn't add none to the hilarity of the place. An'
+one day Jim he strolled in, an' seem' the girl a-cryin' like a freshet and
+wishin' she was dead, he inquired the cause. She told him how that old
+harpy wrote her, an', bein' an orphant, she come out thinkin' she was
+goin' to a respectable place as waitress, an' Jim he 'lowed it was a case
+for the law. He was a little shy of twenty at the time, just a young
+cockerel 'bout br'ilin' size. Some of the old hangers-on 'bout the place
+they see a heap of fun in Jim's takin' on 'bout the girl, he bein' that
+young that he had scarce growed a pair of spurs yet. An' one of 'em says
+to him,' Sonny, if you're afeerd that this yere corral is onjurious to the
+young lady's morals, we'll call in the gospel sharp, if you'll stand for
+the brand.' Now Jim hadn't a cent, nor no callin', nor a prospect to his
+back, but he struts up to the man that was doin' the talkin', game as a
+bantam, an' he says, 'The lady ain't rakin' in anythin' but a lettle white
+chip, in takin' me, but if she's willin', here's my hand.'
+
+"At which that pore young thing cried harder than ever. Well, Jim he up
+an' marries the girl an' it turns out fine. He gets a job herdin' sheep on
+shares, an' she stays with the Rodney outfit till he saves enough to build
+a cabin. Things is goin' with Jim like a prairie afire. In a few years he
+acquires a herd of his own, a fine herd, not a scabby sheep in the bunch.
+Alida she makes him the best kind of a wife, them kids is the pride of his
+life, and then, them cursed cattle-men do for him. Of course, he takes to
+rustlin'; I'd do more'n rustle if they'd touch mine."
+
+The pair of broncos that Mrs. Yellett was driving humped their backs like
+cats as they climbed the steep mountain-road. With her, driving was an
+exact science. It was a treat to see her handle the ribbons. Mary asked
+some trifling question about the children and it elicited the information
+that one of the girls was named Cacta. "Yes," she said, "I like new names
+for children, not old ones that is all frazzled out and folks has suffered
+an' died to. It seems to start 'em fair, like playin' cards with a new
+deck. Cacta's my oldest daughter, and I named her after the flowers that
+blooms all over the desert spite of everything, heat, cold, an' rain an'
+alkali dust--the cactus blooms right through it all. Even its own thorns
+don't seem to fret it none. I called her plain Cactus till she was three,
+and along came a sharp studyin' the flowers an' weeds out here, and he
+'lowed that Cactus was a boy's name an' Cacta was for girls--called it a
+_fee_minin tarnation, or somethin' like that, so we changed it. My second
+daughter 'ain't got quite so much of a name. She's called Clematis. That
+holds its own out here pretty well, 'long by the willows on the creek. Paw
+'lowed he was terrible afraid that I'd name the youngest girl Sage-brush,
+so he spoke to call her Lessie Viola, an' I giv' in. The boys is all plain
+named, Ben, Jack, and Ned. Paw wouldn't hear of a fancy brand bein' run
+onto 'em."
+
+The temperature fell perceptibly as they climbed the heights, and the air
+had the heady quality of wine. It was awesome, this entering into the
+great company of the mountains. Presently Mary caught the glimmer of
+something white against the dark background of the hills. It gleamed like
+a snow-bank, though they were far below the snow-line on the mountain-side
+they were climbing.
+
+"Well, here be camp," announced Mrs. Yellett. What Mary had taken for a
+bank of snow was a huge, canvas-covered wagon. Several dogs ran down to
+greet the buckboard, barking a welcome. In the background was a shadowy
+group, huge of stature, making its way down the mountain-path. "And here's
+all the children come to meet teacher." Mrs. Yellett's tone was tenderly
+maternal, as if it was something of a feat for the children to walk down
+the mountain-path to meet their teacher. But Mary, straining her eyes to
+catch a glimpse of her little pupils, could discover nothing but a group
+of persons that seemed to be the sole survivors of some titanic race. Not
+one among them but seemed to have reached the high-water mark of six feet.
+Was it an optical illusion, a hallucination born of the wonderful
+starlight? Or were they as huge as they seemed? The young men looked
+giants, the girls as if they had wandered out of the first chapters of
+Genesis. Their mother introduced them. They all had huge, warm, perspiring
+hands, with grips like bears. Mary looked about for a house into which she
+could escape to gather her scattered faculties, but the starlight, yellow
+and luminous, revealed none. There was the huge covered wagon that she had
+taken for a snow-bank, there was a small tent, there were two light
+wagons, there were dogs innumerable, but there was no sign of a house.
+
+"What do you think of it?" inquired Mrs. Yellett, smilingly, anticipating
+a favorable answer.
+
+"It's almost too beautiful to leave." Mary innocently supposed that Mrs.
+Yellett referred to the starlit landscape. "But I'm so tired, Mrs.
+Yellett, and so glad to get to a real home at last, that I'm going to ask
+if you will not show me the way to the house so that I may go to bed right
+away."
+
+This apparently reasonable request was greeted by a fine chorus of titanic
+laughter from Mary's pupils. Mrs. Yellett waved her hand over the
+surrounding landscape in comprehensive gesture.
+
+"Ain't all this large enough for you?" she asked, gayly.
+
+"You mean the mountains? They're wonderful. But--I really think I'd like to
+go in the house."
+
+"I shore hope you ain't figgerin' on goin' into no house, 'cause there
+ain't no house to go into." She laughed merrily, as if the idea of such an
+effete luxury as a house were amusing. "This yere family 'ain't ever had a
+house--it camps."
+
+Mary gasped. The real meaning of words no longer had the power of making
+an impression on her. If Mrs. Yellett had announced that they were in the
+habit of sleeping in the moon, it would not have surprised her.
+
+"If you are tired, an' want to go to bed, you can shuck off and lie down
+any time. Ben, Jack, Ned, go an' set with paw in the tent while the
+gov'ment gets ready for bed. Cacta and Clem, you help me with them
+quilts."
+
+Mary stood helpless in the wilderness while quilts and pillows were
+fetched somewhere from the adjacent scenery, and Mrs. Yellett asked her,
+with the gravity of a Pullman porter interrogating a passenger as to the
+location of head and foot, if she liked to sleep "light or dark." She
+chose "dark" at random, hating to display her ignorance of the
+alternatives, with the happy result that her bed was made up to leeward of
+the great sheep-wagon, in a nice little corner of the State of Wyoming.
+Mary was grateful that she had chosen dark.
+
+As she dozed off, she was reminded of a certain magazine illustration that
+Archie had pinned over his bed after the aunts had given a grudging
+consent to this westward journey. There was a line beneath the pictorial
+decoy which read: "Ranch Life in the New West." And there were piazzas
+with fringed Mexican hammocks, wild-grass cushions, a tea-table with a
+samovar, and, last, a lady in white muslin pouring tea. The stern reality
+apparently consisted in scorching alkali plains, with houses of the
+packing-box school of architecture at a distance of seventy or eighty
+miles apart. No ladies in white muslin poured tea; they garbed themselves
+in simple gunny-sacking, and their repartee had an acrid, personal note.
+But Mary was glad to know that Archie had that picture, and that he
+thought of her in such ideal surroundings.
+
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+
+                           On Horse-thief Trail
+
+
+Judith, on her black mare, Dolly, left the Dax ranch after the mid-day
+meal to go in quest of her brother. He had left his comfortable cabin on
+the Bear Creek, when he had turned rustler, and moved into the "bad man's
+country," one of those remote mountain fastnesses that abound in Wyoming
+and furnish a natural protection to the fugitive from justice. Judith took
+the left fork of the road even as Peter Hamilton had chosen the right, the
+day she had watched him gallop towards Kitty Colebrooke with never a
+glance backward. Judith strove now to put him and the memory of that day
+from her mind by turning towards the open country without a glance in the
+direction he had taken. But her thoughts were weary of journeying over
+that trail that she would not look towards; in imagination she had
+travelled it with Peter a hundred times, saw each dip and turn of the
+yellow road, each feature of the landscape as he rode exultant to Kitty,
+to be turned, tried, taken or left as her mood should prompt. But Judith
+was more woman than saint, and in her heart there was a blending of joy
+and pain. For she knew--such skill has love in inference from detail--that
+the mysterious far-away girl, who was so powerful that she could have
+whatever she wanted, even to Peter, loved her own ambitions better than
+she did Peter or Peter's happiness, and that she would not marry him
+except as a makeshift. For Miss Colebrooke wrote verses; Peter had a
+white-and-gold volume of them that Judith fancied he said his prayers to.
+
+As for Peter himself, he had never been able to explain the magic Kitty
+had brewed for him. There was a heady quality in the very ring of her
+name. His first glimpse of her, on Class Day, in a white gown and a hat
+that to his manly indiscrimination looked as guileless as a sheaf of
+poppies nodding above the pale-yellow hair that had the sheen of
+corn-silk, had been a vision that stirred in him heroic promptings. He had
+no difficulty in securing an introduction. She was a connection of the
+Wetmores, as was he, though through opposite sides of the house. In the
+few minutes' talk that followed, he had the disconcerting sensation of
+being "talked down to." There was the indulgent tolerance of the woman of
+the world to the "nice boy" about this amazing young woman, who might have
+been eighteen. Hamilton had repudiated the very suggestion of being a
+"nice boy." But he felt himself blushing, groping for words, saying stupid
+things, supplying every requisite of the "nice boy" as if he were acting
+the part. Her chaperon bore her away presently, and he was left with a
+radiant impression of corn-silk hair and a complexion that justified
+Bouguereau's mother-of-pearl flesh tints. And when she had tilted the
+ruffled lace parasol over her shoulder, so that it framed her head like a
+fleecy halo, he had seen that her eyes were green as jade. Withal he had a
+sense of having acquitted himself stupidly.
+
+Later, when he ran the gamut of some friends, they had chaffed him on his
+hardihood. By Jove! He had nerve to look at her! Didn't he know she was
+"the" Miss Colebrooke? Now Hamilton was absolutely ignorant of Miss
+Colebrooke's right of way to the definite article, but it was
+characteristic of him to make no inquiries. On the whole, he found the
+situation meeting with a greater number of the artistic requirements than
+such situations usually presented. He was still dallying with this
+pleasant vagueness of sensation when he picked up a copy of a magazine,
+and the name Katherine Colebrooke caught his eye and held it like the
+flight of a comet. Her contribution was a sonnet entitled "The Miracle."
+As a naive emotional confession, "The Miracle" interested him; as a
+sonnet, he rent it unmercifully.
+
+Peter was to learn, however, that this sonnet was but a solitary flake in
+a poetic fall of more or less magnitude. He rather conspicuously avoided a
+reference to her poetry when they met again. To him it was the very least
+of her gifts. Her hair, that had the tender yellow of ripening corn, was
+worthy a cycle of sonnets, but pray leave the making of them to some one
+else! By daylight the jade-colored eyes seemed to shut out the world. The
+pupils shrank to pin-points. The green looked deep--as many fathoms as the
+sea. She was all Diana by daylight, a huntress, if you will, of the
+elusive epithet, but essentially a maiden goddess, who would add no
+sprightly romance to the chronicles of Olympus. By lamp-light she
+suggested quite another divinity. The pin-points expanded; they burned
+black, like coals newly breaking into flame.
+
+When Hamilton knew her better, he did not like to think that he had
+thought her eighteen at their first meeting. It impugned his judgment as a
+man of the world. Young ladies of eighteen could not possibly be
+contributors of several years' standing to the various magazines.
+Disconcerting scraps of gossip floated to him. He heard of her as
+bridesmaid at a famous wedding of six years back, when she had deflected
+the admiration from the bride and remained the central figure of the
+picture. Her portrait by Sargent had been the sensation of the Salon when
+he had been a grubby-faced boy with his nose in a Latin grammar. An
+unusual situation was abhorrent to him. That he should marry an older
+woman, one, moreover, who had gained her public in a field to which he had
+not gained admission, was doubly distasteful by reason of his deference to
+the conventional. If she had flirted with him, his midsummer madness would
+have evaporated into thin air; but she kept him at arm's-length,
+ostensibly took him seriously, and the boy proposed.
+
+Her rejection of him was a matter of such consummate skill that Hamilton
+did not realize the keenness of his disappointment till he was swinging
+westward over the prairies. She had confided to him that her work claimed
+her and that she must renounce those sweet responsibilities that made the
+happiness of other women. It was with the protective mien of one who
+sought to shield him from an adverse destiny that she declined his suit.
+
+This had all happened seven years ago. In the mean time he had adjusted
+his disappointment to the new life of the West. To say that he had fallen
+in love with the situation would be to misrepresent him. But the role of
+lonely cow-puncher loyally wedded to the thought of his first love was not
+without charm to Peter. How long his constancy would have survived the
+test of propinquity to a woman of Judith Rodney's compelling personality,
+other things being equal, it would be difficult to hazard a guess. The
+coming of Judith from the convent increased the perspective into which
+Kitty was retreating. With the vivid plainswoman in the foreground, the
+pale-haired writer of verse dwindled almost to reminiscence. But the
+reverence for the usual, that made up the underlying motive for so much of
+Hamilton's conduct, presented barriers alongside of which his previous
+quandary regarding Miss Colebrooke's seniority shrank to insignificance.
+He might marry a woman older than himself and swallow the grimace of it,
+but by no conceivable system of argument could he persuade himself to
+marry into a family like that of the Rodneys--the girl herself, for all her
+beauty and rare womanliness, a quarter Indian, her father the synonyme for
+obloquy, her brother a cattle thief. Hamilton preferred that other men
+should make the heroic marriages of a new country. He was prepared to
+applaud their hardihood of temperament, but in his own case such a thing
+was inconceivable. Similar arguments have ensnared multitudes in the web
+of caution and provided a rich feast for the arch-spider, convention, the
+shrivelled flies dangling in the web conveying no significance,
+apparently, beyond that of advertising the system.
+
+When Peter went East, he had expected to find Kitty worn by the pursuit of
+epithets, haunted by the phantom of a career, resigned to the slings and
+arrows of remorseful spinsterhood. An obvious regret, or, at least,
+resignation tempered with remembrance, was the unguent he anticipated at
+the hands of Kitty. But alas for sanctuaries built to refuge wounded
+pride! He found Kitty the pivot of an adoring coterie, the magazines
+flowing with the milk and honey of her verse and she looking younger, if
+possible, than when he had first known her. Time, experience, even the
+pangs of literary parturition had not writ a single character on that
+alabaster brow. The very atrophy of the forces of time which she had
+accomplished by unknown necromancy seemed to endow her with an elfin
+youth, making her seem smaller, more childlike, more radiantly elusive
+than when she had worn the poppy hat at Cambridge.
+
+The tan and hardship of the prairie had adjusted the blunder of their
+ages. Stark conditions had overdrawn his account perhaps a decade; she
+retained a surplus it would be rude to estimate. Her greeting of him was
+radiant, her welcome panoplied in words that verged close to inspiration.
+A woman would have scented warning instantly, deep feeling and the curled
+and perfumed phrase being suspicious cronies and sure to rouse those
+lightly slumbering watch-dogs, the feminine wits. But Peter only turned
+the other cheek. More than once, in the days that followed, he devoutly
+thanked his patron saint, caution, that his relations with Judith had been
+governed by characteristic prudence. Kitty admitted him to her coterie,
+but he had lost nothing of his attitude of grand Turk towards her verses.
+The sin be upon the heads of whomever took such things seriously! The
+irony of fate that compelled a class poet to punch cows may have tinctured
+his judgment.
+
+A telegram recalled him to the ranch and prevented a final leave-taking
+with Miss Colebrooke. He made his adieux by letter, and they were frankly
+regretful. Miss Colebrooke's reply mingled sorrow in parting from her old
+friend with joy in having found him. Her letter, a masterpiece of
+phrase-spinning, presented to Peter the one significant fact that she
+would not be averse to the renewal of his suit. In reading her letter he
+made no allowance for the fact that the lady had made a fine art of saying
+things, and that her joy and regret at their meeting and parting might
+have been reminiscent of the printed passion that was so prominent a
+feature of magazinedom. Her letters--the like of them he had never seen
+outside printed volumes of letters that had achieved the distinction of
+classics--culminated in the one that Judith had given him that morning,
+announcing that unexpectedly she had decided to join the Wetmore girls and
+would be glad to see him at the ranch.
+
+That he had flown at her bidding, Judith knew. What she would least have
+suspected was that Miss Colebrooke had received her visitor as if his
+breakneck ride across the desert had been in the nature of an afternoon
+call. If Judith, knowing what she did of this long-drawn-out romance,
+could have known likewise of her knight's chagrin, would she have pitied
+him?
+
+Ignorant of the recent anticlimax, and with a burden of many heavy
+thoughts, Judith was penetrating a world of unleavened desolation. Beneath
+the scourge of the noon-day sun the desert lay, stripped of every
+illusion. Vegetation had almost ceased, nothing but sun-scorched,
+dust-choked sage-brush could spring from such sterility. The fruit of
+desolation, it gave back to desolation a quality more melancholy than
+utter barrenness. Glittering in the sunlight, the beds of alkali gleamed
+leper white; above them the agitated air was like the hot waves that dance
+and quiver about iron at white heat. From horizon to horizon the curse of
+God seemed to have fallen on the land; it was as if, cursing it, He had
+forgotten it, and left it as the abomination of desolation. Judith scarce
+heeded, her thoughts straying after first one then another of the group
+that made up her little world--Peter Hamilton, Kitty Colebrooke, Jim, his
+family--thoughts inconsequent as the dancing dust-devils that whirled over
+that infinity of space, and, whirling, disappeared and reappeared at some
+new corner of the compass.
+
+The trail that she must take to Jim's camp in the mountain was known to
+but few honest men. Fugitives from justice--the grave, impersonal justice
+of the law, or the swift justice of the plains--found there an asylum. And
+while they sometimes suffered, in death by thirst or hunger, a sentence
+more dreadful than the law of the land or the law of the rope would have
+given them, the desert, like the sea, seldom gave up her own. It was more
+than probable that no woman except Alida Rodney had ever taken that trail
+before, and reasonably certain that no woman had ever taken it alone.
+Dolly, when she saw the beds of alkali grow more frequent, and that the
+trails of the range cattle turned back, sniffed the lack of water in the
+air, slackened her pace, and turned an interrogatory ear towards her
+mistress.
+
+"It's all right, old girl"; the gauntleted hand patted the satin neck.
+"We're in for"--Judith flung her head up and confronted the infinite
+desolation yawning to the sky-line--"God knows what."
+
+Dolly broke into a light canter; this evidently was not an occasion for
+dawdling. There was a touch of business about the way the reins were held
+that made the mare settle down to work. But her flying hoofs made little
+apparent progress against the space and silence of the desert. Five, ten,
+fifteen miles and the curving shoulder of the mountain, that she must
+cross, still mocked in the distance. Only the sun moved in that vast world
+of seemingly immutable forces.
+
+There was no stoic Sioux in Judith now. The girl that breasted the crests
+of the foot-hills shrank in terror from the loneliness and the suggestion
+of foes lurking in ambush. The sun dropped behind the mountain, leaving a
+blood-red pool in his wake, like fugitive Cain. Already night was sweeping
+over the earth from mountain shadows that flowed imperceptibly together
+like blackened pools. To the girl following the trail the silence was more
+dreadful than a chorus of threatening voices. She listened till the
+stillness beat at her ears like the stamping of ten thousand hoofs, then
+pulled up her horse, and the desert was as still as the chamber of death.
+
+"Ah, Dolly, my dear, a house is the place for women folk when the night
+comes--a house, the fire burning clear, the kettle singing, and--" Dolly
+whinnied an affirmative without waiting for the picture to be completed.
+The wilderness was being gradually swallowed by the shadows, as
+deliberately as a snake swallows its victim. They were nearing the
+mountains. The hot blasts of air from the desert blew more and more
+intermittently. The breeze swept keen from the hills, towering higher and
+higher, and Judith breathed deep of the piny fragrance and felt the
+tension of things loosen a little.
+
+Whitening cattle bones gleamed from the darkness, tragic reminders of hard
+winters and scant pasturage, and Judith, with the Indian superstition that
+was in the marrow of her bones, read ghostly warnings in the empty
+eye-sockets of the grinning skulls that stared up at her. She dared not
+think of the dangers that the looming darkness might conceal, or of what
+she might find at her journey's end, or--"Whoa, Dolly! softly, girl. Is it
+my foolish, white-blood nerves, or is some one following?"
+
+The mare had been trained to respond to the slightest touch on her mouth,
+and stopped instantly. Judith swayed slightly in the saddle with the
+heaving of the sweating horse. The blood beat at her temples, confusing
+what she actually heard with what her imagination pictured. She was
+half-way up a towering spur of the Wind River when she slid from the
+saddle, and putting her ear to the ground listened, Indian fashion. Above
+the throbbing stillness of the desert night, that came to her murmurously,
+like the imprisoned roar of the sea from a shell, she could hear the
+regular beat of horse's hoofs following up the steep mountain grade. She
+scrambled up with the desperate nimbleness of a hunted thing, but when she
+attempted to vault to the saddle her limbs failed and she sank clinging to
+the pommel. Twice she tried and twice the trembling of her limbs held her
+captive. With the loss of each moment the beat of the hoofs on the trail
+below became more distinct. The very desperation of her plight kept her
+clinging to the pommel, incapable of thought, so that when she finally
+flung herself to the saddle she was surprised to find herself there. To
+the left the trail dropped sharply to a precipice, choked by the close
+crowding of many scrub pines. To the right the snow-clad spires of the
+Wind River kept their eternal vigil. If she should call aloud for help,
+these white, still mountains would echo the anguish of her woman's cry and
+give no further heed to her plight.
+
+The trail had begun to widen. The horse behind her again stumbled,
+loosening a stone that rolled with crashes and echoings down to the
+precipice below. She took advantage of the widening of the trail to urge
+Dolly forward. Her impulse was to put spurs to the mare and run, to take
+chances with loose stones, a narrowing trail, and the possibility of
+Dolly's stumbling and breaking a leg; but discretion prompted the showing
+of a brave front, the pleasantries of the road, with flight as the last
+resource of desperation.
+
+Suddenly gaining what seemed to be a plateau, she wheeled and waited the
+coming of this possible friend or foe. The thudding of hoofs through the
+inferno of darkness stopped, as the rider below considered the latest move
+of the horseman above. They were so near that Judith could hear the
+labored breathing of the sweating horse. The blackness of the night had
+become a tangible thing. The towering mountains were one piece with the
+gaping precipice, the trail, the scrub pines, the gauntlet on her hand.
+The horse below resumed its stumbling gait. Judith crowded Dolly close to
+the rocky wall. If the chance comrade of the wilderness should pass her by
+in the darkness--God speed him!
+
+"What the devil are you blocking the trail for?" sung out a voice from the
+darkness. At sound of it Judith's heart stopped beating. The voice was
+Peter Hamilton's.
+
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+
+                         The Cabin In The Valley
+
+
+And Judith, taken unawares by the unexpected turn of things, comforted as
+a lost child that is found, told all her feeling for him in the way she
+called his name. The easy tenderness of the man awoke; his senses swayed
+to the magic of her voice, the mystery of the night, the shadow world in
+which they two, 'twixt earth and sky, were alone. They rode without
+speaking. Peter's hand sought hers, and all her woman's terror of the
+desolation, her fear of the vague terrors of the dreadful night, spoke in
+her answering pressure. It was as if the desert had given them to each
+other as they groped through the silent darkness. In the great company of
+earth, sky, silence, and this great-hearted woman, Peter grew conscious of
+a real thrill. There were depths to life--vast, still depths; this woman's
+unselfish love for him made him realize them. He felt his soul sweeping
+out on the great tide of things. Farther and farther it swept; his patron
+saint, caution, beckoning frantically from the receding shore, was miles
+behind. "Judith!" he said, and he scarce recognized his own voice.
+"Judith!" he struggled as a swimmer in a drowning clutch. Then his patron
+saint threw him a life-line and he saved the situation.
+
+"Judith!" he said, a third time, and now he knew his voice. It was the
+voice of the man who tilted at life picturesquely in a broad-brimmed hat,
+who loved his darling griefs and fitted them as a Rembrandt fits its
+background. And still, in the same voice, the voice he knew, he said: "I
+feel as if we had died and our souls were meeting. You know Aldrich's
+exquisite lines:
+
+  "Somewhere in desolate, wind-swept space,
+    In twilight land--no man's land--
+  Two hurrying shapes met face to face
+    And bade each other stand.
+
+  "'And who are you?' cried one, agape,
+    Shuddering in the gloaming light.
+  I know not,' said the other shape,
+  'I only died last night.'"
+
+"'I only died last night!'" she repeated the line, slowly, significantly.
+In her questioning she forgot the night, the desolation, the presence of
+the man. Had she died last night? Had youth, the joy of living, her
+infinite capacity for love, had they died when Peter, with the ugly haste
+of the man without a nice sense of the time that should elapse between the
+old and the new love, had spurred away cheerfully at the beck of another
+woman? And now the desert, this earth-mother as she called it, in the
+Indian way, had given him back to her, thrown them together as driftwood
+in the still ocean of space. She drew a long breath, the breath of one
+waking from an anguished dream. A wild, unreasoning gladness woke in her
+heart, the joy of living swept her back again to life. She had not died
+last night, she was riding through the wilderness with Peter.
+
+"Look!" she whispered. The sky had lost its forbidding blackness. The
+sharp notches of the mountains, faintly outlined in white, undulated
+through an eternity of space. Venus hung in the west, burning softly as a
+shaded lamp. The trail they climbed seemed to end in her pale yellow
+light.
+
+Peter had saved the situation, but the wild beauty of the night stirred in
+him that gift of silvery speech that was ever his tribute to the sex,
+rather than the woman. He bent towards Judith. A loosened strand of her
+hair blew across his cheek. The breakneck ride to Kitty was already the
+madness of a dead and gone incarnation. He pointed to the pale star, and
+told her it was the omen of their destiny; the formless blackness through
+which they had groped was the way of life, but for such as were not
+condemned to eternal darkness Venus held high her lamp and they scaled the
+heights.
+
+And Judith, listening, found her heart a battle-field of love and hate.
+"Were women dogs, that men should play with them in idle moods, caress
+them, and fling them out for other toys?" she demanded of herself, even
+while the tones of his voice melted her innermost being to thankfulness
+for this hour that he was wholly hers.
+
+Gayly, with ready turns of speech and snatches of song, trolled in his
+musical barytone, Peter rode through the night, even as he rode through
+life, a Sir Knight of the Joyous Heart, unbrushed by the wing of sorrow,
+loving his pale griefs for the values they gave the picture. And Judith
+understood by reason of that exquisite perception that was hers in all
+matters pertaining to him, and, knowing, only loved the more.
+
+Down the valley came the sharp yelp of a coyote, and in a moment the
+towering crags had taken it up, the echo repeating it and giving it back
+to the valley, where the coyote barked again at the shadow of his voice.
+The night was full of the eerie laughter. Peter put a restraining hand on
+Dolly's bridle, and, waiting for the coyote to stop, called Judith's name,
+and all the mountains made music of it. The echo sang the old Hebrew name
+as if it had been a psalm. Peter's voice gave it to the mountains
+joyously, but the mountains gave it back in the minor. And Judith was
+reminded of the soft, singing syllables that her mother, in the Indian
+way, had made of her daughter's Indian name. The remembrance tugged at her
+heart. In her joy at seeing Peter she had forgotten that the errand that
+had brought her was an errand of life and death--life and death for her
+brother!
+
+But Peter's ready enthusiasms pressed him hard. Surely love-making was the
+business of such a night. "Ah, Judith, goddess of the heights, if I could
+sing your name like the mountains, would you love me a little?"
+
+For his pains he had a flash of white teeth in a smile that recalled his
+first acquaintance with Kitty, the sort of smile one would give to a "nice
+boy" when his manoeuvres were a trifle obvious. "Not if you sang my name
+as the chorus of all the Himalayas and the Rockies and Andes, and with the
+fire of all their volcanoes and the beauty of their snows and the strength
+of all their hills, for it's not my way to love a little!"
+
+He bent towards her; to brush her cheek lightly as they rode was but to
+imply his appreciation of the scene as a bit of chiaroscuro, the panorama
+of the desert night, eternal romance typified by the man and woman scaling
+the heights, the goddess of love lighting them on their way by her flaming
+torch. But Judith, who said little because she felt much, was in no mood
+to brook such dalliance, and, urging the mare sharply, she cantered down
+the divide at peril of life and limb. Peter, cursing the heavy-footed
+beast he rode, came stumbling after.
+
+Judith rode wildly through the night, leaving Peter laps behind, to
+beseech, to prophesy dire happening if she should slip, and to scramble
+after, as best he might, on the heavy-footed beast he repudiated, with all
+his ancestors, as oxen, to the fourth generation. But the woman kept her
+pace. She had stern questions to put to herself, and they were likely to
+have truer answers if Peter were elsewhere than riding beside her. Whither
+was he going? They had met casually on a trail known to few honest men. It
+led over a spur of the Wind River to a sort of no man's land, the
+hiding-place of horse and cattle thieves. She had gone to warn her
+brother. Could he be going there--She could not bring herself to finish.
+
+Her heart was divided against itself. Within it were fought again the red
+and the white man's battles, bitterly, and to the finish. And now the
+white man, with his open warfare, won, and all her love rose up and
+scourged her little faith. She would wait on the trail for Peter, penitent
+and ashamed. And while she waited suspicions bred of her Indian blood
+stirred distrustfully, and she told herself that her mother's daughter
+made a worthy champion of the ways of white men. Did Hamilton hunt her
+brother gallowsward, making merry with her the meantime? He had not even
+been courteously concerned as to where she was going when they met on the
+divide. They had met and ridden together as casually as if it had been the
+most natural thing for them both to be taking the horse-thief trail as a
+summer evening's ride. And she had not thought to wonder at his possible
+destination, when the man from whom she rode in terror through the night
+proved to be Peter, because the lesser question of his errand had been
+swallowed up in the greater miracle of his presence.
+
+She was by this time well down the divide. The temperature had risen
+perceptibly on the down grade. The heat of the plains had already mingled
+with the cool hill air; the heights, where Venus kept her love vigil, were
+already past. Judith gave Dolly a breathing spell, herself lounging easily
+meanwhile. She knew how to take her ease in the saddle as well as any
+cow-puncher on the range.
+
+"The Hayoka has dominion over me," she mused, with Indian fatalism. "As
+well resign myself to sorrow with dignity. Hayoka, Hayo--ka!" and she began
+to croon softly a hymn of propitiation to the Hayoka, the Sioux god of
+contrariety. According to the legends, he sat naked and fanned himself in
+a Dakota blizzard and huddled, shivering, over a fire in the heat of
+summer. Likewise the Hayoka cried for joy and laughed for sorrow.
+
+She remembered how the nuns at Santa Fe had been shocked at her for
+praying to Indian gods, and how once she had built a little mound of
+stones, which was the Sioux way of making petition, in the shadow of the
+statue of the Virgin Mary, and how Sister Angela had scattered the stones
+and told her to pray instead to the Blessed Lady. She still prayed to the
+Blessed Lady every day; but sometimes, too, she reared little mounds of
+stones in the desert when she was very sad and the kinship between her and
+the dead gods of her mother's people seemed the closer for their common
+sorrow.
+
+Peter, coming up with a much-blown horse, found her still chanting the
+Indian song.
+
+"Sing him a verse for me, Judith. Heaven knows I need something to
+straighten out my infernal luck. Tell the Hayoka that I'm a good fellow
+and need only half a chance. Tell him to prosper my present venture."
+
+She had begun to chant the invocation, then stopped suddenly. "I must not;
+you know I am a Catholic." Suspicion that had been scotched, not killed,
+raised its head. "What was his present venture?" Her eye had not changed
+in expression, nor a tone of her voice, but in her heart was a sickening
+distrust for all things.
+
+A belated moon had come up. The level plain, on which their horses threw
+grotesque, elongated shadows, was flooded with honey-colored light. Each
+straggling clump of sage-brush, whitening bone and bowlder, gleamed
+mysterious, ghostly in the radiant flood-tide. They seemed to be riding
+through a world that had no kinship with that black, formless void through
+which they had groped but yet a little while. Then darkness had been upon
+the face of the deep. Now there was a miracle of light such as only the
+desert, in its desolation, knows. To Judith, with a soul attuned to every
+passing expression of nature, there was significance in this transition
+from darkness to light. The sudden radiance was emblematic of her belated
+perception, coming as it did after a blindness so dense as to appear
+almost wilful. Her mind was busy with a multitude of schemes. Fool though
+she had been, she would not be the instrument of her brother's undoing.
+
+"I've come too far," she cried, in sudden dismay. "I should have stopped
+at the foot of the divide. I've never been over the trail before."
+
+"You foolish child, why should you stop in the middle of the wilderness?"
+
+She wheeled the mare about and faced him, a figure of graven resolution.
+
+"I promised to meet Tom Lorimer there--now you know."
+
+With which she cracked Dolly sharply with her heel and began to retrace
+her way over the trail. Peter turned his horse and followed, with the
+feeling of utter helplessness that a man has when confronted with the
+granite obstinacy of women. Judith had meanwhile expected that the
+announcement of her mythical appointment with Tom Lorimer would be
+received differently. Tom Lorimer's reputation was of the worst. An
+Eastern man formerly, an absconder from justice, rumor was busy with tales
+of ungodly merrymaking that went on at his ranch, where no woman went
+except painted wisps from the dance-halls. But Peter was too loyal a
+friend, despite his shortcomings as a lover, to see in Judith's statement
+anything more than a sisterly devotion so deeply unselfish that it failed
+to take into account the danger to which she subjected herself.
+
+However, it was plainly his duty to prevent an unprotected rendezvous with
+Lorimer, to reason, to plead, and, if he should fail to bring her to a
+reasonable frame of mind, to go with her, come what would of the result.
+There were reasons innumerable why he, a cattle-man, should avoid the
+appearance of dealing with the sheep faction, he reflected, grimly.
+Lorimer owned sheep, many thousand head. His herds had been allowed to
+graze unmolested, while smaller owners, like Jim Rodney, had been crowded
+out because his influence, politically, was a thing to be reckoned with.
+So Peter followed Judith, pleading Judith's cause; she did not understand,
+he told her, what she was doing; and while perhaps there was not another
+man in the country who would not honor her unselfishness in coming to him,
+Lorimer's chivalry was not a thing to be reckoned with, drunken beast that
+he was. And Judith, worn with the struggle, tried beyond measure, made
+reckless by the daily infusion of ill-fortune, pulled up the mare and
+laughed unpleasantly.
+
+"You think I'm going to see Lorimer about Jim? I'm going with him to a
+merrymaking. We're old pals, Lorimer and I."
+
+"Judith, dear, has it come to this, that you not only distrust an old
+friend, but that you try to degrade yourself to hide from him the fact
+that you are going to your brother's? You've never spoken to Lorimer. I
+heard him say, not a week ago, that he had never succeeded in making you
+recognize him. You deceived me at first when you spoke of meeting him--I
+thought you had a message from Jim--but this talk of merrymaking is beneath
+you." He shrugged his shoulders in disgust. He felt the torrent of grief
+that rent her. No sob escaped her lips; there was no convulsive movement
+of shoulder. She rode beside him, still as the desert before the
+sand-storm breaks, her soul seared with white-hot iron that knows no
+saving grace of sob or tear. She rode as Boadicea might have ridden to
+battle; there was not a yielding line in her body. But over and over in
+her woman's heart there rang the cry: "I am so tired! If the long night
+would but come!"
+
+Peter drew out his watch. "It's a quarter to eleven. We'll have a hard bit
+of riding to reach Blind Creek before midnight."
+
+Then he knew as well as she, perhaps better, the route to Jim's
+hiding-place; she had never been there as yet. And if Peter knew,
+doubtless every cattle-man in the country knew. What a fool she had been
+with her talk of meeting Tom Lorimer! A sense of utter defeat seemed to
+paralyze her energies. She felt like a trapped thing that after eluding
+its pursuers again and again finds that it has been but running about a
+corral. Physical weariness was telling on her. She had been in the saddle
+since a little past noon and it was now not far from midnight. And still
+there was the unanswered question of Peter's errand. It was long since
+either had broken the silence. A delicious coolness had crept into the air
+with the approach of midnight. Judith, breathing deep draughts of it,
+reminded herself of the stoicism that was hers by birthright.
+
+"Peter"--her voice lost some of its old ring, but it had a deeper
+note--"Peter, we make strange comrades, you and I, in a stranger world. We
+meet on Horse-Thief Trail, and there is reason to suppose that our errands
+are inimical. You've pierced all my little pretences; you know that I am
+going to my brother, who is an outlaw--my brother, the rope for whose
+hanging is already cut. And yet we have been friends these many years, and
+we meet in this world of desolation and weigh each other's words, and
+there is no trust in our hearts. Our little faith is more pitiful than the
+cruel errands that bring us. I take it you, too, are going to my
+brother's?"
+
+"I'm going there to see that you arrive safe and sound, but I had no
+intention of going when I left camp. You've brought me a good twenty miles
+out of my way, not to mention accusing me of ulterior motives. Now, aren't
+you penitent?" He smiled at her, boyish and irresistible. To Judith it was
+more reassuring than an oath. "It's like dogs fighting over a picked bone;
+the meat's all gone. The range is overworked; it needs a good, long rest."
+He turned towards Judith, speaking slowly. "What you have said is true.
+We're friends before we're partisans of either faction. I'm on my way to a
+round-up. There's been an unexpected order to fill a beef contract--a
+thousand steers. We're going to furnish five hundred, the XXX two hundred
+and fifty, and the "Circle-Star" two hundred and fifty. Men have been
+scouring the enemy's country for days rounding up stragglers. It will go
+hard with the rustlers after this round-up, Judith."
+
+She felt a great wave of penitence and shame sweep over her. She had not
+trusted him; in her heart she had nourished hideous suspicions of him, and
+he was telling her, quite simply, of the plans of his own faction,
+trusting her, as, indeed, he might, but as she never expected to be
+trusted.
+
+"Peter, do you know that sometimes I think Jim has gone quite mad with
+these range troubles. He's acted strangely ever since his sheep were
+driven over the cliff. He's not been home to Alida and the children since
+he has been out of jail, and you know how devoted to them he has always
+been! He spends all his time tracking Simpson. Alida wrote me that she
+expects him to-night, and I'm going there on the chance."
+
+"It's the devil's own hole for desolation that he's come to." Peter looked
+about the cup-shaped valley that was but a _cul-de-sac_ in the mountains.
+Its approach was between the high rock walls of a canon. Passing between
+them, the rise of temperature was almost incredible. The great barrier of
+mountain-range, that cut it off from the rest of the world, seemed also to
+cut it off from light and air. The atmosphere hung lifeless, the
+occasional bellow of range-cattle sounded far-off and muffled. Vegetation
+was scant, the sage-brush grew close and scrubby, even the brilliant
+cactus flowers seemed to have abandoned the valley to its fate. A lone
+group of dead cotton-woods grew like sentinels close to the rocky walls.
+Their twisted branches, gaunt and bare, writhed upward as if in dumb
+supplication. There was about them a something that made Judith come
+closer to Peter as they passed them by. The night wind sang in their
+leafless branches with a long-drawn, shuddering sigh. The despair of a
+barren, deserted thing seemed to have settled on them.
+
+"Those frightful trees, how can Alida stand them?" She looked back. "Oh, I
+wish they were cut down!"
+
+Before them was the cabin, its ruined condition pitifully apparent even by
+night. It had been deserted ten years before Jim brought his family to it.
+Rumor said it was haunted. Grim stories were told of the death of a woman
+who had come there with a man, and had not lived to go away with him. The
+roof of the adjoining stable had fallen in, the bars of the corral were
+missing. The house was dark but for a feeble light that glimmered in one
+window, the beacon that had been lighted, night after night, against Jim's
+coming. It added a further note of apprehension, peering through the dark,
+still valley like a wakeful, anxious eye, keeping a long and unrewarded
+vigil. Judith felt the consummation of the threatening tragedy after her
+first glimpse of the sentinel trees. She could not explain, but her heart
+cried, even as the wind in them had sung of death. Perhaps her mother's
+spirit spoke to her, just as she had said, on that memorable drive, that
+the Great Mystery spoke to his people in the earth, the sky, and the
+frowning mountains.
+
+"Peter"--she had slid from her horse and was clinging to his arm--"when it
+happens, Peter, you will have no part in it?"
+
+"It won't happen, Judith, if I can help it."
+
+She kissed his hand as it held the loose reins.
+
+"Lord, I am not worthy!" was the thought in his heart. He sat graven in
+the saddle. Sir Knight of the Joyous Heart though he was, the unsought
+kiss of trust gifted him with a self-reverence that would not soon forsake
+him.
+
+Judith was rapping on the door and calling to Alida not to be frightened.
+And presently it was opened. Peter wanted to leave Judith, now that she
+was safely at the end of her journey, but she would not hear of it till he
+had eaten.
+
+"You would have had your comfortable supper five hours ago had you not
+been playing cavalier to me all over the wilderness." And Peter yielded.
+
+Judith busied herself about the kitchen. Her mood of racking apprehension
+had disappeared. Indian stoicism had again the guiding hand. She waved
+Peter from the fire that she was kindling, as if he were a blundering
+incompetent. But she let him slice the bacon and grind the coffee as one
+lets a child help. Alida came in, white-faced and anxious over the long
+absence of her husband, but conscientiously hospitable nevertheless. Peter
+noticed that Judith made a gallant pretence of eating, crumbling her bread
+and talking the meanwhile. The pale wife, who had little to say at the
+best of times, was put to the test to say anything at all. But, withal,
+their intent was so genuinely hospitable that Peter himself could not
+speak with the pity of it. Accustomed as he was to the roughness of these
+frontier cabins, never had he seen a human habitation so desolate as this.
+The mud plaster had fallen away from between the logs, showing cross
+sections of the melancholy prospect. An atmosphere of tragedy brooded over
+the place. Whether from its long period of emptiness, or from the vaguely
+hinted murder of the woman who had died there, or whether it took its
+character from the prevailing desolation, the cabin in the valley was an
+unlovely thing. Nor did the cleanliness, the conscientious making the best
+of things, soften the woful aspect of the place. Rather was the appeal the
+more poignant to the seeing eye, as the brave makeshift of the
+self-respecting poor strikes deeper than the beggar's whine. The house was
+bare but for the few things that Alida could take in the wagon in which
+they made their flight. And all through the pinch of poverty and grinning
+emptiness there was visible the woman-touch, the brave making the best of
+nothing, the pitiful preparation for the coming of the man. Wild roses
+from the creek bloomed against the gnarled and weather-warped logs of the
+walls. Sprays of clematis trailed their white bridal beauty from cans
+rescued from the ashes of a camp-fire. But Alida was a strategist when it
+came to adorning her home, and the rusty receptacle was hid beneath
+trailing green leaves. There was at the window a muslin curtain that in
+its starched and ruffled estate was strongly suggestive of a child's frock
+hastily converted into a window drapery. The curtain was drawn aside that
+the lamp might shed its beam farther on the way of the traveller who came
+not. There was but one other light in the place, a bit of candle. Alida
+apologized for the poor light by which they must eat, but she did not
+offer to take the lamp from the window.
+
+Peter was no longer Sir Knight of the Joyous Heart as he watched the
+little, white-faced woman, who went so often to the door to look towards
+the road that entered the valley that she was no longer aware of what she
+did. He saw her wide eyes full of fear, the bow of the mouth strained taut
+with anxiety, her unconscious fear of him as one of the alien faction, and
+withal her concern for his comfort. Judith's control was far greater, but
+though she hid it skilfully, he knew the sorrow that consumed her.
+
+There was a cry from the room beyond, and Judith, snatching up the candle,
+went in to the children. All three of them were sleeping cross-ways in one
+bed, their small, round arms and legs striking out through the land of
+dreams as swimmers breasting the waves. She gave a little cry of delight
+and appreciation, and called Peter to look. Little Jim, who had cried in
+some passing fear, sat up sleepily. He stretched out his small arms to
+Peter, whom he had never seen before. Peter took him, and again he settled
+to sleep, apparently assured that he was in friendly hands.
+
+The warm, small body, giving itself with perfect confidence, strongly
+affected Peter's heightened susceptibilities. In the very nature of the
+situation he could be no friend to Jim Rodney, yet here in his arms lay
+Jim Rodney's son, loving, trusting him instinctively. Judith noticed that
+his face paled beneath its many coats of tan. He was afraid of the little
+sleeping boy, afraid that his unaccustomed touch might hurt him, and yet
+loath to part with the small burden. Judith took the boy from Peter and
+placed him between the two little girls on the bed.
+
+Through the window they could see Alida's dress glimmering, like a phantom
+in the darkness, as she strained her eyes towards the path. Peter hated to
+leave the women and children in this desolate place. The night was far
+spent. To reach the round-up in season, he could at best snatch a couple
+of hours' sleep and be again in the saddle while the stars still shone.
+His saddle and saddle blanket were enough for him. The broad canopy of
+heaven, the bosom of mother earth, had given him sound, dreamless sleep
+these many years. He bade the women good-night, and made his bed where the
+canon gave entrance to the valley. But sleep was slow to come. Now, in
+that vague, uncertain world where we fall through oceans of space, and the
+waking is the dream, the dream the waking, Peter caught pale flashes of
+Kitty's gold head as she ran and ran, ever in the pursuit of something,
+she knew not what. And as she ran hither and thither, she would turn her
+head and beckon to Peter, and as he followed he felt the burden of years
+come upon him. And then he saw Judith's eyes, still and grave. He turned
+and wakened. No, it was not Judith's eyes, but the stars above the
+mountain-tops.
+
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+
+                               The Round-up
+
+
+The stars were still shining when Peter Hamilton looked at his watch next
+morning, but he sternly fought the temptation to lie another two minutes
+by remembering the day's work before him, and went in search of the horse
+that he had not picketed overnight, as the beast required a full belly
+after the hard night's ride he had given him. Peter had rolled out of his
+blankets with a keen anticipatory relish for the day ahead. It was well,
+he knew, that there was ample work of a definite nature for Peter the
+cow-puncher; as for Peter the man, he was singularly at sea. Had Judith
+Rodney been his desert comrade all these cheerful years for him to get his
+first belated insight into the real Judith only a few little hours back?
+Or was it, he wondered, her seeming unconsciousness of him, as she rode
+brave and sorrowful through the night, to avert, if might be, her
+brother's death--at all events, to comfort and inspirit the frightened
+woman and her little children--that had freshly tinged the friendship he
+had so long felt for her? Many were the questions that Peter vaguely put
+to himself as he started out for his long day in the saddle; and none of
+them he answered. Indeed, he could not satisfactorily explain to himself
+why he should think of Judith at all in this way--Judith, whom he had known
+so long, and upon whom he counted so securely--Judith, who understood
+things, and was as good a comrade as a man. Surely it was a strange thing
+that he should discover himself in a sentimental dream of Judith!
+
+For it was in such dreams that Katherine Colebrooke had figured ever since
+Peter could remember. For years, indeed--and Judith knew it!--he had stood,
+tame and tractable, waiting for Chloe to throw her dainty lariat. But
+Chloe had intimated that her graceful fingers were engaged with the inkpot
+and her head with schemes for further sonneting. Chloe was becoming
+famous. To Peter, who was unmodern, there was little to be gained in
+arguing against a state of affairs so crassly absurd as career-getting for
+women. At such seasons it behooved sane men to pray for patience rather
+than the gift of tongues. When the disheartened fair should weary of the
+phantom pursuit, then might the man of patience have his little day. Peter
+winced at the picture. To the world he knew that his long waiting on the
+brink of the bog, while his ambitious lady floundered after false lights,
+was, in truth, no more impressive a spectacle than the anguished squawking
+of a hen who watches a brood of ducklings, of her own hatching, try their
+luck in the pond.
+
+And there was Judith the great-hearted, Judith who was as inspiring as a
+breath of hill air, Judith with no thought of careers beyond the loyal
+doing of her woman's part, Judith, trusty and loyal--and Judith with that
+accursed family connection!
+
+Peter tightened his cinch and turned his horse westward. The stars had
+grown dim in the sky. The world that the night before had seemed to float
+in a silvery effulgence looked gray and old. The cabin in the valley
+flaunted its wretched squalor, like a beggar seeking alms on the highway.
+Riding by, Peter lifted his sombrero. "Sweet dreams, gentle lady!" He dug
+the rowel into his horse's side and began his day at no laggard pace. Nor
+did he spare his horse in the miles that lay between him and breakfast.
+The beast would have no more work to do that day, when once he reached
+camp, and Peter was not in his tenderest mood as he spurred through the
+gray of the morning. The pale, chastened world was all his own at this
+hour. Not a creature was stirring. The mountains, the valleys, the softly
+huddled hills slept in the deep hush that is just before the dawn. He
+looked about with questioning eyes. Last night this very road had been a
+pale silver thread winding from the mountain crests into a world of
+dreams. To-day it was but a trail across the range. "Where are the snows
+of yester year?" he quoted, with a certain early-morning grimness. At
+heart he was half inclined to believe Judith responsible for the vanished
+world; Judith, Judith--he was riding away from her as fast as his horse
+could gallop, and yet his thoughts perversely lingered about the cabin in
+the valley.
+
+After a couple of hours' hard riding he could dimly make out specks moving
+on that huge background of space, and presently his horse neighed and put
+fresh spirit into his gait, recognizing his fellows in moving dots on the
+vast perspective. And being a beast of some intelligence, for all his
+heavy-footed failings, he reasoned that food and rest would soon be his
+portion. Peter had no further use for the rowel.
+
+Breakfast was already well under way when he reached camp. The outfit,
+seated on saddles in a semicircle about the chuck wagon, ate with that
+peculiar combination of haste and skill that doubtless the life of the
+saddle counteracts, as digestive troubles are apparently unknown among
+plainsmen. The cook, in handing Peter his tin plate, cup, spoon, and
+black-handled fork, asked him if "he would take overland trout or
+Cincinnati chicken, this morning?" The cook never omitted these jocular
+inquiries regarding the various camp names for bacon. He seemed to think
+that a choice of alias was as good as a change of menu. There was little
+talk at breakfast, and that bearing chiefly on the day's work. Every one
+was impatient for an early start. The horse wrangler had his string
+waiting, the cook was scouring his iron pots, saddles were thrown over
+horses fresh from a long night's good grazing, cinches were tightened,
+slickers and blankets were adjusted, and camp melted away in a troup of
+horsemen winding away through the gray of early morning.
+
+The scene of the beef round-up was a mighty plain, affording limitless
+scope for handling the cattle of a thousand hills. In the distance rose
+the first undulations of the mountains, that might be likened to the
+surplusage of space that rolled the length of the sweeping levels, then
+heaped high to the blue. The specks in the far distance began to grow as
+if the screw of a field-glass were bringing them nearer, turning them into
+horsemen, bunches of cattle, "chuck-wagons" of the different outfits,
+reserves of horses restrained by temporary rope-corrals, all the equipment
+of a great round-up. Dozens of men, multitudes of horses, hordes of
+cattle--the mighty plain swallowed all the little, prancing, galloping,
+bellowing things, and still looked mighty in its loneliness. Fling a
+handful of toys from a Noah's Ark--if they make such simple toys now--in an
+ordinary field, and the little, wooden men, horses and cows, will suggest
+the round-up in relation to its background. Men darted hither and thither,
+yelling shrilly; cows--born apparently to be leaders--broke from the bunches
+to which they had been assigned and started at a clumsy run, followed by
+kindred susceptible to example. Cow-punchers, waiting for just such
+manifestations of individuality, whirled after them like comets, and soon
+they were again in the pawing, heaving, sweltering bunch to which they
+belonged.
+
+Peter Hamilton, whose particular skill as a cow-puncher lay in that branch
+of the profession known as "cutting out," found that the work of the
+rustlers had been carried on with no unsparing hand since the early spring
+round-up. Calves bearing the "H L" brand--that claimed by a company known
+to be made up of cattle-thieves--followed mothers bearing almost every
+brand that grazed herds in that part of the State. The Wetmore outfit,
+that used a "W" enclosed in a square, were apparently the heaviest losers.
+The cows and calves were herded at the right of the plain, convenient to
+the branding-pen, the steers well away to the opposite side. As Peter
+drove a "W-square" cow, followed by a little, white-faced calf, whose
+brand had plainly been tampered with, he heard one of his associates say:
+
+"There's nothing small about the 'H L' except their methods."
+
+"What's 'H L' stand for, anyway?" the other cow-puncher asked.
+
+"Why, Hell, or, How Long; depends whether you're with 'em or again 'em."
+
+Peter wheeled from the men and headed for the bunch he was cutting out. He
+fancied that the man had looked at him strangely as he offered a choice of
+meanings for the "H L"--and yet he could not have known that Peter had gone
+to Rodney's cabin last night. He flung himself heart and soul into his
+work, dashing full tilt at the snorting, stamping bedlam, enveloped in
+clouds of dust that dimmed the very daylight. Calves bleated piteously as
+they were jammed in the thickening pack. Peter shouted, swung the rope
+right and left, thinning the bunch about him, and a second later emerged,
+driving before him a cow, followed by a calf. These were turned over to
+cow-boys waiting for them. Time after time Hamilton returned to that mass
+of unconscious power, that with a single rush could have annihilated the
+little band of horsemen that handled them with the skill of a dealer
+shuffling, cutting, dealing a pack of cards.
+
+To the left were the steers, pawing and tearing up the earth in a very
+ecstasy of impotent fury. Picture the giant propeller of an ocean liner
+thrashing about in the sands of the desert and you will have an
+approximate knowledge of the dust raised by a thousand steers. Their
+long-drawn, shrieking bellow had a sinister note. Horns, hoofs, tails beat
+the air, their bloodshot eyes looked menacingly in every direction; but a
+handful of cow-boys kept them in check, circling round and round them on
+ponies who did their work without waiting for quirt or rowel.
+
+The noonday sun looked down upon a scene that to the eye unskilled in
+these things was as confusion worse confounded. Cow-boys dashed from
+nowhere in particular and did amazing things with a bit of rope, sending
+it through the air with snaky undulations after flying cattle. The rope,
+taking on lifelike coils, would pursue the flying beast like an aerial
+reptile, then the noose would fall true, and the thing was done. A second
+later a couple of cow-boys would be examining the disputed brand on the
+prone animal.
+
+The smell of burning flesh and hair rose from the branding-pen and mingled
+with the stench of the herds in one noisome compound. The yells of the
+cow-punchers, each having its different bearing on the work in hand, were
+all but lost in the dull, steady roar of the cattle, bellowing in a chorus
+of fear, rage, and pain. And still the work of sorting, branding,
+cutting-out, went steadily on. Though an outsider would not have perceived
+it, the work was as crisp-cut and exact in its methods as the work in a
+counting-house. One of the cow-boys, in hot pursuit of a fractious heifer,
+encountered a gopher-hole, and horse and rider were down in a heap. In a
+second a dozen helping hands were dragging him from under the horse. He
+limped painfully, but stooped to examine his horse. The beast had broken a
+leg, and turned on the man eyes almost human in their pain.
+
+"Bob, Bob!" The cow-puncher went down on his knees and put his arms about
+the neck of his pet. "My God!" he said, "me and Bob was just like
+brothers. Everybody knowed that." He uncinched the saddle with clumsy
+tenderness; not a man thought a whit less of him because he could not see
+well at the moment. He turned his head away, that he might not see the
+well-aimed shot that would release his pet from pain. Then he limped away
+after another horse--it was all in the day's work.
+
+The beef contract called for a thousand steers, four and five years old,
+and these having been well and duly counted, and some dozen extra head
+added in case of accident, they were immediately started on the trail, as
+they could accomplish some seven or eight miles before being bedded down
+for the night. Hamilton, who had crossed to the beef side of the round-up
+to have a necessary word with the "Circle-Star" foreman, was amazed to
+find Simpson making ready to start with the trail herd. Peter inquired,
+with a few expletives, "how long he had been a cow-man, in good and
+regular standing?"
+
+"As far as the regularity is concerned, that would be a pretty hard thing
+to answer, but he's had an interest in the 'XXX' since--since--"
+
+"He drove Rodney's sheep over the cliff?"
+
+"Ain't you a little hard on the beginning of his cattle career? It usually
+goes by a more business-like name, but--" he shrugged his shoulders--"it's
+up to the 'XXX.' We wouldn't have him help to pull bogged cattle out of a
+creek."
+
+The beeves, hidden in a simoom of their own stamping, were gradually being
+pressed forward on the trail, a huge pawn, ignorant of its own strength,
+manipulated by a handful of men and horses. Its bellowing, like the tuning
+of a thousand bass-fiddles, shook the stillness like the long, sullen roar
+of the sea, as out of the plain they thundered, to feed the multitude.
+
+"Well, there goes as pretty a bunch of porterhouses as I'd want to put
+tooth to. If I get away from here within the next two months, as I'm
+expecting, doubtless I'll meet some of you again with your personality
+somewhat obscured by reason of fried onions."
+
+The foreman of the "Circle-Star" waved his hand after the slowly moving
+herd that gradually pressed forward like an army in loose marching order.
+Outriders galloped ahead, like darting insects, and pointing the lumbering
+mass that trailed its half-mile length at a snail's-pace. The great column
+steadily advanced, checked, turned, led as easily as a child trails his
+little steam-cars after him on the nursery floor, and always by the little
+force of a handful of men and a few horses.
+
+After supper came general relaxation around the camp-fire. The men, who
+had all day been strung to a keen pitch of nervous energy, lounged in
+loose, picturesque uncouthness, while each began to unravel his own lively
+miscellany of information or invention. There was jest, laughter, spinning
+of yarns, singing of songs. As Peter lay in the fire-light, smoking his
+brier-wood, he noticed that the man next him spent a great deal of time
+poring over a letter, holding it close to the blaze, now at arm's-length,
+which was hardly surprising, considering the penmanship of the more common
+variety of _billet-doux_. The man was plainly disappointed that Peter
+would not notice or comment. Finally he folded it up, and with sentimental
+significance returned it to the left side pocket of his flannel shirt, and
+remarked to Peter, "It's from her."
+
+"Indeed," said Peter, who had not the faintest notion who "her" could be.
+"Let me congratulate you."
+
+"Yes, sir," and there was conviction in the cow-puncher's tone; "it's from
+old man Kinson's girl, up to the Basin, and the parson's goin' to give us
+the life sentence soon. A man gets sick o' helling it all over creation."
+He rolled a cigarette, lit it, took a puff or two, then turned to Peter,
+as one whose acquaintance with the broader side of life entitled him to
+speak with a certain authority. "Is it that, or is it that we're getting
+on, a little long in the tooth, logy in our movements?"
+
+"I think we're just sick of helling it." Peter looked towards the star
+that last night had been the beacon towards which he and Judith had scaled
+the heights. "Yes, we get sick of helling it after we've turned thirty."
+
+"Then I can't be making a mistake. If I thought it was because I was
+getting on, I'd stampede this here range. It don't seem fair to a girl to
+allow that you're broke, tamed, and know the way to the corral, when it's
+just that you're needin' to go to an old man's home."
+
+"Now this is really love," said Peter to himself, with interest. "This is
+humility." A sympathetic liking for the self-distrustful lover surged hot
+and generous into Peter's heart, and he continued to himself: "Now that's
+what Judith would appreciate in a man, some directness, some humility!"
+Poor Judith! Poor burden-bearer! Who was to love her as she deserved to be
+loved, even as old man Kinson's girl, of the Basin, was loved? Yet suppose
+some one did love her in such fashion and she returned it? It was a
+picture Peter had never conjured up before. Nonsense! he was accustomed to
+think of Judith a great deal, and that was not the way to think of her.
+"Dear Judith!" said Peter, half unconsciously to himself, and looked again
+at the fellow, who had gone back to his dingy letter and continued to
+reread it in the fire-light as if he hoped to extract some further meaning
+from the now familiar words. Nature had fitted him out with a rag-bag
+assortment of features--the nose of a clown, the eyes of a ferret, the
+mouth that hangs agape like a badly hinged door, the mouth of the
+incessant talker. And withal, as he lounged in the fire-light, dreamily
+turning his love-letter, he had a sort of superphysical beauty, reflected
+of the glow that many waters cannot quench.
+
+Costigan, who had led the merriment against Simpson at Mrs. Clark's
+eating-house, was playing "mumbly-peg" with Texas Tyler. They had been
+working like Trojans all day at the round-up, but they pitched their
+pocket-knives with as keen a zest as school-boys, bickering over points in
+the game, accusing each other of cheating, calling on the rest of the
+company to umpire some disputed point.
+
+But presently, from the opposite side of the fire, some one began to sing,
+in a rich barytone, a dirgelike thing that caught the attention of first
+one then another of the men, making them stop their yarning and
+knife-throwing to listen. The tune, in its homely power to evoke the image
+of the ceremonial of death, was more or less familiar to most of them.
+There was a conscious funeral pageantry in the ring of its measured
+phrases that recalled to many burials of the dead that had taken place in
+their widely scattered homes. Mrs. Barbauld's hymn, "Flee as a Bird to the
+Mountain," are the words usually sung to the air.
+
+Costigan presently cut across the dirgelike refrain with: "Phwat th' divil
+is ut about that chune that Oi'm thinkin' of?"
+
+"This," said the man with the barytone voice, "is the tune that Nick
+Steele saved his neck to."
+
+"Begorra, that's ut. I wasn't there mesilf, but Oi've heard th' story told
+more times than Oi've years to me credit."
+
+"My father was in that necktie party," spoke up a young cow-puncher, "and
+I've heard him tell the story scores of times, and he always wondered why
+the devil they let Steele off. Never could understand it after the thing
+was done. He was talking of it once to a man who was a sharp on things
+like mesmerism, and the man called it hypnotic suggestion. Said that
+Steele got control of the whole outfit and mesmerized 'em so they couldn't
+do a thing to him."
+
+Several of the men asked for the story, echoes of which had come down
+through all the forty years since its happening. And the cow-puncher,
+lighting a cigarette, began:
+
+"It was in the good old forty-nine days in California, when gold was
+sometimes more plentiful than bread, and women were so scarce that one day
+when they found a girl's shoe on the trail they fitted a gold heel to it
+and put it up in camp to worship. But sentiment wasn't exactly their long
+suit, and any little difficulties that cropped up were straightened out by
+the vigilance committee--and a rope. One day a saddle, or maybe it was a
+gun, that didn't belong to him, was found among this man Steele's traps,
+and though he swore that some one had put it there for a grudge, the
+committee thought that a hemp necktie was the easiest way out of the
+argument. And this here Steele party finds himself, at the age of
+twenty-four, with something like thirty minutes of life to his credit. He
+don't take on none, nor make a play for mercy, nor try any fancy
+speech-making. He just waits round, kinder pale, but seemin' indifferent,
+considerin' it was his funeral that was impendin'. I've heard my father
+say that he was a tall, slim boy, with a kind of girlish prettiness, and
+the committee looked some for hysterics and they didn't get none. The
+noose was made ready and they told Steele he could have five minutes to
+pray, if he wanted to, or he could take it out in cursing, just as he
+chose. The boy said he felt that he hadn't quite all that was coming to
+him in the way of enjoyment, and that while he was far from criticising
+the vigilance committee, he was not altogether partial to the nature of
+his demise, and if it was just the same to them, instead of praying or
+cursing, he'd take that five minutes for a song.
+
+"They was agreeable, and he up and steps on the scaffold, what they was
+mighty proud of, it bein' about the only substantial structure the town
+could boast. He began to sing that thing you've all been listening to, and
+he had a voice like water falling light and fine in a pool below. They
+crowded up close about the scaffold and listened. The words he put to it
+were his own story, just like those old minstrels that you read about, and
+at the end of each verse came the chorus, slow and solemn as the moment
+after something great has happened. There wasn't a hangin'-face in the
+crowd after he was started. At some time or other every man had heard
+somebody he thought a heap of, buried to that tune, and his voice got to
+workin' on their imaginations and turned their hearts to water. I don't
+remember anything but the chorus--that went like this:
+
+  "'Who'll weep for me, on the gallows tree,
+    As I sway in the wind and swing?
+  Is there never a tear to be shed for me,
+    As I swing by a hempen string?
+  Who'll weep, who'll keep
+  Watch, as I'm rocked to sleep,
+    Rocked by a hempen string?'"
+
+There was a long silence, broken only by the crackle of the logs in the
+camp-fire and the night sounds of the lonely plain. The leaping flames
+showed a group of thoughtful faces. Finally, Costigan broke the silence
+with:
+
+"Begorra, 'tis some av thim 'ud be doin' well to be lukin' to their
+music-lessons about here, Oi'm thinkin', afther th' day's wurruk."
+
+The Irishman, with his instinctive loquacity, had expressed what none of
+the rest would have considered politic to hint. It was like the giving way
+of the pebble that starts the avalanche. Soon they were deep in tales of
+lynchings. Peter knew only too well the trend of their talk, the "XXX" men
+were feeling the public pulse, as it were. Now, according to the unwritten
+code of the plains, lynching was "meet, right, just, and available" for
+the cattle-thief. And Peter felt himself false to his creed, false to his
+employer, false to himself, in seeking to evade the question. And yet that
+pitiful cabin, the white-faced woman running to the door so often that she
+knew not what she did, and the little rosy boy, who had put out his arms
+so trustfully! Peter broke into their grewsome yarning. "Lord, but you're
+like a lot of old women just come from a funeral!"
+
+"Whin the carpse died hard, and th' wake was a success." Costigan turned
+over. "Werra, werra, but we'll be seein' fairies the night!"
+
+A "XXX" man turned his head with a deliberate slowness and regarded Peter
+with narrowing eyes: "If the subject of cattle-thieves and their
+punishment is unpleasant to the gentleman from New York, perhaps he will
+favor us with something more cheerful." It was the same man who had given
+the two definitions of the "H L" brand that morning at the round-up.
+
+"Delighted," said Peter, affecting not to notice the significance of the
+man's remark. "Did you ever hear of the time that Tony Neville was burned
+with snow?"
+
+The "XXX" man yawned long and audibly. No one seemed especially interested
+in Tony Neville's having been burned with snow, but Peter struck out
+manfully, just in time to head off a man who said that he had seen Jim
+Rodney or some one who looked like him, following the trail-herd.
+
+"Once on a time, when it paid to be a cattle-man," began Peter, "there was
+an outfit near Laramie that hailed from the United Kingdom, every mother's
+son of them. A fine, manly lot of fellows, but wedded to calamity along of
+their cooks--not the revered range article," and Peter waved his hand
+towards the "W-square" cook, who was one of the party, "but the pampered
+ranch article that boasts a real stove, planted in a real kitchen, the
+spoiled darling that never has to light a fire out of wet wood in the
+rain.
+
+"These unhappy Britons had every species of ill luck that could befall an
+outfit, in the way of cooks; they were of every nationality, age, and sex,
+and they stole, drank, quarrelled, till the outfit determined to sweep the
+house clear of them and do its own cooking. Every man was to have a turn
+at it for a week. There was a Scotchman, who gave them something called
+'pease bannocks,' three times a day; followed by an Irishman, who
+breakfasted them on potatoes and whiskey. There was an Englishman, who had
+a beef slaughtered every time he fancied a tenderloin. There was a
+Welshman, who sang as he cooked. There were as many different kinds of
+indigestion as there were men in the outfit. They would beg to do
+night-herding, anything to get them away from that ranch. Finally, when
+their little tummies got so bad that their overcoats thickened, or wore
+through, or whatever happens to stomachs' overcoats that are treated
+unkindly, some one's maiden aunt sent him a tract saying that rice was the
+salvation of the human race, as witness the Chinese. Whosever turn it was
+to cook that week determined to try the old lady's prescription. Rice was
+procured, about a peck, I think; and the man who was cooking, pro tem, put
+the entire quantity on to boil in a huge ham-boiler, over a slow fire, as
+per the directions of the maiden aunt. The rice seemed to be doing nicely,
+when some one came in and said that a bunch of antelope was over on the
+hills and there was a good chance to get a couple. Every man got his gun,
+all but the cook, and he looked at the rice, that hadn't done a thing over
+the slow fire, in a way that would melt your heart. 'Just my luck that it
+should be my week to pot-wrestle when there's good hunting right at one's
+front door.'
+
+"'Oh, come on,' some one said. 'Didn't Kellett's aunt say the rice ought
+to be cooked over a slow fire? Kellett, get your aunt's letter and read
+the directions for cooking that rice again.'
+
+"The cook didn't need a second invitation, and they got into their
+saddles, cook and all, and went for the antelope.
+
+"Now antelope are not like stationary wash-tubs; they move about. And when
+that particular outfit arrived at the spot where those antelope were last
+seen, they had moved, but the boys found traces of them, and continued on
+their trail. They went in the foot-hills and they searched for those
+antelope all day. They caught up with old man Hall's outfit at dinner-time
+and were invited to take a bite. Coming home by way of the 'Circle-Star'
+ranch, Colonel Semmes asked them in to have a mint-julep; the colonel was
+a South Carolinian, and he had just succeeded in raising some mint. They
+had several--I fear more than several--drinks before leaving for home, with
+never a trace of antelope nor a thought of the rice cooking over the slow
+fire. The colonel remembered some hard cider that he had, and topping off
+on that, they set out. The weather was pretty warm, and on their way home
+they experienced some remorse over the hard cider. Now hard cider is an
+accumulative drink; it piles up interest like debt or unpaid taxes. And by
+the time those Englishmen had turned the little lane leading into their
+home corral, they saw a sight that made their sombreros rise. As I have
+said before, it was hot, being somewhere in the month of August.
+Gentlemen, I hardly expect you to believe me when I say it was snowing on
+their house, and not on another God blessed thing in the landscape.
+
+"The blame thing about it was, that every man took the phenomenon to be
+his own private view of snakes, or their bibulous equivalent, manifested
+in another and more terrifying form. Here was the August sun pouring down
+on the plain where their ranch-house was situated; everything in sight hot
+and dry as a lime-kiln, grasshoppers chirping in a hot-wave prophecy, and
+snow covering the house and the ground, about to what seemed a depth of
+four inches. Every one of them felt sensitive about mentioning what he saw
+to the others. You see, gentlemen, being unfamiliar with American drinks,
+and especially old Massachusetts cider, they merely looked to keep their
+saddles and no questions asked.
+
+"But when they got a bit closer the horror increased. Flying right out of
+their windows were perfect drifts of snow, banks of it, gentlemen, and the
+thermometer up past a hundred. One of the men looked about him and noticed
+the pallor on the faces of the rest:
+
+"'Do you notice anything strange, old chap? These cursed American drinks!'
+
+"'Strange!'--the boy he had spoken to was about eighteen, a nice,
+red-cheeked English lad out with his uncle learning the cattle business.
+'Good God!' the boy said. 'I've always tried to lead a good life, and here
+I am a paretic before I've come of age.'
+
+"They halted their horses and held a consultation. The boss came to the
+conclusion that since they had all seen it, there was nothing to do but
+continue the investigation and send the details to the 'Society for
+Psychical Research,' when he got down from his horse and walked towards
+the door of the house. At his approach, as if to rebuke his wanton
+curiosity, a great blast of snow blew out of the window and got him full
+in the face. He howled--the snow was scalding hot.
+
+"Then they remembered the rice."
+
+"Is that all?" demanded the man who had wanted to talk about rustling.
+
+"Isn't it enough?" said Peter, who could afford to be magnanimous, now
+that he had accomplished his point.
+
+"When I first heard that story, 'bout ten years ago, it ended with the
+Britishers riding like hell over to the Wolcott ranch to borrow umbrellas
+to keep off the hot rice while they got into the house," said the man,
+still sulky.
+
+"That's the way they tell it to tenderfeet," and Peter turned on his heel.
+The story-telling for the evening was over, the boys got their blankets
+and set about making their beds for the night.
+
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+
+                         Mary's First Day In Camp
+
+
+The first day spent as governess to the family of Yellett reminded Mary
+Carmichael of those days mentioned in the opening chapter of Genesis, days
+wherein whole geological ages developed and decayed. Any era, geological
+or otherwise, she felt might have had its rise, decline, and fall during
+that first day spent in a sheep camp.
+
+She awoke to the sound of faint tinklings, and accepted the towering peaks
+of the Wind River mountains, with their snowy mantles all shadowy in the
+whitening dawn, and the warmer grays of huddling foot-hills, as one
+receives, without question, the fantastic visions of sleep. The faint
+tinkling grew nearer, mingled with a light pitter patter and a far off
+baa-ing and bleating; then, as shadowy as the sheep in dreams, a great
+flock came winding round the hill; in and out through the sage-brush they
+went and came, elusive as the early morning shadows they moved among. The
+air was crystalline and sparkling; creation's first morning could not have
+promised more. It would have been inconsistent in such a place to waken in
+a house; the desert, that seemed a lifeless sea, the sheep moving like
+gray shadows, were all parts of a big, new world that had no need of
+houses built by hands.
+
+Ben, oldest of the Brobdingnag tribe, who had greeted Mary's request to be
+directed to "the house" as a bit of dry Eastern humor, led the herd to
+pasture. Ben's right-hand man was "Stump," the collie, so named because he
+had no tail worth mentioning, but otherwise in full possession of his
+faculties. Stump was newly broken to his official duties and authority sat
+heavily on him. Keenly alert, he flew hither and thither, first after one
+straying member of the herd, then another, barking an early morning
+roll-call as he went. Two other male Brobdingnags came from some
+sequestered spot in the landscape and joined Ben--Mary recognized two more
+pupils.
+
+Mrs. Yellett then unrolled the pillow constructed the night previous of
+such garments as she had been willing to dispense with, and put them on.
+The vastness of her surroundings did not prevent her from locating the
+minutest article, and Mary gave her the respectful admiration of a woman
+who has spent a great deal of time searching for things in an infinitely
+smaller space. The matriarch then called the remaining members of her
+household officially--the Misses Yellett accomplished their early morning
+toilets with the simplicity of young robins. Only the new governess hung
+back, but finally mustered up enough courage to say that if such a thing
+was possible she would like to have a bath.
+
+Mrs. Yellett greeted her request with the amused tolerance of one who has
+never given such a trifle a thought.
+
+"The habit of bathing," she commented, "is shore like religion: them that
+observes it wonders how them that neglects it gets along." She beckoned
+Mary to follow, and led the way to a bunch of willows that grew about a
+stone's-throw from the camp. "Here be a whole creek full of water, if you
+don't lack the fortitood. It's cold enough to sell for ten cents a glass
+down to Texas."
+
+Somewhat dismayed, Mary stepped gingerly into the creek. Its intense cold
+numbed her at first, but a second later awoke all her young lustiness, and
+she returned to camp in a fine glow of courage to encounter whatever else
+there might be of novelty. Mrs. Yellett was preparing breakfast at a
+sheet-iron stove, assisted by Cacta and Clematis.
+
+"Your hankering after a bath like this"--she added another handful of flour
+to the biscuit dough--"do shore remind me of an Englishman who come to
+visit near Laramie in the days of plenty, when steers had jumped to
+forty-five. This yere Britisher was exhibit stock, shore enough, being
+what's called a peer of the realm, which means, in his own country, that
+he is just nacherally entitled from the start to h'ist his nose high.
+
+"The outfit he was goin' to visit wasn't in the habit of havin' peers drop
+in on them casual, but they aimed to make him feel that he wasn't the
+first of the herd that headed that way by a quart"--she cut four biscuits
+with a tin cup, and resumed--"to which end they rounded up every specimen
+of canned food that's ever come across the Rockies.
+
+"'Let him ask for "salmon esplinade," let him ask for "chicken marine-go,"
+let him ask for plum-pudding, let him ask for hair-oil or throat
+lozengers, this yere outfit calls his bluff,' says Billy Ames, who owns
+the 'twin star' outfit and is anticipatin' this peer as a guest.
+
+"Well, just as everything is ready, the can-opener, sharp as a razor,
+waitin' to open up such effete luxuries as the peer may demand, Bill Ames
+gets called to California by the sickness of his wife. He feels mean about
+abandonin' the peer, but he don't seem to have no choice, his wife bein'
+one of them women who shares her bad health pretty impartially round the
+family. So Billy he departs. But before he goes he expounds to Joplin Joe,
+his foreman, the nature of a peer and how his wants is apt to be a heap
+fashionable, and that when he asks for anything to grasp the can-opener
+and run to the store-house--Cacta, you put on the coffee!
+
+"That peer arrives in the afternoon, and he never makes a request any more
+than a corpse. Beyond a marked disposition to herd by himself and to
+maintain the greatest possible distance between his own person and a
+six-shooter, he don't vary none from the bulk of tenderfeet. At night,
+when all parties retires, and Joplin Joe ponders on them untouched, effete
+luxuries in the store-room, and how the can-opener 'ain't once been dimmed
+in the cause of hospitality, it frets him considerable, and he feels he
+ain't doin' his duty to the absent Billy Ames.
+
+"At sunrise he can stand it no longer. He thunders on the Britisher's door
+with the butt of his six-shooter, calling out:
+
+"'Peer, peer, be you awake?'
+
+"The peer allowed he was, though his teeth was rattling like broken
+crockery.
+
+"'Peer, would you relish some "salmon esplinade"?'
+
+"The peer allowed he wouldn't.
+
+"'Peer, would you relish some "chicken marine-go"?'
+
+"The peer allowed he shore wouldn't, and the crockery rattled harder than
+ever. Joplin Joe then tried him on the hair-oil and the throat lozengers,
+the peer declining each with thanks.
+
+"'Peer,' said Joplin Joe, fair busting with hospitality, 'is there
+anything in this Gawd's world that you do want?'
+
+"The crockery rattled an interlood, then Joplin Joe made out:
+
+"'Thanks, very much. I should like a ba-ath'--Clematis, you see if them
+biscuits is brownin'.
+
+"Joe he ran to the store-room, and his eye encountered a barrel of
+corned-beef. He calls to a couple of cow-punchers, and the first thing you
+know that late corned steer is piled onto the prairie and them
+cow-punchers is hustling the empty barrel in to the peer. Next they
+detaches the steps from the kitchen door, ropes 'em to the barrel and
+introduces the peer to his bath. He's good people all right, and when he
+sees they calls his bluff he steps in all right and lets 'em soak him a
+couple of buckets. This here move restores all parties to a mutual
+understanding, and the peer he bathes in the corned-beef barrel regular
+durin' his stay--you see the habit had cinched him."
+
+Ned had shot an antelope a day or two previous, and antelope steak,
+broiled over a glowing bed of wood coals, with black coffee, stewed dried
+apples, and soda biscuit made up what Mary found to be an unexpectedly
+palatable breakfast. As camp did not include a cow, no milk or butter was
+served with meals. Nevertheless, the hungry tenderfoot was quite content,
+and missed none of the appurtenances she had been brought up to believe
+essential to a civilized meal, not even the little silver jug that Aunt
+Martha always insisted came over with William the Conqueror--Aunt Martha
+scorned the _May-flower_ contingent as parvenus.
+
+The family sat on the grass, tailor fashion, and every one helped himself
+to what appetite prompted, in a fashion that suggested brilliant gymnastic
+powers. To pass a dish to any one, the governess discovered, was construed
+as an evidence of mental weakness and eccentricity. The family satisfied
+its appetite without assistance or amenities, but with the skill of a
+troupe of jugglers.
+
+Breakfast was half over when Mrs. Yellett laid down her knife, which she
+had handled throughout the meal with masterly efficiency. Mary watched her
+in hopeless embarrassment, and wondered if her own timid use of a tin fork
+could be construed as an unfriendly comment upon the Yelletts' more simple
+and direct code of table etiquette.
+
+"Land's sakes! I just felt, all the time we've been eating, we was
+forgettin' something. You children ought to remember, I got so much on my
+mind."
+
+All eyes turned anxiously to the cooking-stove, while an expression of
+frank regret began to settle over the different faces. The backbone of
+their appetites had been broken, and there was something else, perhaps
+something even more appetizing, to come.
+
+Interpreting the trend of their glance and expression, up flared Mrs.
+Yellett, with as great a show of indignation as if some one had set a
+match to her petticoats.
+
+"I declare, I never see such children; no more nacheral feelin's than a
+herd of coyotes; never thinks of a plumb thing but grub. No, make no
+mistake about the character of the objec' we've forgot. 'Tain't sweet
+pertaters, 'tain't molasses, 'tain't corn-bread--it's paw! It's your pore
+old paw--him settin' in the tent, forsook and neglected by his own
+children."
+
+All started up to remedy their filial neglect without loss of time, but
+Mrs. Yellett waved them back to their places.
+
+"Don't the whole posse of you go after him, like he'd done something and
+was to be apprehended. Ben, you go after your father."
+
+Ben strode over to the little white tent that Mary had noticed glimmering
+in the moonlight the preceding evening, and presently emerged, supporting
+on his arm a partially paralyzed old man, who might have been Rip Van
+Winkle in the worst of tempers. His white hair and beard encircled a
+shrivelled, hawklike face, the mouth was sucked back in a toothless eddy
+that brought tip of nose and tip of chin into whispering distance, the
+eyes glittered from behind the overhanging, ragged brows like those of a
+hungry animal searching through the brush for its prey.
+
+"If you've done eatin'," whispered Mrs. Yellett to Miss Carmichael, "you'd
+better run on. Paw's langwidge is simply awful when we forget to bring him
+to meals." Mary ran on.
+
+When, after the lapse of some thirty minutes or so, the stentorian voice
+of Mrs. Yellett recalled Mary to camp, she found that the tin breakfast
+service had been washed and returned to the mess-box, the beds had been
+neatly folded and piled in one of the wagons--in fact, the extremely simple
+tent-hold, to coin a word, was in absolute order. It was just 6 A.M., and
+Mrs. Yellett thought it high time to begin school. Mary tried to convey to
+her that the hour was somewhat unusual, but she seemed to think that for
+pupils who were beginning their tasks comparatively late in life it would
+be impossible to start sufficiently early in the morning. So at this young
+and tender hour, with many misgivings, Mary set about preparing her _al
+fresco_ class-room.
+
+She chose a nice, flat little piece of the United States, situated in the
+shade of the clump of willows that bordered a trickling creek not far from
+her sylvan bath-room of the early morning. How she was to sit on the
+ground all day and yet preserve a properly pedagogical demeanor was the
+first question to be settled. That there was nothing even remotely
+resembling a chair in camp she felt reasonably assured, as "paw" was
+sitting on an inverted soap-box under a pine-tree, and "paw," by reason of
+age and infirmity, appropriated all luxuries. Mrs. Yellett, with her usual
+acumen, grasped the situation.
+
+"I'm figgerin'," she commented, "that there must be easier ways of
+governin' than sittin' up like a prairie-dog while you're at it."
+
+Mrs. Yellett took a hurried survey of the camp, lessening the distance
+between herself and one of the light wagons with a gait in which grace was
+entirely subservient to speed; then, with one capacious wrench of the
+arms, she loosened the spring seat from the wagon and bore it to the
+governess with an artless air of triumph. It was difficult, under these
+circumstances, to explain to Mrs. Yellett that without that symbol of
+scholastic authority, a desk, the wagon seat was useless. Nevertheless,
+Mary set forth, with all her eloquence, the mission of a desk. Mrs.
+Yellett was genuinely depressed. Had she imported the magician without his
+wand--Aladdin without his lamp? She proposed a bewildering choice--an
+inverted wash-tub, two buckets sustaining the relation of caryatides to a
+board, the sheet-iron cooking-stove. In an excess of solicitude she even
+suggested robbing "paw" of his soap-box.
+
+Mary chose the wash-tub on condition that Mrs. Yellett consented to
+sacrifice the handles in the cause of lower education. She felt that an
+inverted tub that was likely to see-saw during class hours would tend
+rather to develop a sense of humor in her pupils than to contribute to her
+pedagogical dignity.
+
+The camp, as may already have been inferred, enjoyed a matriarchal form of
+government. Its feminine dictator was no exception to the race of
+autocrats in that she was not an absolute stranger to the rosy byways of
+self-indulgence. There was a strenuous quality in her pleasuring perhaps
+not inconsistent in one whose daily tasks included sheep-herding,
+ditch-digging, varied by irrigating and shearing in their proper seasons.
+Under the circumstances, it was not surprising that her wash-tub bore
+about the same relationship to her real duties as does the crochet needle
+or embroidery hoop to the lives of less arduously engaged women. It was at
+once her fad and her relaxation, the dainty feminine accomplishment with
+which she whiled away the hours after a busy day spent with pick and
+shovel. Of all this Mary was ignorant when she proposed that Mrs. Yellett
+saw off the tub-handles in the cause of culture. However, Mrs. Yellett
+procured a saw, yet the hand that held it lingered in its descent on the
+handles. She contemplated the tub as affectionately as Hamlet regarding
+the skull of "Alas, poor Yorick!"
+
+"This," she observed, "is the only thing about camp that reminds me I'm a
+woman. I'd plumb forget it many a time if it warn't for this little tub.
+The identity of a woman is mighty apt to get mislaid when dooty compels
+her to assoome the pants cast aside by the nacheral head of the house in
+sickness or death. It's ben six years now since paw's done a thing but set
+'round and wait for meals." Mrs. Yellett sighed laboriously. "Not that I'm
+holdin' it agin him none. When a man sees eighty, it's time he bedded
+himself down comfortable and waited for the nacheral course of events to
+weed him out. But when the boys get old enough to tend to herdin',
+irrigatin', and the work that God A'mighty provided that man might get the
+chance to sweat hisself for bread, accordin' to the Scriptures, I aim to
+indulge myself by doin' a wash of clothes every day, even if I have to
+take clean clothes and do 'em over again."
+
+The poor "gov'ment's" tender heart could not resist this presentation of
+the case.
+
+"We won't touch the handles, Mrs. Yellett," she laughed. "I'm glad you
+told me you had a personal sentiment for the tub. There are some things I
+should feel the same way about--my hoe and rake, for instance, that I care
+for my garden with, at home. And that suggests to me, why not dig two
+little trenches for the handles and plant the tub? Then I shall have an
+even firmer foundation on which to arrange the--the--the educational
+miscellany."
+
+The suggestion of this harmless expedient was gratefully received, and the
+"desk" duly implanted, whereupon Mary pathetically sought to embellish her
+"class-room" from such scanty materials as happened to be at hand. A
+hemstitched bureau scarf that she had tucked in her trunk, in
+unquestioning faith in the bureau that was to be part of the ranch
+equipment, took the "raw edge," as it were, off the desk. A bunch of
+prairie flowers, flaming cactus blossoms in scarlet and yellow, ox-eyed
+daisies, white clematis from the creek, seemed none the less decorative
+for the tin cup that held them. Mary grimly told herself that her school
+was to have refining influences, even if it had no furniture.
+
+The books, pencils, and paper arranged in decorous little piles, Miss
+Carmichael announced to her patroness that school was ready to open. Mrs.
+Yellett, who had never heard that "a soft voice is an excellent thing in
+woman," and whose chest-notes were not unlike those of a Durham in
+sustained volume of sound, made the valley of the Wind River echo with the
+summons of the pupils to school, upon which the teacher herself was
+overcome by the absurdity of the situation and had barely time to escape
+back of the willows, where she laughed till she cried.
+
+As the pupils trooped obediently to school, Mary noted that they carried
+no flowers to their dear teacher, but that Ben, the oldest pupil,
+twenty-one years old, six feet four inches in height and deeply saturnine
+in manner, carried a six-shooter in his cartridge-belt. The teacher felt
+that she was the last to deny a pupil any reasonable palliative of the
+tedium of class-hours--the nearness of her own school-days inclined her to
+leniency in this particular--but she was hardly prepared to condone a
+six-shooter, and confided her fears to Mrs. Yellett, who received them
+with the indulgent tolerance a strong-minded woman might extend to the
+feminine flutter aroused by a mouse. She explained that Ben did not shoot
+for "glory," but to defend the herd from the casual calls of
+mountain-lions, bears, and coyotes. Jack and Ned, who were very nearly as
+tall as their older brother, carried similar weapons. Mary prayed that a
+fraternal spirit might dwell among her pupils.
+
+The Misses Yellett were hardly less terrifying than their brothers. They
+had their father's fierce, hawklike profile, softened by youth, and the
+appalling height and robustness due to the freedom and fresh air of a
+nomadic existence. Their costumes might, Mary thought, have been fashioned
+out of gunny-sacks by the simple expedient of cutting holes for the head
+and arms. The description of the dress worn by the charcoal-burner's
+daughter in any mediaeval novel of modern construction would approximate
+fairly well the school toilets of these young lady pupils. The boys wore
+overalls and flannel shirts, which, in contrast to the sketchy effects of
+their sisters' costumes, seemed almost modish. Mrs. Yellett then left the
+"class-room," saying she must take Ben's place with the sheep.
+
+The Brobdingnags, huge of stature, sinister of aspect, deeply distrustful
+of the rites in which they were about to participate, closed in about
+their teacher. From the pigeon-holes of memory Mary drew forth the
+academic smile with which a certain teacher of hers had invariably opened
+school. The pupils greeted the academic smile with obvious suspicion. No
+one smiled in camp. When anything according with their conception of the
+humorous happened, they laughed uproariously. Thus, early in the morning,
+on his way to breakfast, Ned had stumbled over an ax and severely cut his
+head. Every one but Ned saw the point of this joke immediately, and hearty
+guffaws testified to their appreciation.
+
+Miss Carmichael took her place behind the upturned tub.
+
+"Will you please be seated?" she said.
+
+The class complied with the instantaneous precision of automata newly
+greased and in excellent working order. Their abrupt obedience was
+disconcerting. Some one must have been drilling them, thought their
+anxious teacher, in the art of simultaneous squatting. The temper of the
+class respecting scholastic deportment leaned towards rigidity bordering
+on self-torture.
+
+Mary made out a roll-call, and by unanimous consent it was agreed to
+arrange the class as it then stood, or rather squatted, with the Herculean
+Ben at the top, and gradually diminishing in size till it reached the
+vanishing point with Cacta, who was ten and the least terrifying of all.
+
+"And now," ventured the teacher, with the courage of a white rabbit, "what
+have you been in the habit of studying?"
+
+Absolute silence on the part of the class, which confronted its questioner
+straight as a row of bottles, presenting faces imperturbable as so many
+sphinxes.
+
+Other questions met with an equally disheartening response. Miss
+Carmichael sat up straight, pushed back the persistent curls from her
+face, and bent every energy towards the achievement of a "firm" demeanor.
+
+"Clematis," said she, wisely selecting perhaps the least formidable of the
+class, "I want you to give me some idea of the kind of work you have been
+doing, so that we may all be able to understand each other. Now, in your
+mathematics, for instance, which of you have finished with your
+arithmetic, and which--"
+
+"What do you mean?" begged Clematis, somewhat tearful.
+
+"Where are you in your arithmetic?
+
+"Nowhere, ma'am."
+
+"Do you mean you have never learned any?" Mary Carmichael shuddered as she
+icily put the question.
+
+"Yes, ma'am."
+
+"Is that the case with all of you?"
+
+Emphatic nods left no room for doubt.
+
+"Then we'll leave that for the present. If you will tell me, Clematis,
+what kind of work you have been doing in your history and English, we will
+get to work on those to-day. What books have you been using?"
+
+Not unnaturally, Clematis, who was emotional and easily impressed, began
+to feel as though she were a criminal. She sobbed in a helpless, feminine
+way. Ben spoke up, fearsomely, from the top of the class.
+
+"We 'ain't got no books," said he, in grim rebuke, as though to put an end
+to a profitless discussion.
+
+"Do you wish me to understand," quavered Mary, "that you have had no
+studies--that you--can't read?--that you--don't know--anything?"
+
+"That's it," said Ben, with the nearest approach to cheerfulness he had
+yet manifested.
+
+Meanwhile there lay on the teacher's "desk" copies of Clodd's _Childhood
+of the World_, two of that excellent series of _History Primers_, and _The
+Young Geologist_, all carefully selected, in the fulness of Mary's
+ignorance, for the little pupils of her imagination. She had brought no
+primer, as Mrs. Yellett's letter had distinctly said that the youngest
+child was ten and that all were comparatively advanced in their studies.
+More than ever Mary longed to penetrate the mystery of that Irish linen
+decoy, for without doubt it was to be her melancholy fate to conduct this
+giant band through the alphabet!
+
+Accordingly she wrote out the letters of the alphabet with large
+simplicity and a sublime renunciation of flourish. The class received it
+tepidly. Mary grew eloquent over its unswerving verities. The class
+remained lukewarm. The difference between a and b was a matter of
+indifference to the house of Yellett. They regarded their teacher's
+strenuous efforts to furnish a key to the acquirement of the alphabet with
+the amused superiority of "grown-ups" watching infant antics with pencil
+and paper. Meanwhile her fear of the class increased in proportion as her
+ability to hold its attention diminished. The backbone of the school was
+plainly wilting. The little scholars, armed to the teeth, no longer sat up
+straight as tenpins. After twenty-five minutes of educational experience,
+satiety bowled them over.
+
+A single glance had convinced Ben that the alphabet was beneath contempt.
+He yawned automatically at regular intervals--long, dismal yawns that
+threatened to terminate in a howl, the unchecked, primitive type of yawn
+that one hears in the cages of the zoological gardens on a dull day. Miss
+Carmichael raised interrogatory eyebrows, but she might as well have
+looked reproof at a Bengal tiger.
+
+The class was rapidly promoted to c-a-t, cat; but these dizzy intellectual
+heights left them cold and dull. Ben began to clean his revolver, and on
+being asked why he did not pay attention to his lessons, answered,
+briefly:
+
+"It's all d----d foolishness."
+
+Cacta and Clem were pulling each other's hair. Mary affected not to see
+this sisterly exchange of torture. Ned whittled a stick; and, in chorus,
+when their teacher told them that d-o-g spelled dog, they shouted
+derision, and affirmed that they had no difficulty in compelling the
+obedience of Stump even without this particular bit of erudition. Though
+Mary had always abhorred corporal punishment, she began to see arguments
+in its favor.
+
+With the handleless tub as an elbow-rest the teacher took counsel with
+herself. Strategy must be employed with the intellectual conquest of the
+Brobdingnags. Summoning all the pedagogical dignity of which she was
+capable, she asked:
+
+"Boys, don't you want to know how to read?"
+
+"Noap," responded the head of the class.
+
+"Don't you want to know how to write?"
+
+"Noap."
+
+"But, my dear boy, what would you do if you left here and went out into
+the world, where every one knows these things and your ignorance would be
+evident at every turn. What would you do?"
+
+"Slug the whole blamed outfit!"
+
+Mary looked at her watch. School had lasted just forty-five minutes. Had
+time become petrified?
+
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+
+                       Judith Adjusts The Situation
+
+
+Mary had been a member of the Yellett household for something over a week,
+and the intellectual conquest of her Brobdingnag pupils seemed as hopeless
+as on that first day. School seemed to be regarded by them as a sort of
+neutral territory, admirably adapted for the settlement of long-standing
+grudges, the pleasant exchange of practical jokes, peace and war
+conferences; also as a mart of trade, where fire-arms, knives, bear and
+elk teeth might be swapped with a greater expenditure of time and
+conversation than under the maternal eye. "Teacher," as she was understood
+and accepted by the house of Yellett, undoubtedly filled a long-felt want.
+Presiding over a school of six-imp power for a week, however, had humbled
+Mary to the point of seriously considering a letter to the home
+government, meekly asking for return transportation. But this was before
+feminine wile had struggled with feminine vanity, and feminine wile won
+the day. School still continued to open at six, from which early and
+unusual hour it continued, without recess or interruption, till noon, when
+dinner pleasantly invaded the scholastic monotony, to the infinite relief
+of all parties concerned.
+
+Mary had dismissed her pupils a few minutes before the usual hour, on a
+particularly bad day, that she might rally her scattered faculties and
+present something of a countenance to the watchful eye of Mrs. Yellett.
+Every element of humor had vanished from the situation. The inverted tub
+was no longer a theme for merriment in her diary; home-life without a
+house was no longer a diverting epigram; she had closed her eyes that she
+might not see the mountains in all their grandeur. In her present mood of
+abject homesickness the white-capped peaks were part and parcel of the
+affront. With head sunk in the palms of her hands, and elbows resting on
+the inverted tub, Mary presented a picture of woe, in which the wicked
+element of comedy was not wholly lacking. Looking up suddenly, she saw
+Judith Rodney advancing. The first glimpse of her put Mary in a more
+rational mood.
+
+"I'm so glad to see you! Behold my class-room appointments! They may seem
+a trifle novel, but, for that matter, so are my pupils," began Mary,
+determining to present the same front to Judith that she had to Mrs.
+Yellett. But Judith was not to be put off. She looked into Mary's eyes and
+did not relax her gaze until she was rewarded with an answering twinkle.
+Then Mary laughed long and merrily, the first good, hearty laugh since the
+beginning of her teaching.
+
+"Tell me," Mary broke out, suddenly, "or the suspense will kill me, who
+wrote that lovely letter--on such good quality Irish linen, too? Snob that
+I was, it was the letter that did it."
+
+"So you have your suspicions that it was not a home product?"
+
+"You didn't do it, did you?"
+
+"Oh no; though I was asked, and so was Miss Wetmore, I believe. Of course
+poor Mrs. Yellett had no other recourse, as I suppose you know. I chose to
+be disobliging that time, and was sorry for it afterwards--sorry when I
+heard about the letter that really went! Do you find the sheep-wagon so
+very dreadful?"
+
+"I thought," laughed Mary, "that it was going to be like a picture I saw
+in a magazine, Mexican hammocks, grass cushions, and a lady pouring tea
+from a samovar; instead it was the sheep-wagon and 'Do you sleep light or
+dark?' There is Mrs. Yellett calling us to dinner. Shall I have a chance
+to talk to you alone afterwards?"
+
+"I've come all the way from Dax's to see you," explained Judith, with
+characteristic directness. "We have all the afternoon."
+
+"Really!" Mary displayed a flash of school-girl enthusiasm. "I feel as if
+I could almost bear the scenery."
+
+Presumably Judith was a favorite guest of the Yellett household, and not
+without reason. She took her place in the circle about the homely,
+steaming fare, with an ease and grace that suggested that dining off the
+ground was an every-day affair with her, and chairs and tables
+undreamed-of luxuries. Mary envied her ready tact. Why could she not meet
+these people with Judith's poise--bring out the best of them, as she did?
+The boys talked readily and naturally--there was even a flavor to what they
+said. As for herself, try never so conscientiously and she would be
+confronted by frank amusement or shy distrust. Even "paw" beamed at Judith
+appreciatively as he consumed his meal with infinite, toothless labor. The
+Spartan family became almost sprightly under the pleasantly stimulating
+influence of its guest.
+
+"What kind of basques are they wearing this summer, Judy?" inquired Mrs.
+Yellett, regarding her guest's trim shirt-waist judicially. "I reckon them
+loose, meal-sack things must be all the go since you and Miss Mary both
+have 'em; but give me a good, tight-fittin' basque, every time. How's any
+one to know whether you got a figure or not, in a thing that never hits
+you anywhere?" questioned the matriarch, not without a touch of pride
+anent her own fine proportions.
+
+"You really ought to have a shirt-waist, Mrs. Yellett. You've no idea of
+the comfort of them, till you've worn them."
+
+"I don't see but I'll have to come to it." Her tone was frankly regretful,
+as one who feels obliged to follow the behests of fashion, yet, in so
+doing, sacrifices a cherished ideal. Mary Carmichael choked over her
+coffee in an abortive attempt to restrain her audible hilarity. Judith,
+without a trace of amusement, was discussing materials, cut, and buttons;
+the plainswoman had proved herself the better gentlewoman of the two.
+
+"Get me a spotty calico, white, with a red dot, will you, the next time
+you're over to Ervay? Buttons accordin' to your judgment; but if you could
+get some white chiny with a red ring, I think they'd match it handsome."
+She frowned reflectively. "You're sure one of them loose, hangy things 'd
+become me? Then you can bring it over Tuesday, when you come to the hunt."
+
+"What hunt?" asked Judith, in all simplicity.
+
+"Why, the wolf-hunt. Peter Hamilton come here three days ago and made
+arrangements for 'em all to have supper here after it was done. 'Lowed
+there was a young Eastern lady in the party, Miss Colebrooke, who couldn't
+wait to meet me. Course you're goin', Judy? You've plumb forgot it, or
+somethin' happened to the messenger. Who ever hyeard tell of anythin'
+happenin' in this yere county 'thout you bein' the very axle of it?"
+
+Judith had not betrayed her chagrin by the least change of countenance. To
+the most searching glance every faculty was intent on the shirt-waist with
+the ringed buttons. Yet both women felt--by a species of telepathy wholly
+feminine--that Judith was deeply wounded. Loyal Sarah Yellett decided that
+Hamilton's guests would get but a scant supper from her if her friend
+Judith was to be unfavored with an invitation, while Judith, in her own
+warm heart, resented as deeply as Peter's slight of herself, his tale of
+Miss Colebrooke's impatience to meet Mrs. Yellett. The matriarch's
+dominant personality evoked many a smile even from those most deeply
+conscious of her worth; but it wasn't like Peter to make a spectacle of
+his ruggedly honest neighbor. Nevertheless she remarked, coolly:
+
+"I sha'n't be able to bring your shirt-waist things up Tuesday, I'm
+afraid, Mrs. Yellett, but I'll try to bring them towards the end of the
+week." Then, with a swift change of subject, "How are the boys getting on
+with their education, Miss Carmichael?"
+
+The boys looked at Mary out of the corners of their eyes. Their prowess in
+the field of letters had not been publicly discussed before. Mary
+Carmichael, emboldened by Judith's presence, looked at her tormentors with
+a judicious glance.
+
+"The girls are doing fairly well," she replied, suppressing the mischief
+in her eyes, "but the boys, poor fellows, I think something must be the
+matter with them. Did they ever fall on their heads when they were babies,
+Mrs. Yellett?"
+
+"Not more than common. All babies fall on their heads; it's as common as
+colic."
+
+"Poor boys!" said Mary, with a manner that suggested they were miles away,
+rather than within a few feet of her. "Poor boys! I've never seen anything
+like it. They try so hard, too, yet they can make nothing of work that
+would be play for a child of three. They must have fallen on their heads
+harder than you supposed, Mrs. Yellett."
+
+"Perhaps their skulls were a heap frailer than I allowed for at the time,"
+said Mrs. Yellett, with similar remoteness, yet with a twinkle that showed
+Mary she understood the situation.
+
+"An infant's skull doesn't stand much knocking about, I suppose, Mrs.
+Yellett?"
+
+"Not a great deal, if there ain't plenty of vinegar and brown paper handy,
+and I seldom had such fancy fixings in camp. It's too bad my boys should
+be dumb 'n account of a little thing like vinegar and brown paper."
+
+"Maw, they be dumb as Injuns," declared Cacta, preening herself, while the
+Messrs. Yellett reapplied themselves to their dinner with ostentatious
+interest.
+
+"Well, well!" said Mrs. Yellett; "it be a hard blow to me to know that my
+sons are lackings; there's mothers I know as would give vent to their
+disapp'inted ambition in ways I'd consider crool to the absent-minded. Now
+hearken, the whole outfit of you! Any offspring of mine now present and
+forever after holding his peace, who proves feebleminded by the end of the
+coming week, takes over all the work, labor, and chores of such offspring
+as demonstrates himself in full possession of his faculties, the matter to
+be reported on by the gov'ment."
+
+No sovereign, issuing a proclamation of war, could have assumed a more
+formidable mien than Mrs. Yellett, squatting erect on the prairie, crowned
+by her rabbit-skin cap. Mary and Judith, with bland, impassive
+expressions, noted the effect of the mandate. There was not the faintest
+symptom of rebellion; each Brobdingnag accepted the matriarch's edict
+without a murmur.
+
+With an air of further meditation on the efficacy of brown paper and
+vinegar at the crucial moment, Mrs. Yellett suddenly observed:
+
+"The lacking, like the dog, may be taught to fetch and carry a book; but
+to learn it he is unable."
+
+"Maw, does it say that in the Book of Hiram?" asked Clematis.
+
+"It says that, an' more, too. It says, 'The words of the wise are an
+expense, but the lovin' parent don't grudge 'em.'"
+
+Mary Carmichael had noticed, as her alien presence came to be less of a
+check on Mrs. Yellett's natural medium of expression, that she was much
+addicted to a species of quotation with which she impartially adorned her
+conversation, pointed family morals, or administered an occasional
+reproof. These family aphorisms were sometimes semi-legal, sometimes
+semi-scriptural in turn of phrase, and built on a foundation of homely
+philosophy. They were ascribed to the "Book of Hiram" and never failed of
+salutary effect in the family circle. But the apt quotations that she had
+just heard piqued Mary's curiosity more than before.
+
+"Do you happen to have a copy of the Book of Hiram, Mrs. Yellett?" she
+asked, in all innocence, supposing that the 'homely apothegms were to be
+found at the back of some patent-medicine almanac. Judith Rodney listened
+in wonder. The question had never before been asked in her hearing.
+
+"I lost mine." Mrs. Yellett folded her arms and looked at her questioner
+with something of a challenging mien.
+
+"What a pity! I've been so interested in the quotations I've heard you
+make from it."
+
+"What's the matter with 'em?" she demanded, pride and apprehension equally
+commingled.
+
+Judith Rodney rushed to the rescue:
+
+"Nothing is the matter with them, Mrs. Yellett," she said, with her
+disarming smile, "except that there is not quite enough to go around."
+
+The matriarch had the air of gathering herself together for something
+really worth while. Then she tossed off:
+
+"''Tain't always the quality of the grub that confers the flavor, but
+sometimes the scarcity thereof.'"
+
+Perhaps it has been the good-fortune of some of us to say a word of praise
+to an author, while unconscious of his relationship to the book praised.
+Mark the genial glow radiating from every feature of our auditor! How we
+feel ourselves anointed with his approval, our good taste and critical
+faculty how commended! It is a luxury that goes a long way towards
+mitigating the discomfitures caused by the reverse of this unctuous
+blunder.
+
+"The Book of Hiram," said Mrs. Yellett, angling for time, "is a book--it do
+surprise me that it escapes your notice back East. You ever heard tell of
+the Book of Mormon?"
+
+Mary assented.
+
+"Well, the Book of Hiram is like the Book of Mormon, only a heap more
+undefiled. The youngest child can read it without asking a single
+embarrassing question of its elder, and the oldest sinner can read it
+without having any fleshly meditations intrudin' on his piety."
+
+The Yellett family had by this time dispersed itself for the afternoon,
+and the matriarch and the two girls started in to clear away the meal and
+wash the dishes.
+
+"That's the kind of book for me," continued Mrs. Yellett, vigorously
+swishing about in the soapy water. "Story-books don't count none with me
+these days. It's my opinion that things are snarled up a whole lot too
+much in real life without pestering over the anguish of print folks. Flesh
+and blood suffering goes without a groan of sympathy from the on-lookers,
+while novel characters wade to the neck in compassion. I've pondered on
+that a whole lot, seem' a heap of indifference to every-day calamity, and
+the way I assay it is like this: print folks has terrible fanciful layouts
+given to their griefs and worriments by the authors of their being. The
+trimmings to their troubles is mighty attractive. Don't you reckon I'd be
+willin' to have a spell of trouble if I had a sweeping black velvet dress
+to do it in? Yes, indeed, I'd be willin' to turn a few of them shades of
+anguish, 'gray's ashes,' 'pale as death,' and so on, if they'd give me the
+dress novel ladies seems to have for them special occasions."
+
+"But you used to like novels, you know you did, Mrs. Yellett," observed
+Judith Rodney.
+
+"Yes, I didn't always entertain these views concernin' romance. You
+wouldn't believe it, but there was a time when I just nacherally went
+careerin' round enveloped in fantasies. I was young then--just about the
+time I married paw. Every novel that was read to me, I mean that I
+read"--Mrs. Yellett blushed a deep copper color through her many coats of
+tan--"convinced me that I was the heroine thereof. And, nacherally, I
+turned over to paw the feachers and characteristics of the hero in said
+book I happened to be enjoyin' at the time. Paw never knew it, but
+sometimes he was a dook, and it was plumb hard work. Just about as hard as
+ropin' a mountain-lion an' sayin', 'remember, you are a sheep from this
+time henceforth, and trim your action accordin'.' I'd say to paw, 'Let's
+walk together in the gloaming, here in this deserted garden'; and paw
+would say, 'Name o' Gawd, woman, have you lost your mind? It's plumb three
+hundred and fifty miles to the Tivoli beer-garden in Cheyenne, and it
+ain't deserted, either!'
+
+"Then I'd wring my hands in anguish, same as the Lady Mary, an' paw would
+declare I was locoed. He seemed a heap more nacheral when I pretended he
+was 'Black Ranger, the Pirate King.' His language came in handy, and his
+cartridge-belt and pistol all came in Black Ranger's outfit. Yes, it was a
+heap easier playing he was a pirate than a dook. All this happened back to
+Salt Lake, where me an' paw was married."
+
+Mrs. Yellett looked towards the mountain-range that separated her from the
+Mormon country, and her listeners realized that she was verging perilously
+close to confidences. Mary Carmichael, who dreaded missing any detail of
+the chronicle that dealt with paw in the role of apocryphal duke, hastened
+to say:
+
+"And you lost your taste for romance, finally?"
+
+"In Salt Lake I was left to myself a whole lot-there was reasons why I
+didn't mingle with the Mormon herd. Paw was mighty attentive to me, but
+them was troublous times for paw. I pastures myself with the fleetin'
+figures of romance the endoorin' time and enjoys myself a heap. When paw
+wasn't a dook or a pirate king, unbeknownst to himself, like as not he was
+Sir Marmaduke Trevelyun, or somebody entitled to the same amount of dog.
+
+"'Bout this time a little stranger was due in our midst, and the woman who
+came to take care of me was plumb locoed over novels, same as me, only
+worse. She just hungered for 'em, same as if she had a longin' for
+something out of season. She brought a batch of them with her in her
+trunk, we borrowed her a lot more, some I don't know how she come by. But
+they didn't have no effect; it was like feedin' an' Injun--you couldn't
+strike bottom. She read out of 'em to me with disastrous results
+happenin', an' that cured me. The brand on this here book that effected my
+change of heart was _The Bride of the Tomb_. I forget the name of the girl
+in that romance, but she was in hard luck from the start. She couldn't
+head off the man pursooin' her, any way she turned. She'd wheel out of his
+way cl'ar across country, but he'd land thar fust an' wait for her, a
+smile on his satanine feachers.
+
+"I got so wrought up along o' that book, an' worried as to the outcome,
+'most as bad as the girl. Think of it! An' me with only three baby-shirts
+an' a flannel petticoat made at the time! Seemed 's if I couldn't hustle
+my meals fast enough, I just hankered so to know what was goin' to happen
+next! I plumb detested the man with the handsome feachers, same as the
+girl. Me an' her felt precisely alike about him. And when he shut her up
+in the family vault I just giv' up an' was took then an' there, an' me
+without so much as finishin' the flannel petticoat! I never could endure
+the sight of a novel since. Perhaps that's why Ben is so dumb about his
+books--just holds a nacheral grudge against 'em along of my havin' to
+borrow slips for him."
+
+"Has the Book of Hiram anything to say against the habit of novel reading,
+Mrs. Yellett?" inquired Judith, demurely.
+
+She paused for a moment. "It's mighty inconvenient that I should have
+mislaid that book, but rounding up my recollections of it, I recall
+something like this: 'Romance is the loco-weed of humanity.'"
+
+"So you don't approve of the Mormon Bible?" ventured Mary.
+
+"I jest nacherally execrates Mormonism, spoken, printed, or in action,"
+she said, with an emphasis that suggested the subject had a strong
+personal bearing. "I recall a text from the Book of Hiram touching on
+Mormon deportment in particklar an' human nature at large. It says, 'Where
+several women and one man are gathered together for the purpose of serving
+the Lord, the man gets the bulk of the service."
+
+She broke off suddenly, as if she feared she had said too much. "Judy,"
+she demanded, "is Mis' Dax busy with Leander now?"
+
+"Not more than usual," smiled Judith.
+
+"Jest tell her for me, will you, that I want to hire her husband to do
+some herdin'; Leander's handy, 'n' can work good an' sharp, if he is an
+infidel. An' I like to have him over now an' then, as you know, Judy. As
+the Book of Hiram says, 'It's neighborly to ease the check-rein of a
+gentled husband.' But you tell him I don't want to hear any of his
+ever-lastin' fool argufyin' 'bout religion. Leander 'd stop in the middle
+of shearin' a sheep to argue that Jonah never came out o' the whale's
+belly. I ain't no use for infidels, 'less they're muzzled, which Leander
+mos' generally is."
+
+With the feeling that there was an excellent though unspoken understanding
+between them, the two girls walked together to the top of the path that
+wandered away from camp towards a bluff overlooking wave after wave of
+foot-hills, lying blue and still like a petrified sea.
+
+"I'm still dying to know who wrote that letter," begged Mary.
+
+"It was written by a lady who is very anxious to return to Washington, and
+she took that means of getting one more vote. Her husband is going to run
+for the Senate next term. We hear a good deal of that side of politics,
+you know."
+
+"It was certainly convincing," remarked the victim of the letter. "My
+aunts detected many virtues in the handwriting."
+
+"But now that you are really here, isn't it splendid? Mountains are such
+good neighbors. They give you their great company and yet leave you your
+own little reservations."
+
+"But I fear I can never feel at home out-of-doors," Mary announced, with
+such a rueful expression that they both smiled.
+
+"Perhaps, then, it depends on the frame of mind. I've had longer than you
+to cultivate it."
+
+Mary looked towards the mountains, serene in their strength. "Awesome as
+they are," she laughed, "they don't frighten me nearly as much as Ben and
+Ned. They are really very difficile, my pupils, and I feel so ridiculous
+sitting up back of that tub, teaching them letters and the spelling of
+foolish words, when they know things I've never dreamed of. The other day,
+out of a few scratches in the dust that I should never have given a second
+glance, one of them made out that some one's horses had broken the corral
+and one was trailing a rope. Whereupon my pupil got on a horse, went in
+search of the strays, and returned them to men going to a round-up. After
+that, the spelling of cat didn't seem quite so much of an achievement as
+it had before."
+
+"But they need the spelling of cat so much more than you need to
+understand trail-marks. Why don't you try a little strategy with them?
+Perhaps a bribe, even? It seems to me I remember something in history
+about the part played in colonization by the bright-colored bead."
+
+Sundry wood-cuts from a long-forgotten primer history of the United States
+came back to Mary. In that tear-stained, dog-eared volume, all explorers,
+from Columbus down to Lewis and Clarke, were unfailingly depicted in the
+attitude of salesmen displaying squares of cloth to savages apparently in
+urgent need of them.
+
+"How stupid of me not to remember Father Marquette concluding negotiations
+with a necklace!"
+
+"Frankly plagiarize the terms of your treaty from Pere Marquette, and
+there you are!"
+
+"You are so splendid!" said Mary, impulsively, remembering Judith's own
+sorrows and the smiling fortitude with which she kept them hidden. "You
+make me feel like a horrid little girl that has been whining."
+
+Judith looked towards the mountains a long time without speaking.
+
+"When you know them well, they whisper great things that little folk can't
+take away."
+
+She turned back towards camp, walking lightly, with head thrown back. Mary
+watched her. Yes, the mountains might have admitted her to their company.
+
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+
+                              The Wolf-hunt
+
+
+Judith awakened with all the starry infinitude of sky for a canopy. In the
+distance loomed the foot-hills, watchful sentinels of her slumbers; and,
+sloping gently away from them, rolled the plain, like some smooth, dark
+sea flowing deep and silently. Judith, a solitary figure adrift in that
+still ocean of space, sat up and watched the stars fade and saw the young
+day peer timorously at the world that lay before it. Her mind, refreshed
+by long hours of dreamless sleep, turned to the problem of impending
+things, serenely contemplative. The passing of many mornings and many
+peoples had the mountains seen as the wreathed mists came and went about
+their brows, and to all who knew the value of the gift they gave their
+great company, and to such as could hear, they told their great secrets.
+Judith's prayer was an outflowing of soul to the great forces about her, a
+wish to be in harmony with them, to remember her kinship, to keep some
+measure of their serenity in the press of burdens. The way of the Indian
+was ever her way when circumstance raised no barriers; the four walls of a
+house were a prison to her after the days lengthened and the summer nights
+grew warm. To the infinite disapproval of that custodian of propriety,
+Mrs. Dax, she would make her bed beneath the stars, night after night, and
+bathe in the cold, clear waters of the stream that purled from the
+white-capped crest of the mountains.
+
+"Nasty Injun ways!" scoffed Leander's masterful lady, consciously superior
+from the intrenchment of her stuffy bedroom, that boasted crochet-work on
+the backs of the chairs and a scant lace curtain at its solitary window.
+
+Judith, going to her favorite pool to bathe, saw that it had shrunk till
+it seemed but a fairy well hid among the willows. A quarter of a mile
+above was another pool, hidden like a jewel in its case of green,
+broidered with scarlet roseberries and white clematis; and towards this
+she bent her steps, as time was a-plenty that morning. She kept to the
+stones of the creek for a pathway, jumping lightly from those that were
+moss-grown to those that hid their nakedness in the dark, velvet shadows
+of early morning, her white feet touching the shallow stream like pale
+gulls that dipped and skimmed. "Diana's Pool," as she called it, was
+always clear. It lay half hid beneath a shelving rock, a fount for the
+tiny, white fall that crooned and sang as it fell. And here she bathed, as
+the east flamed where the mountains blackened against it. Gold halos
+tipped the clouds, that melted presently into fiery waves, then burst into
+one great aureole through which the sun rode triumphant, and it was day.
+
+She had kept post-office the day before, and it would not be till day
+after to-morrow that the squires of the lariat would come again to offer
+their hearts, their worldly goods, their complete reformation, if she
+would only change her mind. It was all such an old story that she had
+grown to regard them with a tenderness almost maternal. But to-day was all
+her own, and the spirit of adventure swelled high in her bosom as she
+thought of what she had planned. It was warm and close and still in the
+Dax house as Judith made her way softly to her own room and began her
+preparations for the long journey she was to take afoot. To walk in the
+abominations devised by the white man for the purpose of cramping his feet
+would have been a serious handicap to Judith. The twenty miles that she
+would walk before nightfall was no very great undertaking to her, but it
+was part of her primitive directness to accomplish it with as little
+expenditure of fatigue and comfort as possible. Moreover, who could steal
+through the forest in those heeled things without announcing his coming
+and frightening the forest folk, and sending them skurrying? And Judith
+loved to surprise them and see them busy with their affairs--to creep along
+in her soft, elk-hide moccasins and catch their watchful eyes and see the
+things that were not for the heavy-booted white man.
+
+She might have inspired Kitty Colebrooke to a sonnet as she stepped out
+into the glad morning light, in short skirt and jacket, green-clad as the
+pines that girdled the mountains, with a knapsack with rations of bread
+and meat and the wherewithal to build a fire should she wander belated.
+She softly closed the door, not to awaken Leander and his slumbering lady,
+and broke into the running gait that the Indians use on their all-day
+journeys, the elk-hide moccasins falling soft as snow-flakes on the trail.
+Dolly she missed chiefly for her companionship, for Judith had not the
+white man's utter helplessness without a horse in this country of high
+altitudes. When she walked she breathed, carried herself, covered ground
+like her mother's people, and loved the inspiration of it.
+
+The eerie shadows of the desert drew back and hid themselves in the
+mountains. The day began with splendid promise--the day of the wolf-hunt,
+of which no word had been spoken to her by Peter. She, too, was going
+hunting, but silently and unbidden she would steal through the forest and
+see this mysterious woman who played fast and loose with Peter, who loved
+her apparently all the better for the game she played. What manner of
+woman could do these things? What manner of woman could be indifferent to
+Peter? Judith was consumingly curious to see. And, apart from this naked
+and unashamed curiosity, there was the possibility that at sight of Miss
+Colebrooke there might come a relaxation of Peter's tyrannous hold upon
+her thoughts, her life, her very heart's blood. Would her loyalty bear the
+test of seeing Peter made a fool of by a woman she could dismiss with a
+shrug--a softly speaking shrew, perhaps, who played a waiting game with her
+finger on the pulse of Peter's prospects? For there was talk of a
+partnership with the Wetmores. Or a fool, perhaps, for all her sonneting,
+for there are men who relish a weak headpiece as the chiefest ornament of
+women, especially when its indeterminate vagaries boast an escape-valve
+remotely connected with the fine arts. Or a devil-woman, perhaps--an
+upright wanton who could think no wrong from very poverty of temperament,
+yet kept him dangling. The possibility of Kitty's honesty, Judith in her
+jealousy would not admit. Had she gone to the devil for him, stood and
+faced the drift of opinion for his sake, that Judith could have
+understood. But what was the spinning of verses to a woman's portion of
+loving and being loved? Even Alida, through all her distracting anxieties,
+had in her heart the thrice-blessed leaven, reasoned the woman of the
+plains, who might, according to modern standards, be reckoned a trifle
+primitive in her psychological deductions. And, withal, Judith was forced
+to admit that there was something simple and true about a man who would
+let a woman make a fool of him, whoever the woman was.
+
+Perhaps with this hunting would end the long reign of Peter as a divinity.
+Judith was tired, not in her vigorous young body, because that was strong
+and healthful as the hill wind, but tired in heart and mind and life. Her
+destiny had not been beautiful or happy before he invaded it, but it had
+been calm, and now serenity seemed the worthiest gift of the gods. It was
+not that she loved him less, but that she had so long reflected upon him
+that her imagination was numb; her thoughts, arid, unfruitful as the
+desert, turned from him to the problems that beset her, and from them back
+to him again, in dull, subconscious yearning. She could no longer project
+an anguished consciousness to those scenes wherein he walked and talked
+with Kitty. Her Indian fatalism had intervened. "Life was life," to be
+lived or left. And yet she felt herself a poor creature, one who had lived
+long on illusion, who had bent her neck to the yoke of arid unrealities.
+The pale-haired woman who kept him with her miserliness of self, who
+intruded no sombre tragedy of loving, was well worth a trip across the
+foot-hills to see. And yet, Judith reflected, it was the portion of her
+mother's daughter to make of loving the whole business of life, even if
+she rebelled and fought against it as an accursed destiny. It was in her
+inheritance to know and live for the wild thrill of ecstasy in her pulses,
+to feel trembling joy and despair and frantic hope, that exacted its
+tribute hardly less poignant; as it was, also, to feel a shivering
+sensitiveness in regard to the loneliness and bitterness of her life, to
+have the same measureless capacity for sorrow that she had for loving, to
+have a soul attuned to the tragedy of things, to love the mighty forces
+about her, to feel the reflection of all their moods in her heart, and,
+lastly, it was her destiny to be the daughter of a half-Sioux and a border
+adventurer, and to feel the counter influences of the two races make
+forever of her heart a battleground.
+
+Her light feet scarcely touched the ground as she sped swiftly through all
+the network of the hills; and more than once her woman's heart asked the
+question, "And, prithee, Judith, if from henceforth you are only to hold
+fellowship with the stars and have no part in the ways of men, why do you
+walk a day's journey to catch a glimpse of a pale-haired woman?"
+
+She knew the probable course of the wolf-hunt. She had been on scores of
+them, galloped with Peter after the fleeing gray thing that swept along
+the ground like the nucleus of a whirling dust-devil. At least she was
+sure of the place of their nooning--a limpid stream that ran close to many
+young pine-trees. Here was a pause in the rugged ascent, a level space of
+open green, thick with buffalo grass. Many times had she been here with
+Peter, sometimes with many other people on the chase--sometimes, and these
+occasions were enshrined in her memory, each with its own particular halo,
+with Peter alone; and they had fished for trout and cooked their supper on
+the grassy levels. It was in Judith's planning to arrive before the
+hunting-party, to hide among the thickets of scrub pine that grew along
+the steep cliffs and overlooked the grassy level, to take her fill of
+looking at the pale-haired girl and the hunters at their merrymaking, and,
+when she had seen, to steal back across the trail to the Daxes'. They
+would not penetrate the thickets where she meant to hide, and, should
+they, she was prepared for that contingency, too. She had brought with her
+a bright-colored shawl that she would throw over her head, and with the
+start of them she could outrun them all, even Peter. Had she not
+outdistanced him easily, many times, in fun? Through the tangle of
+tree-trunks that grew not far from the thicket, they would think she was
+but a poor Shoshone squaw lying in wait for the broken meat of the
+revellers.
+
+By crossing and recrossing the tiny creeks that trickled slow and
+obstructed through the gaunt levels of plain and foot-hill, she had come
+by a direct route to the fringes of the pine country. And here she found a
+world dim, green, and mysterious. It was wellnigh inconceivable that the
+land of sage-brush and silence could, within walking distance of
+desolation, show such wealth of young timber, such shade and beauty. Her
+noiseless footfalls scarce startled a sage-hen that, realizing too late
+her presence, froze to the dead stump--a ruffled gray excrescence with
+glittering bead eyes that stared at her furtively, the one live thing in
+the tense body.
+
+The sun wanted an hour of noon when Judith rested by the stream, bathed
+her face and hands, flushed from the long walk, ate the bread and meat,
+then lay on the bed of pine-needles, brown and soft from the weathering of
+many suns and snows. She had been all day in the company she loved
+best--the earth, the sky, the sun and wind--and in her heart at last was a
+deep tranquillity. Thus she could face life and ask nothing but to watch
+the cloud fleeces as they are spun and heaped high in the long days of
+summer; in soberer moods to watch the thoughts of the Great Mystery as He
+reveals them in the shifting cloud shapes; to penetrate further and
+further into the councils of the great forces. Thus did she dream the
+moments away till the sun was high in the blue and threw long, yellow
+splashes of light on her still body, on the soft pine-needles, beneath the
+boughs. But there was no time for further day-dreams if she intended to
+forestall the hunters at the place of nooning. She followed a game trail
+that lay along the stream, ascending through the dense growths till she
+reached the top of the jutting rocks. Her hair was loosened, her skirt
+awry, and the pine-needles stood out from it as from a cushion. Much of
+the way she gained by creeping beneath the low branches on her hands and
+knees. No white woman would be likely to follow her reasoned the daughter
+of the plains. It would be a little too hard on her appearance. And here,
+by lying flat and hanging over the jutting knob of rock, with a pine
+branch in her hand, she could see this mysterious woman and Peter and the
+hunters.
+
+She broke a branch to shade her face, she looked down on the grassy level.
+She waited, but there was no sound of hoofs falling muffled on the soft
+ground. The shadows of the pines contended with the splashes of sunlight
+for the little world beneath the trees. They trembled in mimic battle,
+then the shadows stole the sunlight, bit by bit, till all was pale-green
+twilight, and there was no sound of the hunters.
+
+
+
+The hunters, meanwhile, had not been altogether successful in the chase.
+The necessary wolf had been coy, and they, perforce, had to compromise
+with his poor relation, the coyote--a poor relation, indeed, whose shabby
+coat, thinned by the process of summer shedding, made it an unworthy
+souvenir to Miss Colebrooke. But it was not the lack of a wolf that robbed
+the hunting-party of its zest for Kitty. She could not tell what it was,
+but something seemed to have gone wrong with the day from the beginning.
+She rode beside her cavalier in a habit the like of which the country had
+never before seen, and Peter, usually the most observant of men, had no
+word for its multitude of perfections. In the first realization of
+disappointment with the day, the hunt, the hardships of the long ride, her
+perturbed consciousness took up the problem of this missing element and
+tried to adjust itself to the irritating absence. Kitty wondered if it
+were something she had forgotten. No, there were her two little cambric
+pocket-handkerchiefs, remotely suggestive of orris, and bearing her
+monogram delicately wrought and characteristic. It was not her watch, the
+ribbon fob of which fluttered now and then in the breeze. It was not veil
+nor scarf-pin nor any of the paraphernalia of the properly garbed
+horsewoman. And yet there was something missing, something she should have
+had with her, something the absence of which was taking the savor from the
+day's hunting.
+
+It must be the very bigness of this great, splendid world that gave her
+the sense of being alone at sea. Intuitively she turned and looked at
+Peter riding beside her. There was something in his face that made her
+look again before accepting the realization at first incredulously, then
+with frank amusement. Peter had scarcely spoken since they left the ranch.
+She had come down to breakfast so sure of her new riding-habit. The
+Wetmore girls had been moved to hyperboles about its cut and fit and the
+trim shortness of the skirt--short riding-skirts were something of a
+novelty then. The fine gold hair, twisted tight at the back of the shapely
+head, was like a coiled mass of burnished metal, some safe-keeping device
+of mint or gold-worker till the season of coining or fashioning should
+come round. The translucent flesh-tints, pearl-white flushing into
+pink--"Bouguereau realized at last," as Nannie Wetmore was in the habit of
+summing up her cousin's complexion--was as marvellous as ever. The delicate
+firmness of profile gave to the face the artificial perfection of an old
+miniature, rather than of a flesh-and-blood countenance, and all these
+were there as of yore, but the marvel of them failed of the customary
+tribute. Kitty, on scanty reflection, was at no loss to translate Peter's
+reserve into a language at once flattering and retributive. In her scheme
+of life he was always to be her devoted cavalier, as indeed he had been
+from the beginning. She loved her own small eminence too well to imperil
+her tenure of it by sharing its pretty view of men and things with any
+one. In country house parties she loved the mild wonder that the
+successful _litterateuse_ could fight and play and win her social triumphs
+so well. She loved the star part, and next to playing it she enjoyed
+wresting it from other women or eclipsing them completely in some
+conspicuously minor role, while, in the matter of dress, Miss Colebrooke
+went beyond the point decreed by the most exigent mandates of fashion.
+When hats were worn over the face, her admirers had to content themselves
+with a glimpse of her charming mouth and chin. When they flared, hers
+fairly challenged the laws of equilibrium. She danced with the same
+facility with which she rode, swam, and played tennis. In doing these
+things supremely well she felt that she vindicated the position of the
+woman of letters. Why should one be a frump because one wrote?
+
+Her friendship with Peter was to endure to greenest old age, more
+platonic, perhaps, than that of Madame Recamier and Chateaubriand. It was
+to be fruitful in letters that would compare favorably with the best of
+the seventeenth century series. Even now her own letters to Peter were no
+sprightly scrawl of passing events, but efforts whose seriousness
+suggested, at least in their carefully elaborated stages of structure, the
+letters of the ladies of Cranford.
+
+But in the course of these Western wanderings, undertaken not wholly
+without consideration of Peter, there had appeared in the maplike
+exactness of her plans an indefinite territory that threatened
+undreamed-of proportions. It menaced the scheme of the letters, it shook
+the foundations of the Chateaubriand-Recamier friendship. The unknown
+quantity was none other than the frequent and irritating mention of one
+Judith Rodney, who, from all accounts, appeared a half-breed. Her name,
+her beauty, some intrinsic charm of personality made her an all too
+frequent topic, except in the case of Peter. He had been singularly keen
+in scenting any interrogatory venue that led to the mysterious half-breed;
+when questioned he persistently refused to exhibit her as a type.
+
+Kitty knew that she had treated her long-suffering cavalier with scant
+consideration the day he had spurred across the desert to see her. True,
+she had written him on her arrival, but, with feminine perversity of
+logic, thought it a trifle inconsiderate of him to come so soon after that
+trying railroad journey. An ardent resumption of his suit--and Peter could
+be depended on for renewing it early and often--was farthest from her
+inclination at that particular time. She intended to salve her conscience
+at the wolf-hunt for her casual reception of his impetuous visit. But
+apparently Peter did not intend to be prodigal of opportunity.
+
+"How garrulous you people are this morning!" Nannie Wetmore challenged
+them. Peter came out of his brown study with the look of one who has again
+returned to earth.
+
+"You don't find it like the drop-curtain of a theatre, now that you've
+seen it?" he questioned Kitty. For she had doubted her pleasure in the
+mountains, in the conviction that they would be too dramatic for her
+simple taste.
+
+Kitty closed her eyes and sighted the peaks as if she were getting the
+color scheme for an afternoon toilet.
+
+"Mass, bulk, rather than line--no, it's not like a drop-curtain, but it's
+distinctly 'hand-painted.' All it needs is a stag surveying the prospect
+from that great cliff. It's the kind of thing that would sound well in a
+description. Oh, I assure you I intend to make lavish use of it, but it
+leaves nothing to one's poor imagination!"
+
+Peter had a distinct feeling of being annoyed. No, she could not
+appreciate the mountains any more than they could appreciate her. They
+were incongruous, antipathetic, antipodal. Kitty, in her pink and white
+and flaxen prettiness and her trim habit, was in harmony with the
+bridle-path of a city park; in this great, lonely country she was an
+alien. He thought of Judith and the night they had climbed Horse-Thief
+Trail, of her quiet endurance, her keen pleasure in the wild beauty of the
+night, her quality of companionship, her loyalty, her silent bearing of
+many burdens. Yet until he had seen them both against the same relentless
+background, he had never been conscious of comparing the two women.
+
+Nannie Wetmore had fallen behind. She was riding with a bronzed young
+lieutenant from Fort Washakie. The two ahead rode long without speaking.
+Then Peter broke the silence impatiently:
+
+"You did not really mean that, did you?" He was boyishly hurt at her
+flippant summing up of his beloved blue country. And Kitty, tired with the
+long, hard ride, and missing that something in Peter that had always been
+hers, turned on him a pair of blue eyes in which the tears were brimming
+suspiciously. They were well out of sight of the others, and had come to
+the heavy fringes of a pine wood. Was it the psychological moment at last?
+Then suddenly their horses, that had been sniffing the air suspiciously,
+stopped. Kitty's horse, which was in advance of Peter's, rushed towards
+the thicker growth of pines as if all Bedlam were in pursuit. Peter's
+horse, swerving from the cause of alarm, bolted back across the trail over
+which they had just made their way. A large brown bear, feeding with her
+cub, and hidden by the trees till they were directly in front of her, had
+caused the alarm.
+
+And presently the hush of the shadowy green world in which Judith lay was
+broken by a light, sobbing sound. It had been so still that, lying on her
+bed of pine-needles, she had likened it to great waves of silence, rolling
+up from the valley, breaking over her and sweeping back again, noiseless,
+green from the billowing ocean of pine branches, and sunlit. Judith bent
+over the rocky ledge and saw a girl making her way down the game trail,
+dishevelled and tearful. Her hat was gone, her pale-yellow hair, that in
+shadow had the greenish tinge of corn-silk, blew about her shoulders, her
+trim skirt was torn and dusty, and she looked about, bewildered, hardly
+realizing that through the unexpected course of things she had been
+stranded in this great world of sunlit splendor and loneliness. She closed
+her eyes. The awful vastness and solitude oppressed her with a deepening
+sense of calamity. Suppose they never found her? How could she find her
+way in this endless wilderness, afoot? She sank to the turf and began to
+cry hysterically.
+
+Judith knew in a flash of instant cognition that this was Miss Colebrooke.
+Amazement seemed to have dulled her powers of action--amazement that she,
+who had stolen to this place and crouched close to earth that she might
+see the triumph of this preferred woman, and, having seen and paid her
+grievous dole, steal away and take up the thread of endless little things
+that spun for her the web of life, was forced instead to be an unwilling
+witness of the other's distress. Judith had risen with her first impulse,
+which had been to go to Kitty, but half-way through the thicket she
+hesitated and reconsidered. Undoubtedly Peter would come soon, and Peter's
+consolation would be more potent than any she could offer. She shrank in
+shuddering self-consciousness at the thought of her presence at their
+meeting, the uninvited guest, the outgrown friend and confidante,
+blundering in at such a time, pitifully full of good intentions. She
+recoiled from the picture as from a precipice that all unwittingly she had
+escaped. What madness had induced her to come on this expedition? A sudden
+panic at the possibility of discovery possessed her; suppose Peter should
+find her skulking like a beggar, waiting for broken meats? She looked at
+the image of herself that she carried in her heart. It was that of a proud
+woman who made no moan at the scourge of the inevitable. Many burdens had
+she carried in her proud, lonely heart, but of them her lips gave no sign.
+In her contemplative stoicism she felt with pride that she was no unworthy
+daughter of her mother's people, and catching a glimpse through the trees
+of the abjectly waiting woman who, though safe and sound, could but wait,
+wretched and dispirited, for some one to come and adjust her to the
+situation, Judith felt for her a wondering pity at her helplessness. She
+waited, expectant, for the sound of Peter's horse. Surely he must come at
+any moment, overcome with apologies, and she--Judith hid her face in her
+hands at the thought--she would steal away through the thicket at the first
+sound of hoofs. But as the minutes slipped by and still no sign of Peter,
+a sickening anxiety began to gnaw at her heart. Had something happened to
+him?
+
+She did not wait to ask herself the question twice. She crawled the length
+of the thicket with incredible rapidity, gained the pine forest, and made
+her way beneath the low-hanging boughs; without stopping to protect
+herself from them she gained the open space and ran quickly to Kitty.
+
+"Are you hurt? What has happened?"
+
+Kitty looked up, startled at the voice. She had not heard the sound of the
+moccasined feet. Her wandering, forlorn thoughts crystallized at sight of
+the woman before her. A new lightning leaped into her eyes as she
+recognized Judith. There was between them a thrilling consciousness that
+gave to their mutual perception a something sharp and fine, that grasped
+the drama of the moment with the precision and fidelity of a camera. And
+through all the wonder of the meeting there was in the heart of each an
+outflowing that met and mingled and understood the potential tragedy
+element of the situation.
+
+"You are Miss Rodney, I believe?"
+
+Kitty was conscious of something strange in her voice as she looked into
+the dark eyes, wide with questioning fear. Ah, but she had amazing beauty,
+and a something that seemed of the very essence of deep-souled
+womanliness! The two women presented a fine bit of antithesis, Kitty,
+flower-like, small, delicately wrought, the finished product of the town,
+exotic as some rare transplanted orchid growth. And in Judith there was a
+gemlike quality: it was in the bloom of her skin, the iridescent radiance
+of her hair, that was bluish, like a plum in sunlight; it was in the warm,
+red life in her lips, in the pulsing vitality of the slim, brown throat;
+in every line was sensuous force restrained by spiritual passion.
+
+Kitty told of the accident in which her horse had thrown her and
+disappeared in the pine fringes, leaving her stunned for a moment or two;
+and how she had finally pulled herself together and followed what appeared
+to be a trail, in the hope of finding some one. She dwelt long on the
+details of the accident.
+
+"Yes, but Peter, what has happened him?" Judith chose her words
+impatiently. She was racked with anxiety at his long delay, and now she
+hung over Kitty, waiting for her answer, without the semblance of a cloak
+for her alarm.
+
+There was reproof in Kitty's amendment. "I don't know which way Mr.
+Hamilton's horse went. It started back over the trail, I think."
+
+Judith clasped her hands. "Let us go and look for him. Why do we waste
+time?" But Kitty hung back. She was shaken from her fall, and upset by the
+events of the morning. Besides, her faith in Peter's ability to cope with
+all the exigencies of this country was supreme. And chiefest reason of all
+for her not going was a something within her that winced at the thought of
+this fellowship that had for its object the quest of Peter.
+
+"Oh, don't you see," pleaded Judith, "that if something had not happened
+to him he would have been here long ago?"
+
+Judith's anxiety awoke in Kitty a new consciousness. What was she to him,
+that at the possibility of harm, a fear not shared by Kitty, she should
+throw off a reserve that every line of her face pronounced habitual? In
+her very energy of attitude, an energy that all unconsciously communicated
+itself to Kitty, there was the power that belongs to all elemental human
+emotion--the power that compels. Kitty rose to follow Judith, then
+hesitated.
+
+"I'm sure nothing has happened him. No, I'm really too unstrung by my fall
+to walk." She sank again to the bowlder on which she had been sitting.
+
+To the woman of the world, Judith's ingenuous display of feeling had in
+its very sincerity a something pitiable. How could she strip from her soul
+every fold of reserve and stand unloved and unashamed, sanctified, as it
+were, by the very hopelessness of her passion? How could women make of
+their whole existence a thing to be rejected, reflected Kitty, who, giving
+nothing, could not understand. She looked again at the bronzed face beside
+her, so bold in outline, so expressive in detail. Yes, she was beautiful,
+and yet, what had her beauty availed her? The thought that she herself was
+the preferred woman throbbed through her for a moment with a sense of
+exaltation. The next moment a haunting doubt laid hold of her heart, held
+up mockingly the little that she and Peter had lived through together, the
+lofty plane of friendship along which she had tried to lead his unwilling
+feet sedately, his protests, his frank amusement at her serious
+pretensions to a career. How much fuller might not have been the
+intercourse between him and this woman, who, in all probability, had been
+his comrade for years? And she had been idealizing him, and his love for
+her, and his loneliness! Kitty stood with eyes cast down, while images
+crowded upon her, leaving her cold and smiling.
+
+"But think," pleaded Judith; "if you don't come it will take me longer to
+search the trail-marks. You could show me just where the horses ran--"
+
+Kitty's eyes were still on the ground. She did not lift them, and Judith,
+realizing that further appeal was but a waste of time, turned and ran
+swiftly down the trail.
+
+"He is her lover," said Kitty; and all the wilderness before her was no
+lonelier than her heart.
+
+Swift, intent, Judith traced Kitty's footprints. They followed the game
+trail, the one she herself had taken earlier in the day. She traced them
+back through the pine wood about a hundred rods, and then the trail-marks
+grew confused. This was unquestionably the place where the horses had
+taken fright, circled, reared, then dashed in different directions. She
+traced the other horse, whose tracks led under low-hanging boughs. It
+would have been a difficult matter for a horse with a rider to clear; and
+now the impression of the horse's shoes grew fainter, from the lighter
+footfalls of a horse at full gallop.
+
+"Ah!" A cry broke from her as she saw the marks had become almost
+eliminated by something that had dragged, something heavy. Those
+long-drawn lines were finger-prints, where a hand had dragged in its vain
+endeavor to grasp at something. A sickening image came persistently before
+her eyes--Peter's upturned face, blood-smeared and disfigured.
+
+"Sh-sh-sh!" She put her hand to her breast to still the beating of her
+heart. She could hear the sound of hoofs falling muffled on the soft
+ground, and a man's voice speaking in a soothing sing-song. She listened.
+It was Peter's voice, reassuring the horse, asking him what kind of a bag
+of nerves he was for a cow pony, to get frightened at a bear? Judith stood
+tall and straight among the pines. Surely he could not blindly pass her
+by. He must feel the joy in her heart that all was well with him. The
+hoofs came nearer, the man's voice sounded but intermittently, as he got
+his horse under better control. She felt as if he must come to her, as if
+some overpowering consciousness of her presence would speak from her heart
+to his; but his eyes scanned the distant trail for a glimpse of Kitty or
+Kitty's horse. Judith saw that his head was bound in something white and
+that it bore a red stain, but he held himself well in the saddle. He was
+not the man to heed a tumble. He urged the horse forward, never looking
+towards the tree-trunks, his face white and strained with anxiety as he
+scoured the trail for evidences of Kitty. The horse, with a keener sense
+than his master, shied slightly as he passed the group of pines where
+Judith stood; but Peter's glance was for the open trail, and as she heard
+him canter by, so close that she could have touched his stirrup with her
+hand, it seemed as if he must hear the beating of her heart.
+
+"Oh, blind eyes, and ears that will not hear, and heart that has forgotten
+how to beat! Yes, go to that pale, cold girl! You speak one language, and
+life for you is the way of little things!"
+
+She waited till the last sound of the horse's hoofs had died away and all
+was still in the tremulous green of the forest. Judith's mind was busy
+with the image of their meeting, the man bringing the joy of his youth to
+the calm divinity who could feel no thrill of fear in his absence. She
+broke into the running gait and hurried through the forest to the Daxes'.
+
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+
+                      In The Land Of The Red Silence
+
+
+The beef-herd, that had been the pivotal point of the round-up and had
+made the mighty plain echo to its stampings and bellowings, beating up
+simooms that choked it with thirst, blinded it with dust, confounding
+itself on every side by the very fury of its blind force, had trailed for
+a week, tractable as toys in the hands of children. Little had happened to
+vary the monotony for the cow-punchers that handled the herd--they grazed,
+guarded, watered, night-herded the cattle day after day, night after
+night. Pasturage had been sufficient, if not abundant. The creeks were
+running low and slimy with the advance of summer, but there had been
+sufficient water to let the herd drink its fill at least once a day.
+
+The outfit ate its "sow-belly," soda-biscuit, and coffee three times a
+day, and smoked its pipes, but was a little shy on yarns round the
+camp-fire.
+
+"This yere outfit don't lather none," commented the cook to the
+horse-wrangler, over the smoke of an early morning fire.
+
+"Don't lather no more than a chunk of wood," agreed the horse-wrangler.
+"That's the trouble with a picked-up outfit like this. Catch 'W-square'
+men kowtowing to a 'XXX' boss, even if he is only acting foreman."
+
+Simpson, the origin of whose connection with the "XXX" was rather a
+sensitive subject with that outfit, had begun to take his duties as a
+cattle-man with grim seriousness; he was untiring in his labors; he spent
+long hours in the saddle, he took his turn at night herding, though he was
+old for this kind of work. He condemned the sheep-men with foul-mouthed
+denunciations, scoffed at their range-rights, said the sheep question
+should be dealt with in the business-like manner in which the Indian
+question had been settled. He was an advocate of violence--in short, a
+swaggering, bombastic wind-bag. He talked much of "his outfit" and "his
+men." "What was good enough for them was good enough for him," he would
+announce at meal-time, in a snivelling tone, when the food happened to be
+particularly bad. He split the temporary outfit, brought together for the
+purpose of handling the beef-herd, into factions. He put the "XXX" in
+worse repute than it already enjoyed--he was, in fact, the discordant
+spirit of the expedition. The men attended to their work sullenly. Discord
+was rife. The one thought they shared in common was that of the wages that
+would come to them at the end of the drive; of the feverish joy of
+"blowing in," in a single night; perchance, of forgetting, in one long,
+riotous evening, the monotony, the hardship, the lack of comradery that
+made this particular drive one long to be remembered in the mind of every
+man who had taken part in it.
+
+Meanwhile the herd trailed its half-mile length to the slaughtering pens
+day after day, all unconscious of its power. When the steers had trailed
+for about a fortnight, the question of finding sufficient water for them
+began to be a serious one. The preceding winter had been unusually mild,
+the snow-fall on the mountains averaging less than in the recollection of
+the oldest plains-man. Summer had begun early and waxed hot and dry. The
+earth began to wrinkle, and cracked into trenches, like gaping mouths,
+thirsty for the water that came not. Such streams as had not dried shrank
+and crawled among the willows like slimy things, that the herd, thirsty
+though it was from the long drives, had to be coaxed to drink from.
+
+Discontent grew. The acting foreman, who was a "XXX" man, and a
+comparative stranger to that part of the country, refused to consult with
+the "W-square" men in the outfit, who knew every inch of the ground. The
+acting foreman thought the Wetmore men looked down on him, "put on dog";
+and, to flaunt his authority, he ordered the herd driven due west instead
+of skirting to the north by the longer route, where they would have had
+the advantage of drinking at several creeks before crossing Green River.
+Moreover, the acting foreman was drinking hard, and he insisted upon his
+order in spite of the Wetmore men's protestations.
+
+The character of the country began to change, the soil took on the color
+of blood, even the omnipresent sage-brush began to fail the landscape;
+sun-bleached bones glistened on the red soil, white as ulcers. All the
+animal trails led back from the country into which they were proceeding.
+The sky, a vivid, cloudless blue, paled as it dipped earthward. The sun
+looked down, a flaming copper shield. There was no sign of life in all the
+land. Even the grasshoppers had left it to the sun, the silence, and the
+desolation. To ears accustomed to the incessant shrilling of the insects,
+the cessation was ominous, like the sudden stopping of a clock in a
+chamber of death. Above the angry bellow of the thirsty herd the men
+strained their ears again and again for this familiar sound of life, but
+there was nothing but the bellowing of the cattle, the trampling of their
+hoofs, and sometimes the long, squealing whinny of a horse as he threw
+back his head in seeming demand to know the justice of this thing.
+
+Across the red plain snailed the herd, like a many-jointed, prehistoric
+reptile wandering over the limitless spaces of some primeval world. A
+cloud of red dust hung over them in a dense haze, trailed after them a
+weary length, then all was featureless monotony as before. What were a
+thousand steers, a handful of men and horses, in the land of the red
+silence? It had seen the comings and goings of many peoples, and once it
+had flowed with streams; but that was before the curse of God came upon
+it, and in its harsh, dry barrenness it grew to be a menace to living
+things.
+
+The saddle-stock had been watered at some fetid alkali holes that had
+scarce given enough to slake their thirst. The effect of the water had
+weakened them, and the steers that had been without water for thirty-six
+hours were being pushed on a course slightly northwest as rapidly as the
+enfeebled condition of the saddle-horses would permit. Creek after creek
+that they had made for proved to be but a dry bed.
+
+The glare of the red earth, under the scourge of the flaming sun,
+tormented the eyes of the men into strange illusions. The naked red plain
+stretched flat like the colossal background of a screen, over which
+writhed a huge dragon, spined with many horns, headless, trailing its
+tortuous way over the red world. Sometimes it was as unreal as a
+fever-haunted dream, a drug-inspired nightmare, when a Chinese screen,
+perchance, has stood at the foot of the sleeper's bed. Sometimes the
+dragon curled itself into a ball, and the foreman sung out that they were
+milling, and the men turned and rode away from it, then dashed back at it,
+after getting the necessary momentum, entered like a flying wedge, fought
+their way into the rocking sea of surging bodies, shouted from their
+thirst-parched throats imprecations that were lost in the dull, sullen
+roar. Then the dragon would uncoil and again trail its way over the red
+waste-lands.
+
+A red sun had begun to set over a red earth, and the men who had been out
+since noon-scouring the country for water, returned to say that none had
+been found, and they began to look into each other's faces for the answer
+that none could give. At sunset they made a dry camp; there was but enough
+water left to cook with. Each man received, as a thirst-quenching ration,
+a can of tomatoes. After supper they consulted, and it was agreed to trail
+the herd till midnight, taking advantage of the coolness to hurry them on
+as fast as possible to Green River. The grave nature of their plight was
+indicated by the fact that no one smoked after supper. Silent, sullen,
+they sat round, waiting for the foreman to give the order to advance. He
+waited for the moon to come up. Slowly it rose over the Bad Land Hills and
+hung round and full like a gigantic lantern. The watches were arranged for
+the night with a double guard. Every man in the outfit was beginning to
+have a feeling of panic that communicated itself to every other man, and
+as they looked at the herd, tractable now no longer, but a blind force
+that they must take chances with through the long watches of the night,
+while the thirst grew in the beasts' parched throats, they foresaw what
+would in all probability happen; they thought of their women, of all that
+most strongly bound them to life, and they sat and waited dumbly.
+
+The moon that night was too brilliant for benisons; the gaunt, red world
+lay naked and unshriven for the sin that long ago had brought upon it the
+wrath of God. The picture was still that of the grotesque Chinese screen,
+with the headless dragon crawling endlessly; but the dream was long,
+centuries long, it seemed to the men listening to the bellowing of the
+herd. And while they waited, the red grew dull and the dragon dingy, and
+its fury made its contortions the more horrible; and that was all the
+difference between day and night in the land of the red silence. Sometimes
+the dragon split, and joints of it tried to turn back to the last water it
+had drunk; for cattle, though blinded with thirst, never forget the last
+stream at which they have quenched thirst, and will turn back to it,
+though they drop on the way. But the men pressed them farther and farther,
+and for yet a little while the cattle yielded.
+
+At midnight the saddle-stock was incapable of moving farther. One horse
+had fallen and lay too weak to rise. The others, limping and foot-sore, no
+longer responded to quirt and rowel. The foreman ordered the herd thrown
+on the bed ground for the night. The herders for the first watch began to
+circle. The rest of the outfit took to its blankets to snatch a little
+rest for the double duty that awaited every man that night. Now it is a
+time-honored belief among cow-men that the herd must be sung to,
+particularly when it is restless, and to-night they tried all the old
+favorites, the "Cow-boy's Lament" being chief among them. But the herd
+refused to be soothed, and round and round it circled; not once would it
+lie down.
+
+The moon gleamed almost brazen, showing the cruel scars, the trenches torn
+by cloud-bursts, the lines wrought by the long, patient waiting of the
+earth for the lifting of the wrath of God. Imperishable grief was writ on
+the land as on a human face. The night wore on, the watches changed, the
+herd continued restless; not more than a third of it had bedded down. The
+third watch was from one o'clock to half-past three in the morning.
+Simpson and another "XXX" man, with two of the Wetmore outfit, made up a
+double watch, and rode, singing, about the herd, as the long, dreary watch
+wore away. The cattle's lowing had taken on a gasping, cracked sound that
+was more frightful than the maddened bellow of the early evening. Simpson,
+who was past the age when men live the life of the saddle, felt the
+hardship keenly. He had ridden since sunrise, but for the respite at noon
+and the scant time at the dry camp while the evening meal was being eaten.
+He was more than half asleep now, as he lurched heavily in the saddle,
+crossing and recrossing his partner in the half-circle they completed
+about the herd. Suddenly the sharp yelp of a coyote rang out; it seemed to
+come from no farther than twenty yards away. The cattle heard it, too, and
+a wave of panic swept through them. Simpson stiffened in his saddle. The
+sound, which was repeated, was an exact reproduction of a coyote's yelp,
+yet he knew that it was not a coyote.
+
+The herd rose to its feet as a single steer, and for a second stood
+undetermined. From a clump of sage-brush not more than two feet high
+fluttered something long and white like a sheet. It waved in the wind as
+the cry was repeated. The herd crashed forward in a stampede, Simpson in
+the lead on a tired horse, but a scant length ahead of a thousand maddened
+steers bolting in a panic of thirst and fear.
+
+"Hell's loose!" yelled the men in their blankets, making for the temporary
+rope corral to secure horses. Simpson, tallow-colored with fear, clung
+like a cat to his horse, and dug the rowels in the beast's flanks till
+they were bloody and dripping. He had seen Jim Rodney's face above the
+white cloth as it fluttered in the face of the herd that came pounding
+behind him with the rumble of nearing thunder. He was too close to them to
+attempt to fire his revolver in the air in the hope of turning them, but
+the boys had evidently got into their saddles, to judge by the volley of
+shots that rang out and were answered. Simpson alone rode ahead of the
+herd that tore after him, ripping up the earth as it came, bellowing in
+its blind fury. His horse, a thoroughly seasoned cow-pony, sniffed the
+bedlam and responded to the goading spur. She had been in cattle stampedes
+before, and, though every fibre ached with fatigue, she flattened out her
+lean body and covered ground to the length of her stride at each gallop.
+The herd was so close that Simpson could smell the stench of their
+sweating bodies, taste their dust, and feel the scorch of their breath.
+The sound of their hoofs was like the pounding of a thousand propellers.
+From above looked the moon, round and serene; she had watched the passing
+of many peoples in the land of the red silence. The horse seemed to be
+gaining. A few more lengths ahead and Simpson could turn her to one side
+and let the maddened cattle race to their own destruction. All he asked of
+God was to escape their trampling hoofs, and though he gained he dug the
+rowel and plied the quirt, unmindful of what he did. On they came; the
+chorus of their fear swelled like the voice of a mighty cataract, the
+pound, pound, pound of their hoofs ringing like mighty sledge-hammers.
+
+Suddenly he felt himself sinking, horribly, irresistibly. "God! What is
+it?" as his horse went down with her foreleg in a gopher-hole. "Up, up,
+you damned brute!" but the mare's leg had cracked like a pipe-stem. In his
+fury at the beast Simpson began kicking her, then started to run as the
+cattle swept forward like a black storm-cloud.
+
+The next second the great sea of cattle had broken over horse and rider.
+When it had passed there was not enough left of either to warrant burial
+or to furnish a feast for the buzzards. A few shreds of clothes, that had
+once been a man, lay scattered there; a something that had been a horse.
+
+
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+
+                 Mrs. Yellett Contends With A Cloudburst
+
+
+The matriarch had delayed longer in moving camp than was consistent with
+her habitual watchfulness where the interests of the sheep were involved.
+Mary Carmichael, who had already become inured to the experience of
+moving, was even conscious of a certain impatience at the delay, and could
+only explain the apathy with which Mrs. Yellett received reports of the
+dearth of pasturage on the ground that she wished each fresh educational
+germ to take as deep root as possible before transplantation. So that when
+Mrs. Yellett, shortly after Leander Dax's arrival at camp in the capacity
+of herder, announced that she and Leander were to make a trip to the
+dipping-vat that had kept Ben from his classes for the past ten days, and
+invited the "gov'ment" to join the expedition, Mary accepted with fervor.
+
+The Yelletts' "bunch" of sheep did not exceed three thousand head, and the
+matriarch had wisely decreed that it should be restricted to that number,
+as she wished always to give the flock her personal supervision.
+
+"'The hen that's the surest of her chicks is the one that does her own
+settin','" was the adage from the Book of Hiram with which Mrs. Yellett
+succinctly summed up the case.
+
+Each autumn, therefore, the wethers and the dry-bag ewes were sent to the
+market, and as the result of continual weeding of the stock the matriarch
+had as promising a herd of its size as could be found in Wyoming. Often
+she had explained to Mary, who was learning of the wonders of this new
+world with remarkable aptness, that she had constantly to fight against
+the inclination to increase her business of sheep-raising, but that as
+soon as she should begin to hire herders or depend on strangers things
+would go wrong. With the assistance of her sons, she therefore managed the
+entire details of the herd, with the exception of those occasions on which
+Leander lent his semi-professional co-operation.
+
+As a workman Leander was, considering his size and apparent weakness,
+surprisingly efficient. It was as a dispenser of anti-theological doctrine
+that Mrs. Dax's husband annoyed his temporary employer. Freed from his
+wife's masterful presence, Leander dared to be an "agnostic," as he called
+himself, of an unprecedentedly violent order. His iconoclasm was not of a
+pattern with paw's gusty protests against life in general, but it was
+Leander's way of asserting himself, on the rare occasions when he got a
+chance, to deny clamorously every tenet advanced by every religion. The
+mere use of certain familiar expletives drove him, ordinarily mild and
+submissive though he was, to frantic gesticulation and diatribe. Mary
+Carmichael could not make out, as she watched the comedy with growing
+amusement, whether poor Leander really believed that he was the first of
+doubting Thomases, or whether he took an unfair advantage of the lack of
+general information in his casual audiences to set forth well-known
+opinions as his own. Whatever its basis may have been, Leander sustained
+the role of doubter with passionate zeal, wearing himself to tatters of
+rage and hoarseness over arguments maliciously contrived beforehand by
+cow-punchers and sheep-herders in need of amusement; and yet he never saw
+the traps, going out of his way, apparently, to fall into them, tumbling
+headlong into the identical pits time after time. Jonah and the whale
+constituted one bait by means of which Leander could be lured from food,
+sleep, or work of the most pressing nature.
+
+"The poor fool would stop in the middle of shearing a sheep to argue that
+Jonah never come out of the whale's belly," the matriarch had told Mary
+Carmichael, in summing up Leander's disadvantages as a herder. And the
+first remark she had addressed to him on his arrival was: "Leander Dax,
+you'd have to be made over, and made different, to keep you from bein' a
+infidel, but there's one p'int on which you are particularly locoed, and
+that's Jonah and the whale. Now at this particular time in the hist'ry of
+the United States, nobody in his faculties has got no call to fret hisself
+over Jonah and his whereabouts--none whatever. There's a lot of business
+round this here camp that's a heap more pressin'. Now, Leander Dax, if I
+do hereby undertake to hire, engage, and employ you to herd sheep, do you
+agree to renounce discussions, arguments, and debates on the late Jonah
+and his whereabouts durin' them three days? God A'mighty, man, any one
+would think you was Jonah's wife, the interest you have in his absence!"
+
+"I come here to herd sheep," Leander had brazenly retaliated. "I 'ain't
+come to try to make you think."
+
+Nevertheless, he appeared docile enough as the time came for the journey
+to the dipping-vat, and did his part in making ready. The wagon was the
+rudest of structures; it consisted merely of one long, stout pole. Though
+she saw the horses being harnessed to this pole, Mary Carmichael,
+discreetly exercising her newly acquired wisdom, forbore to ask where she
+was going to sit, and listened with interest to a discussion between Mrs.
+Yellett and Leander as to the number of horses it would take to get the
+dip up the mountain. Leander, who loved pomp and splendor, was for taking
+six, but Mrs. Yellett, who carried simplicity to a fault, was in favor of
+only two. They finally compromised on four, and Leander went to fetch the
+extra two.
+
+Mrs. Yellett, ever economical of the flitting moment, took advantage of
+the delay to give Mr. Yellett a dose of "Brainard's Beneficial
+Blackthorn."
+
+"Paw's as hard to manage as a bent pin," she remarked, in an aside to
+Mary, while he protested and fought her off with his stick. But she, with
+the agility of an acrobat, got directly back of him, took his head under
+her arm, pried open his mouth, and poured down the unwelcome, if
+beneficial, dose.
+
+"There, there, paw," she said, wiping his mouth as if he had been a baby,
+"don't take on so! It's all gone, and I can't have you sick on my hands."
+
+But Mr. Yellett continued to splutter and flare and use violent language,
+whereupon the matriarch went into the tent and returned with a drink of
+condensed-milk and water, "to wash down the nasty taste," she told him,
+soothingly.
+
+A moment afterwards she and Leander were engaged in rolling the barrels of
+sheep-dip to the wagon, Mary Carmichael helplessly looking on while Mrs.
+Yellett looked doubtfully at a "gov'ment" who could not handle barrels.
+Finally, under the skilful manipulation of Mrs. Yellett and Leander, the
+long pole took on the aspect of a colossal vertebral column, from which
+huge barrel-ribs projected horizontally, leaving at the rear a foot or so
+of bare pole as a smart caudal appendage, bearing about the same
+proportion to the wagon as the neatly bitten tail of a fox-terrier does to
+the dog.
+
+Mrs. Yellett kissed "paw" good-bye, explaining to Mary, in extenuation of
+her weakness, that she would never forgive herself if she neglected it and
+anything happened to him during her absence. She then climbed to the front
+barrel and secured the ribbons. Leander had brought out three rolls of
+bedding of the inevitable bed-quilt variety, but Mrs. Yellett scorned such
+luxury while driving, and accordingly gave hers to the "gov'ment" for a
+back-rest. Mary sat on the lower row of barrels, with her feet dangling,
+using one roll of bedding for a seat and the other comfortably arranged at
+her back as a cushion.
+
+Madam called sharply to the horses, "Hi-hi-hi-kerat! hi-kerat-kerat!" and
+they started off at a rattling pace, the barrels of dip creaking and
+squeaking as they swayed under their rope lashings. Mary bounced about
+like a bean in a bag, working loose from between the bed-quilt rolls at
+each gulley, clinging frantically to barrel ends, shaken back and forth
+like a shuttle. Indeed, the drive seemed to combine every known form of
+physical exercise. Mrs. Yellett herself was in fine fettle; she drove
+sitting for a while, then rose, standing on a narrow ledge while she held
+the four ribbons lightly in one hand and tickled the leaders with a long
+whip carried in the other. She drove her four horses over the rough road
+with the skill of a circus equestrienne, balancing easily on the crazy
+ledge, shifting her weight from side to side as the wagon rattled down
+gullies and up ridges, the horses responding gallantly to the shrill
+"Hi-hi-kerat! hi-kerat! hi-kerat!" Her costume on this occasion
+represented joint concessions to her sex and the work that was before her,
+as the head of a family at the dipping-vat. She still wore the drum-shaped
+rabbit-skin cap pulled well down over her forehead for driving. The great,
+cable-like braids of hair stood out well below the cap, giving her head an
+appearance of denseness and solidity, but the rambling curls were still
+blowing about her face, perhaps adding to the sum total of grotesqueness.
+She wore a man's shirt of gray flannel, well open at the neck, from which
+the bronzed column of the throat rose in austere dignity. A pair of Mr.
+Yellett's trousers, stuffed into high, cow-puncher's boots, that met the
+hem of a skirt coming barely to the knees, contributed to the originality
+of her dress.
+
+The wagon had been pitching like a ship at sea through the desert
+dreariness for about an hour, when Mary Carmichael suddenly became
+conscious that the prods she had been receiving from time to time in her
+back were not due either to their manner of locomotion or to the freight
+carried. Clinging to two barrels, she waited for the next lurch of the
+wagon to shake her free from the rolls of bedding, and, at the peril of
+life and limb, looked round. Leander hung over the top row of barrels,
+gesticulating wildly. The change in the man, since leaving camp some two
+hours previous, was appalling. He seemed to have shrivelled away to a
+wraith of his former self. His cheeks, his chin, had waned to the
+vanishing point. He opened his lips and mouthed horribly, yet his
+frightful grimacings conveyed no meaning. Mary called to Mrs. Yellett, but
+her voice was drowned in the rattle of the wagon, the clatter of four
+horses' hoofs, and the continual "Hi-hi-hi-kerat! hi-kerat!" of the
+driver. In the mean time Leander pointed to his mouth and back to the road
+in indescribably pathetic pantomime. "Perhaps the poor creature wants to
+turn back and die in his bed, like a Christian, even if he isn't one,"
+thought Mary, as she called and called, Leander still emitting the most
+inhuman of cries, like the sounds made by deaf mutes in distress.
+Presently Mrs. Yellett drew up, and asked in the name of many profane
+things what was the matter with her companions.
+
+Leander resumed his mouthings and his dumb show, but Mrs. Yellett proved a
+better interpreter than Mary Carmichael.
+
+"God A'mighty!" she said, "he's lost his false teeth!" And without another
+word she turned the four horses and the wagon with a skill that fell
+little short of sleight-of-hand.
+
+The dialogue that followed between Mrs. Yellett and Leander as to how far
+back he had dropped his teeth, cannot be given, owing to the inadequacy of
+the English language to reproduce his toothless enunciation. Catching, as
+Mary did, the meaning of Mrs. Yellett's remarks only, she received
+something of the one-sided impression given by overhearing a telephone
+conversation:
+
+"What did you have 'em out for?... You didn't have 'em out?... I just
+shook 'em out? Then what made you have your mouth open? Ef your mouth had
+been shut, you couldn't have lost 'em.... You was a-yawnin', eh? Well, you
+are a plumb fool to yawn on this kind of a waggin, with your mouth full o'
+china teeth. Your yawnin' 'll put us back a good hour an' we won't reach
+camp before sundown."
+
+At this point of the diatribe the Infidel left the wagon and began to
+search along the road. He said he had noticed a buffalo skull near the
+place where he had dropped the teeth, and thought he could trace them by
+this landmark. Mrs. Yellett held the ribbons and suggested that Mary get
+down "and help to prospect for them teeth." As Mary clambered down she
+heard a fragment of the matriarch's monologue, which, being duly
+expurgated for polite ears, was to the effect that she would rather take
+ten babies anywhere than one grown man, and that as for getting in the
+way, hindering, obstructing, and being a nuisance, generally speaking, man
+had not his counterpart in the scheme of creation.
+
+"Talk about a woman bein' at the bottom of everything!" sniffed Mrs.
+Yellett; "I be so sick of always hearin' about 'the woman in the case!'
+Half the time the case would be a blame sight worse if it was left
+exclusive to the men. The Book of Hiram says: 'A skunk may have his good
+p'ints, but few folks is takin' the risk of waitin' round to get
+acquainted with 'em.'"
+
+While Mary was still "prospecting," a glad cry roused her attention, and
+Leander came up smiling, with his dental treasures nicely adjusted.
+
+"Quit smilin' like a rattlesnake, you plumb fool!" called out Mrs.
+Yellett. "Do you want to lose 'em again?"
+
+So, curtailing the muscular contraction indicative of his pleasure, the
+Infidel again took his place among the bed-quilts and the journey was
+resumed.
+
+It was now about five in the afternoon. The heat, which had been
+oppressive all day, suddenly relaxed its blistering grip, and a keenly
+penetrating dampness, not unlike that of a sea-fog, came from some unknown
+quarter of the arid wastes and chilled the three travellers to the marrow.
+The horses flung up their heads and sniffed it, rearing and plunging as if
+they had scent of something menacing. Across the horizon a dark cloud
+scudded, no bigger than your hand.
+
+"Cloud-burst!" announced Mrs. Yellett.
+
+"Cloud-burst, all right enough," agreed Leander, and he turned up his
+coat-collar in simple preparation for the deluge.
+
+There flashed into Mary Carmichael's mind a sentence from her physical
+geography that she had been obliged to commit to heart in her school-days:
+"A cloud-burst is a sudden, capricious rainfall, as if the whole cloud had
+been precipitated at once." She wanted to question her companions as to
+the accuracy of this definition, but before she had time to frame a
+sentence the real cloud-burst came, with a splitting crack of thunder;
+then the lightning flashed out its message in the short-hand of the storm,
+across the inky blackness, and the water fell as if the ocean had been
+inverted. In the fraction of a second all three were drenched to the skin,
+the water pouring from them in sheets, as if they had been some slight
+obstruction in the path of a waterfall. The wagon was soon in a deep
+gully, with frothing, foaming, yellow water up to the hubs of the wheels.
+Mrs. Yellett, like some goddess of the storm, lashed her horses forward to
+keep them from foundering in the mud, and the wagon creaked and groaned in
+all its timbers as it lurched and jolted through the angry torrents.
+
+Each moment Mary expected to be flung from the barrels, and clung till her
+finger-tips were white and aching. From the drenched red bedquilts a
+sticky crimson trail ran over the barrel heads, as well as over Mary's
+hands, face, and dress. Still they forged on through the deluge, Mrs.
+Yellett shouting and lashing the horses, holding them erect and safe with
+the skill she never lost. The fur on her rabbit-skin cap was beaten flat.
+The great, wet braids had fallen from the force of the water and hung
+straight and black, like huge snakes uncoiled. She was far from losing her
+grip on either the horses or the situation, and from the inspiring ring of
+her voice as she urged them forward it was plain that she took a fierce
+joy in this conflict of the elements.
+
+It was bitterly cold, and Mary reflected that if Leander's teeth chattered
+half as hard as hers did, without breaking, they must, indeed, be of
+excellent quality. The storm began to abate, and the sky became lighter,
+though the water still poured in torrents. As soon as her responsibility
+as driver left her time to speak, Mrs. Yellett lost no time in fastening
+the cloud-burst to Leander.
+
+"This here is what comes of settin' up your back against God A'mighty and
+encouragin' the heathen and the infidel in his idolatry. I might 'a'
+knowed somethin' would happen, takin' you along! 'And the heathen and the
+infidel went out, and the Lord God sent a cloud-burst to wet him,'" quoted
+Mrs. Yellett from the apocryphal Scriptures that never yet failed to
+furnish her with verse and text.
+
+The infidel, from his side of the wagon, began to display agitation. His
+jaws worked, but he said nothing.
+
+"You 'ain't lost them teeth again, have you?"
+
+He nodded his head wretchedly.
+
+"'And the Lord took away the teeth of his enemy, so that he could neither
+bite nor talk,'" quoted Mrs. Yellett to the miserable man, who could make
+no reply.
+
+"Wonder you wouldn't see the foolishness o' being a heathen and a infidel,
+and turn to the Lord! You 'ain't got no teeth, and it takes your wife to
+herd you. 'And the Lord multiplied the tribulations of his enemy.' You got
+no more show standin' up agin the Lord than an insect would have standin'
+up agin me."
+
+She had Leander, at last, just where she wanted him. He was forced to
+listen, and he could make no reply. She alternately abused him for his
+lack of faith and urged him to repentance. Leander raged, gesticulated,
+turned his back on her, mouthed, and finally put his fingers in his ears.
+But nothing stemmed the tide of Mrs. Yellett's eloquence; it was as
+inexhaustible and as remorseless as the cloud-burst.
+
+It continued bitterly cold, even after the rain had stopped falling, and
+the heap of sodden bedclothes furnished no protection against the chilling
+dampness. It was growing dark; there was no red in the sunset, only a
+streak of vivid orange along the horizon, chill and clear as the empty,
+soulless flame of burning paper. There were no deep, glowing coals, no
+amethystine opalescence, fading into gold and violet. All was cold and
+subdued, and the scrub pines on the mountain-tops stood out sharply
+against this cold background like an etching on yellow paper.
+
+Mrs. Yellett's self-inspired scriptural maxims were discontinued after a
+while, either because she could think of no more, or because the
+rain-soaked, shivering, chattering object towards which they were directed
+was too abject to inspire further efforts. Leander huddled on the barrel
+that was farthest from Mrs. Yellett, and wrapped himself in the soaked red
+bedquilt. The dye smeared his face till he looked like an Indian brave
+ready for battle, but there was no further suggestion of the fighting red
+man in the utter desolation of his attitude. Mary Carmichael, on her
+barrel, shivered with grim patience and longed for a cup of tea. Only Mrs.
+Yellett gave no sign of anxiety or discomfort; she drove along, sometimes
+whistling, sometimes swearing, erect as an Indian, and to all appearances
+as oblivious of cold and wet as if she were in her own home.
+
+The gathering darkness into which the horses were plunging was mysterious
+and appalling. Objects stood out enormously magnified, or distorted
+grotesquely, in the uncertain light. It was like penetrating into the real
+Inferno, like stumbling across the inspiration of Dante in all its
+sinister splendor. It was the Inferno of his dream rather than the Inferno
+of his poem; it had the ghastly reality of the unreal.
+
+"It wouldn't surprise me if we had a smash-up in Clear Creek," said Mrs.
+Yellett, just by way of adding her quota of cheerful speculation. She
+ducked her head and whispered in Mary's ear:
+
+"It's all along of me hirin' _him_! I wouldn't be surprised if paw died.
+I'm thinkin' of shakin' him out after his teeth. 'Take not up with the
+enemy of the Lord, lest he make of you also an enemy.'"
+
+But there was no accent of apprehension in Mrs. Yellett's dismal
+prognostications of the evil that might befall her for employing Leander.
+She spoke more with the air of one who produces incidents to prove an
+argument than of one who anticipates a calamity.
+
+Leander, toothless and wretched, sitting on the side of the wagon, began
+to show symptoms of joy comparable to that of the vanguard of the
+Israelites, catching their first glimpse of the Promised Land. Touching
+Mary Carmichael on the shoulder, he pointed to a white tent and the
+remains of a camp-fire. Already Mrs. Yellett had begun to "Hallo, Ben!"
+But Ben was at work at the vat, which was still a quarter of a mile
+further up the mountain; so Mrs. Yellett, throwing the reins to Leander
+and bidding him turn out the horses, lost no time in building a fire,
+putting on coffee, and making her little party comfortable. So various was
+her efficiency that she seemed no less at home in these simple domestic
+tasks than when guiding her horses, goddess-like, through the cloud-burst.
+And Mary Carmichael, succumbing gradually to the revivifying influence of
+the fire and the hot coffee, acknowledged honestly to herself a warmth of
+affection for her hostess and for the atmosphere Mrs. Yellett created
+about her that made even Virginia and her aunts seem less the only pivot
+of rational existence. She felt that she had come West with but one eye,
+as it were, and countless prejudices, whereas her powers of vision were
+fast becoming increased a hundredfold. How very tame life must be, she
+reflected, as she sat smiling to herself, to those who did not know Mrs.
+Yellett, how over-serious to those who did not know Leander! Yet, after
+all, she knew that the real basis of her readjusted vision was her brief
+but illuminating acquaintance with Judith Rodney. To Mary, freed for the
+first time in her life from the most elegantly provincial of surroundings,
+Judith seemed the incarnation of all the splendor and heroism of the West.
+And in the glow of her enthusiasm she decided then and there not to
+abandon the Yellett educational problem till she should have solved it
+successfully. She might not be born to valiant achievement, like these
+sturdy folk about her, but she might as well prove to them that an Eastern
+tenderfoot was not all feebleness and inefficiency.
+
+"Leander!" called Mrs. Yellett. "Just act as if you was to home and wash
+up these dishes."
+
+
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+
+                               Foreshadowed
+
+
+Alida awoke, knowing what was to happen. She had dreamed of it, just
+before daylight, and lay in bed stupefied by the horror of it, living,
+again and again, through each frightful detail. It had happened--there, in
+the very room, and before the children; the noise of it had startled them;
+and then she woke and knew she had been dreaming. In the dream the noise
+had wakened the children--when it really happened they must never know. It
+wouldn't be fair to them; they needed a "clean start."
+
+What had she done to keep them quiet? There had been a thunderous knocking
+at the door. She had expected it and was prepared; because the lock was
+feeble, she had shoved the old brown bureau against the door.
+
+Nothing had happened. What a fool she was to lie there and think of it!
+There was the brown bureau against the wall; she could hear the deep
+breathing of Jim in the room beyond. Jim had been unequal to the task of
+conventionally going to bed the night before, and she had put a pillow
+under his head and a quilt over him. She was the last woman in the world
+to worry about Jim, drunk, or to nag him for it when sober. But she didn't
+like the children to see him that way.
+
+What was it that she had done to quiet the children when "they" rode up?
+She had done something and they had gone to sleep again, and she--and
+she--oh no, it hadn't happened. What a fool she was to lie there thinking!
+There were the children to rouse and dress, and breakfast to cook, and
+Jim--Jim would be feeling pretty mean this morning; he'd like a good cup of
+coffee. She was glad he was alive to make coffee for.
+
+She got up and, in the uncertainty bred of the dream, felt the brown
+bureau, felt it hungrily, almost incredulously. The brown bureau had been
+pushed against the door when they had come, and knocked and knocked. Then
+they had thundered with the butts of their six-shooters, and the children
+had wakened, and she had called out to them:
+
+"Sh-sh! It's only a bad dream. Mammy will give you some dough to bake
+to-morrow."
+
+And she had gone to press her face flat to the thin wall, and call, "For
+God's sake, don't wake the children!"
+
+And they had called out, "Let him come out quiet, then."
+
+And then she could feel that they put their shoulders to the door--the
+weather-beaten door--with its crazy lock that didn't half catch. The brown
+bureau had spun across the floor like a top, and they had crowded in. Then
+she had done something to quiet the children--it was queer that she could
+not remember what it was, when everything else in the dream still lived
+within her, horribly distinct and real.
+
+What a fool she was, with Jim asleep in the next room; she would not think
+about it another minute. She began to dress, but her fingers were heavy,
+and the vague oppression of nightmare blocked her efficiency. Repeatedly
+she would detect herself subconsciously brooding over some one of the
+links in that pitiless memory--what they had said to Jim; his undaunted
+replies; how she had left him and gone into the next room because Jim had
+told her to.
+
+She called the children, but the sight of them, happy and flushed with
+sleep, did not reassure her.
+
+"Mammy," said Topeka, eldest of the family, and lately on the invalid
+list, the victim of a cactus thorn, "my toe's all well; can I go
+barefoot?"
+
+"Topeka Rodney, what kind of feet do you expect to have when you are a
+young lady, if you run barefoot now?"
+
+Topeka, sitting on the side of the bed, with tousled hair, put her small
+feet together and contemplated them. The toe was still suspiciously
+inflamed for perfect convalescence, although Topeka, with a Spartan
+courage that won her a place in the annals of household valor, had the day
+before allowed her mother to pick out with a needle the torturing cactus
+thorn, scorning to shed a tear during the operation, though afterwards she
+had taken the piece of dried apple that was offered her and devoured it to
+the last bite, as only just compensation for her sufferings.
+
+"Dimmy dot a tore toe, too." But Jimmy showed a strange reticence about
+offering proofs of his affliction. At the peril of his equilibrium, he
+clasped the allegedly injured member in his chubby hand and rolled over on
+the bed in apparent anguish.
+
+"Less see, Jimmy," asked his mother, anxiously.
+
+"Don't bleeve him, mammy. He 'ain't ever cried. He'd a cried, for sure, if
+his toe was sore." At the age of five, little Judith, namesake of her
+aunt, was something of a doubting Thomas.
+
+"Let mammy see, Jimmy," and Alida bent over her son and heir.
+
+"Doth Dimmy det any apple?" The wee man sometimes succeeded in making
+terms with his mother, when the other children were not present. Though
+feeling himself a trifle over-confident, he held the disputed toe with the
+air of one keeping back a trump card, and looked his mother squarely in
+the eyes.
+
+She struggled with the temptation to give him the apple. He had lifted the
+horrors of her dream as nothing else could have done, but she answered him
+with quiet firmness.
+
+"Jimmy must not tell stories."
+
+"Less see," insisted Topeka.
+
+"He dassent," affirmed Judith, junior, of little faith.
+
+"It hurths me," and Jimmy tried to squeeze out a tear. "It hurths me, my
+tore toe!"
+
+His mother tipped him over on his fat little back and opened the chubby
+hand that held the trump toe. It was white from the pressure applied by
+the infant dissembler, but there was no trace of the treacherous cactus
+thorn. She gave him an affectionate spank and went into the kitchen to
+make coffee.
+
+"I with I had a tore toe," he crooned, quite unabashed at the discovery of
+his deception. "I with I toud det a tore toe 'thout the hurt."
+
+But the horror of the dream gripped her when she found herself alone in
+the kitchen; and she remembered she had not told the children not to go
+into the room where their father was sleeping. She went back and found
+that Jimmy had not left his post on the side of the bed, where he still
+regretted that his perfectly well toe did not entitle him to gastronomic
+consideration. Topeka, who had arrived at an age where little girls, in
+the first subconscious attempt at adornment, know no keener delight than
+plastering their heads with a wet hairbrush, till they present an
+appearance of slippery rotundity equalled only by a peeled onion, put down
+the brush with guilty haste at sight of her mother.
+
+"I'm goin' to dress him soon as I've done my hair."
+
+"Any one think you was goin' to be married, the time you've took to it."
+
+"It's gettin' so long," urged Topeka.
+
+"I wouldn't give it a chance to grow no longer while Jimmy was waitin' to
+get dressed. And don't go into the front room. Your father's gettin' his
+sleep out."
+
+Topeka opened her round eyes. There was always something suspicious about
+that sleep her father had to get out, but she felt it was something she
+must not ask questions about. Her mother lingered; she dreaded to be alone
+in the kitchen. The little, familiar intimacies between herself and her
+children scattered the horrors of the dream which would come back to her
+when she was again at the mercy of her thoughts.
+
+"Judy, s'pose you dress Jimmy this morning! I want Topeka to help me get
+breakfast."
+
+"Yessum," said Judith, dutifully. "Is he to have his face washed?"
+
+"He certainly is, Judy. I's ashamed to have you ask such a question.
+'Ain't you all been brought up to have your faces washed?"
+
+But young Judith seemed disinclined to take up this phase of family
+superiority. She merely inquired further:
+
+"Is he to have it washed with soap, maw?"
+
+"He shore is. Any one would think you had been born and raised in Arizony
+or Nebrasky, to hear you talk. I'm plumb ashamed of you, Judy."
+
+"But, 'deed, maw, I ain't big enough to wash his face with soap. It takes
+Topeka to hold his head."
+
+The subject of the discussion still sat on the edge of the bed, a small
+lord of creation, letting his women folk arrange among themselves who
+should minister to his wants. As an instrument of torture the washcloth,
+in the hands of his sister Judy, was no ignoble rival of the cactus thorn.
+The question of making terms for his sufferings again appealed to him in
+the light of a feasible business proposition.
+
+"Muvvy, tan't I have the apple? Judy hurts me a lot when she wathes my
+face wis soap."
+
+"Yes, you can have the apple, honey; and, Judy, you be gentle with him.
+Don't rub his features up, and be careful and don't get soap in his eyes."
+
+"No'm." And Judy heroically stifled the longing to slick her hair, like
+Topeka's, with the wet hairbrush. There were easier tasks than washing the
+face of her younger brother.
+
+When Topeka and her mother were alone in the kitchen, Topeka grinding the
+coffee and all unconsciously working her jaw in an accompaniment to the
+coffee-mill, her mother bent over her and said:
+
+"Did you dream of anything last night?"
+
+Topeka simultaneously stopped working the coffee-mill and her jaw, and
+regarded her mother solemnly. She did not remember having been thus
+questioned about her dreams before.
+
+"No'm," she answered, after laborious consideration. But something in her
+mother's face held her.
+
+"You're sure you didn't dream nothing?"
+
+"Yes, maw."
+
+"Did Judy or Jim say that they dreamed anything?"
+
+"Jim said he dreamed he had a pup."
+
+"Was that all? Think hard, Topeka!"
+
+Topeka held the handle of the coffee-mill in her hand; her jaw continued
+to work with the labor of her mental process. "I've thought hard, maw, and
+all he told was about the pup."
+
+Alida went back to her bedroom and again felt the brown bureau. "What's
+the matter with me, anyhow? It's the lonesomeness, and they bein' agin Jim
+the way they are. God, this country's hard on women and horses!"
+
+When breakfast was over, and young Jim had received the reward of his
+valor in presenting a brave face to his ablution, and Judith the reward of
+her skill, the evidence of which almost prevented the young martyr from
+smiling while he enjoyed his treat, their mother sent them all to play in
+the canon. She told them not to come home till she should come for them,
+and if any one should ask about their father, to say that he was away from
+home. And this, as well as the mystery of her father's "getting his sleep
+out," roused some slight apprehension in Topeka, who was old for her age.
+They were seldom sent to the canon to play. Topeka looked at her mother as
+she had when questioned about the dream, but there was no further
+confidence between them.
+
+"You do as your sister Topeka tells you, and remember what I said about
+your papa," Alida said to the younger children. Jim and Judy clasped each
+other's hands in mute compact at the edict. Their sister Topeka had a real
+genius for authority; they were minded all too well when she swayed the
+maternal sceptre vicariously.
+
+Alida made fresh coffee for Jim when the children had gone. She made it
+carefully; there was this morning, unconsciously, about each little thing
+that she did for him, the solemnity of a funeral rite. Struggle as she
+would, she could not divest her mind of the conviction that what she did
+this day she did for the dead. She would go to the door and listen to his
+breathing, and tell herself that she was a fool, then wring her hands at
+the remembrance of the dream.
+
+As he tossed, half waking, she heard him groan and curse the cattle-men
+with oaths that made her glad she had sent the children from home. Then
+she bent over him and woke him from his uneasy slumber.
+
+"Jim, don't you want me to bathe your head? And here's some nice, hot
+coffee all ready for you."
+
+Jim woke slowly to a realization of his troubles and his blessings. His
+wife was bathing his head with hands that trembled. Not always had she
+greeted his indiscretions with such loving forbearance. He noticed, though
+his waking faculties were not over-keen, that her face was pale and
+frightened, and that her eyes, meeting his, held a dumb, measureless
+affection.
+
+"What th' hell are you babying me for?" But his roughness did not deceive
+her woman's wits. He was not getting the lecture he anticipated, and this
+was his way of showing that he was not embarrassed by her kindness. The
+morning sunlight was pitilessly frank in its exposure of the grim pinch of
+poverty in the mean little room, but the woman was unconscious of these
+things; what she saw was that Jim, the reckless, Jim, the dare-devil
+terror of the country, Jim, who had married and settled with her into
+home-keeping respectability, Jim, who had struggled with misfortune and
+fallen, had, young as he was, lost every look of youth; that hope had gone
+from his dull eyes, and that his face had become drawn until the
+death's-head grinned beneath the scant padding of flesh. But he was
+to-day, as always, the one man in the world for her. In making a world of
+their own and reducing their parents to supplementary consideration, their
+children, whom she had sent away that she might be alone with him, had
+given a different quality to the love of this pair that had known so many
+curious vicissitudes. The responsibilities of parenthood had placed them
+on a tenderer, as well as a securer footing; and as she saw his age and
+weariness, he recognized hers, and both felt a self-accusing twinge.
+
+"That's a blamed good cup of coffee," he said, by way of relieving the
+tension that had crept into the situation. "Any one would think you was
+settin' your cap for me 'stead of us being married for years."
+
+Alida sighed. "It's better to end than to begin like this," she said, in
+the far-away voice of one who thinks aloud. The word "end" had slipped out
+before she realized what she was saying, and the knowledge haunted her as
+an omen. She glanced at him quickly, to see if he had noticed it.
+
+"Why did you say end?" He saw that her eyes were full of tears and chafed
+her. "You ain't thinking of divorcing me, like Mountain Pink done Bosky?"
+
+"Oh, Jim," she said, and her face was all aquiver, "I never could divorce
+you, no matter what you done." And then the grim philosophy of the
+plains-woman asserted itself. "I never can understand why women feed their
+pride on their heart's blood; it never was my way."
+
+He did not like to remember that he had given her cause for a way.
+"There's a lot of women as wouldn't exactly regard me as a Merino, or a
+Southdown, either;" he gulped the coffee to ease the tightness in his
+throat.
+
+"They'd be women of no judgment, then," she said, with conviction.
+
+Jim's head was tilted back, resting in the palm of his hand. His profile,
+sharpened by anxiety, more than suggested his quarter-strain of Sioux
+blood. He might almost have been old Chief Flying Hawk himself, as he
+looked steadily at the woman who had been a young girl and reckless, when
+he had been a boy and reckless; who had paid her woman's penalty and come
+into her woman's kingdom; who had made a man of him by the mystery of her
+motherhood, and who had uncomplainingly gone with him into the wilderness
+and become an alien and an outcast.
+
+These things unmanned him as the sight of the gallows and the rope for his
+hanging could not have done. Shielding himself with an affected roughness,
+he asked:
+
+"What the hell's the matter with you? I've been drinking like a beast of
+an Indian, and you give me coffee instead of a tongue-lashing."
+
+The color had all gone out of her face. She gasped the words:
+
+"Jim, I dreamed it last night--they came for you!"
+
+She cowered at the recollection.
+
+"Did they get me?" he asked. There was no surprise in his tone. He spoke
+as one who knew the answer.
+
+"Yes, the children saw. The noise woke them."
+
+"You mustn't let 'em see, when--they come. They've a right to a fair start;
+we didn't get it, old girl."
+
+"The children gave it to us," and she faced him.
+
+"Yes, yes, but we want them to have it from the start, like good folks."
+
+They looked into each other's eyes. The memory of dead and gone madness
+twinkled there a moment, then each remembered:
+
+"You must hurry, Jim. You haven't a moment to lose. I dreamed it was to be
+to-night--they'll come to-night!"
+
+"The game's all up, old girl! If I had a month I couldn't get away.
+Morrison's been looking for me over to the Owl Creek Range; he's
+back--Stevens told me yesterday. He'll be heading here soon. The price on
+my head is a strain on friendship."
+
+"Have the sheep-men gone back on you?"
+
+"Yes, damn them! A thousand dollars is big money, and they've had hard
+luck!"
+
+"They deserve it; I hope every herd in the State dies of scab."
+
+"There wasn't a scabby sheep in our bunch. What a sight they were, loaded
+with tallow! There wasn't one of them that couldn't have weathered a
+blizzard; they could have lived on their own tallow for a month."
+
+She tried to divert his attention from his lost flock. When he began to
+talk about them the despair of his loss drove him to drink. She was ground
+between the millstones of his going or staying. If he stayed they would
+come for him; if he went, they would apprehend him before he was ten miles
+from the house.
+
+"Jim, we got to think. If there's a chance in a thousand that you can get
+away, you got to take it; if there ain't, the children mustn't know. We
+got to think it out!"
+
+"There ain't a chance in a thousand, old girl. There ain't one in a
+million. They're circling round in the hills out here now, waitin' for me,
+like buzzards waitin' for the eyes of a dyin' horse."
+
+She rocked herself, and the clutching fingers left white marks on her
+face, but the eyes that met his glittered tearless:
+
+"Then there ain't nothing left but to face it like a man?"
+
+"That's all there be." He might have been giving an opinion on a matter in
+which he had no interest.
+
+"Then there ain't no use in our having any more talk about it?"
+
+"'Tain't just what you'd call an agreeable subject," he answered, with the
+sinister humor of the frontiersman who has learned to make a crony of
+death.
+
+She was tempted to kiss him--they were not given to demonstrations, this
+pair--then decided it were kinder to him, less suggestive of what they
+anticipated, not to deviate from their undemonstrative marital routine.
+
+"Do you want your breakfast now?"
+
+"I guess you might bring it along."
+
+And for the same reason that she refrained from kissing him, she repressed
+a desire to wring the neck of a young broiler and cook it for his
+breakfast, remembering that she had heard they gave folks pretty much what
+they wanted when they wouldn't want it long. So Jim got his usual
+breakfast of bacon, uncooked canned tomatoes, soda-biscuit, and coffee.
+She sat with him while he ate, but they spoke no more of "them" or of how
+soon "they" might be expected. She told him that young Jim had pretended
+that morning that he had a cactus thorn in his foot, so that he might have
+a piece of dried apple. And old Jim, in an excess of parental fondness and
+pride, said: "The damned little liar, he'll get to Congress yet!"
+
+But the children were a dangerous topic for overstrained nerves at this
+particular time, so Alida told Jim that she had put the black hen to set
+and she thought they'd have some chickens at last. Jim smoked while Alida
+washed the dishes, and when Jim's back was turned she examined the lock on
+the door--a good push would open it. Then she looked at the brown bureau,
+and the recklessness of despair came into her eyes. In the room beyond,
+Jim was reading a two weeks' old newspaper and smoking. He looked like a
+lazy ranchman taking his ease.
+
+As she went about her household tasks that morning, Alida noticed things
+as she had never noticed them before. A sunbeam came through the
+shutterless window of the house and writhed and quivered on the wall as if
+it were a live thing. She read a warning in this, and in the color of the
+sun, that was red, like blood, and in the whirr of the grasshoppers, that
+was sinister and threatening. The creeks had dried, and their slimy beds
+crept along the willows like sluggish snakes. Gaunt range-cattle bellowed
+in their thirst, and the parched earth crackled beneath the sun that hung
+above the house like a flaming disk. Sometimes she sank beneath the burden
+of it; then she would wring her hands and call on God to help them; they
+were beyond human power. She and Jim were alone all the morning; they did
+not again refer to what they knew would happen. He read his old paper and
+she put her house in order. She did it with especial care. It was meet to
+have things seemly in the house of the dead. And every time she glanced at
+Jim she repressed the desire to fling herself on his breast and cry out
+the anguish that consumed her.
+
+At noon she brought the children home to dinner, and afterwards Jim taught
+them to throw the lasso and played buffalo with them. Alida did not trust
+herself to watch them; she stayed in the kitchen and saw the sunbeam grow
+pale with the waning of the day, the day whose minutes dragged like lead,
+yet had rushed from her, leaving her the night to face. At sundown she
+cooked supper, but she no longer knew what she did. A crazy agility had
+taken possession of her and she spun about the kitchen, doing the same
+errand many times, finding herself doing always something different from
+that she had set about doing. The molten day was burning itself out like a
+fever; hot gusts of air beat up from the earth, but the woman who waited
+felt chilled to the marrow, and took a cloak down from a peg and wrapped
+it about her while she waited for the biscuit to bake. At supper they sat
+down together, the man and his wife and their three children. The children
+were in fine spirits from the fun they had had that afternoon. Never had
+daddy been so nice to them. He had taught Topeka to throw the lasso so
+well that she had caught the cat once and little Jim twice; and daddy had
+played he was a buffalo and had charged them all with his head down, till
+they screamed in terror. But daddy seemed more quiet through the meal, and
+once mother started up and cried:
+
+"What's that?"
+
+She ran to the door with her hand pressed to her side, but daddy called
+after her:
+
+"Don't you know the cowards better than that? They'll wait for nightfall."
+
+But these things had not worried the children, with their heads full of
+playing buffalo and throwing the lariat.
+
+"Jim," said his father, before they went to bed, "remember you are the man
+of the family." But young Jim was already nodding with sleep. Topeka and
+Judith were sleepy, too; they kissed their father and were glad to go to
+bed.
+
+The night began menacingly to close over the wilderness. Where the sun had
+hung above the mountain a moment before there glowed a great pool of red
+that dripped across the blackness in faint tricklings. The outlines of the
+foot-hills loomed huge, formless, uncouth. In the half-light it seemed a
+world struggling in the birth-throes. All day the dry, burning heat had
+quivered over the desert, like hot-air waves flickering over a bed of live
+coals, and now the very earth seemed to palpitate with the intensity of
+its fever. The bellowing of the thirst-maddened cattle had not stopped
+with the twilight that brought no dew to slake their parched throats. In
+the hills the coyotes wailed like lost souls. It was night bereft of
+benisons, day made frightful by darkness. All the heat of a cycle of
+desert summers seemed concentrated in that house in the valley where the
+man and his wife waited. Each sound of the desert night Alida translated
+into the trampling of horses' feet; then, as the sound would die away, or
+prove to be but some night noise of the wilderness, the pallor would lose
+its pinch on her features, and she would stare into her husband's face
+with eyes that did not see. Jim smoked his pipe and refilled it, smoked
+and filled again, but gave no sign of the object of his waiting.
+
+"Jim," she said, when the clock had struck ten, then eleven, "I am going
+to fasten up the house."
+
+"Do you hear them?" he asked, without emotion, but as one who deferred to
+the finer senses of women.
+
+She shook her head, not trusting herself to speak.
+
+He looked at the door that was shrunken and warped from the heat till it
+barely held together, and there was no measure to the tenderness he put
+into:
+
+"Oh, you poor little fool, do you think you could keep them out by
+fastening that?"
+
+"Jim, I must," and her voice broke. "They may think you are not here, that
+it's only me and the children, and that's why the house is fastened." She
+got up and began to move about as though her thoughts scourged her to
+action, even if futile. He shook the ashes from his pipe.
+
+"Do anything you blame please," he said, more by way of humoring her than
+from faith in her stratagem. He felt strong enough to face his destiny, to
+meet it in a way worthy of his mother's people.
+
+Alida seemed under a spell in her preparations for the night. Each thing
+she did as she had done it in her dream the night before; it was as if she
+were constrained by a power greater than her will to fulfil a sinister
+prophecy. Yet now and then she would stop and wonder if she might not
+break the spell by doing things differently from the way she had dreamed
+them. Her hand grasped the knob of the door uncertainly, and she swung it
+to and fro on its creaking hinges, while her mind seemed likewise to sway
+hither and thither. Should she fasten the door and push the bureau against
+it, as it had been in the dream, or should she leave door and windows
+gaping wide for them? And then, as one who walks and does familiar things
+in sleep, she shut the door and turned the key. Jim smiled at her, but she
+could no longer look at him. One of the children wailed fretfully from the
+room beyond. Sleep had become a scourge in the stifling heat. One by one
+she lowered the windows and nailed them down; then she dragged the brown
+bureau against the door, took the brace of six-shooters from the wall, and
+sat down with Jim to wait.
+
+"What are you going to do with them toys?" he asked, as he saw her examine
+the chambers of one of the six-shooters.
+
+"You ain't going to let yourself be caught like a rat in a hole, are you?"
+she reproached him.
+
+"'Ain't we agreed that it's best to keep onpleasant family matters from
+the kids?" He smiled at her bravely. "The remembrance of what we're
+anticipatin' ain't going to help young Jim to get to Congress when his
+time comes, nor it ain't going to help the girls get good husbands,
+either. This here country ain't what it was in the way of liberality since
+it's got to be a State."
+
+"Sh-sh-sh!" she said. "Is that the range-cattle stampedin' after water, or
+is it--" They listened. The furniture in the room crackled; there was not a
+fibre of it to which the resistless heat had not penetrated. On the range
+the cattle bellowed in their thirst-torture; in the intervals of their
+cries sounded something far off, but regular as the thumping of a ship's
+screw. The woman did not need an answer to her question. The steady
+trampling of hoofs came muffled through the dead air, but the sound was
+unmistakable. She put her arms about the man's neck and crushed him to her
+with all her woman strength. "Oh, Jim, you've been a good man to me!"
+
+"Steady--steady." He strained her close to him. "They'd be, by the sound of
+them, on the straight bit of road now, before the turn. Soon we'll hear
+their hoofs ring hollow as they cross the plank bridge."
+
+His plainsman's faculty was as keen as ever; his calculation of the
+horsemen's distance was made as though he were the least concerned. All
+Alida's courage had gone, with the dread thing at hand. She clung to him,
+dazed.
+
+"They're sober, all right enough."
+
+"How do you know?"
+
+"They'd be cursing and bellowing if they were drunk."
+
+The hoofs rang hollow on the little plank bridge that crossed the ditch
+about a stone's-throw from the door. Not a word was said either within or
+without. The lynchers seemed to have drilled for their part; there was no
+whispering, no deferring to a leader. On they came, so close that Jim and
+Alida could hear the creaking of their saddles. There was the clank of
+spurs and the straining of leather as they dismounted, then some one
+knocked at the door till the warped boards rattled.
+
+Jim could feel the thudding of Alida's heart as she clung to him, but when
+the knock was repeated a new courage came to her, and she left Jim and
+went on her knees close to the outer wall.
+
+"Jim, is that you?" she called, and now every sense was trained to battle;
+her voice had even a sleepy cadence, as if she had been suddenly roused.
+
+"That won't do at all, Miz Rodney. We know you got Jim in there, just as
+certain as we're out here, and we want him to come out and we'll do the
+thing square, otherwise he can take the consequences."
+
+Jim opened his mouth to speak, but she, still on her knees beside the
+wall, gained his silence by one supplicating gesture. There was a sleepy,
+fretful cry from the room beyond--the noise had roused one of the children.
+
+"Sh-sh, dear," she called. "It's only a bad dream. Go to sleep again;
+mother is here."
+
+Through the warped door came sounds of the whispering voices without,
+drowned by the shrieking bellow of the cattle. There was not a breath of
+air in the suffocating room. Jim bent towards Alida:
+
+"I'm goin out to 'em. They'll do it square, over on the cotton-woods; this
+rumpus'll only wake the kids."
+
+But she shook her head imploringly, putting her finger to her lips as a
+sign that he was not to speak, and he had not the heart to refuse, though
+knowing that she made a desperate situation worse.
+
+"Gentlemen"--she spoke in a low, distinct voice--"Jim ain't here. He's been
+away from home five days. There's no one here but me and the children;
+you've woke them up and frightened them by pounding on the door. I ask you
+to go away."
+
+"If he ain't in there, will you let us search the house?" It was Henderson
+that spoke, Henderson, foreman of the "XXX" outfit.
+
+"I can't have them frightened; please take my word and go away."
+
+"Whas er matter, muvvy?" called Judith, sleepily. Young Jim was by this
+time crying lustily. Only Topeka said nothing. With the precocity of a
+frontier child, she half realized the truth. She tried to comfort little
+Jim, though her teeth chattered in fear and she felt cold in the hot,
+still room. Then Judith called out, "Make papa send them away."
+
+"Your papa ain't here, Judith." But the fight had all gone out of Alida's
+voice; it was the groan of an animal in a trap.
+
+"Where's papa gone to?"
+
+"Sh-sh, Judith! Topeka, keep your sister quiet."
+
+It was absolutely still, within and without, for a full minute. Then Alida
+heard the shoving of shoulders against the door. Once, twice, thrice the
+lock resisted them. The brown bureau spun across the room like a child's
+toy. The lynchers, bursting in, saw Alida with her arms around Jim. When
+the last hope had gone it was instinct with her to protect him with her
+own body.
+
+"Go into the kids, old girl, this is no place for you." And there was that
+in his voice that made her obey.
+
+Something of the glory of old Chief Flying Hawk, riding to battle, was in
+the face of his grandson.
+
+"Remember, the children ain't to know," he said to his wife; and to the
+lynchers, "Gentlemen, I'm ready."
+
+
+
+
+
+XIX
+
+
+                       "Rocked By A Hempen String"
+
+
+Alida heard the mingled sounds of footsteps and hoofs grow fainter on the
+trail. The children looked at her to tell them why this night was
+different from all others--what was happening. But she could only cower
+among them, more terrified than they. She seemed to be shrunken from the
+happenings of that day. They hardly knew the little, shrivelled, gray
+woman who looked at them with unfamiliar eyes. Alida gazed at the little
+Judith, and there was something in her mother's glance that made the
+little one hide her face in her sister's shoulder. Young Judith it was who
+all unwittingly had told the lynchers that her father was at home, and in
+Alida's heart there was towards this child a blind, unreasoning hate.
+Better had she never been born than live to do this thing!
+
+It was the wee man, Jim, who first began to reflect resentfully on this
+intrusion on his slumbers. He had been sleeping well and comfortably when
+some grown-ups came with a lot of noise, and his father had gone away with
+them. It had frightened him, but his mother was here, and why should she
+not put him to sleep again?
+
+"Muvvy, sing 'Dway Wolf.'" And as she paid no heed, but looked at him,
+white-faced and strange, he again repeated, with his most insinuating and
+beguiling tricks of eye and smile:
+
+"Muvvy, sing 'Dway Wolf' for Dimmy."
+
+The child put his head in his mother's lap, and Alida began, scarce
+knowing what she did:
+
+  "'The gray wolves are coming fast over the hill,
+    Run fast, little lamb, do not baa, do not bleat,
+  For the gray wolves are hungry, they come here to kill,
+    And the lambs shall be scattered--'
+
+"No, no, Jimmy, muvvy cannot sing. Oh, can't you feel, child? Judith,
+Judith, why were you ever born?"
+
+It was still in the valley. Had they come to the dead cotton-woods yet?
+Had they begun it? The children shrank from this gray-faced woman whom
+they did not know and but yet a little while had been their mother. An
+awful silence had fallen on the night. The range-cattle no longer bellowed
+in their thirst; the hot wind no longer blew from the desert. A hush not
+of earth nor air nor the things that were of her ken seemed to have fallen
+about them, muffing the dark loneliness as by invisible flakes. The
+children had crouched close together for comfort. They feared the little,
+gray-faced woman who seemed to have stolen into their mother's place and
+looked at them with strange eyes.
+
+Jimmy looked at the woman who held him, hoping his mother would come, and
+he could see them both. And while he waited he dropped off to sleep; and
+little Judith, hiding her head on Topeka's shoulder, that she might not
+see the look in those accusing eyes, presently dreamed that all was well
+with her again; and Topeka reflected that if her mother should ask her in
+the morning whether she had dreamed last night, she would have a fine tale
+to tell of men riding up, and loud voices, and trying of the door, and
+father going away with them. Her mother had questioned her this morning
+when nothing had happened to warrant it. Surely she would ask again
+to-morrow, and Topeka could tell--she could tell--all.
+
+Alida looked at her three sleeping children--his children, and yet they
+could sleep. Into her mind came that cry of utter desolation, "Could ye
+not watch with me one hour?" And God had been deaf to Him, His son, even
+as He was deaf to her.
+
+The children were sleeping easily. The hush that had hung like a pall over
+the valley had not lifted. Had they done it? Was it over yet? She went to
+the door and listened. Surely the silence that wrapped the valley was a
+thing apart. It was as no other silence that she could remember. It was
+still, still, and yet there was vibration to it, like the muffled roar
+within a shell. She strained her ears--was that the sound of horsemen going
+down the trail? No, no, it was only the beating of her foolish heart that
+would not be still, but beat and fluttered and would not let her hear.
+Yes, surely, that was the sound of hoofs. It was over then--they were
+going.
+
+She would go and look for him. Perhaps it would not be too late--she had
+heard of such things. A dynamic force consumed her. She had no
+consciousness of her body. Her feet and hands did things with incredible
+swiftness--lighted a lantern, selected a knife, ran to the corral for an
+old ladder that had been there when they took possession of the deserted
+house; and through all her frantic haste she could feel this new force, as
+it were, lick up the red blood in her veins, burn her body to ashes as it
+gave her new power. She felt that never again would she have need of meat
+and drink and sleep. This force would abide with her till all was over,
+then leave her, like the whitened bones of the desert.
+
+It was dark in the valley, but the menacing stillness seemed to be
+lifting. The range-cattle had again taken up their plaint, the sounds of
+the desert night swept across the stony walls of the canon. Alida knew
+that it must have happened at the dead cotton-woods. There were no other
+high trees about for miles. Again she listened before advancing. There was
+no sound of hoof or champing bit or men moving quickly. They had gone
+their way into the valley. She ran swiftly, her lantern throwing its beam
+across the scrubby inequalities of ground, but for her there was no need
+of its beacon. To-night she was beyond the halting, stumbling
+uncertainties of tread to which man is subject. There was magic in her
+feet and in her hands and brain. Like the wind she ran, the wind on the
+great plain where there are no foot-hills to hinder its course. The black,
+dead trees stood out distinctly against the starry sky, and from a
+cross-limb of one of them dangled something with head awry, like a broken
+jumping-jack, something that had once been a man--and her husband. She
+could touch the feet of this frightful thing and feel its human warmth. A
+wind came up from the desert and blew across the canon's rocky walls into
+the valley, and the parody of a man swayed to it.
+
+She had been expecting this thing. For weeks the image of it had been
+graven on her heart. Sleeping or waking, she had seen nothing but his
+dangling body from the cross-limb. Yet with the actual consummation before
+her, she felt its hideous novelty as though it were unexpected. At sight
+of it the force that had borne her up through the happenings of that day
+went out of her, and as she stood with the knife and the rope, that she
+had brought in the hope of cheating the lynchers, dangling from her
+nerveless hand her helplessness overcame her. Again and again she called
+to the dead man for help, called to him as she had been accustomed to call
+when her woman's strength had been unequal to some heavy household task.
+
+Far down the trail she could hear the gallop of a horse coming closer, and
+mingled with the sounds of its flying feet was a voice urging the horse to
+greater speed in the shrill cabalistic "Hi-hi-hi-ki!" of the plains-man.
+What was it--one of them returning to see that she did not cheat the rope
+of its due?--to hang her beside him, as an after-thought, as they hanged
+Kate Watson beside her man? Let them. She was standing near the swaying
+thing when horse and rider gained the ground beside her, and what was left
+to her of consciousness made out that the rider was Judith. She pointed to
+it, and stood helpless with the dangling rope in her hand.
+
+"Are we too late?" Judith almost whispered, as she caught Alida's cold,
+inert hands. "I dreamed it all and came. If I could have dreamed it
+sooner!"
+
+Alida did not seem to hear, neither could she speak. She only pointed
+again to the thing beside her.
+
+Judith understood. The women had a task to share, and in silence they
+began it. The lynchers had done their work all too well. Again and again
+the women strove with all their strength to take down the dangling parody
+of a man, which in its dead-weight resistance seemed in league with the
+forces against them. At last the thing was done. Down to a pale world,
+that in the haggard gray of morning seemed to bear in its countenance
+something of the pinch of death, Judith lowered the thing that had so
+lately been a man. She cut the rope away from the neck, she straightened
+the wry neck that seemed to wag in pantomimic representation of the last
+word to the lynchers. They'd have to reckon with him on dark nights, and
+when the wind wailed like a famished wolf and when things not to be
+explained lurked in the shadows of the desert.
+
+The morning stillness came flooding into the cup-shaped valley like a
+soft, resistless wave. Something had come to the gray, old earth--another
+day, with all its human gift of joy and woe, and the earth welcomed it
+though it had known so many. The sun burst through the gold-tipped aureole
+of cloud, scattering far and wide lavish promises of a perfect day. The
+earth seemed to respond with a thrill. No longer was the pinch of death in
+her countenance. The valley, the mountains, the invisible wind, even the
+dead cotton-woods, seemed endowed with throbbing life that contrasted
+fearsomely with the terrible nullity of this thing that once had been Jim
+Rodney.
+
+Alida had ceased to take any part in the hideous drama. She sat on the
+ground, a crouching thing with glittering eyes. It was past comprehension
+that the sun could shine and the world go on with her man dead before her.
+Judith had become the force that planned and did to save the family pride.
+While her hands were busy with preparations for the dead, she rehearsed
+what she would say to this and that one to account for Jim's absence. The
+silence of the men who had done this thing would be as steadfast as their
+own.
+
+And there were the children. Through all her frantic search for things in
+the house, Judith remembered that she must step softly and not waken the
+children. With each turn of the screw, as her numbed consciousness rallied
+and responded afresh to the hideous realization of this thing, there came
+no release from the tyrannous hold of petty detail. She remembered that
+she must be back at noon to hold post-office, and there would be the
+endless comedy to be played once more with her cavaliers. They must never
+suspect from word or look of hers. And there was the dance to-night at the
+Benton ranch--she hid her face in her hands. Ah, no, she could not do this
+thing! And yet they must not suspect. She must contrive to give the
+impression that Jim had cheated the rope. Yes, she must go and dance, and,
+if need be, dance with his very murderers. Jim's children were to have the
+"clean start" that he intended, and they would have to get it here. There
+was no money for an exodus and a beginning elsewhere.
+
+Alida still crouched beside the long, even tarpaulin roll that Judith had
+prepared with hands that knew not what they did. But now Judith gently
+roused her and put in her hand a spade; already she herself had begun. But
+Alida stared at it dully, as if she did not understand. Then Judith
+pointed to something black that had begun to wheel in the sky, wheel, and
+with each circular swoop come closer to the roll of tarpaulin. Then Alida
+knew, and, taking the spade, she and Judith began to dig the grave.
+
+
+
+
+
+XX
+
+
+                                 The Ball
+
+
+The dance in the Benton ranch was the great social event of the midsummer
+season. The Bentons had begun to give dances in the days of plenty, when
+the cattle industry had been at its dizziest height; and they had
+continued to give dances through all the depressing fluctuations of the
+trade, perhaps in much the same spirit as one whistles in the dark to keep
+up his courage. Thus, though cattle fell and continued to fall in the
+scale of prices till the end no man dared surmise, the Benton "boys"--they
+were two brothers, aged respectively forty-five and fifty years--continued
+to hold out facilities to dance and be merry.
+
+All day strange wagons--ludicrous, makeshift things--had been discharging
+loads of women and children at the Benton ranch, tired mothers and their
+insistent offspring. To the women this strenuous relaxation came as manna
+in the wilderness. What was the dreary round of washing, ironing, baking,
+and the chain of household tasks that must be done as primitively as in
+Genesis, if only they might dance and forget? So the mothers came early
+and stayed late, and the primary sessions of the dances fulfilled all the
+functions of the latter-day mothers' congresses--there were infant ailments
+to be discussed, there were the questions of food and of teething, of
+paregoric and of flannel bands, which, strange heresy, seemed to be "going
+out," according to the latest advices from those compendiums of all
+domestic information, the "Woman's Pages" of the daily papers.
+
+Inasmuch as these more than punctual debaters must be cooked for, there
+was, to speak plainly, "feeling" on the part of the housekeeper at the
+Bentons'. Wasn't it enough for folks to come to a dance and get a good
+supper, and go away like Christians when the thing was over, instead of
+coming a day before it began and lingering on as if they had no home to go
+to? This, at least, was the housekeeper's point of view, a crochety one,
+be it said, not shared by the brothers Benton, whose hospitality was as
+genuine as it was primitive. To this same difficult lady the infants, who
+were too tender in years to be separated from their mothers, were as
+productive of anxiety as their elders. A room had been set apart for their
+especial accommodation, the floor of which, carefully spread with
+bed-quilts and pillows, prevented any great damage from happening to the
+more tender of the guests; and they rolled and crooned and dug their small
+fists into each other's faces while their mothers danced in the room
+beyond.
+
+By nightfall the Benton ranch gleamed on the dark prairie like a
+constellation. Lights burned at every window; a broad beam issued from the
+door and threw a welcoming beacon across the darkness and silence of the
+night. The scraping of fiddles mingled with the rhythmic scuffle of feet
+and the singsong of the words that the dancers sung as they whirled
+through the figures of the quadrille and lancers. About the walls of the
+room where the dancing was in progress stood a fringe of gallants, their
+heads newly oiled, and proclaiming the fact in a bewildering variety of
+strong perfumes. Red silk neckerchiefs knotted with elaborate carelessness
+displayed to advantage bronzed throats; new overalls, and of the shaggiest
+species, amply testified to the social importance of the Benton dance.
+
+As yet the dancing was but intermittent and was engaged in chiefly by the
+mothers with large progeny, who felt that after the arrival of a greater
+number of guests, and among them the unmarried girls, their opportunities
+might not be as plentiful as at present. One or two cow-punchers, in an
+excess of civility at the presence of the fair, had insisted on giving up
+their six-shooters, mumbling something about "there being ladies present
+and a man being hasty at times." In the "bunk-room," which did duty as a
+gentleman's cloak-room, things were really warming up. There was much
+drinking of healths, as the brothers Benton had thoughtfully provided the
+wherewithal, and that in excellent quality.
+
+Costigan was there, and Texas Tyler, who had ridden sixty miles to "swing
+a petticoat," or, if there were not enough to go round, to dance with a
+handkerchief tied to some fellow's sleeve. By "swinging a petticoat" it
+was perfectly understood among all his friends that he meant a chance to
+dance with Judith Rodney. Year in and year out Texas never failed to
+present himself at the post-office on mail-days, if his work took him
+within a radius of fifty miles of the Daxes. No dance where the
+possibility of seeing Judith was even remote was too long a ride for him
+to undertake, even when it took him across the dreariest wastes of the
+desert. Texas had been devoted to Judith since she had left the convent,
+and sometimes, perhaps twice a year, she told him that she valued his
+friendship. On all other occasions she rejected his suit as if his
+continual pressing of it were something in the nature of an affront. Yet
+Texas persevered.
+
+"Well, here's lukin' at you, since in the way of a frind there's nothing
+better to look at!" and Costigan drained a tin cup at Texas Tyler.
+
+"Your very good health," said Texas, who was somewhat embarrassed by what
+was regarded as Costigan's "floweriness."
+
+"Begorra, is that Hinderson or the ghost av the b'y?" Costigan's roving
+eye was arrested by the foreman of the "XXX," who stood drinking with two
+or three men of his outfit. He was pale and ill-looking. He drank several
+times in succession, as if he needed the stimulant, and without the
+formality of drinking to any one. The two or three "XXX" men who were with
+him seemed to be equally in need of restoratives.
+
+They talked of the cattle stampede in which several of the outfits had
+been heavy losers. Some nine hundred head of cattle had been recovered,
+and members of the different outfits were still scouring the Red Desert
+for strays.
+
+Something in the nature of a sensation was created by the arrival of the
+Wetmore party. The women were frankly interested in the clothes, bearing,
+and general deportment of the New-Yorkers. Rumors of Miss Colebrooke's
+beauty were rife, and there was a general inclination to compare her with
+local belles. Such exotic types--they had seen these city beauties
+before--were as a rule too colorless for their appreciation. They liked
+faces that had "more go to them," was the verdict passed upon one famous
+beauty who had visited the Wetmores the year before. In arrangement of the
+hair, perhaps, in matters of dress, the judges were willing to concede the
+laurels to city damsels, but there concession stopped. But evidently
+Kitty, to judge from the elaboration of her toilet, did not intend to be
+dismissed thus cursorily. She herself was delicately, palely pretty, as
+always, but her hair was tortured to a fashionable fluffiness, and the
+simplicity of her green muslin gown was only in the name. It was muslin
+disguised, elaborated, beribboned, lace-trimmed till its identity was all
+but lost in the multitude of pretty complications.
+
+"Did you know that old Ma'am Yellett had a school-marm up to her place?"
+asked one of the men, apropos of Eastern prettiness.
+
+"Well, well," Costigan reminisced, "'tis some av thim Yillitt lambs thot's
+six fut in their shtockings, if Oi be rimimbering right. Sure, the tacher
+ought to be something av a pugilist, Oi'm thinkin'."
+
+"I seen her the other day, and a neater little heifer never turned out to
+pasture. Lord, I'd like to be gnawing the corners of the primer right now,
+if she was there to whale the ruler."
+
+"Arrah," bayed Costigan, "but the women question is gittin' complicated
+ontoirely, wid Miss Rodney--an' herself lukin' loike a saint in a church
+window--dalin' the mails an' th' other wan tachin' in the mountains. Sure,
+this place is gittin' to be but a sorry shpot for bachelors loike mesilf."
+
+"I ain't mentionin' no names, but there's a man here ain't treatin' a
+mighty fine woman square and accordin' to the way she ought to be
+treated."
+
+The information ran through the circle like an electric shock. Men stopped
+in the act of pledging each other's healths to listen. Loungers
+straightened up; every topic was dropped. The man who had made the
+statement was the loose-lipped busybody who had suggested to his host that
+he give up his six-shooter since there were "ladies present."
+
+"What the hell are you waiting for?" queried Texas Tyler, savagely.
+"You've cracked your whip, made your bow, and got our attention; why the
+hell don't you go on?"
+
+The man looked about nervously. He was rather alarmed at the interest he
+had excited. The next moment Peter Hamilton had walked into the room.
+There was something crucial in his entrance at this particular time; it
+crystallized suspicion. The gossip took advantage of the greetings to
+Hamilton to make his escape. Texas Tyler left the bunk-room immediately
+and looked for him in the room with the dancers. The fiddles, in the hands
+of a couple of Mexicans, had set the whole room whirling as if by magic.
+As they danced they sang, joining with the "caller-out," who held his
+vociferous post between the rooms, till the room was full of singing,
+dancing men and women, who spun and pirouetted as if they had not a care
+in the world. But Texas Tyler was not of these, as he looked through the
+dancers for his man. There was a red flash in the pupils of his eyes, and
+he told himself that he was going to do things the way they did them in
+Texas, for, of course, he knew that the loose-lipped idiot had meant
+Judith Rodney and Peter Hamilton. Never before had such an idea occurred
+to him, and now that it had been presented to his mind's eye, he wondered
+why he had been such a blind fool. Never had the singing to these dances
+seemed so absurd.
+
+  "Hawk hop out and the crow hop in,
+  Three hands round and go it ag'in.
+  Allemane left, back to the missus,
+  Grande right and left and sneak a few kisses."
+
+He rushed from the room and down to the stable. At sight of him some one
+leaped on a horse and rode out into the darkness.
+
+"Who was that?" asked Texas of a man lounging by the corral.
+
+"That was--" and he gave the name of the loose-lipped man.
+
+Texas cursed long and picturesquely. Then he went back to the bunk-room
+and tried to pick a quarrel with Peter Hamilton, who good-naturedly
+assumed that his old friend had been drinking and refused to take offence.
+
+Peter went in to ask Kitty to dance with him. All that evening he had been
+waiting anxiously for Judith. Meanwhile he had used all his influence as a
+newly appointed member of the Wetmore outfit to soothe the ruffled
+feelings of the cattle-men. Of the tragedy in the valley he had heard no
+rumor.
+
+Kitty had come to the point where she was willing to waive the
+Recamier-Chateaubriand friendship in favor of one more personal and
+ordinary. In fact, as Peter showed a disposition to regard as final her
+answer to him on the day he had spurred across the desert, Kitty, with
+true feminine perversity, inclined to permit him to resume his suit. His
+acquiescence in her refusal she had at first regarded as the turning of
+the worm; after the wolf-hunt, however, her meditations were more
+disturbing. She had never told Peter of that strange woodland meeting with
+Judith, yet Judith's beauty, her probable hold over Peter, the degree of
+his affection for her were rankling questions in Kitty's consciousness. In
+the stress of these considerations Kitty lost her head completely for so
+old a campaigner. She drew the apron-string tight--attempted force instead
+of strategy.
+
+Kitty and Peter finished their waltz, one of the few round dances of the
+evening.
+
+"How perfectly you dance, Kitty! It's a long time since we've had a waltz
+together."
+
+The cow-punchers looked at Kitty as if she were not quite flesh and blood.
+Such flaxen daintiness, femininty etherealized to angelic perfection, was
+new to them, but their admiration was like that given to a delicate exotic
+which, wonderful as it is, one is well pleased to view through the glass
+of the florist's window.
+
+Peter was deferentially attentive and zealous to make the Wetmore party
+have a thoroughly good time, yet he did all these things, as it were, with
+his eye on the door. He was not obviously distrait; he was the man of the
+world, talking, making himself agreeable, "doing his duty," while his
+subconsciousness was busy with other matters. It was rather through
+telepathy than through any lack of attention paid to her that Kitty
+realized the state of things, and in proportion to her realization came a
+feeling of helplessness; it was so new, so unexpected, so cruel. He seemed
+drifting away from her on some tide of affairs of the very existence of
+which she had been unconscious. Further and further he had drifted, till
+intelligible speech no longer seemed possible between them. They said the
+foolish, empty things that people call out as the boat glides away from
+the shore, the things that all the world may hear, and in his eyes there
+was only that smiling kindness. How had it come about after all these
+years? What was it that had first cut the cable that sent him drifting?
+What was it? She must think. Oh, who could think with that noise! How
+silly was their singing as they danced, how uncouth!
+
+  "All dance as pretty as you can,
+  Turn your toes and left alleman;
+    First gent sashay to the right,
+  Now swing the girl you last swung about,
+  And now the one that's cut her out,
+    And now the one that's dressed in white,
+  And now the belle of the ball."
+
+The dancers seemed bitten to the quick with the tarantula of an ecstatic
+hilarity; their bodies swayed in perfect harmony to the swing of the
+fiddles and the swell of the chorus. The most uncouth of them came under
+the spell of that mad magic. Their movements, that in the beginning of the
+dance had been shy and awkward, became almost beautiful; they forgot arms,
+hands, feet; their bodies had become like the strings of some skilfully
+played instrument, obediently responsive to rhythm, and in that composite
+blending of races each in his dancing brought some of the poetry of his
+own far land. The scene was amazing in its beauty and simplicity, like the
+strong, inspirational power and rugged rhythm of some old border minstrel.
+One by one the dancers glowed with better understanding; discordant
+elements, alien nations were fused to harmony in this vivid picture.
+
+Peter turned to Kitty, expecting to see her face aglow with the warmth of
+it. She stood beside him, the one unresponsive soul in the room, on her
+lips a pale, tolerant smile.
+
+"Aren't they splendid, Kitty, these women? More than half of them work
+like beavers all day, and they have young children and dozens of worries,
+but would you suspect it? They're just the women for this country."
+
+Now in the present state of affairs almost any other subject would have
+been better calculated to promote good feeling than the one on which Peter
+had alighted. Kitty's thoughts had perversely lingered about one who,
+though not one with these women, had yet their sturdy self-reliance, their
+acquiescence in grim conditions, their pleasure in simple things. Kitty's
+apprehension, slow to kindle, had taken fire like a forest, and by its
+blaze she saw things in a distorted light; her present vision magnified
+the relations of Peter and Judith to a degree that a month ago she would
+have regarded as impossible. "He is her lover!" was the accusation that
+suddenly flashed through her mind, and with the thought an overwhelming
+desire to say something unkind, something that should hurt him, supplanted
+all judgment and reason.
+
+"Oh, it's a decidedly remarkable scene, pictorially, I agree with you. And
+an artist, of course--but isn't it a trifle quixotic, Peter, to idealize
+them because they are having a good time? There's no virtue in it. It is
+conceivable that they might have to work just as hard and have just as
+many little children to look after, and yet not have these dances you
+praise them for coming to."
+
+"I'm afraid you find us and our amusements a little crude. Evidently the
+spirit of our dances does not appeal to you; but I did not suppose it
+necessary to remind you that they should not be judged by the standard of
+conventional evening parties," said Peter, hurt and angry in his turn.
+
+"Us, our amusements, our dances? So you are quite identified with these
+people, my dear Peter, and I had thought you an ornament of cotillions and
+country clubs. I can only infer that it is somebody in particular who has
+brought about your change of heart."
+
+Peter flushed a little, and Kitty kept on: "Some of the native belles are
+quite wonderful, I believe. Nannie Wetmore tells of a half-breed who is
+very handsome."
+
+Peter set his lips. "At the expense of spoiling Nannie's pretty romance, I
+must tell you that the lady she refers to is not only the most beautiful
+of women, but she would be at ease in any drawing-room. It would be as
+ridiculous to apply the petty standards of ladyhood to her as it would
+to--well, imagine some foolish girl bringing up the question at a woman's
+club--'Was Joan of Arc a lady?'" Peter spoke without calculating the
+conviction that his words carried. He was angry, and his manner, voice,
+intonation showed it.
+
+Kitty, now that her most unworthy suspicions had been confirmed by Peter's
+ardent championing of Judith, lost her discretion in the pang that gnawed
+her little soul: "I beg your pardon, Peter. When I spoke I did not, of
+course, know that this young woman was anything to you."
+
+"Anything to me? My dear Kitty, I've never had a better friend than Judith
+Rodney."
+
+The dance was at its flood-tide. The exhilaration had grown with each
+sweep of the fiddle-bow, with the sorcery of sinuous, swaying bodies, with
+the song of the dancers as they joined in the calling out of the figures,
+with the rhythmic shuffle of feet, with the hum of the pulses, with the
+leaping of blood to cheek and heart till the dancers whirled as leaves
+circling towards the eddies of a whirlpool. The dancing Mrs. Dax split her
+favors into infinitesimal fragments, for each measure of which her long
+list of waiting gallants stood ready to pick a quarrel if need be. Her
+dancing, in the splendor of its spontaneity, had something of the surge of
+the west wind sweeping over a field of grain. Sometimes she waved back her
+partner and alone danced a figure, putting to the music her own
+interpretation--barbaric, passionate, rude, but magnificently vivid. And
+the dancers would stop and crowd about her, clapping hands and stamping
+feet to the rhyming movement of her body, while against the wall her
+hostile sister-in-law, Mrs. Leander, stood and glared in a fury of
+disapproval, Leander himself smiling broadly meanwhile and exercising the
+utmost restraint to keep from joining Mrs. Johnnie's train.
+
+The "XXX" men, who had remained aloof from the dancers and the merriment,
+keeping a faithful vigil in the bunk-room, where the hospitable bottles
+were to be found, seemed to awaken from the spell that had bound them all
+day. Henderson, the foreman, whose face had not lost its tallow paleness
+despite the number of his potations, put his head through the door to have
+a look at the dancing Mrs. Dax, was caught in the outermost eddy of the
+whirling throng, and was soon dancing as madly as the others. The rest of
+the "XXX" party still hugged the bunk-room, where the bottles gleamed
+hospitable. They were still dusty from their long ride of the early
+morning, and more than once their fear-quickened imaginations had been
+haunted by the spectre of the dead cotton-woods, from which something
+heavy and limp and warm had been swaying when they left it. Henderson had
+secured the dancing Mrs. Dax for a partner. The "caller-out," stationed
+between the two rooms, warmed to his genial task. He improvised, he put a
+wealth of imagination and personality into his work, he showered
+compliments on the nimbleness of Mrs. Dax's feet, he joked Henderson on
+his pallor, he attempted a florid venture at Kitty. Miguel put fresh magic
+into his bowing, Jose's fiddle rioted with the madness of it.
+
+Judith stood for a moment in the kindly enveloping darkness, and her heart
+cried out in protest at the thing she must do. It was the utmost cruelty
+of fate that forced her here to dance on the evening of the day that they
+had killed him. But she must do it, that his children might evade the
+stigma of "cattle-thief," that the shadow of the gallows-tree might not
+fall across their young lives, that the neighbors might give credence to
+the tale of Jim's escape from his enemies, that Alida and she might earn
+the pittance that would give the children the "clean start" that Jim had
+set his heart on so confidently. And she must dance and be the merriest of
+them all that these things might happen, but again and again she deferred
+the dread moment. The light, the music, the voices, the shuffle of the
+feet came to her as she stood forlorn in the grateful darkness. On the
+wall the shadows of the dancers, magnified and grotesque, parodied their
+movements, as they contended there, monstrous, uncouth shapes, like
+prehistoric monsters gripping, clinching in some mighty struggle; and
+above it all sang out the wild rhythm of Miguel's fiddle, and young Jose's
+bow capered madly.
+
+Judith drew close to the window, and the merriment struck chill at her
+heart like the tolling of a knell. She saw the pale face of Henderson
+gleam yellow-white among the dancers, and, watching him, the blood-lust of
+the Indian woke in her heart. The rest of the room was but a blur; the
+dancers faded into swaying shadows; she saw nothing but Henderson as he
+danced that he might forget the gray of morning, the black, dead trees,
+and the grotesque thing with head awry that swayed in the breeze like a
+pendulum. He dreaded the long, black ride that would bring him to his
+camp, for he alone of the lynchers remained. Something was drawing his
+gaze out into the blackness of the night. He struggled against the
+temptation to look towards the window. He whirled the Dax woman till her
+twinkling feet cleared the floor. He sang to the accompaniment of Miguel's
+fiddle. He was outwitting the thing that dangled before his eyes, having
+the incontrovertible last word with a vengeance. And as he danced and
+swayed, all unwittingly his glance fell on the window opposite, and Jim
+Rodney's face looked in at him, beautiful in its ecstasy of hate--Rodney's
+face, refined, sharpened, tried in some bitter crucible, but Rodney's
+face! Henderson could not withdraw his fascinated gaze. He stood in the
+midst of the dancers like a man turned to stone. He put up his hand to his
+eyes as if to brush away a cloud of swarming gnats, then threw up his arms
+and rushed from the room. The dancers paused in their mad whirl. Miguel's
+bow stopped with a wailing shriek. Every eye turned towards the window for
+an explanation of Henderson's sudden panic, but all was dark without on
+the prairie. The magic had gone from the dance, the whirlwind of drapery
+that had swung like flags in a breeze dropped in dead air. "What was it?"
+the dancers asked one another in whispers.
+
+And for answer Judith entered, but a Judith that was strange to them.
+There was about her a white radiance that kept the dancers back, and in
+her eyes something of Mary's look, as she turned from Calvary. The dancers
+still kept the position of the figures, the men with their arms about
+their partners' waists, the women stepping forward; they were like the
+painted figures of dancers in a fresco. And among them stood Judith,
+waiting to play her part, waiting to show her world that she could dance
+and be merry because all was well with her and hers. But the bronzed sons
+of the saddle hung back, they who a day before would have quarrelled for
+the honor of a dance. They were afraid of her; it would be like dancing
+with the death angel. She looked from face to face. Surely some one would
+ask her to dance, and her eyes fell on Henderson, returning from the
+bottled courage in the bunk-room. Some word was due from him to explain
+his terror of a moment ago.
+
+"Oh, Miss Judith, I thought you was a ghost when I seen you at the
+window."
+
+"A ghost that's ready to dance." She held out her hand to him. In her
+gesture there was something of royal command, and Henderson, reading the
+meaning in her eyes, stepped forward. Her face, almost a perfect replica
+of the dead man's, looked at him.
+
+"I bring you greeting from my brother," she said. "He has gone on a long
+journey."
+
+Henderson started. Through the still room ran the murmur, "Rodney's
+outwitted them; he's played a joke on the rope!" And Judith, his
+dare-devil sister, had come with his greetings to Henderson, leader of the
+faction against him! The tide had turned. The applause that is ever the
+meed of the winner was hers to command. The cattle faction were ready to
+sing the praises of her splendid audacity. In their hearts they were glad
+in the thought that Jim had outwitted them.
+
+Miguel's bow dashed across the strings, and he drew from the little brown
+fiddle music that again made them merry and glowing. The magic came back
+to the dance, the blood leaped again with the merry madness, and they
+swept to the bowing like leaves when the first faint wail of winter cries
+in the trees.
+
+Hamilton, standing apart with Kitty Colebrooke, had been a dazed witness
+of the scene. With the rest he had watched the entrance of Judith, had
+been stunned by the change in her appearance, had seen her triumph and
+heard the rumor of Jim's escape, and his heart had warmed with the good
+word. She had probably managed the plan, and had come to-night, in the joy
+of her triumph, to hurl in their faces that she had outwitted them. And
+she had paid the penalty of her courage--her face told that. What a woman
+she was! Her heart would pay the penalty to the last throb, and yet she
+could dance with the merriest of them. And as she danced she seemed to
+Peter Hamilton, in her white draperies, like a cloud of whirling
+snow-flakes drifting across the silence of the desert night. She was the
+one woman in all the world for him, though his blind eyes had faced the
+light for years and had not known it. He had squandered the strength of
+his youth in the pursuit of a little wax light, and had not marked the
+serene shining of the moon.
+
+"And a man there was and he made his prayer--" he quoted to himself. Well,
+thank God that it had not been answered. He would take her away from here.
+She could take her place in his family and reflect credit on his choice.
+His family, his friends--he winced at the thought of their possible
+reception of the news. But Judith's presence would adjust these
+difficulties. He would present her to Kitty now, that his old friend might
+see what manner of woman she was. Kitty, he felt, would be kind in memory
+of the old days. She would give to them both in friendship what she had
+denied him in love. And as he warmed to the thought he turned to the woman
+of his youth. And she read a look in his face that had not been there in a
+long time. Had he, then, come back to her? Was the distance from bark to
+shore lessening as the sea of misunderstanding diminished?
+
+"Kitty, we were speaking a moment ago of Miss Rodney. You would like to
+know her, I'm sure. We've been such good friends all these years while you
+were deciding that what I wanted was not good for us--and deciding wisely,
+as I know now. Look at her! You'll understand how she has helped me keep
+the balance of things. When she's finished dancing you'll let me bring her
+to you, won't you?"
+
+And Kitty, who had expected much different words, struggled with the
+meaning of these unexpected ones. The strangeness of the pain bewildered
+her. Her dazed consciousness refused to accept that Peter was asking
+permission to present to her a woman whom she thought should not have been
+permitted to enter her presence. There was about her a white flame of
+anger that seemed to lick up the red blood in her veins as she turned to
+answer:
+
+"She is undeniably handsome, Peter, but I do not care to meet your
+mistress."
+
+He bowed low to her as Lieutenant Swift, of Fort Washakie, who was of the
+Wetmore party, came to claim Kitty's hand for the next dance. Judith and
+Henderson were leading the last figure, their hands clasped high in an
+arch through which the dancers trooped in couples. Again and again he
+tried to catch Judith's eye, but her glance never once met his. Her great,
+wide eyes had a far-away look as if they saw some tragedy, the shadow of
+which would never fall from her. She was, indeed, the tragic muse in her
+floating white drapery, the tragic muse whose grief is too deep for tears.
+He watched her as she swept towards him in the figure of the dance, the
+head thrown back, slightly foreshortened, the mouth smiling with the smile
+that knows all things, the eyes holy wells of truth. He saw in her
+something of the tenderness of Eve, for all the blending of the calm
+modern woman, capable in affairs, equal to emergency. It was like her to
+contrive her brother's escape and then to dance with the very men who had
+knotted the noose for his hanging. Henderson was bowing to her, the dance
+was over, and the next moment she was alone.
+
+"Is it you, Peter?" She thrust a strand of hair back from her temple. Her
+eyes rested on him for a moment, then wandered, till in their absent look
+was the rapt expression of the sleep-walker. The dark-rimmed eyes had in
+their depths the quiet of a conflagration, and Peter, seeing these things,
+and knowing the gamut of all her moods, saw that he had been mistaken. She
+had not come, to dance in triumph, in the face of her brother's enemies.
+There was no triumph in her face, but white, consuming despair.
+
+"Did you ask me to dance?" Again she put back the strand of hair. "Forgive
+me for being so stupid, but I've kept post-office to-day, and had a long
+ride, and I danced with Henderson."
+
+He drew her arm within his and led the way out through the crowd of
+dancers to the star-strewn night. She did not speak again, nor did she
+seem to notice that they had left the room with the dancers. She turned
+her face towards the lonely valley, where the drama of her brother's
+passing had been consummated, and something there was in her look as it
+turned towards the hills that told Peter.
+
+"Tell me, Judith, 'what has happened?"
+
+For answer she pointed towards the valley. "They did it last night at the
+dead cotton-woods. Henderson led them. I could not stay with Alida. I had
+to come here to dance that no one might suspect."
+
+Her voice was steady, but low and thrilling. In its deep resonance was the
+echo of all human sorrow. There was no hint of accusation, yet Peter felt
+accused. He felt, now when it was too late, that his position had been one
+of almost pusillanimous negligence. From the beginning he had taken a firm
+stand against violent measures. He had talked, argued, reasoned, inveighed
+against violence; no later than a week ago he had ridden across the desert
+to tell Henderson that the Wetmore outfit would take no part in violence
+of any sort, and that the cattle outfit that did resort to extreme
+measures would miss the support of the "W-Square" in any future range
+business. But it had not been enough. He should have made plain his
+position in regard to Judith. With her as his future wife the tragedy of
+the valley would not have been possible.
+
+From the ranch-house came the swell of the fiddles, the rhythmic shuffle
+of feet, the song of the dancers, dulled by distance. Beside him was
+Judith, a white spirit, the woman in her dead of grief. And yet, through
+all the grim horror of the tragedy she remembered the part that had been
+allotted to her, threw all the weight of her personality on the side of
+the game she was playing.
+
+"You must be on our side, Peter, and when there is talk of Jim's absence
+you must imply that he is East somewhere. You will know how to meet such
+inquiries better than we women. Henderson will be only too glad. You
+should have seen the wretch when I held out my hand to him and told him to
+dance with me. He came, white and shambling; we have nothing to fear from
+Henderson. Alida has no money to go away with. She and I must stay here
+and make a beginning for the children, and, Peter, we want you to help
+us."
+
+He had no voice to answer her brave words for a minute, and then his
+sentences came uncertain and halting.
+
+"You must think me a poor sort of friend, Judith, one who has been blind
+till the eleventh hour and is then found wanting. I feel so guilty to you,
+to your brother's wife, to that little child who put out his arms so
+trustfully to me that night, but I never imagined that things would come
+to such a pass as this. The smaller cattle outfits have been doing a good
+deal of blustering, but the more conservative element supposed that they
+had them in check, and did not for a moment think that they would take the
+law into their own hands. Believe me, this lawlessness has been in the
+face of every influence that could be brought to bear, and it shall not go
+unpunished."
+
+She spoke to him from the darkness, as the spirit of grief might speak.
+"An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, that is the justice of the
+plains. But, Peter, it is but poor justice. What's done is done, and fresh
+violence will not give back Alida her husband nor the little ones their
+father. What we need is friends, one or two loyal souls who, though
+knowing the hideous truth of this thing, will stand by us in our pitiful
+falsehood. I have told no one, nor shall I, but you and--Peter, you must
+not laugh at your fellow-conspirator--Leander."
+
+He took her hands in his and pressed them; big hands they were, and
+hardened by many a homely task, but withal tender and with the healing
+quality of womanliness in the touch of their warm, supple fingers. But
+to-night she did not seem to know that he held them, nor to be conscious
+of his presence. The woman in her was dead of grief. The white spirit in
+her place, that plotted and planned that Jim's children and Jim's wife
+might not from henceforth walk in the shadow of the gallows, was beyond
+the prompting of the flesh. And again she spoke to him in the same
+far-away voice, with the same far-away look in her eyes.
+
+"You must know, Peter, that Leander is at heart of the salt of the earth.
+I told him about it all, and he asked to be given the commission to deal
+with the men. He has risen to his post magnificently. I heard him swear
+the wretches to secrecy, hint to them that he had a great story to tell
+them. They were frightened, and listened. And the poor little man that we
+have so despised told them convincingly how Jim had made good his
+escape--even Henderson half believes we saved him."
+
+Peter hoped that she would accuse him of his half-heartedness indirectly,
+if not openly. It would have made his conscience more comfortable, and his
+conscience troubled him sorely to-night. It was that fatal habit of
+procrastination that had brought this thing about. He had hesitated all
+these weeks about Judith, and while he had threshed out the pro and con of
+her disadvantageous family connection, this hideous tragedy had happened.
+
+"Peter"--and now her eyes seemed to come back to earth again, to lose
+something of the far-away look of the sleep-walker--"Peter, I'm cruel to
+speak to you of these things now. When your heart is full of your own
+happiness, I come to you like a dark shadow with this tragedy. But I am
+glad for the good that has come to you, Peter. Perhaps Miss Colebrooke
+told you of the day I met her in the wood, the day of the wolf-hunt. She
+was so beautiful, I understood--"
+
+"Judith, I hardly know how to say what I am going to, I feel that I have
+been such a bad friend to you, but you must hear me patiently. Together,
+if you are willing, after knowing all of me that you do, we must look
+after your brother's children. That night in the little house in the
+valley, when the little chap came to me, don't you remember, there was
+something fine and fearless in the way he did it. 'You may belong to the
+cattle side of the argument,' he seemed to say, 'but I trust you.' Now,
+Judith dear, that boy's faith in me is not going to be shaken. We must
+look after them together. It is a very little thing you have asked of me,
+my dearest, but a very big one that I am asking of you. Do you understand,
+my Judith, it is _you_ that I want? Don't think of me as I have been,
+Judith, but as you are going to make me. I want you to give me the right
+now, this evening, to share all this trouble with you. Do we understand
+each other, Judith? Is it to be? And will you come back with me now, into
+the room where they are dancing, and let me present you to them, to the
+Wetmores, as _my_ Judith, my betrothed?"
+
+"But, Peter, I don't understand. I--I thought you and Miss Colebrooke
+were--"
+
+"That's all over, Judith. I did love her once. Oh, you dear, brave woman,
+I'm not a hero from any point of view, and you know it. It's but a sorry
+lover that's making his prayer to you, my dearest; but you won't judge, I
+know, beloved, you will love me instead?"
+
+Judith turned towards the valley. Her whole being throbbed with a
+passionate response to the man who stood so humbly before her, but there
+were duties that came first. Her mind was full of Alida and her children,
+and her eyes still sought Peter's imploringly.
+
+"You will be a good friend to them, Peter--to Jim's people? I cannot talk
+to you of anything else to-night. Your heart is big, Peter, but you cannot
+feel, perhaps--"
+
+"Listen, Judith. Whatever friendship and protection I can give your family
+you may count upon from now till the end of time. I will be theirs as I am
+yours. I feel your grief, but I want to soothe it, too. And if you love
+me, and I feel, Judith, that you do, you must let them all see to-night,
+these people who know us both, that we stand together before all the world
+for better or worse. Think, Judith, and you will see that you owe it to
+yourself, to me, to all these men, who reverence you as the one woman, the
+one ideal in their lonely lives."
+
+She could not speak. The moment was too full, the strain had been too
+great; but she smiled surrender, and Peter caught her tenderly in his arms
+and kissed her once--his Judith she was now, his heroine. Then, without
+another word, he drew her arm through his and led her back to the lights,
+where the dancers still held high carnival.
+
+Judith's half-sister, Eudora, was making a pretty quarrel by perversely
+forgetting the order in which she had given her dances. The girl was so
+undeniably happy that Judith dreaded the grim news she must tell her.
+Eudora blushed as she encountered Judith's eye. Her half-sister ever
+offered a check on Eudora's exuberant coquetry, with its precipitation of
+discussions that often ended in bullets. Leander stood on the outermost
+fringe of Eudora's potential partners. He would not have dared to maintain
+it openly, yet he was sure the pretty minx had promised that dance to him.
+
+"Dance with Leander, dear, and don't let those men begin quarrelling. I've
+something to tell you, presently," said Judith.
+
+Texas Tyler stood glowering at them from the doorway. He would not catch
+Judith's eye as she tried to speak to him. Kitty sat alone for the moment.
+She had sent the young lieutenant to fetch her a cup of coffee, but as
+Peter approached with Judith she averted her eyes.
+
+"Kitty, may I present to you my fiancee, Miss Rodney?"
+
+Kitty rose superbly to the situation. She might, indeed, have made the
+match she was so overjoyed in the good-fortune of her old friend Peter.
+She made no reference to the woodland meeting--she hoped for the happiness
+of seeing them in town. And she bade Peter tell the good news to Nannie
+Wetmore, they would be so glad. Nannie swallowed a grimace and proffered a
+cousinly hand. She had suspected some such news as this when she saw that
+things were not going well with Kitty and Peter.
+
+"Better one dance with a good partner that can swing ye than several with
+a feeble partner that leaves ye to swing your own corners!"
+
+Judith looked up, smiling. She recognized the characteristic utterance of
+her old friend Mrs. Yellett. The matriarch had sustained a breakdown, and
+arrived, in consequence, when the dance was half over, but she was
+philosophical, as always, in the face of misfortune, and loudly attested
+her pleasure in the renowned pedal feats of her partner, Costigan.
+
+Behind came Mary Carmichael, looking brown and happy. From the attitude of
+the group around Judith and Peter Mary divined what had happened, and came
+to add her congratulations. Even Mrs. Yellett forgot to choose an axiom as
+her medium of expression, and kissed Judith publicly, with affectionate
+unction. Henderson had effaced himself, and Leander, proud of his triumph
+and Judith's commendation, sat in a corner and smiled contentedly.
+Ignorant of the drama to which they had played chorus, the dancers still
+riotously swung one another up and down the length of the room, and from
+the little brown fiddles came the gay music of Judith's betrothal.
+
+                                *THE END*
+
+
+
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JUDITH OF THE PLAINS***
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