CHAPTER VII
Afterwhat had just taken place at the Crystal Palace the bright sunshine of Nevada was welcome to both brothers. Inside the gambling house had been unwholesome excitement, passion, the dregs of cruel murder lust, and the shadow of death. In the open street were friendly faces, a sane world going about its business, and God’s sun in the heavens. The McClintocks had probably snuffed out a life. It had been one horribly distorted by evil. None the less, it shook their composure to have sent even such a soul to its last account. They wanted, if possible, to forget completely the look on the face of that huge figure collapsing upon the table.
A little girl stood squarely in front of them on the broken sidewalk. To the casual eye she appeared all patches, flying hair, and knobby legs. There was the shy wildness of a captured forest creature in her manner, but in her small body the McClintocks sensed, too, a dauntless spirit.
“Mister Goodmans,” she said, addressing them both, “don’t you ’member me?”
“Of course. You’re Vicky,” Scot told her.
She came directly to business. “Rob, he’s ’most always drunk ’n we ain’t got nothin’ to eat. Mollie ’n me’s jist awful hungry.”
“Hungry? Good Lord!” cried Hugh.
His brother took charge of the situation. “Go in to Groton’s with Vicky and get her a good dinner. I’ll see what supplies I can pick up and go down to the wagon with them.”
In front of the Delta saloon Scot met a Washoe Indian. He was carrying a half a sack of wild onions he had brought to town to trade. McClintock did business with him on the spot. At Lyman Jones’s store the faro dealer bought some rice and coffee. He also induced the merchant to let him have the last five pounds of flour he had in stock. With these supplies he tramped to the edge of town to the place where the Dodsons had moved their camp.
He ploughed through heavy sand, up a steep slope of shale and loose rubble, to a narrow flat where the prairie schooner stood. Mollie Dodson must have heard him coming, for as he reached the wagon she called from within:
“Did you find Rob, Vicky?”
Perhaps the firmness of his tread told her at once of her mistake. She leaned out of the open flap and caught sight of Scot. Into her white face the colour beat in waves. Startled eyes held to his with a surprised question in them.
“I—I was looking for Vicky,” she said.
“Yes. I met Vicky.” His white teeth flashed in a smile that sought to win her confidence. “That young lady has a lot of sense. She wanted to know why the trustees of the Virginia Dodson Fund were not attending to business. So I’m here.”
“Oh! Vicky oughtn’t to have done that.” Another surge of colour, born of shame, swept into the cheeks.
For the first time Scot realized how very pretty she was. He found her diffidence charming, for he lived in a world where the women he knew could not afford to be shy.
“Vicky did just right,” he protested while he was opening his sack. “Our baby must be well fed. It’s my business to see to that, and I’m going to do it from now.”
He built a fire while she watched him, the baby in her arms. Mollie was acutely uncomfortable. The gambler had taken off his coat in order that his movements might be freer. In his figured waistcoat, frilled cambric shirt, close-fitting trousers, and varnished boots he looked too exquisite for menial labour. She was acutely conscious of her patched and faded gingham. It was Cophetua and the beggar maid brought down to date, except that she was a wife and not a girl.
“I wish—you wouldn’t,” she stammered.
He stood up, masterful and dominant. His glance swept round and found a battered water bucket. “Where’s the spring, Mrs. Dodson?” he asked.
“Let me go,” she begged. “It’s—it’s quite a way.”
“I’m feeling better to-day. Maybe I can make it to the spring and back,” he said, smiling. “Which way, please?”
Reluctantly she pointed to the spring. It was in an arroyo nearly a quarter of a mile distant.
“Robert forgot to get water before he left. He’s—away looking for work,” she explained with a slight tremor of the lips.
He liked her better for the little lie. Scot guessed that Dodson had not been at the camp for several days. He had seen the man in town yesterday drunk, and again to-day sleeping under an empty wagon in a vacant lot. It was a safe bet that Mollie Dodson carried the water for the family use.
Scot returned with the water and made a batch of biscuits and some hot coffee. While she ate he put rice on to boil.
When he looked at her he saw tears in her brown eyes. She was choking over the food and trying to prevent him from seeing it. He decided that this was a time for plain talk.
“I reckon I can guess how you feel,” he said gently. “But that’s not the right angle to look at this thing. Back where you come from persons that take help from others are—well, they don’t hold their heads up. But this is the West, a new country. The camp’s short of food. It can’t be bought in the market unless you know the ropes. We share with each other here. In a kind of way we’re all one big family. I’m your big brother, and I’m certainly going to see this baby is fed proper.”
She murmured something he could not catch for the break in her voice. He bustled about the fire cheerfully and let her alone till she had regained control of herself.
By which time Hugh and Vicky arrived, that long-legged young lady skipping on the hilltops, with high-pitched voluble comment.
“Looky. Looky here, Sister Mollie, what I got,” she cried in her eager breathless fashion. “He got it for me, Mister—Mister Santa Claus.” One finger pointed straight at Hugh while she held out for the inspection of her sister a doll with blue eyes and flaxen hair.
“Oh, but you shouldn’t—you ought not,” Mollie protested to the boy. “Did she ask you for it?”
“No, ma’am. I wanted to get it for her. It was the only doll for sale in Virginia, far as I know. I been hankerin’ to buy that doll. Now I feel a heap better.”
Vicky herself was so clearly in a seventh heaven of delight that her sister had not the heart to say anything more about it. But she was uneasy in her mind. She wondered if their obligations to these young men would never end. What would Rob say? How would he make her pay for the charity he had forced her to accept?
In the days that followed she had occasion many times to feel weighted by the kindnesses of Scot McClintock. Hugh had departed to report for duty with the express company, but his brother made it a point to see that the little family in the prairie schooner did not lack for food.
He hunted the cañons and brought back a young buck deer with him. One hind quarter of it went to Mollie Dodson to keep the pot boiling. Fish, rabbits, a prairie hen, three dozen eggs brought by a rancher all the way from Honey Lake Valley; these and other delicacies were forced upon the protesting woman.
Robert Dodson’s attitude was one of sneering suspicion. He was willing that another man should supply his family with the food it needed, but he was mean enough to jeer at his wife and bully her because of it. Even while he ate the meat brought by McClintock his tongue was a whip that lashed Mollie and the man. His whole attitude implied that the two were carrying on a clandestine love affair.
Mollie wept herself to sleep more nights than one. By nature a dependent woman, she did not now know which way to turn. Her husband was a broken reed. He no longer even pretended to be looking for work. Humiliating though it was, she had to accept Scot’s favours. She could not let the family starve. A thousand times Robert Dodson had trampled her pride and affection in the dust. She knew that life with him held nothing for her, but it must go on through the long gray years that stretched ahead till the end of things. She was not the sort of woman to contemplate suicide with any fortitude. Both the courage and the cowardice for it she lacked.
Scot returned from the Dodson camp one day, lips close set and eyes dangerously lit with a smouldering fire. Mollie was nursing a black eye. She had fallen, she told him, against the corner of the wagon. He had not believed her when she told this tremulous lie. But Vicky had settled the matter past doubt. She was waiting for him in a little gulch near the camp, waiting to tell him in a burst of impotent childish passion that Dodson had beaten Mollie because she did not have supper ready for him when he came home hours after the fire was out.
As it chanced, McClintock met the ne’er-do-well a hundred yards farther down the gulch. Dodson was, for a wonder, sober. He had no money of his own and he had been unable to wheedle many free drinks from miners.
At sight of the gambler Dodson scowled. He had plenty of reasons for disliking Scot. He nursed a continuous spleen because he would not let him get at the money collected for the baby. His pride suffered at accepting favours from a man who scorned him. He was jealous of the interest McClintock must have aroused in his “woman,” Mollie Dodson. No matter how he stormed and sneered at her he could not keep her mind from a comparison of the men who just now were most present in her life, and in that silent judgment he knew he must play a sorry part.
The bummer, to use the phrase of the day, would have passed without speaking. A sulky dignity was the rôle he judged the most effective. But Scot caught him by the coat lapel and swung him sharply round.
“I’m going to teach you not to lay a hand on—on a woman,” McClintock said, his voice thick with suppressed passion.
Dodson’s thin mask of offended dignity fell away instantly. He tried to back off, snarling at the man whose steel grip held him.
“She’s been tellin’ lies on me, has she?” he retorted, showing his teeth.
“Mrs. Dodson says she fell against the wagon. I don’t believe it. You struck her, you yellow wolf. Right now I’m going to give you the thrashing of your life.”
The eyes of the loafer flashed fear. “You lemme go,” he panted, trying to break away. “Don’t you dass touch me. Think I don’t know about you an’ her? Think I’m a plumb idjit?”
An open-handed smash across the mouth stopped his words. He made a swift pass with his right hand. Scot’s left shot out and caught the wrist, twisting it back and up. A bullet was flung into the sky; then, under the urge of a pain which leaped from wrist to shoulder of the tortured arm, the revolver dropped harmlessly to the ground.
“Goddlemighty, you’re breakin’ my arm,” Dodson shrieked, sagging at the knees as he gave to the pressure.
Scot sent home a stiff right. “You’ll be nursing a black eye from that to-morrow,” he said evenly.
The craven in Dodson came out at once. He tried to escape punishment by whining and begging. He promised anything the other man might demand of him. He made an attempt to fling himself to the ground and cover up. McClintock set his teeth and went through with the job.
Afterwards to the bully who lay on the sand sobbing with rage and pain, he gave curt orders. “You’ll go back to town and not show up at the wagon to-night. To-morrow you’ll tell Mrs. Dodson you had a fight. You’ll not tell her who with or what it was about. If you ever lay a hand on her again or on Vicky, I’ll break every bone in your body. Understand?”
The beaten man gulped out what might be taken for an assent.
Scot turned away, sick at heart. Already he questioned the wisdom of what he had done.
CHAPTER VIII
AWashoezephyr was playing impish tricks in Virginia City. It screamed down the side of Mt. Davidson in a gale of laughter, filling the air with the white powder of alkali dust. It snatched hats from unwary heads and sent them flying into the cleft cañon below which led through the hills to the sage desert. It swooped up a dog on A Street and dropped the yelping cur down the chimney of a shack on B Street. Boards were ripped from fences and sucked straight into the air for fifty feet. A basket of duck eggs took premature flight from a farmer’s wagon, sailed through the window of a barber shop, and gave a customer in the chair a free egg shampoo. The wind came in ribald gusts, tremendous, filled with jeering howls.
About Virginia City there have been many disputes, but nobody who lived there in the ’sixties ever denied that it was the windiest spot on earth. The town slanted like a steep roof, each street a terrace. During the zephyrs all sorts of possessions came rolling downhill like tumbleweeds. They ranged in size from a spool of thread to the roof of a house.
Scot McClintock, working his way along B Street, took refuge in a hurdy-gurdy[7]near Union. The noise of a piano, of fiddles, of stamping feet, filled the hall. The place was flooded with light from kerosene lamps set in candelabras with crystal pendants. At one side of the room was the inevitable bar.
[7]An unusual feature of Virginia City was the hurdy-gurdy house. In the early days it was quite respectable, at least from the Western point of view. The girls were generally Germans. Their business was to dance with the miners and to lead them afterwards to the bar for a drink. Most of the girls saved their money to send home to their parents overseas. Serious-minded young women, they often married well and happily. Later, these houses degenerated.—W. M. R.
[7]An unusual feature of Virginia City was the hurdy-gurdy house. In the early days it was quite respectable, at least from the Western point of view. The girls were generally Germans. Their business was to dance with the miners and to lead them afterwards to the bar for a drink. Most of the girls saved their money to send home to their parents overseas. Serious-minded young women, they often married well and happily. Later, these houses degenerated.—W. M. R.
A blonde young woman of Teutonic descent joined Scot. “Would you like to dance, Mr. McClintock?” she asked deferentially.
“Not to-night, thank you,” he answered with the grave respect he gave all women.
His glance swept the hall, was arrested at a small group near the farther end of the bar. The central figure of it was a huge rough-bearded man with long hair flowing to his shoulders. He wore an army overcoat, dusty boots, and Mexican spurs.
The girl’s eyes gave a signal of alarm. She had forgotten for the moment about the affair between the McClintocks and Sam Dutch.
“First time he’s been down,” she whispered. “He has not yet seen you already. If you like—the door——”
Scot smiled grimly. He had a picture of himself slipping out of the door to avoid Sam Dutch.
It was his temperament always to take the bull by the horns. He stepped across the dance floor to the bar, and stood at the elbow of the desperado.
Dutch, clinking glasses with a girl, looked round to see his enemy before him. He was taken at a disadvantage. Was this a trap set for him? If he made a move would the younger McClintock or some other ally of the gambler fill him full of slugs? Nervously his eyes stole round the big room. They came back to the clean, straight figure standing in front of him.
“No place for you, Dutch,” the faro dealer said curtly. “Not good for your health. You’ve got a weak heart, you know. It’s likely to stop working altogether if you’re not careful of yourself. Go home—now—right away—and stay there till the stage leaves. This is an unhealthy altitude for you. Try Aurora or Dayton.”
The bad man moistened his dry lips with his tongue. Tiny beads of moisture stood out on his forehead. He had come to the parting of the ways and knew it. If he let this man drive him from the house he could never hold up his head in Virginia again. His reign as chief would be ended here. Should he take a chance and draw? He had killed many men. This gambler, so far as he knew, had never got one. Why not now? This very instant. It would all be over in a flash.
And yet—he could not do it. With McClintock’s cold and steely stare in his he could not drop the glass from his hand and reach for a revolver. The wills of the two clashed, fought out the battle, and the stronger won.
The gaze of the killer fell away and slid round the hall in a furtive search for help. It found none. He was playing a lone hand. The way out must be one of his own choosing. Of all these men and women who watched this crisis so tensely not one but would be glad to see him blotted out of existence. His hand was against every man’s. That was the penalty he paid for his reputation.
Again his tongue went out to moisten dry lips.
“I—I reckon you’re right,” he heard himself say huskily. “I ain’t feelin’ good yet. Fact is, I’m still a sick man. Mebbe I better go home. I was thinkin’ thataway myself before you came in.”
“Keep right on thinking it. Think yourself out of Virginia inside of twenty-four hours,” ordered Scot implacably.
Dutch drained the glass and put it down shakily on the bar. He laughed with attempted bravado and swaggered to the door. There he turned.
“Meet up with you again one o’ these days, Mr. McClintock,” he said, his voice and manner a threat.
Scot said nothing. Not for an instant did his unwavering eyes release the man till the door had shut behind him. Then, quickly, disregarding the hands of congratulation thrust at him, he pushed through the crowd and passed from the rear of the building. He had no intention of letting himself be a target for a shot through the window.
The discredited killer did not leave by stage. He went out in a private buckboard to Carson, from whence he drifted to the new camp Aurora, already the largest town in that section of Nevada. His self-esteem and public repute, shaken by the showdown in the hurdy-gurdy house, were shortly restored by a rencontre with another bad man. He shot his victim in the stomach while they were drinking together, after which he was cock of the walk at Aurora.
CHAPTER IX
Theweeks passed, became months. Spring browned to summer and summer crisped to autumn. Hugh and Scot saw nothing of each other. The younger brother had given up riding and joined a gold rush to a new camp; the older was still dealing faro at the Crystal Palace.
The Dodsons were yet camped on the outskirts of Virginia. The man of the family spent most of his time hanging around saloons and dance halls. Rarely he did a day’s work. Usually he secured food and drink for himself by acting as janitor at some of the places which he frequented. For weeks at a time his wife never saw him.
Scot McClintock no longer visited the dugout beside the prairie schooner. The last time he had seen Mollie Dodson was the day when he had thrashed the bully to whom she was married. He did his kindnesses by proxy now. The missionary from Buffalo, New York, Calvin Baird by name, was his deputy in supplying the needs of the Dodson family. Sometimes Vicky reported to him, but he saw very little even of her.
Then, one day, Vicky came to him at the International Hotel, where he lived, and sent up word that she wanted to see him. Scot came down and found the face of his little friend wan and tear-stained.
“What’s wrong, Vicky?” he asked, slipping his arm round her shoulder.
She began to sob, and through her broken words he gathered the story. Dodson had come home drunk while his wife was getting a bucket of water, had flung himself on the bed without seeing the baby, and had fallen at once into heavy stertorous slumber. When Mollie got back the child was dead, smothered by her own father.
Scot borrowed a horse and rode out at once to the camp. Dodson had temporarily disappeared, frightened at the horrible thing he had done. The accident had taken place twelve hours earlier, and the tears of the mother were for the moment spent. She was dry-eyed and wan, in that deep despair which is beyond expression, almost beyond feeling. With a tenderness that set flowing in Scot a wild river of sympathy she drew back the cotton handkerchief that covered the baby face. For an instant his heart beat fast. Except for the pallor Virginia looked so natural she might have been asleep. He half-expected to see the lashes tremble and the blue eyes open.
McClintock took on himself all the arrangements for the funeral. He dragged Dodson out of a grog shop, soused his head in a horse trough, and when he became sober saw that he remained so until the burial.
The day after the interment Scot called on Mrs. Dodson. Her husband was not at the camp.
Presently he came plump to the purpose of his visit. He was never a spendthrift of words.
“What are you and Vicky going to do?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” the bereaved mother answered listlessly. “Vicky ought not to stay here. It’s not right. But I’ve no place to send her.”
“Mr. Stewart and I have discussed that. We’ve talked with some of the business men of the town. If you’re willing we’ll divert the baby’s fund to Vicky and send her down to Miss Clapp’s school at Carson. She’ll be well taken care of there. Miss Clapp is a fine woman. Does it seem to you a good idea?”
Tears brimmed to her eyes. “You’re good. I can never repay you. I—I’ll be awf’lly lonesome without her, but if you think it best——”
“It’s not what I think but what you think,” he said gently.
“Could I see her sometimes?”
“As often as you like. She would spend her vacations with you, of course.”
The lump in her throat began to ache again. Her gaze travelled beyond the cañon below, across the Twenty-Six Mile Desert and the Forty Mile Desert to the Pine Nut Mountains. There it rested for a long time. She drew in her breath with a deep ragged sigh that was almost a sob. “She’d better go. This is no life for a little girl. I want her to have a chance to—to—be happy and live with good people.”
“Is it any life for a young woman to lead?” he asked, his blue eyes fixed steadily on her.
A faint flag of colour fluttered in her wan cheeks. He had never before broken down the outposts of her reserve. She felt her pulse beating. His impersonal friendliness had suddenly become a close and vital thing.
“Why speak of that? I made my choice years ago,” she said. She thought, but did not say, that the hard and bitter facts of existence cannot be talked away. They are as immovable as the Sierras.
“We have to make fresh choices every day,” he told her. “Do you think your life can go on now the same as it did before? It can’t. There’s a gulf between you and—him. Have you any hope that it can be bridged?”
“No.”
“Or that you can do him any good by staying with him?”
“No.”
“Then why should you make deliberate shipwreck of your life—or let him do it for you? Just now you don’t care what becomes of you. But you have to keep on the best you can.”
He spoke quietly, his words unstressed, but just for a flash she caught in his eyes an expression that told her his emotions were a banked volcano. Mollie found herself trembling.
“No—no. I married him, for better or worse. I’ll stay with him.”
“Can you stay with him when he doesn’t want you, when he won’t stay with you?”
“Perhaps he’ll change,” she murmured.
The knuckles of his clenched hand were bloodless, she noticed.
“Men of his age don’t change. They’re what they have made themselves. They can’t be anything else. Would you waste your life on such an impossible chance? Don’t do it. Begin again.”
“How?” she asked.
“There’s work at Virginia for a hundred women. You can mend clothes or cook or keep boarders—anything for a start. Afterwards——” He let the future take care of itself.
In spite of her dependence Mollie had a capacity for dumb resistance. Scot left her knowing that he had the empty victory of having convinced her judgment but not the deep instinct in her born of habit and tradition.
He walked down the grade past dugouts, shanties, and lean-tos. Occasionally he could hear the blast of dynamite. He passed bull teams hauling hay from the Truckee Meadows, the drivers cracking long-lashed whips with short hickory handles. Freight outfits, wood haulers, and ore wagons filled the road. Everywhere was the bustle and activity that go with the early years of a new and prosperous mining camp. He was aware of it all only subconsciously, for his mind was filled with thoughts of the woman he had just left.
A medley of voices, a whirl of excited men, roused him from reflection as he reached the end of the business part of town. Just now he was not looking for crowds. He turned to make the climb to A Street when a voice hailed him.
“Just in time, Scot. We’re aimin’ to hang Dodson. Come on, old scout.”
McClintock stood rooted. Here was an easy way for Mollie out of her troubles. All he had to do was to keep on walking up hill and the matter would settle itself. It was none of his business. If Virginia City had had enough of the ne’er-do-well the matter was one for it to pass upon. The fellow was not worth a short bit anyhow. Scot’s judgment was that he was better dead.
None the less he found it impossible to keep on up the hill. He walked toward the mob and pushed a way through with his broad shoulders to the cowering wretch with the rope around his neck.
Dodson sank down and clung to McClintock’s knees. “Save me,” he begged, his face ashen gray.
“What’s he done?” asked Scot of the man who seemed to be the leader.
“You know what the drunken bummer did—killed his own baby. Then when Jerry Mulligan told him what for an hour ago he stuck a knife in him.”
“Is Jerry dead?”
“No. Not yet. Doc says maybe he’ll die.”
“Jerry have a six-shooter out?”
“No.”
“He was gonna attack me. It was self-defence,” the grovelling man pleaded.
One of the crowd spoke: “This Dodson’s bad—bad clear to the bottom of his heart. He’s been talkin’ about his wife to make excuses for what he did.”
“Let’s wait, boys,” Scot said. “Maybe Jerry will pull through.”
“No, let’s finish the job, Scot. This fellow’s no good, anyhow. You know it. So do we.” Jean Poulette, the owner of a gambling house, pushed to the front.
“I’m not thinking about him, Jean. I’m thinking about that little mother in the prairie schooner. She’s got trouble enough already, hasn’t she? Do you want to pile on more—to send her through life marked as the wife of a man that was hanged? Ain’t that rather rough on her, boys?”
“She’ll be well rid of him,” a voice cried.
“Sure,” agreed McClintock. “But not that way. I don’t say this drunken loafer is worth saving. But we can’t hang him without striking a blow at her. She’s sensitive, boys. It would hurt her ’way down deep.”
“Sho! Tha’s foolishness, Scot. It’d be a li’l shock at first maybe, but afterwards she’d just naturally be plumb pleased. Any of us would in her place.”
“Say, who started this gabfest?” demanded the man holding the other end of the rope that had been slipped over Dodson’s head. “Let’s hustle this job through. I got a man to meet right soon.”
McClintock met him eye to eye. “You can go meet him right now, Six-Fingered Pete. The hanging’s off.”
“Who says it’s off?” blustered Pete.
“I say so.” Scot spoke quietly, his voice low and clear.
“Someone elect you judge and jury, Scot?” asked Poulette.
“Sorry to interfere, boys. I’ve just come in from seeing Mrs. Dodson. She’s all broke up about the baby. You wouldn’t want to make things harder for her. It doesn’t matter a billy-be-damn whether this fellow lives or dies. Nobody cares about him. He’s nothing. We’ll hold him till we see how Jerry comes out—just stick him in the calaboose.”
If Scot was a dominating figure in the life of the camp it was not because men walked in fear of him. He never looked for trouble or avoided it. He never used his splendid strength and courage to bully those weaker than himself. Even old Tom Todd, the Negro roustabout who was the butt of the camp jokes, always met with respect from the dealer at the Crystal. His influence was born of liking and admiration. It maintained itself without effort on his part because he had the qualities of leadership.
It was a part of his gift that he made men want to follow the path he took. He usually knew exactly in what direction he wanted to go, but he never hectored or was overbearing.
Poulette felt within himself a response to Scot’s warm appealing smile, but he was ashamed to make a direct face about. “Might as well go through now. You can’t ever do justice without hurtin’ some woman somewhere.”
“An’ this bummer ce’tainly is ripe for a rope,” added Pete.
“I wouldn’t lift a hand for him,” Scot answered. “I’m still thinking of that mother’s aching heart, boys. Not one of us here was ever good enough to his mother. We’re a hard, tough lot. We’ve travelled a heap of crooked trails since we were kids at our mothers’ knees. Pete, you hard-boiled old sinner, I met your mother in Sacramento last year, and that little lady began to tell me about what a good boy you’ve always been to her, how you send her money now, and how when you were a freckled runt of a ten-year-old——”
Red as a beet, Pete interrupted roughly: “Oh, hire a hall, Scot.”
McClintock pushed his advantage home. The theme of his talk was mother love. These big, overgrown boys reacted to it because each one of them had enshrined in his own heart the memory of a mother he had many times hurt and often neglected. The point Scot made was that they could now pay part of the debt they owed their own mothers. It scored heavily.
“I reckon Scot’s right,” someone spoke up. “If it’s gonna worry the lady any, might as well postpone the necktie party.”
Mobs are fickle and unstable of purpose. This one’s mind began to veer. Inside of five minutes Scot had the members of the lynching party moulded to his view. They had no desire whatever to hang the poltroon who had stabbed their friend, or, at least, the desire was subordinated to a more imperative one.
The rescued man tried to whine out a blend of thanks and justification to the gambler.
Scot looked him over scornfully and turned on his heel without a word.
CHAPTER X
Theloyalty Mollie had cherished to her early ideal of marriage burned low for lack of fuel to feed upon. Her husband had practically deserted her. When he returned to camp it was to bully money out of her or to get some of their small store of belongings to sell. In the intervals she might starve for all he cared.
There came a day when she definitely broke with her past life. She moved into town and opened a small shop where she sold home-cooked food to miners eager to buy her cakes, cookies, pies, and doughnuts. She called her place the Back Home Kitchen, and she did a thriving business. The members of the fire companies patronized the store a great deal, and since they ran to a large extent the political and social life of Virginia City, as they had done in San Francisco a few years earlier, her shop became so much the vogue that she had to employ a Chinese assistant to help with the cooking.
Scot watched the venture but offered no advice. He had, in fact, not spoken to Mollie since the day after the funeral. Vicky had been taken to Carson by Hank Monk on the stage and was writing back badly spelled but enthusiastic letters to her sister. The cards had been re-shuffled, McClintock told himself, and he was no longer sitting in at the game.
Meanwhile, the new camps of Nevada went their humorous, turbulent, and homicidal way. Men grew wild over prospects that never had a chance to become real mines. They worked on croppings, sold and bought feet in a thousand prospects, struck it rich, went stony broke again within the month. They were in bonanza or in borrasca[8], and in either case kept their grins working. They lived in brush tents, sack tents, or dugouts, and the hard conditions never disturbed their happy-go-lucky optimism.
[8]The Mexicans used to say that a mine was in bonanza when its production was high, and in borrasca before the vein was struck or after it had pinched out. With the adoption of the terms by Americans, the words took on a more general application. A bonanza was then any highly profitable venture; a borrasca was the reverse.—W. M. R.
[8]The Mexicans used to say that a mine was in bonanza when its production was high, and in borrasca before the vein was struck or after it had pinched out. With the adoption of the terms by Americans, the words took on a more general application. A bonanza was then any highly profitable venture; a borrasca was the reverse.—W. M. R.
They shared their last pot of beans with a stranger and were gaily confident that to-morrow they would strike a pick into the glory hole.
The saving grace of American humour salted all their adventures. The law in particular, when it made its belated appearance, was a merry jest. Those who dispensed it and those who dispensed with it enjoyed the joke alike.
Two women in Carson quarrelled over a cow. One accused the other of milking it secretly. The jury decided that the defendant was guilty of milking the cow in the second degree. A man in Virginia City was haled before the court charged with drunkenness, which in Nevada was held to be a right guaranteed a man by the Constitution. The constable Mike whispered to the justice that the arrested man had one hundred dollars on his person. “Are youse guilty?” the judge demanded. The defendant said he was not. “You know domn well yez are. I fine yez a hundred dollars, fifty for me an’ fifty for Mike,” the Court passed judgment. Sometimes the laugh was on the Court, as in the case of a justice, very hazy as to his powers and duties, who conducted the preliminary hearing of a man charged with murder. He listened to the evidence till he was satisfied, then announced his decision. “I find you guilty and sentence you to be hanged at ten o’clock to-morrow. The constable will bring the prisoner and a rope.”
Even the homicidal mania of those who lived by their wits had its momentary gleams of dreadful humour. Scot drifted into a barber shop one day and found El Dorado Johnnie having his hair curled. The youth in the chair was dressed in new clothes. His boots had been polished. He was shaved and perfumed.
“Going to your wedding, Johnnie?” the faro dealer asked.
“No, sir,” replied the other. “ ‘Farmer’ Peel has give out that he’s gunnin’ for me. If I’m elected as the corpse I want to look nice.”
It turned out that Johnnie’s forethought was wise. “Farmer” Peel shot quicker and straighter than he did. Peel, who had come from Salt Lake with a record of several killings, was arrested for having made a disturbance. He was fined and released on his own recognizance to go and raise the money. “Farmer” Peel sober was a pleasant, mild young fellow who wanted to be at peace with the world, but Peel drunk was a demon. Before he raised the money to pay his fine, he visited several saloons and had a change of heart. Back he went to the court, caught the justice by the beard, and mopped that dignitary all over the floor. Nobody intervened, for the drunken man was dangerous. The justice, released at last, had to be removed to the hospital for repairs. Virginia City merely grinned. Judge or no judge, every man had to play his own hand.
Offences against property were considered more serious than those against life. In some camps hired desperadoes jumped claims. Hold-ups were of frequent occurrence, and every few days a stage robbery was reported. Nevada was too busy developing the newly discovered ore veins to pay much attention to these excrescences from the normal.
In this rough, crude society Mollie moved with as much safety as she could have done in a staid New England village. No ruffian could have molested her without the danger of being lynched. The only man who annoyed her was the one whose name she bore. When he discovered how well she was doing financially Dodson began to hang around the Back Home to bleed its mistress of what she earned.
Mollie was an easy victim. She never had been one to stand up for her own rights. She fought only feebly and without success to protect herself. Every day or two Dodson robbed the till.
He boasted of it to his cronies when he was half seas over. To Scot, who was keeping an eye on him in expectation of just such a possibility, the news was promptly carried. He learned that the man paid his visits to the Back Home in the evening.
Two days later Dodson knocked at the door of the shop and was admitted. He slouched forward to the counter and leered at the girl he had promised to love and protect.
“Come through, old woman.”
“I can’t. There’s just enough for the rent,” she pleaded.
“You’re holdin’ out on me. Tha’s what you’re doin’. I won’t stand it—not a minute.”
His eyes were glazed. He thrust his bullet head forward threateningly. Mollie recognized the signs of the abusive stage of intoxication. Presently he would begin to beat her if she opposed him. But she was desperate. She could not let him take the rent money.
“You can’t have it. That’s all there’s to it. You just can’t have it,” she cried.
Mollie flew to the till as the man came round the counter. She was between him and the money. He tried to thrust her to one side, but the space was narrow. For a few seconds he tugged at her in vain. Then his temper leaped out. He struck her again and again while she tried to shield herself from the blows.
Neither of them heard the door open or saw a man step into the room. Neither of them saw him take the counter in one flying leap. An arm reached out and plucked Dodson from his victim. It hurled him back against the wall, where he struck with great force, hung for a moment, and dropped limply to the floor.
Mollie lifted her eyes to those of Scot McClintock and into the white face came two flaming flowers. For in the eyes that burned down into hers she read that which brought a burst of music into her heart. She had fought against this—oh, how she had schooled herself to deny it! But with his strong arms round her, his heart beating against her own, what was the use of pretending any longer? Her supple body made a little motion of nestling closer. She began to sob quietly.
“He—he——”
Scot brushed her explanation aside. “Forget him. He’s out of your life. It’s you and I now. I kept away. I gave him his chance. I gave you yours to go it alone. That’s ended. I’m going to take care of you now.”
He lifted her flushed face and kissed it.
That kiss stirred to life all the Puritan blood of Mollie, the racial inheritance from a rock-ribbed ancestry. She pushed him from her with all the force of a despairing energy.
“No . . . no . . . no!” she cried, and fled to the room back of the shop.
She was afraid of his passionate tenderness for her, but she was afraid, too, of the deep yearning of her whole being for the love he offered.
In the days that followed Scot McClintock fought the fight of his life. He had always prided himself that he was master of his desires. When he yielded to self-indulgence it was because he chose to follow for a time the path of dalliance. But this keen-edged longing for the woman he loved flooded his being, swept over him like great waves over a bather in the surf. It set him fifty times pacing the floor, to and fro, to and fro. For the first time in his life he learned that he had nerves. There was a passionate urge in him to take what he wanted. He could make her happy in spite of all the tongues that would clack, in spite of cynical smiles and hard unforgiveness on the part of the world.
But could he? Would his love be enough to insure Mollie’s happiness if he overbore her scruples? He knew it would not. There was in her a something fine and flowerlike that blossomed shyly through all the sordid impedimenta of her life. If he snatched at her, as a child does at a rose, the fragrant beauty of her would be crushed and lost.
Yet Scot knew that it was the best of him that wanted her. This was the real thing that had come to him at last. Love had penetrated the folly and waste of his life. Its rapier thrust had pushed through the conceits of manner and dress in which he had wrapped himself. It called to the simple elemental manhood in him.
He knew how his world would take it if he eloped with Mollie. His old father, Alexander McClintock, a Bible-reading Presbyterian of granitic faith, would cast him off with a gesture worthy of the ancient prophets. Hugh would be hurt and shocked, but he would not give him up. Virginia City would be interested but not outraged, for the town had by this time become accustomed to unexpected shifts in marital relations. The legal divorce had not yet reached Nevada, but a simple substitute for it was not infrequent. Many young women who had come from the East by way of the Overland Trail had found the long desert trip destructive of romance and had deserted their rough and weatherworn husbands for more devoted and attractive lovers. In Mollie’s case the camp would find extenuating circumstances. Dodson was a ne’er-do-well of a particularly despicable type. He was a shiftless, wife-beating drunkard. It had not been his fault that Jerry Mulligan had persisted in recovering from the knife thrust in his side. Moreover, Scot was known to be no Lothario. The general verdict would be that it was nobody’s affair but that of the principals. If Dodson felt aggrieved he could always appeal to Judge Colt as a court of last resort.
Yes, but Scot had to think of Mollie herself—of Mollie into whose cheeks he could send the delicate colour flying, whose pulses he could set beating with a burst of music in her heart. The thought of her drenched him with despair. How could he protect her if he remained a stranger in her life? Yet if he broke the code with her he would be saving her from distress only to plunge her into greater trouble.