“Behold, one journeyed in the night.He sang amid the wind and rain;My wet sands gave his feet delight—When will that traveler come again?”—The Heart of the Road,Anna Hempstead Branch.
“Behold, one journeyed in the night.He sang amid the wind and rain;My wet sands gave his feet delight—When will that traveler come again?”
—The Heart of the Road,Anna Hempstead Branch.
Ahypotenuse, as has been well said, is the longest side of a right-angled triangle. There is no need for details. That we are all familiar with the use of this handy little article is shown by the existence of shortcuts at every available opportunity, and by keep-off-o’-the-grass signs in parks.
Now, had Jeff Bransford desired to go to Arcadia—to that masquerade, for instance—his direct route from Jackson’s Ranch would have been cater-cornered across the desert, as has been amply demonstrated by Pythagoras and others.
That Jeff did not want to go to Arcadia—to the masked ball, for instance—is made apparent by the fact that the afternoon preceding said ball saw him jogging southward toward Baird’s, along the lonely base of that inveterate triangle whereofJackson’s, Baird’s and Arcadia are the respective corners, leaving the fifty-five-mile hypotenuse far to his left. It was also obvious from the tenor of his occasional self-communings.
“I don’t want to make a bally fool of myself—do I, old Grasshopper? Anyhow, you’ll be too tired when we get to ’Gene’s.”
Grasshopper made no response, other than a plucky tossing of his bit and a quickening cadence in his rhythmical stride, by way of pardonable bravado.
“I never forced myself in where my company wasn’t wanted yet, and I ain’t going to begin now,” asserted Jeff stoutly; adding, as a fervent afterthought: “Damn Lake!”
His way lay along the plain, paralleling the long westward range, just far enough out to dodge the jutting foothills; through bare white levels where Grasshopper’s hoofs left but a faint trace on the hard-glazed earth. At intervals, tempting cross-roads branched away to mountain springs. The cottonwood at Independent Springs came into view round the granite shoulder of Strawberry, six miles to the right of him. He roused himself from prolonged pondering of the marvelous silhouette, where San Andres unflung in broken masses against the sky, to remark in a hushed whisper:
“I wonder if she’d be glad to see me?”
Several miles later he quoted musingly:
“For Ellinor—her Christian name was Ellinor—Had twenty-seven different kinds of hell in her!”
“For Ellinor—her Christian name was Ellinor—Had twenty-seven different kinds of hell in her!”
After all, there are problems which Pythagoras never solved.
The longest road must have an end. Ritch’s Ranch was passed far to the right, lying low in the long shadow of Kaylor; then the mouth of Hembrillo Cañon; far ahead, a shifting flicker of Baird’s windmill topped the brush. It grew taller; the upper tower took shape. He dipped into the low, mirage-haunted basin, where the age-old Texas Trail crosses the narrow western corner of the White Sands. When he emerged the windmill was tall and silver-shining; the low iron roofs of the house gloomed sullen in the sun.
Dust rose from the corral. Now Jeff’s ostensible errand to the West Side had been the search for strays; three days before he had prudently been three days’ ride farther to the north. The reluctance with which he had turned back southward was justified by the fact that this critical afternoon found him within striking distance of Arcadia—striking distance, that is, should he care for a bit of hard riding. This was exactly what Jeff had fought against all along. So, when he saw the dust, he loped up.
It was as he had feared. A band of horses was in the waterpen; among them a red-roan head he knew—Copperhead, of Pringle’s mount; confirmedrunaway. Jeff shut the gate. For the first time that day, he permitted himself a discreet glance eastward to Arcadia.
“Three days,” he said bitterly, while Grasshopper thrust his eager muzzle into the water-trough—“three days I have braced back my feet and slid, like a yearlin’ at a brandin’ bee—and look at me now! Oh, Copperhead, you darned old fool, see what you done now!”
In this morose mood he went to the house. There was no one at home. A note was tacked on the door.
Gone to Plomo. Back in two or three days. Beef hangs under platform on windmill tower. When you get it, oil the mill. Books and deck of cards in box under bed. Don’t leave fire in stove when you go.Gene Baird.N. B.—Feed the cat.
Gone to Plomo. Back in two or three days. Beef hangs under platform on windmill tower. When you get it, oil the mill. Books and deck of cards in box under bed. Don’t leave fire in stove when you go.
Gene Baird.
N. B.—Feed the cat.
Jeff built a fire in the stove and unsaddled the weary Grasshopper. He found some corn, which he put into a woven-grassmorraland hung on Grasshopper’s nose. He went to the waterpen, roped out Copperhead and shut him in a side corral. Then he let the bunch go. They strained through the gate in a mad run, despite shrill and frantic remonstrance from Copperhead.
“Jeff,” said Jeff soberly, “are you going to be a damned fool all your life? That girl doesn’tcare anything about you. She hasn’t thought of you since. You stay right here and read the pretty books. That’s the place for you.”
This advice was sound and wise beyond cavil. So Jeff took it valiantly. After supper he hobbled Grasshopper and took off the nosebag. Then he went to the back room in pursuit of literature.
Have I leave for a slight digression, to commit a long-delayed act of justice—to correct a grievous wrong? Thank you.
We hear much of Mr. Andrew Carnegie and His Libraries, the Hall of Fame, the Little Red Schoolhouse, the Five-Foot Shelf, and the World’s Best Books. A singular thing is that the most effective bit of philanthropy along these lines has gone unrecorded of a thankless world. This shall no longer be.
Know, then, that once upon a time a certain soulless corporation, rather in the tobacco trade, placed in each package of tobacco a coupon, each coupon redeemable by one paper-bound book. Whether they were moved by remorse to this action or by sordid hidden purposes of their own, or, again, by pure, disinterested and farseeing love of their kind, is not yet known; but the results remain. There were three hundred and three volumes on that list, mostly—but not altogether—fiction. And each one was a classic. Classics are cheap. They are not copyrighted. Could I butknow the anonymous benefactor who enrolled that glorious company, how gladly would I drop a leaf on his bier or a cherry in his bitters!
Thus it was that, in one brief decade, the cowboys, with others, became comparatively literate. Cowboys all smoked. Doubtless that was a chief cause contributory to making them the wrecks they were. It destroyed their physique; it corroded and ate away their will power—leaving them seldom able to work over nineteen hours a day, except in emergencies; prone to abandon duty in the face of difficulty or danger, when human effort, raised to the nth power, could do no more—all things considered, the most efficient men of their hands on record.
Cowboys all smoked: and the most deep-seated instinct of the human race is to get something for nothing. They got those books. In due course of time they read those books. Some were slow to take to it; but when you stay at lonely ranches, when you are left afoot until the water-holes dry up, so you may catch a horse in the waterpen—why, you must do something. The books were read. Then, having acquired the habit, they bought more books. Since the three hundred and three were all real books, and since the cowboys had been previously uncorrupted of predigested or sterilized fiction, or by “gift,” “uplift” and “helpful” books, their composite taste had become surprisingly good, and theybought with discriminating care. Nay, more. A bookcase follows books; a bookcase demands a house; a house needs a keeper; a housekeeper needs everything. Hence alfalfa—houseplants—slotless tables—bankbooks. The chain which began with yellow coupons ends with Christmas trees. In some proudest niche in the Hall of Fame a grateful nation will yet honor that hitherto unrecognized educator, Front de Bœuf.[A]
Jeff pawed over the tattered yellow-backed volumes in profane discontent. He had read them all. Another box was under the bed, behind the first. Opening it, he saw a tangled mass of clothing, tumbled in the bachelor manner; with the rest, a much-used football outfit—canvas jacket, sweater, padded trousers, woolen stockings, rubber noseguard, shinguards, ribbed shoes—all complete; for ’Gene Baird was fullback of the El Paso eleven.
Jeff segregated the gridiron wardrobe with hasty hands. His eye brightened; he spoke in an awed and almost reverent voice.
“I ain’t mostly superstitious, but this looks like a leading. First, I’m here; second, Copperhead’s here; third, no one else is here; and, for the final miracle, here’s a costume made to my hand. Thirty-five miles. Ten o’clock, if I hurry. H’m!
“‘When first I put this uniform on’—how did that go? I’m forgetting all my songs. Getting old, I guess.”
Rejecting the heavy shoes, as unmeet for waxed floors, and the shinguards, he rolled the rest of the uniform in his slicker and tied it behind his saddle. Then he rubbed his chin.
“Huh! That’s a true saying, too. I am getting old. Youth turns to youth. Buck up, Jeff, you old fool! Have some pride about you and just a little old horse-sense.”
Yet he unhobbled Grasshopper, who might then be trusted to find his way to Rainbow in about three days. He went to the corral and tossed a rope on snorting Copperhead. “No; I won’t go!” he said, as he slipped on the bridle. “Just to uncock old Copperhead, I’ll make a little horse-ride to Hospital Springs and look through the stock.” He threw on the saddle with some difficulty—Copperhead was fat and frisky. “She don’t want to see you, Jeff—an old has-been like you! No, no; I’d better not go. I won’t! There, if I didn’t leave that football stuff on the saddle! I’ll take it off. It might get lost. Whoa, Copperhead!”
Copperhead, however, declined to whoa on any terms. His eyes bulged out; he reared, he pawed, he snorted, he bucked, he squealed, he did anything but whoa. Exasperated, Jeff caught the bridle by the cheek piece and swung into the saddle.After a few preliminaries in the pitching line, Jeff started bravely for Hospital Springs.
It was destined that this act of renunciation should be thwarted. Copperhead stopped and dug his feet in the ground as if about to take root. Jeff dug the spurs home. With an agonized bawl, Copperhead made a creditable ascension, shook himself and swapped ends before he hit the ground again. “Wooh!” he said. His nose was headed now for Arcadia; he followed his nose, his roan flanks fanned vigorously with a doubled rope.
“Headstrong, stubborn, unmanageable brute! Oh, well, have it your own way then, you old fool! You’ll be sorry!” Copperhead leaped out to the loosened rein. “This is just plain kidnapping!” said Jeff.
Kidnapped and kidnapper were far out on the plain as night came on. Arcadia road stretched dimly to the east; the far lights of La Luz flashed through the leftward dusk; straight before them was a glint and sparkle in the sky, faint, diffused, wavering; beyond, a warm and mellow glow broke the blackness of the mountain wall, where the lights of low-hidden Arcadia beat up against Rainbow Rim.
Jeff was past his first vexation; he sang as he rode:
“There was ink on her thumb when I kissed her hand,And she whispered: ‘If you should dieI’d write you an epitaph, gloomy and grand!’‘Time enough for that!’ says I.
“There was ink on her thumb when I kissed her hand,And she whispered: ‘If you should dieI’d write you an epitaph, gloomy and grand!’‘Time enough for that!’ says I.
“Keep a-movin here, Copperhead! Time fugits right along. You will play hooky, will you? ‘I’m going to be a horse!’”
“For Ellinor (her Christian name was Ellinor)Had twenty-seven different kinds of hell in her.”—Richard Hovey.
“For Ellinor (her Christian name was Ellinor)Had twenty-seven different kinds of hell in her.”
—Richard Hovey.
It lacked little of the eleventh hour when the football player reached the ballroom—last comer to the revels. A bandage round his head and a rubber noseguard, which also hid his mouth, served for a mask, eked out by crisscrossed strips of courtplaster. One arm was in a sling—for stage purposes only.
As he limped through the door, Diogenes hurried to meet him, held up his lantern, peered hopefully into the battered face and shook his disappointed head. “Stung again!” muttered Diogenes.
Jeff lisped in numbers which fully verified the cynic’s misgiving. “7—11—4—11—44!” he announced jerkily. This was strictly in character and also excused him from entangling talk, leaving him free to search the whirl of dancers.
A bulky Rough Rider volunteered his help. He fixed a gleaming eyeglass on his nose and politelyoffered Jeff a Big Stick by way of a crutch. “Hit the line hard!” he barked. He bit the words off with a prize-bulldog effect. He had fine teeth.
Jeff waved him off. “16—2—1!” he proclaimed controversially. He felt his spirits sinking, with a growing doubt of his ability to identify the Only One, and was impatient of interruption. He kept his slow and watchful way down the floor.
Topsy broke away from her partner and stopped Jeff’s crippled progress. Her short hair, braided to a dozen tight and tiny pigtails, bristled away in all directions.
“Laws, young marsta’, you suhtenly does look puny!” she said. Then she clutched at her knee. “Aie!” she tittered, as a loose red stocking dropped flappingly to her ankle. Pray do not be shocked. The effect was startling; but a black stocking, decorously tight and smooth, was beneath the red one. Jeff’s mathematics were not equal to the strain of adequate comment. Topsy dived to the rescue. “Got a string?” she giggled, as she hitched the fallen stocking back to place. “I cain’t fix this good nohow!”
Jeff jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “Man over there with an eyeglass cord—maybe you can get that. What makes you act so?” He looked cold disapproval; nevertheless, he looked.
Topsy hung her head, still clutching at the stocking-top. “Dunno. I spec’s it’s ’cause Ise sowicked!” Finger in mouth, she looked after Jeff as he hobbled away.
A slender witch bounced from a chair and barred his way with a broom. Her eyes were brimming sorcery; her lips looked saucy challenge; she leaned close for a whispered word in his ear: “How would you like to tackle me?”
Poor Jeff! “10, 2—10, 2!” he promised huskily. Yet he ducked beneath the broom.
“But,” said the little witch plaintively, “you’re going away!” She dropped her broom and wept.
“8, 2—8, 2—8, 2!” said Jeff, almost in tears himself, and again fell back upon English. “Mere figures or mere words can’t tell you how much I hate to; but I’ve got to follow the ball. I’m looking for a fellow.”
“If he—if he doesn’t love you,” sobbed the stricken witch, “then you’ll come back to me—won’t you? I love a liar!”
“To the very stake!” vowed Jeff. Such heroic, if conditional, constancy was not to go unrewarded. A couple detached themselves from the dancers, threaded their way to a corner of the long hall and stood there in deep converse. Jeff quickened pulse and pace—for one was a Red Devil and the other wore the soft gray costume of a Friend. She was tall, this Quakeress, and the hobnobbing devil was of Jeff’s own height. Jeff began to hope for a goal.
Briskly limping, he came to this engrossed couple and laid a friendly hand on the devil’s shoulder.
“Brother,” he said cordially, “will you please go to—home?”
The devil recoiled an astonished step.
“What? What!! Show me your license!”
“Twenty-three!—Please!—there’s a good devil—23! I’m the right guard for this lady, I hope. Oh, please to go home!”
The devil took this request in very bad part.
“Go back fifteen yards for offside play and take a drop kick at yourself!” he suggested sourly.
A burly policeman, plainly conscious of fitting his uniform, paused for warning.
“No scrappin’ now! Don’t start nothin’ or I’ll run in the t’ree av yees!” he said, and sauntered on, twirling a graceful nightstick.
“Thee is a local man, judging from thy letters,” said the Quaker lady, to relieve the somewhat strained situation. “What do they stand for? E. P.? Oh, yes—El Paso, of course!”
“I saw you first!” said the Red Devil. “And with your disposition you would naturally find me more suitable. Make your choice of gridirons! Send him back to the side lines! Disqualify him for interference!”
“Don’t be hurried into a decision,” said Jeff. “Eternity is a good while. Before it’s over I’mgoing to be a—well, something more than a footballer. Golf, maybe—or tiddledywinks.”
The Quakeress glanced attentively from one to the other.
“Doubtless he will do his best to forward Thy Majesty’s interests,” she interposed. “Why not give him a chance?”
The devil shrugged his shoulders. “I always prefer to give this branch of work my personal attention,” he said stiffly.
“A specialty of thine?” mocked the girl.
The devil bowed sulkily.
“My heart is in it. Of course, if you prefer the bungling of a novice, there is no more to be said.”
“Thy Majesty’s manners have never been questioned,” murmured the Quakeress, bowing dismissal. “So kind of you!”
The devil bowed deeply and turned, pausing to hurl a gloomy prophecy over his shoulder. “See you later!” he said, and stalked away with an ill grace.
Pigskin hero and girl Friend, left alone, eyed each other with mutual apprehension. The girl Friend was first to recover speech. Her red lips were prim below her vizor, her eyes downcast to hide their dancing lights. Timidly she spread out fanwise the dove color of her sober costume.
“How does thee like my gray gown?”
“Not at all,” said Jeff brutally. “You’re no friend of mine, I hope.”
A most un-Quakerlike dimple trembled to her chin, relieving the firm austerity of straight lips. Also, Jeff caught a glimpse of her eyes through the vizor. They were crinkling—and they were brown. She ventured another tentative remark, and there was in it an undertone lingering, softly confidential.
“Is thee lame?”
“Not—very,” said Jeff, and saw a faint color start to the unmasked moiety of the Quaker cheek. “Still, if I may have the next dance, I shall be glad if you will sit it out with me.” Painfully he raised the beslinged arm in explanation.Sobre las Olasthrobbed out its wistful call; they set their thought to its haunting measure.
“By all means!” She took his undamaged arm. “Let us find chairs.”
Now there were chairs to the left of them, chairs to the right of them, chairs vacant everywhere; but the gallant Six Hundred themselves were not more heedless or undismayed than these two. Still, all the world did not wonder. On the contrary, not even the anxious devil saw them after they passed behind a knot of would-be dancers who were striving to disentangle themselves. For, seeing traffic thus blocked, the policeman rushed to unsnarl the tangle. Magnificently he flourished his stick. He adjured themroughly: “Move on, yous! Move on!” Whereat, with one impulse, the tangle moved on the copper, swept over him, engulfed him, hustled him to the door and threw him out.
So screened, the chair-hunters vanished in far less than a psychological moment: for Jeff, in obedience to a faint or fancied pressure on his arm, dived through portières into a small room set apart for such as had the heart to prefer cards or chess. The room was deserted now and there was a broad window open to the night. Thus, thrice favored of Providence, they found themselves in the garden, chairless but cheerful.
A garden with one Eve is the perfect combination in a world awry. Muffled, the music and the sounds of the ballroom came faint and far to them; star-made shadows danced at their feet. The girl paused, expectant; but it was the unexpected that happened. The nimble tongue which had done such faithful service for Mr. Bransford now failed him quite: left him struggling, dumb, inarticulate, helpless—tongue and hand alike forgetful of their cunning.
Be sure the maid had adroitly heard much of Mr. Bransford, his deeds and misdeeds, during the tedious interval since their first meeting. Report had dwelt lovingly upon Mr. Bransford’s eloquence at need. This awkward silence was a tribute of sincerity above question.
With difficulty Ellinor mastered a wild desireto ask where the cat had gone. “Oh, come ye in peace here or come ye in war?” Such injudicious quotation trembled on the tip of her tongue, but she suppressed it—barely in time. She felt herself growing nervous with the fear lest she should be hurried into some all too luminous speech. And still Jeff stood there, lost, speechless, helpless, unready, a clumsy oaf, an object of pity. Pity at last, or a kindred feeling, drove her to the rescue. And, just as she had feared, she said, in her generous haste, far too much.
“I thought you were not coming?”
The inflection made a question of this statement. Also, by implication, it answered so many questions yet unworded that Jeff was able to use his tongue again; but it was not the trusty tongue of yore—witness this wooden speech:
“You mean you thought I said I wasn’t coming—don’t you? You knew I would come.”
“Indeed? How should I know what you would do? I’ve only seen you once. Aren’t you forgetting that?”
“Why else did you make up as a Friend then?”
“Oh! Oh, dear, these men! There’s conceit for you! I chose my costume solely to trap Mr. Bransford’s eye? Is that it? Doubtless all my thoughts have centered on Mr. Bransford since I first saw him!”
“You know I didn’t mean that, Miss Ellinor. I——”
“Miss Hoffman, if you please!”
“Miss Hoffman. Don’t be mean to me. I’ve only got an hour——”
“An hour! Do you imagine for one second——Why, I mustn’t stay here. This is really a farewell dance given in my honor. We go back East day after to-morrow. I must go in.”
“Only one little hour. And I have come a long ways for my hour. They take their masks off at midnight—don’t they? And of course I can’t stay after that. I want only just to askyou——”
“Why did you come then? Isn’t it rather unusual to go uninvited to a ball?”
“Why, I reckon you nearly know why I come, Miss Hoffman; but if you want me to say precisely,ma’am——”
“I don’t!”
“We’ll keep that for a surprise, then. Another thing: I wanted to find out just where you live in New York. I forgot to ask you. And I couldn’t very well go round asking folks after you’re gone—could I? Of course I didn’t have any invitation—from Mr. Lake; but I thought, if he didn’t know it, he wouldn’t mind me just stepping in to get your address.”
“Well, of all the assurance!” said Miss Ellinor.“Do you intend to start up a correspondence with me without even the formality of asking my consent?”
“Why, Miss Ellinor, ma’am, I thought——”
“Miss Hoffman, sir! Yes—and there’s another thing. You said you had no invitation—from Mr. Lake. Does that mean, by any chance, that I invited you?”
“You didn’t say a word about my coming,” said Jeff. He was a flustered man, this poor Bransford, but he managed to put a slight stress upon the word “say.”
Miss Ellinor—Miss Hoffman—caught this faint emphasis instantly.
“Oh, I didn’tsayanything? I just looked an invitation, I suppose?” she stormed. “Melting eyes—and that sort of thing? Tears in them, maybe? Poor girl! Poor little child! It would be cruel to let her go home without seeing me again. I will give her a little more happiness, poor thing, and write to her a while. Maybe it would be wiser, though, just to make a quarrel and break loose at once. She’ll get over it in a little while after she gets back to New York. Well! Upon my word!”
As she advanced these horrible suppositions, Miss Hoffman had marked out a short beat of garden path—five steps and a turn; five steps back and whirl again—with, on the whole, a caged-tigress effect. With a double-quick at each turnto keep his place at her elbow, Jeff, utterly aghast at the damnable perversity of everything on earth, vainly endeavored to make coördinate and stumbling remonstrance. As she stopped for breath, Jeff heard his own voice at last, propounding to the world at large a stunned query as to whether the abode of lost spirits could afford aught to excel the present situation. The remark struck him: he paused to wonder what other things he had been saying.
Miss Ellinor walked her beat, vindictive. Her chin was at an angle of complacency. She turned up the perky corners of an imaginary mustache with an air, an exasperating little finger, separated from the others, pointing upward in hateful self-satisfaction. Her mouth wore a gratified masculine smirk, visible even in the starlight; her gait was a leisured and lordly strut; her hand waved airy pity. Jeff shrank back in horror.
“M-Miss Hoffman, I n-never d-dreamed——”
Miss Hoffman turned upon him swiftly.
“Never have I heard anything like it—never! You bring me out here willy-nilly, and by way of entertainment you virtually accuse me of throwing myself at your head.”
“I never!” said Jeff indignantly. “I didn’t——”
Miss Hoffman faced him crouchingly and shook an indictment from her fingers.
“First, you imply that I enticed you to come;second, expecting you, I dressed to catch your eye; third, I was watching eagerly foryou——”
“Come—I say now!” The baited and exasperated victim walked headlong into the trap. “The first thing you did was to ask me if I was lame? Wasn’t that question meant to find out who I was? When I answered, ‘Not—very,’ didn’t you know at once that it was me?”
“There! That proves exactly what I was just saying,” raged the delighted trapper. “You don’t even deny it! You say in so many words that I have been courting you! I had to say something—didn’t I? You wouldn’t! You were limping, so I asked you if you were lame. What else could I have said? Did you want me to stand there like a stuffed Egyptian mummy? That’s the thanks a girl gets for trying to help a great, awkward, blundering butter-fingers! Oh, if you could just see yourself! The irresistible conqueror! Not altogether unprincipled though! Youarecapable of compunction. I’ll give you credit for that. Alarmed at your easy success, you try to spare me. It is noble of you—noble! You drag me out here, force a quarrel uponme——”
“Oh, by Jove now! Really!” Stung by the poignant injustice of crowding events, Jeff took the bit in his teeth and rushed to destruction. “Really, you must see yourself that I couldn’t drag you out here! I have never been in thathall before. I didn’t know the lay of the ground. I didn’t even know that little side room was there. I thought you pressed my arm a little——” So the brainless colt, in the quicksands, flounders deeper with each effort to extricate himself.
If Miss Hoffman had been angry before she was furious now.
“Sothat’sthe way of it? Better and better!Idraggedyouout! Really, Mr. Bransford, I feel that I should take you back to your chaperon at once. You might be compromised, you know!”
Goaded to desperation, he acted on this hint at once. He turned, with stiff and stilted speech:
“I will take you back to the window, Miss Hoffman. Then there is nothing for me to do but go. I am sorry to have caused you even a moment’s annoyance. To-morrow you will see how you have twisted—I mean, how completely you have misinterpreted everything I have said. Perhaps some day you may forgive me. Here is the window. Good-night—good-by!”
Miss Hoffman lingered, however.
“Of course, if you apologize——”
“I do, Miss Hoffman. I beg your pardon most sincerely for anything I have ever said or done that could hurt you in any way.”
“If you are sure you are sorry—if you take it all back and will never do such a thing again—perhaps I may forgive you.”
“I won’t—I am—I will!” said the abject andgroveling wretch. Which was incoherent but pleasing. “I didn’t mean anything the way you took it; but I’m sorry for everything.”
“Then I didn’t beguile you to come? Or mask as a Friend in the hope that you would identify me?”
“No, no!”
Miss Ellinor pressed her advantage cruelly. “Nor take stock of each new masker to see if he possibly wasn’t the expected Mr. Bransford? Nor drag you into the garden? Nor squeeze your arm?” Her hands went to her face, her lissome body shook. “Oh, Mr. Bransford!” she sobbed between her fingers. “How could you—howcouldyou say that?”
The clock chimed. A pealing voice beat out into the night: “Masks off!” A hundred voices swelled the cry; it was drowned in waves of laughter. It rose again tumultuously: “Masks off! Masks off!” Nearer came hateful voices, too, that cried: “Ellinor! Ellinor! Where are you?”
“I must go!” said Jeff. “They’ll be looking for you. No; you didn’t do any of those things. You couldn’t do any of those things. Good-by!”
“Ellinor! Ellinor Hoffman!! Where are you?”
Miss Hoffman whipped off her mask. From the open window a shaft of light fell on her face. It was flushed, sparkling, radiant. “Masks off!”she said. “Stupid!... Oh, you great goose! Of course I did!” She stepped back into the shadow.
No one, as the copybook says justly, may be always wise. Conversely, the most unwise of us blunders sometimes upon the right thing to do. With a glimmer of returning intelligence Mr. Bransford laid his noseguard on the window-sill.
“Sir!” said Ellinor then. “How dare you?” Then she turned the other cheek. “Good-by!” she whispered, and fled away to the ballroom.
Mr. Bransford, in the shadows, scratched his head dubiously.
“Her Christian name was Ellinor,” he muttered. “Ellinor! H’m—Ellinor! Very appropriate name.... Very!... And I don’t know yet where she lives!”
He wandered disconsolately away to the garden wall, forgetting the discarded noseguard.
“Then the moon shone out so broad and goodThat the barn-fowl crowed:And the brown owl called to his mate in the woodThat a dead man lay in the road!”—Will Wallace Harney.
“Then the moon shone out so broad and goodThat the barn-fowl crowed:And the brown owl called to his mate in the woodThat a dead man lay in the road!”
—Will Wallace Harney.
Arcadia’s assets were the railroad, two large modern sawmills, the climate and printer’s ink. The railroad found it a patch of bare ground, six miles from water; put in successively a whistling-post, a signboard, a depot, townsite papers and a water-main from the Alamo; and, when the townsite papers were confirmed, established machine shops and made the new town the division headquarters and base for northward building.
The railroad then set up the sawmills, primarily to get out ties and timbers for its own lanky growth, and built a spur to bring the forest down from Rainbow to the mills. The word “down” is used advisedly. Arcadia nestled on the plain under the very eavespouts of Rainbow Range. The branch, following with slavish fidelitythe lines of a twisted corkscrew, took twenty-seven miles, mostly tunnel and trestlework, to clamber to the logging camps, with a minimum grade that was purely prohibitive and a maximum that I dare not state; but there was a rise of six thousand feet in those twenty-seven miles. You can figure the average for yourself. And if the engine should run off the track at the end of her climb she would light on the very roundhouse where she took breakfast, and spoil the shingles.
Yes, that was some railroad. There was a summer hotel—Cloudland—on the summit, largely occupied by slackwire performers. Others walked up or rode a horse. They used stem-winding engines, with eight vertical cylinders on the right side and a shaft like a steamboat, with beveled cogwheel transmission on the axles. And they haven’t had a wreck on that branch to date. No matter how late a train is, when an engine sees the tail-lights of her caboose ahead of her she stops and sends out flagmen.
The railroad, under the pseudonym of the Arcadia Development Company, also laid out streets and laid in a network of pipe-lines, and staked out lots until the sawmill protested for lack of tie-lumber. It put down miles of cement walks, fringed them with cottonwood saplings, telephone poles and electric lights. It built a hotel and a few streets of party-colored cottages—directoire, with lingerie tile roofs, organdy façades andpeplum, intersecting panels and outside chimneys at the gable ends. It decreed a park, with nooks, lanes, mazes, lake, swans, ballground, grandstand, bandstand and the band appertaining thereunto—all of which apparently came into being over night. Then it employed a competent staff of word-artists and capitalized the climate.
The result was astonishing. The cottonwoods grew apace and a swift town grew with them—swift in every sense of the word. It took good money to buy good lots in Arcadia. People with money must be fed, served and amused by people wanting money. In three years the trees cast a pleasant shade and the company cast a balance, with gratifying results. They discounted the unearned increment for a generation to come.
It was a beneficent scheme, selling ozone and novelty, sunshine and delight. The buyers got far more than the worth of their money, the company got their money—and every one was happy. Health and good spirits are a bargain at any price. There were sandstorms and hot days; but sand promotes digestion and digestion promotes cheerfulness. Heat merely enhanced the luxury of shaded hammocks. As an adventurer thawed out, he sent for seven others worse than himself. Arcadia became the metropolis of the county and, by special election, the county-seat. Courthouse, college and jail followed in quick succession.
For the company, Arcadia life was one grand,sweet song, with, thus far, but a single discord. As has been said, Arcadia was laid out on the plain. There was higher ground on three sides—Rainbow Mountain to the east, the deltas of La Luz Creek and the Alamo to the north and south. New Mexico was dry, as a rule. After the second exception, when enthusiastic citizens went about on stilts to forward a project for changing the town’s name to Venice, the company acknowledged its error handsomely. When dry land prevailed once more above the face of the waters, it built a mighty moat by way of theamende honorable—a moat with its one embankment on the inner side of the five-mile horseshoe about the town. This, with its attendant bridges, gave to Arcadia an aspect singularly medieval. It also furnished a convenient line of social demarcation. Chauffeurs, college professors, lawyers, gamblers, county officers, together with a few tradesmen and railroad officials, abode within “the Isle of Arcady,” on more or less even terms with the Arcadians proper; millmen, railroaders, lumberjacks, and the underworld generally, dwelt without the pale.
The company rubbed its lamp again—and behold! an armory, a hospital and a library! It contributed liberally to churches and campaign funds; it exercised a general supervision over morals and manners. For example, in the deed to every lot sold was an ironclad, fire-tested, automaticand highly constitutional forfeiture clause, to the effect that sale or storage on the premises of any malt, vinous or spirituous liquors should immediately cause the title to revert to the company. The company’s own vicarious saloon, on Lot Number One, was a sumptuous and magnificent affair. It was known as The Mint.
All this while we have been trying to reach the night watchman.
In the early youth of Arcadia there came to her borders a warlock Finn, of ruddy countenance and solid build. He had a Finnish name, and they called him Lars Porsena.
Lars P. had been a seafaring man. While spending a year’s wage in San Francisco, he had wandered into Arcadia by accident. There, being unable to find the sea, he became a lumberjack—with a custom, when in spirits, of beating the watchman of that date into an omelet.
The indulgence of this penchant gave occasion for much adverse criticism. Fine and imprisonment failed to deter him from this playful habit. One watchman tried to dissuade Lars from his foible with a club, and his successor even went so far as to shoot him—to shoot Lars P., of course, not his predecessor—the successor’s predecessor, not Lars Porsena’s—if he ever had one, which he hadn’t. (What we need is more pronouns.) He—the successor of the predecessor—resignedwhen Lars became convalescent; but Lars was no whit dismayed by this contretemps—in his first light-hearted moment he resumed his old amusement with unabated gayety.
Thus was one of our greatest railroad systems subjected to embarrassment and annoyance by the idiosyncrasies of an ignorant but cheerful sailor-man. The railroad resolved to submit no longer to such caprice. A middleweight of renown was imported, who—when he was able to be about again—bitterly reproached the president and demanded a bonus on the ground that he had knocked Lars down several times before he—Lars—got angry; and also because of a disquisition in the Finnish tongue which Lars Porsena had emitted during the procedure—which address, the prizefighter stated, had unnerved him and so led to his undoing. It was obviously, he said, of a nature inconceivably insulting; the memory of it rankled yet, though he had heard only the beginning and did not get the—But let that pass.
The thing became a scandal. Watchman succeeded watchman on the company payroll and the hospital list, until some one hit upon a happy and ingenious way to avoid this indignity. Lars Porsena was appointed watchman.
This statesmanlike policy bore gratifying results. Lars Porsena straightway abandoned his absurd and indefensible custom, and no imitatorarose. Also, Arcadia within the moat—the island—which was the limit of his jurisdiction, became the most orderly spot in New Mexico.
In the first gray of dawn, Uncle Sam, whistling down Main Street on his way home from the masquerade, found Lars Porsena lying on his face in a pool of blood.
The belated reveler knelt beside him. The watchman was shot, but still breathed. “Ho! Murder! Help! Murder!” shouted Uncle Sam. The alarm rolled crashing along the quiet street. Heads were thrust from windows; startled voices took up the outcry; other home-goers ran from every corner; hastily arrayed householders poured themselves from street doors.
Lars Porsena was in disastrous plight. He breathed, but that was about all. He was shot through the body. A trail of blood led back a few doors to Lake’s Bank. A window was cut out; the blood began at the sill.
Messengers ran to telephone the doctor, the sheriff, Lake. The knot of men grew to a crowd. A rumor spread that there had been an unusual amount of currency in the bank over night—a rumor presently confirmed by Bassett, the bareheaded and white-faced cashier. It was near payday; in addition to the customary amount to cash checks for railroaders and millhands—itself nomean sum—and the money for regular business, there had been provision for contemplated loans to promoters of new local industries.
The doctor came running, made a hasty examination, took emergency measures to stanch the freshly started blood, and swore whole-heartedly at the ambulance and the crowding Arcadians. He administered a stimulant. Lars Porsena fluttered his eyes weakly.
“Stand back, you idiots! Bash these fools’ faces in for ’em, some one!” said the medical man. He bent over the watchman. “Who did it, Lars?”
Lars made a vain effort to speak. The doctor gave him another sip of restorative and took a pull himself.
“Try again, old man. You’re badly hurt and you may not get another chance. Did you know him?”
Lars gathered all his strength to a broken speech:
“No.... Bank ... Found window ... Midnight ... nearly.... Shot me.... Didn’t see him.” He fell back on Uncle Sam’s starry vest.
“Ambulance coming,” said Uncle Sam. “Will he live, doc?”
Doc shook his head doubtfully.
“Poor chance. Lost too much blood. If he had been found in time he might have pulledthrough. Wonderful vitality. Ought to be dead now, by the books. Still, there’s a chance.”
“I never thought,” said Uncle Sam to Cyrano de Bergerac, as the ambulance bore away its unconscious burden, “that I would ever be so sorry at anything that could happen to Lars Porsena—after the way he made me stop singing on my own birthday. He was one grand old fighting machine!”