Kitsap in a tribal headdressCopyrighted by E. S. Curtis, Seattle"KITSAP, THE CLERK, DONNED THE TRIBAL FINERY OF HIS ANCESTORS""I have sent you an important letter by express on the three o'clock train," said the cashier. "Get it and read what I have written. Stay as long as you need to, but smash that pool, and teach Lamson not to lie about the Elliott Bay National."Then Kitsap waited for the train, secured his express package, and opened it. It contained a letter from Lamson to the bank—a letter that was ammunition for the Indian—and instructions to make certain use of it.He could make no more progress indirectly; he must face the raiders, or his own people would doubt him. He must seek out Lamson, and standing in front of that white man, the Indian must throw back into his teeth that lie about the bank. The warm red blood in him yearned for a clash and a tussle. He would go to the store to spend the evening. If a collision with the fourteen-cent raiders was to be effected anywhere, the store would afford it.To the store that night came Lamson and the St. Louis buyers, all in evil mood. Kitsap's news had completely arrested the effect of their pessimistic talk. No rancher would sell at fourteen cents with a bank's messenger rioting over the valley quoting hops in Liverpool at eighteen cents. Indeed, those who had already contracted to sell were grumbling, and many of them came to the store that night, eager to hear the truth of a market which had been misrepresented to them. These men were listening to Kitsap, whose words put them in a very sullen temper, when Lamson and the three buyers entered."So you're the Injun who's been going around bulling the market," shouted Lamson, his voice keyed high with temper. He stepped quickly into the crowd of ranchers about Kitsap, conscious that he must rout the Indian or see the end of the pool.The young Indian faced the irate rancher and looked him coolly up and down. This was Lamson; the heaviest owner of land in the valley. This was the white man who had lied about the Elliott Bay National. The meeting for which he had hoped had come. The Indian drew a deep breath of sheer delight. Then, in a clear, ringing tone, he returned the white man's fire:"So you are the rancher who lied about the Elliott Bay National Bank?"The blood leaped to the rancher's temples and he stepped menacingly toward the Indian. But before he could strike, Kitsap's voice again rang out:"You are a double liar! You borrowed money to pay pickers, but used it to buy hops at fourteen cents, after telling the ranchers that you had sold. That was the first lie. You told the Indians that the bank would not loan you enough to pay them. That was another lie. But the bank has found you out!"The rancher stood speechless before the unexpected words of the Indian. The clenched fist fell to his side. The young man who stood there before him, with the straight proud poise of the savage chieftain, spoke the words of the white man's warfare, the warfare of the mart and of barter. He must be met and beaten on his own ground. Clearly, he had spoken to effect, and the rancher must justify his position before his fellow ranchers, whose eyes were so intently watching him."You seem to know a lot about the bank's business," he began, with an attempt at sarcasm. "I suppose the president consults you on loans.""The president did on this one," replied the Indian. The ranchers laughed."Then perhaps he told you that this one was amply secured by my hop receipts," boasted Lamson."He did.""Then what the bloomin' —— is it to him what I do with the cash?""He sent me to give you back that lie about the bank.""Well"——"I have. I called you a liar, and then proved it. Your name is—Two Lies!"Lamson's color came back, but this time it was the color of anger. His hand went half-way to his revolver, but a broad-shouldered rancher caught his arm."None o' that, Lamson."Lamson wrenched his arm away. The big rancher faced him."This here Kitsap is telling the truth," said he. "I reckon he's got still more of it to give us. And we will expect you to fish or cut bait. But I'll hold this." Then he clapped his hand on Lamson's gun pocket and disarmed him. The three St. Louis hop buyers looked wistfully toward the door. But prudence held them to the spot."You are making a big fuss over nothing," sputtered Lamson. "Whose business is it if I do buy hops? The bank is secured on its loan.""It's our business a whole lot," said the big rancher, gently tapping the handle of Lamson's revolver on Lamson's chest. "You give out that you are selling hops at fourteen cents and advise a lot of us fellows to do the same. Now we're told that you've been buyin' at fourteen cents. It's our business to find out which end up you're playin' this market.""Oh, rot!" roared Lamson. "Hops are fourteen cents now. I'm buying a few to hold 'em. If I can afford to take the risk, I'm entitled to the profit.""The bank knows that hops are eighteen cents to-day," broke in Kitsap."That's another lie," yelled the enraged Lamson, and the ranchers laughed at the unconscious admission."Is it?" said Kitsap quietly. "Do you dare to bet on it?""I'll bet you a hundred dollars," roared the rancher, "that you can't get over fourteen cents for hops in this valley this fall.""I will bet you that amount that I can get at least sixteen cents for the Indians on the reservation.""Where's your money?" said Lamson, drawing out a roll of bills.Kitsap had not looked for this. He was puzzledfor a moment. Then he drew forth a pocket check-book, signed a check, and handed it to an Indian rancher, who endorsed it. Turning to Lamson, Kitsap said:Native americans of all generations in the hops fieldsCopyrighted by E. S. Curtis, Seattle"ON ALL SIDES THE HOP-PICKERS WERE MAKING MERRY""Will this do, or shall I telephone the cashier to assure its payment?""It's good," said Lamson."Very well. But if you are so sure about the price of hops, Mr. Two Lies, why don't you make it two to one that I can't get seventeen cents?""That's my money!" and Lamson began counting out another hundred."Or three to one that I can't get eighteen cents?""It goes!""Or four to one that I can't get nineteen cents?""Yes; or five to one that you can't get twenty," roared the exasperated planter."Five to one," replied Kitsap. "And if I win, I will throw your money in silver from the steps of the reservation school to the Indian children."Kitsap noted the effect on the Indians in the room as the money was placed in the hands of the town marshal. He knew how every red man on the reservation would work for twenty-cent hops now.But the Indian was not through with the white man. He turned on him again."If you think the bank lied when it said eighteen cents, there is a telephone. Call up the cashier at his home. He sent me here to tell the white men and Indians who are our clients. Ask him for yourself."Lamson and the three buyers noted the words "Our clients." To Lamson it brought identification of the Indian as Johnny Kitsap, the clerk; to the buyers it was just mysterious enough to be alarming."Confound the cashier! All he knows is what somebody else has told him.""Mr. Lamson, do you yourself think that fourteen cents for hops to-day is a fair price?" asked Kitsap, suddenly taking a conciliatory tone."Certainly I do. But if I want to buy hops at fourteen cents now and hold them on a speculation, it's my own business.""Entirely," said the Indian. "But I believe your conduct with the ranchers who have agreed to sell is based on your statement that you had already sold your own hops to these buyers from St. Louis for fourteen cents.""That's right," said Lamson boldly. "I can sell my hops for what I like.""Liar," said Kitsap, "you havenotsold your hops."Lamson sprang to his feet, but the big rancher put out a big hand and shoved him back."Sit down," said the big man. "Can't you see this here Kitsap's got the floor?""As I understand it," continued Kitsap, turning to the men who had signed the contract to sell to the raiders, "unless Mr. Lamson has already delivered his hops to the buyers under his contract, the very agreement is void, and you are all released.""You bet your life that's right," said the big man with the gun, and from all parts of the crowd came words of confirmation.Lamson, for the first time during the encounter, felt uneasy. He looked blankly at the three buyers. One of the gentlemen from St. Louis drew the contract from his pocket."The young man is right," said the gentleman from St. Louis, in a conciliatory tone. "Here is the contract, and I can safely assure our friends that Mr. Lamson has carried out his part of the agreement.""You bet," shouted Lamson, recognizing a very pretty bluff on the part of the buyer."May I see the contract?" asked Kitsap.The buyer passed it to him. Kitsap read the contract aloud, and then tossed it over his head into the hands of the men who had signed it. The buyers and Lamson came to their feet."Worthless paper," said Kitsap. "Lamson has not delivered his hop receipts and therefore there is no contract."A yell of delight went up from the crowd, and a shower of tiny bits of white papers showed the fate of the instrument. Kitsap pointed his finger at the enraged Lamson, and as the shower of paper fell about him fairly shouted his denunciation:"I, Kitsap, the clerk, am a representative of the Elliott Bay National Bank. I come here by the orders of thetyee—the president. Your hop receipts are in the bank's treasure-chest, and here is your letter received at the bank last Monday." Kitsap opened the letter that had come to him by express and read:Picking is progressing well, and the valley will yield a big crop. A few hungry ranchers are selling at fourteen cents cash at the warehouse, but I look for better prices later. I hope you will be willing to carry my receiptstill November, when I look for a price close to twenty cents.As Kitsap read, his voice rose, and, as he ended, there was absolute silence for an instant. Then the ranchers took their spellbound eyes from the quivering Indian and looked at the pale face of the speechless Lamson. The store-keeper looked with the others, and it was his groan that broke the spell:"Thunder! I stood to make a thousand on the deal."Then the overjoyed ranchers found their voices in a wild laugh, and laid enthusiastic hands on Kitsap. Lamson and the buyers slipped away, beaten and humiliated, to lament the failure of the fourteen-cent raid, and to spend a few bitter hours in planning a new offer next morning at a better price, for there was need to cover promises made to Eastern houses.The ranchers quickly formed themselves into a meeting and sent couriers out to notify all signers of the contract that the deal was off. Then they appointed a committee to go to the bank next day with Kitsap and be witnesses to his report to his superiors.Before another day passed, the spirit of thevalley had changed from a desire to sell quickly for cash into a determination to hold the crop for a twenty-cent market. The Elliott Bay National secured daily bulletins from inside sources and kept the world's markets before the entire valley. Picking progressed to an end, and the Indians held their last feast and departed. Then buyers came from other markets, inspected the crop, and made offers. Gradually the valley ranchers joined the lead of the reservation Indians and placed their receipts with the Elliott Bay National, to be held for a rise and sold as near twenty cents as possible. The cashier sent East for a prominent broker, who replied that he would arrive by the Sound in mid-October. Then the other buyers began bulling the market, hoping to induce a rancher here and there to sell and, by thus breaking the ranks, run prices down. But Kitsap, on the ground, and the cashier, in the bank, were able to hold them together till the new broker arrived.The families load up their canoesCopyrighted by E. S. Curtis, Seattle"PICKING PROGRESSED TO AN END, AND THE INDIANS HELD THEIR LAST FEAST AND DEPARTED"The new man was business from the ground up. He knew where he could sell hops, and for what price. He inspected the valley crop of hops and frankly announced his intention to pay twenty-one cents. Then the other buyers rushed in to get a share, and the result was an agreement by which the new broker got half the crop at twenty-one cents and the late lamented fourteen-cent raiders divided the other half among themselves at twenty-three cents, the money to be distributed through the Elliott Bay National to all ranchers at the average of twenty-two cents.Kitsap telephoned the news to the reservation, and the priest sent the son of Peter Coultee on his spotted cayuse to ride into the village with the news. DeQuincey's Royal Mail with the news of Waterloo did not create more enthusiasm than the Indian's triumphant shout. As he dashed along he yelled to the white men:"Hops sold at twenty-two cents!"To the Indian ranchers he called out the same news in the jargon:"Hops marsh mox-taltum-tee-mox."Down the street he rode, yelling and winning yells in return. The news spread from street to street, men carried it into the valley, and that night many a heart among the ranches beat quicker and many a voice at the firesides murmured the name of "Kitsap."The town marshal made the trip to Seattle and delivered the six-hundred-dollar wager to Kitsap. The Indian told the cashier the terms of the wager and asked to be excused on thefollowing Saturday, that he might assemble the reservation children and scatter the Lamson money."It will be a great event to them," said Kitsap. "I shall take all of Lamson's five hundred dollars in dimes, and the whole reservation will come out to see the fun."The cashier granted the leave of absence gladly."If you will hold the event in the afternoon, I think the president would be pleased to go out and see it," said he.Kitsap needed no other hint, but went boldly to the president and invited him to witness the scattering of the coins."With pleasure," replied the president."Come on the three o'clock train, and I will have a carriage for you," said Kitsap.The reservation had been waiting for twenty-cent hops as a band of children wait for the circus. Five thousand dimes to be thrown to less than three hundred children! It would be a rare scramble. Indian children raided their mothers' button-baskets that they might throw the buttons in the sand and practise scrambling for them. Then came the news of twenty-two cent hops, and every Indian, young or old, jumped up and down and shouted that Kitsap had won that Lamson money."Saturday afternoon at four o'clock," was Kitsap's message to the reservation priest, and the priest assembled ten young men for a conference. It was decided to mark off ten squares on the lawn in front of the schoolhouse. On each square a squad of thirty children should stand, the children of each squad graded so as to be nearly of a size, girls and boys in alternate squares. Before each square one of the ten young men should stand with five hundred silver coins in a dish. At a signal from Kitsap, who should stand on the school steps, the ten young men should throw the dimes in the air and the scramble would begin.When the train stopped at the reservation station that October afternoon, the president of the Elliott Bay National found Kitsap the elder there to meet him, with a clean spring wagon. During the short drive to the reservation school, he noted that the road was deserted, but when the school was reached a scene of color and animation met his eye. The tribe was out in full regalia, even the clients of the bank, who came gravely to the president's wagon to greet him. Kitsap the elder drove to a spot reserved for the head men of the tribe, and the chief of the money-house was welcomed to a place among them. Then a hush fell upon the assembly.A procession of young men, headed by Kitsap, decked in tribal finery, came out of the schoolhouse. Kitsap remained on the stairs, as the ten young men, bearing dishes of dimes, took their places before the squares. Every child stood waiting—every grown person held his breath. The voice of Kitsap, speaking each sentence first in the jargon and then in English, made a short harangue. The president smiled as he caught this glimpse of Kitsap's own interpretation of a bank."Lamson, the white man, told a lie about the money-house. The greattyeeof the treasure-chest sent Kitsap, who is a brave of the whitetyee'shouse, to tell the Puyallups the truth. The Great Spirit made Lamson angry and caused him to lose this money to Kitsap, who serves the great whitetyee. But the great whitetyeesaid: 'Behold, the Great Spirit has punished Lamson. Forever will he be called Two Lies. The money shall be for the children, as Kitsap said. I will go myself to see Kitsap throw the silver coins to the children, for it is a lesson. Let them always speak true words, or the Great Spirit will punish them, and they will have an evil name like Lamson!' And look, children, Kitsap'styeesits with thetyeeof the Puyallups to see you scramble. Remember, keep on your own square and do not strike. Push and pull, but do not strike. Show the whitetyeewho lives in the magic treasure-house that you can play your games fairly. Then he will be pleased and tell his own people of the silver coins that Kitsap throws to the children."There was silence a moment, and then Kitsap raised a feathered wand. In the native tongue he shouted:"All ready? Throw!"Ten lithe Indians threw their silver treasure into the air. Five thousand silver coins flashed in the sun and fell in a sparkling shower on the heads of the tribal children. With one voice the children screamed and sprang to the scramble; with one voice the Puyallup tribe roared in glee; with one motion the tribal hats went into the air, and the president of the Elliott Bay National yelled in his enthusiasm, pounded a red man on the back, waved a silk hat on high, and became as one of these child-hearted aborigines.Late that night, while the president sat at his club, hoarse but happy, and told what he had seen, a band of Indians out on the reservation held a ceremony in a big tent. The rite was as old as the tribal memory—the rite of formally adopting a chief—and a young man was declared to have won a great fight, and to be worthy of a high place in the councils of the tribe. They wanted to name him Chief Who-Made-The-Silver-Rain, but the young man replied that Chief Kitsap, being his father's name, was good enough for him.THE WAYFARERSBYMARY STEWART CUTTINGAUTHOR OF "LITTLE STORIES OF COURTSHIP," "LITTLE STORIES OF MARRIED LIFE," ETC.ILLUSTRATIONS BY ALICE BARBER STEPHENSXXIIIJustinwas in Chicago—the fact was verified—and he would start for home on the morrow. There seemed to be no details, save the comforting one that Billy Snow was with him. After that first sharp immediate relief from suspense, Lois again felt its filminess settling down upon her.Girard had gone back very early to the Snows' to breakfast. He talked to Lois by telephone, but he did not come to the house; while Dosia, wrapped in an outward abstraction that concealed a whirl within, went about her daily tasks, living over and over the scene of the night before. The shattering of the pitcher seemed to have shattered something else. Once he had felt, then, as she had done; once—so far away that night of disaster had gone, so long was it since she had held that protecting hand in her dreams, that the touch brought a strange resurrection of the spirit. She had an upwelling new sense of gratitude to him for something unexpressed, some quality which she passionately revered, and which other men had not always used toward her."Oh, he's good, he'sgood!" she whispered to herself, with the tears blinding her, as she picked up Redge's blocks from the floor. She felt Lawson's kisses on her lips, her throat—that cross of shame that she held always close to her; George Sutton's fat face thrust itself leeringly before her. How many girls have passages in their lives to which they look back with the shame that only purity and innocence can feel! Yet the sense of Girard's presence before was as nothing to her sense of it now—it blotted out the world. She saw him sitting alone in the dining-room, with his head resting on his hand, the attitude informed with life. The turn of his head, the shape of his hand, were insistent things. She saw him standing in front of her, long-limbed, erect of mien. She saw—If she looked pale and inert, it was because that inner thought of her lived so hard that the body was worn out with it.Neither telegram nor any other message came from Justin, except the bare word that he had started home. On the second morning, just as Lois had finished dressing, she heard the hall door open and shut. She called, but cautiously, for fear of disturbing her baby, who had dropped off to sleep again.Justin was standing by the table, looking at the newspaper, as she entered the dining-room. With a cry, she ran toward him. "Justin!"He turned, and she put her arms around him passionately. He held her for a moment, and then said, "You'd better sit down.""But, Justin—oh, my dearest, how ill you look!" She clung to him. "Where have you been? Why didn't you send me any word?""I've been to Chicago.""Yes, yes, I know. Why did you go?""I don't know.""You don'tknow?""Lois, will you give me some coffee?"She poured out the cup with trembling hands, and sat while he took a swallow of the hot fluid, still scanning the newspaper. At last she said:"Aren't you going to tell me any more?""There isn't any more to tell. There's no use talking about it. I believe I had some idea of selling the island when I went to Chicago, but I don't know how I got there. I didn't know I was there until I woke up two nights ago at a little hotel away out on the West Side. Billy pounded on the door, and said they told him I had been asleep for twenty-eight hours. I suppose I was dead tired out. I don't want to speak of it again, Lois; it wasn't a particularly pleasant thing to happen. Will you tell Mary to bring in the rest of the breakfast? I must catch the eight-thirty train back into town. I thought you might be bothered, so I came out first. Where are the children?""They are coming down now with Dosia," said his wife, helping Mary with the dishes. Redge ran up to his father, hitting him jubilantly with a small stick which he held in his chubby hand, and bringing irritated reproof down upon him at once; but Zaidee, her blue eyes open, her lips parted over her little white teeth, slid into the arm outstretched for her, and stood there leaning against "Daddy's" side, while he ate and drank hurriedly, with only one hand at his disposal. Poor Lois could not help one pang of jealousy at being shut out, but she heroically smothered it."Mr. Harker was here the evening before last; he brought me some money," she ventured at last."That was all right.""And Mr. Girard was very kind; he stayed here all that night—until your message came.""I hope you haven't been talking about this all over the place.""No—oh, no," said Lois, driving back the tears at this causeless injury. "Mr. Leverich said it was best not to. Nobody knows about your being away at all. You're not goingnow, Justin—without even seeing baby?""I'll see him to-night when I come home," said Justin, rising. He kissed the children and his wife hastily, but she followed him into the hall, standing there, dumbly beseeching, while he brushed his hat with the hat-brush on the table, and then rummaged hastily as if for something else."Here are your gloves, if that is what you are looking for," she said."Yes, thank you." He bent over and kissed her again, as if really seeing her for the first time, with a whispered "Poor girl!" That momentary close embrace brought her a needed—oh, so needed!—crumb of comfort. She who had hungered so insatiably for recognition could be humbly thankful now for the two words that spoke of an inner bond.But all day she could not get rid of that feeling of suspense that had been hers for five days past; the strain was to end, of course, with Justin's return, but it had not ended—in some sad, weighting fashion it seemed just to have begun. What was he so worried about? Was she never to hear any more?That night Girard came over, but with him was another visitor—William Snow. No sun could brown that baby-fair skin of William's, but he had an indefinably large and Western air; the very way in which he wore his clothes showed his independence. Dosia did not notice his swift, covert, shamefaced glance at her when she came into the room where he was talking to Lois—his avoidance of her the year before had dropped clear out of her mind; but his expression changed to one of complacent delight as she ran to him instantly and clasped his arm with both hands to cry, "Oh, Billy, Billy, I'm so glad to see you! I am so glad—I can't tell you how glad I am!"Little girl next to Daddy during breakfast"STOOD THERE LEANING AGAINST 'DADDY'S' SIDE""All right, Sweetness, you're not going to lose me again," said William encouragingly. "My, but you do knock the spots out of those Western girls. Can't we go in the dining-room by ourselves? I want to ask you to marry me before we talk any more.""Yes, do," said Dosia, dimpling.It was sweet to be chaffed, to be heedlessly young once more, to take refuge from all disconcerting thoughts—from a new embarrassment—with Billy, in the corner of the other room, where she sat in a low chair, and he dragged up an ottoman close in front of her. Through the open window the scent of honeysuckle came in with the gloom."Oh, but you've grown pretty!" he said, his hands clasped over his knees, gazing at her. "That's right, get pink—it makes you prettier. I like this slimpsy sort of dress you've got on; I like that black velvet around your throat; I—have you missed me much?""No," said Dosia, with the old-time sparkle. "I've hardly thought of you at all. But I feel now as if I had."Billy nodded. "All right, I'll pay you up for that some day. Oh, Dosia, you may think I'm joking, but I'm not! There have been days and nights when I've done nothing but plan the things I was going to do and say to make you care for me—but they're all gone the moment I lay eyes on you. I'll talk of whatever you like afterward, but I've got to say first"—Billy's voice, deep and manly and confident, had yet a little shake in it—"that nobody is going to marry you but me, and don't you forget it. I'm no kid any more." Something in his tone gave his words emphasis. "I know how to look out for you better than any one else does.""Dear Billy," said Dosia, touched, and resting her cheek momentarily against the rough sleeve of his coat, "it's so good to have you back again."Lois, who had been longing intolerably all day for evening to come, so that she could be alone with her husband, sat in the drawing-room, trying to sew with nervous, trembling fingers, while her husband, looking frightfully tired, and Bailey Girard smoked and talked—of all things in the world!—of the relative merits of live or "spoon" bait in trolling, and afterward went minutely into details of the manufacture of artificial lures for catching trout.Those wasted "social" hours of non-interest, non-satisfaction, how long, how unbearably long, they can seem! Lois' face twitched, as well as her fingers; she did not realize, as women often do not, that to Justin this conversation, banal and irrelevant to any action of his present life or his present anxiety, was like coming up from under-depths to breathe at a necessary air-hole.After five days of torturing, unexplained absence, to talk of nothing but fishing, as if his life depended on it! Girard himself had wondered, but he accepted the position allotted to him as a matter of course. He had thought, from Justin's manner to-day, that he was to know something of his affairs; but if Justin did not choose to confide in him—that was all right. Possibly the affairs were all right, too; they were none of his business, anyway.The lady and gentleman sit and chat"IT WAS SWEET TO BE CHAFFED, TO BE HEEDLESSLY YOUNG ONCE MORE"Suddenly a word caught the ears of the two who were sitting in the dining-room."That was the kind Lawson Barr used when he went down on the Susquehanna. By the way, I hear that he's dead."Lawson! Dosia's face changed as if a whip had flicked across it, and then trembled back into its normal quiet. William leaned a little nearer, his eyes curiously scanning her."Hadn't you heard before?""No; what?""He's dead.""Lawsondead! Not Lawson?" Her dry lips illy formed the words."Yes, Dosia. Don't look like that—don't let them see in there, Girard is looking at you; turn your face toward me. Leverich told us, coming up to-night. Lawson died a week ago.""How?""Fell from his horse somewhere up in a cañon—he was drunk, I reckon. They found him twenty-four hours afterward. The superintendent of the mines wrote to Leverich. He'd tried to keep pretty straight out there, all but the drinking, I guess that was too much forhim. It was the best thing he could do—to die—as Girard says. Girard hates the very sound of his name.""Oh," breathed Dosia painfully."The superintendent said that some of the miners chipped in to bury him, and the woman he boarded with sent a pencil scrawl along with the superintendent's letter to say that she'd 'miss Mr. Barr dreadful,'—that he'd get up and get the breakfast when she was sick, and 'the kids, they thought the world of him.' She signed herself, 'A true mourner, Mrs. Wilson.'"Lawson was dead!Dosia sat there, her hand clasping Billy's sleeve as at first—something tangible to hold on to. Her gaze had gone far beyond the room; even that haunting consciousness that Bailey Girard was near her was but a far, hidden subconsciousness. She was out on a rocky slope beside a dead body—Lawson, his head thrown back, those mocking, caressing eyes, those curving, passionate lips, closed forever, the blood oozing from between his dark locks. As ever with poor Dosia, there was that sharp, unbearable pang of self-reproach, of self-condemnation. Of what avail her prayers, her belief in him, when he had died thus? Oh, she had not prayed enough. She had not been good enough to be allowed to help; she had not believed hard enough. Perhaps it had helped just a little—he had "tried to keep pretty straight, all but the drinking; that was too much for him."That covered some resistance in an underworld of which she knew nothing. Poor Lawson, who had never had the right chance, whose youth had been poisoned at the start! In that grave where he lay, drunkard and reveler, part of the youth of her, Dosia Linden,—once his promised wife, to whom she had given herself in her soul,—must always lie too, buried with him; nothing could undo that. To die so causelessly! But the miners had cared a little; he had been kind to a woman and her little children—"the kids had thought the world of him"; she was "a true mourner, Mrs. Wilson." Dosia imagined him cheeringly cooking for this poor, worn-out mother, carrying the children from place to place as she had once seen him carry that little boy home from the ball, long, long ago.A strain from that unforgotten music came to her now, carrying her to the stars! Oh, not for Lawson the splendid rehabilitation of the strong, except in that one moment of denial when he had risen by the might of his manhood in renunciation for her sake; only the humble virtues of his weakness could be his—yet perhaps, in the sight of the God who pities, no such small offering, after all!"Dosia, you didn't reallycarefor him!"She smiled with pale lips and brimming eyes—an enigmatic answer which Billy could not read. He sat beside her, smoothing her dress furtively, until she got up, and, whispering, "I must go," left the room, unconscious of Girard's following gaze."I think we'd better be getting back," said the latter, in an odd voice, rising in the middle of one of Justin's sentences, as Billy came straying in to join the group.Lois' heart leaped. She had felt that another moment of live bait and reminiscences would be more than she could stand."You need some rest," she said gratefully. "You have been tired out in our service.""Oh, I'm not tired at all," he returned, shortly. Her work seemed to catch his eye for the first time and, in a desire to change the subject, "What are you making?" he asked."A ball for Redge. I made one for Zaidee, and he felt left out—he's of a very jealous disposition," she went on abstractedly. "Are you of a jealous disposition, Mr. Girard?""I!" He stopped short, with the air of one not accustomed to taking account of his own attributes, and apparently pondered the question as if for the first time. When he looked up to answer, it was with abrupt decision: "Yes, I am.""Don't look so like a pirate," said young Billy, giving him a thump on the back that sent them both out of the house, laughing, when Lois rose and went over to Justin's side.Husband and wife were at last alone.XXIVIn the days that followed, Justin, going away in the morning very early with a set face, coming home very late in the evening with that set face still, hardly seemed to notice the children or Dosia."Justin has so much on his mind." Lois kept repeating the words over and over, as if she found in them something by which to hold fast. Rich in beauty as she was, full of love and tender favor, with the sweetness and the pathos of an awakening soul, her husband seemed to have no eyes, no thought for her. That one murmured sentence in the hallway was all her food to live on—his only personal recognition of her.Sitting on the stairs, listening in her nightgown"SHE CREPT OUT UPON THE LANDING OF THE STAIRS, AND SAT THERE DESOLATELY ON THE TOP STEP"On the other hand, he poured out his affairs and his plans to her with a freedom of confidence unknown before, a confidence which seemed to pre-suppose her oneness of interest with him. He had talked exhaustively about everything but those few days' absence; that was a sore that she must not touch, a wound that could bear no probing. She had striven very hard not to show when she didn't understand, taking her cues for assent or dissent as he evidently wished her to, letting him think aloud, since it seemed to be a relief to him, and saying little herself. The only time when she broke in on her own account was when he told her about Cater, and the defective bars, and Leverich's ultimatum. Her "Justin, you wouldn't do that; you wouldn't tell!" met his quick response: "No, I couldn't.""Oh, I know that. I'd rather be a hundred times poorer than we are! Aren't you glad that you couldn't do it?""No; I think I'm rather sorry," said Justin, with a half-smile. The peculiar sharpness of the thought that it was between Cater and Leverich—his friends, Heaven save the mark!—that he was being pushed toward ruin, had not lost any of its edge.There had been a tonic in a certain attitude of Cater's mind toward Justin—an unspoken kindliness and admiration and tenderness such as an older man who has been along a hard road may feel toward another who has come along the same way. Cater's kind, unobtrusive comradeship, the fair-dealing friendliness of his rivalry, had seemed to be one of the factors of support, of honesty, of commercial righteousness. Justin could smile proudly at Leverich, but he couldn't smile when he thought of Cater—it weighed upon and humiliated him for the man who had been his friend."I am glad, anyway!" said Lois. "It wouldn't have beenyouif you had! Can't you take a rest now, dear, when you look so ill? No, no; I didn't mean that—of course you can't!""Arest!" He rose and walked up and down the room. "Lois, do you know that, in some way, I've got to get it before the 13th? Those days in Chicago—at the worst time! It makes me wild to think of the time I've lost. I'm looking out for a partner who will buy out Leverich and Martin, and we've got a chance yet—I'll swear we have! But Lewiston's note has got to be paid first; then I can take time to breathe. Harker saw a man from Boston from whom we might have borrowed the money, if I had only been here. If we get that, we can hold over; if we don't, we go to smash, and so does Lewiston. Lewistontrustedme. I've been to several places to-day to men that would be willing enough to lend the money if they didn't know I needed it.""George Sutton?" hazarded Lois.Justin's lips curved bitterly. "Oh, he's a cur. He had some money invested last year when he was sweet on Dosia, and drew it all out afterward! And, after all, I went to him to-day, like a fool!""Can't you go to Eugene Larue?""No. We talked about it once, but he fought shy; he didn't think the security enough. If he thought so then, it would be worse than useless now.""Mr. Girard?""There's no use telling things to him, he hasn't any money." Justin turned a dim eye on her. "I tell you, Lois, I haven't left a stone unturned, so far, that I could get at. If we could only sell the island! Girard's looking it up for me; there may be a chance of that. There are lots of chances to be thought out. I don't even know how we keep running, but we do. Harker's a trump! If I can hold up my end, we'll be all right.""Then go to bed now," said Lois, with a quick dread that gave her courage. "And you must have something to eat first—and to drink, too. Come, Justin! Do as I say." Her voice had a new firmness in it which he unconsciously obeyed. She crept to her bed at last, aching in every limb, but with her baby pressed close to her, her one darling comfort, the source from which she drew a new love as the child drew its life from her. It was the first time in all her married life that she had borne the burden of her husband's care, a burden from which she must seek no solace from him.She bent all her energies, these next days, to keeping him well fed, and ordering everything minutely for his comfort when he came home, aided and abetted by Dosia. The two women worked as with one thought between them, as women can work, for the well-being of one they love, with fond and minute care. Every detail, from the time he went away in the morning, stooping slightly under the weight of something mysterious and unseen, was ordered with reference to his home-coming at night—the husband and father on whose strength all this helpless little family hung for their own sustenance.Everything that was done for him had to be done covertly, it was found; he disliked any manifestation of undue attention to his wants. Sometimes he was terribly irritable and unjust, and at others almost heartbreakingly gentle and mild. Lois had persuaded him to have the doctor, who told him seriously that he must stay home and rest—a futile prescription, which he treated with scorn. Rest! He knew very well that it was not rest that he needed,but money—money, money, the elixir of life!It was near the end of this week when Justin came home, as Lois could see at once, revived and encouraged, though still abstracted. He had an invitation to take a ride in the doctor's motor, the doctor being a man who, when the hazard of dangerous cases had been extreme, absented himself for a couple of hours, in which, under a breathless and unholy speed of motoring, he reversed the pressure on his nerves, and came to the renewed sanity of a wind-swept brain when every idea had been rushed out of it.Lois felt that it would be good for Justin, too, and was glad that he had been persuaded to go; yet she caught him looking at her with such strange intentness a couple of times during the dinner that it discomposed her oddly. It made her a little silent; she pondered over it after she had gone up, as usual, to the baby. Was there something wrong with her appearance? She looked anxiously in the glass, and was annoyed to find that the white fichu, open at the throat, was not on quite straight, and her hair was a little disarranged. She was pale, and there were dark lines under her eyes. She hated not to look nice. Yet it might not be that. Was it, perhaps, that something else was wrong—that he had bad news which he did not like to tell? Was he to leave her again on some journey? She turned white for a moment, and sat down to get the baby to sleep, and then resolutely tried to drive the thought from her. Yet, as she sat there rocking gently, the thought still came back to her, oddly, puzzlingly. Why had he looked at her like that? The smoke of his pipe down-stairs kept her still aware of his presence.Presently he came up-stairs and tiptoed into the room in clumsy fashion, for fear of waking the baby, in his quest of a pair of gloves in a chiffonier drawer. After finding them, he stopped for a moment in front of her, with that odd, arrested expression once more."You don't mind my going out to-night and leaving you?" he murmured. "The doctor ought to have askedyou, instead; you need it more than I.""Oh, no, no!" she hastened to reassure. "I don't mind at all, really!" Her eyes gazed up at him, limpidly clear, and emptied of self. "I have to run up and down stairs so many times to baby now that I couldn't go, no matter how much I was asked to. I'm only glad that you will have the distraction—you need it. I hope you'll have a lovely time."She listened to his descending footsteps, and after a moment or two arose and laid the sleeping child down in his crib.In the dim light she went about the room, picking up toys and little discarded garments left by the children, folding the clothes away, her tall, graceful figure, in the large curves of its repeated bending and straightening, seeming to exemplify some unpainted Millet-like idea of mother-work, emblematic of its unceasing round. She was hanging up a tiny cloak in the half gloom of her closet, when she heard her husband's step once more stealing into the room, and the next moment saw him beside her."What's the matter?" she asked, with quick premonition."Nothing, nothing at all; we haven't started yet." He put one arm around her and with the other lifted her face up toward his. "I only came back to tell you"—His voice broke; there seemed to be a mist over the eyes that were bent on hers. "I can't talk. I can't be as I ought to be, Lois, until all this is over—but—I don't know what's getting into me lately, you look so beautiful to me that I can't take my eyes off you! I went around all to-day counting the hours, like a foolish boy, until it was time to come back to you; I grudge every minute that I spend away from my lovely wife."Sometimes we have a happiness so much greater, so much more blessed than our easily imagined bliss, that we can only hide our eyes from it at first, like those of old, when in some humble and unthought-of place they were visited by angels.XXVVery late that night Bailey Girard arrived at the house, after an absence of ten days. Dosia had gone to bed unusually early, but she could not sleep. She could not seem to sleep at all lately—the tireder she was, the more ceaselessly luminous seemed her brain; it was like trying to sleep in a white glare in which all sorts of trivial things became unnaturally distinct. Darkness brought, not a sense of rest, but that dread knowledge that she was going to lie there staring through all the hours of it. Since that night that the pitcher had broken, she was ever waiting tensely for the day to bring her something that it never brought. Lawson's death—Girard—Billy, who was getting a little troublesome lately—the dear little brothers far away, mixed up with tiny household perplexities, kept going through and through her mind. Her heart was wrung for Justin and Lois; yet they had each other! Dreams could no longer comfort and support Dosia. Prayer but wakened her further. If she could only sleep and forget!To-night she heard Justin's return from theautomobile ride; apparently the machine had broken down, but the accident seemed only to have added to the zest. Lois was still dressed and waiting up for him. Then Girard came—he had seen the light in the window. Dosia could hear the murmuring of the voices down-stairs—Girard's sent the blood leaping to her heart so fast that she pressed her hands against it. For a moment his face seemed near, his lips almost touched hers—her heart stopped before it went on again. Why had he come now? It seemed suddenly an unbearable thing that those others down-stairs should see him and hear him, and that she could not. Why, oh, why, had she gone to bed so early to-night of all nights? She was ready to cry with the passion of a disappointment that seemed, not a little thing, but something crushing and calamitous, a loss for which she never could be repaid. She could imagine Justin and Lois meeting the kind glances of those gray eyes, smiling when he did. He was beautiful when he smiled! She was within a few yards of him, but convention, absurd yet maddening, held her in its chains. She couldn't get dressed and break in upon their intimate conference—or it seemed as if she could not. Besides, he would probably go very soon. But he did not go! After a while she could lie there no longer. She crept out upon the landing of the stairs, and sat there desolately on the top step, "in her long night-gown, sweet as boughs of May," with her little bare feet curled over each other, and her hands clasping the balustrade against which her cheek was pressed, watching and waiting for him to go. The ends of her long fair hair fell into large loose curls where it hung over her shoulder, as she bent to listen—and to listen—and to listen."I want to be there, too—I want to be there, too!" she whispered, with quivering lips, in her voice the sobbing catch of a very little child. "I want to be there, too. They're having it all—without me. And I want to be there, too. They might have called me to come down, and they didn't." They might have called her! All her passion, all her philosophy, all her endurance, melted into that one desire. If she had only known at first that he was going to stay so long, she would have dressed and gone down. She could hardly bear it a moment longer.After a while a door on the landing of the second story below opened, and a little figure crept out—Zaidee. She stood irresolute in the hall, looking down; then she looked up, and, seeing Dosia, ran to her and climbed into her lap, resting her little pigtailed head confidingly against Dosia's warm young shoulder."They woke me up," she said placidly. "Did they woke you up, too, Cousin Dosia?""Yes," said Dosia, hugging the child close. "Hush! some one is coming; you'll get sent to bed again." This time it was Lois. Her abstracted gaze seemed to take in the two on the upper stairway as a matter of course."Oh, it's you, is it?" she said. "I thought I heard some one talking." She rested on the post below, looking up. "I came to see if you'd take Zaidee in with you for the rest of the night, Dosia. I want to give Justin's room to Mr. Girard.""Is he going to stay?" asked Dosia."Yes. It's too late for him to disturb the Snows, and he's been traveling all day; he's dreadfully tired. He wanted to sleep on the sofa down-stairs, but I wouldn't let him." She was carrying Zaidee, already half asleep again, in her arms as she talked, depositing her in Dosia's bed, while Dosia followed her."Did he sell the island?" asked Dosia.Lois shook her head. "No. They may really sell it next week, but not now—only that will be too late to save the business. Of course, Mr. Girard doesn't know that, and Justin will not tell him—he says Mr. Girard cannot help. Oh, Dosia, when Justin came in from that ride he looked so well, and now—" She covered her face with her hands, before recovering herself. "It's time you were both asleep.""Can't I help you?" asked Dosia; but Lois only answered indifferently, "No, it's not necessary," and went around making arrangements, while Dosia, with Zaidee nestling close to her, slept at last.It was late the next morning before Girard came down. Justin had had breakfast, and gone; Lois was up-stairs with the children, and Dosia, who had been tidying up the place, was arranging some flowers in the vases when he strode in. There was no vestige of that sick-hearted, imploring maiden of the night before; no desolate frenzy was to be seen in this trim, neat, capable little figure, clad in blue gingham, that made her throat very white, her hair very fair. Something in Girard's glance seemed to show an instant pleasure that she should be the one to greet him, but he bent anxiously over the watch he held in his hand."Will you tell me what time it is? My watch has stopped.""It's half-past nine," said Dosia."Half-pastnine!" He looked at her in a sort of quick, horrified arraignment. "What do you mean?" His eye fell upon the clock, and conviction seemed to steal upon him against his will. "Heavens and earth, whywasn't I called? On this morning of all others, when every moment's of importance! I thought I asked particularly to be waked early.""I suppose they thought you were tired and needed the rest," apologized Dosia."Needed the rest!" His tone was poignant; he looked outraged; but his anger was entirely impersonal—there was in it even a sort of boyish appeal to her, as if she must feel it, too."You had better sit down and have some breakfast.""Oh,breakfast!" His gesture deprecated her evident intention. "Please don't. Thank you very much, but I don't want any breakfast; I only want to get to town.""There isn't any train for twenty-five minutes, so you might as well sit down and eat," said Dosia firmly. "Come out to this little table on the piazza." She led the way to the screened corner at the end, sweet with the honeysuckle that swung its long loops in the wind, and faced him sternly. "Do you take coffee?""Please don't, please don't cook me anything! I'd hate to trouble you." He seemed so distressed that she relented a little."A glass of milk and some fruit, then; you'llhaveto take that.""Very well—if I must. Can't I get the things myself?""No." She ran away to get them for him, with some new joy singing in her heart as she went backward and forward, bringing a pitcher of milk, a glass, a dish of strawberries, some cream, and the sugar, sitting down herself by the table afterward as he ate and drank. He gave her a sudden smile, so surprised and pleased that the color surged in her cheeks."I'm not used to this," he said simply. "What is that dress you have on—silk?"
Kitsap in a tribal headdressCopyrighted by E. S. Curtis, Seattle"KITSAP, THE CLERK, DONNED THE TRIBAL FINERY OF HIS ANCESTORS"
Copyrighted by E. S. Curtis, Seattle
"I have sent you an important letter by express on the three o'clock train," said the cashier. "Get it and read what I have written. Stay as long as you need to, but smash that pool, and teach Lamson not to lie about the Elliott Bay National."
Then Kitsap waited for the train, secured his express package, and opened it. It contained a letter from Lamson to the bank—a letter that was ammunition for the Indian—and instructions to make certain use of it.
He could make no more progress indirectly; he must face the raiders, or his own people would doubt him. He must seek out Lamson, and standing in front of that white man, the Indian must throw back into his teeth that lie about the bank. The warm red blood in him yearned for a clash and a tussle. He would go to the store to spend the evening. If a collision with the fourteen-cent raiders was to be effected anywhere, the store would afford it.
To the store that night came Lamson and the St. Louis buyers, all in evil mood. Kitsap's news had completely arrested the effect of their pessimistic talk. No rancher would sell at fourteen cents with a bank's messenger rioting over the valley quoting hops in Liverpool at eighteen cents. Indeed, those who had already contracted to sell were grumbling, and many of them came to the store that night, eager to hear the truth of a market which had been misrepresented to them. These men were listening to Kitsap, whose words put them in a very sullen temper, when Lamson and the three buyers entered.
"So you're the Injun who's been going around bulling the market," shouted Lamson, his voice keyed high with temper. He stepped quickly into the crowd of ranchers about Kitsap, conscious that he must rout the Indian or see the end of the pool.
The young Indian faced the irate rancher and looked him coolly up and down. This was Lamson; the heaviest owner of land in the valley. This was the white man who had lied about the Elliott Bay National. The meeting for which he had hoped had come. The Indian drew a deep breath of sheer delight. Then, in a clear, ringing tone, he returned the white man's fire:
"So you are the rancher who lied about the Elliott Bay National Bank?"
The blood leaped to the rancher's temples and he stepped menacingly toward the Indian. But before he could strike, Kitsap's voice again rang out:
"You are a double liar! You borrowed money to pay pickers, but used it to buy hops at fourteen cents, after telling the ranchers that you had sold. That was the first lie. You told the Indians that the bank would not loan you enough to pay them. That was another lie. But the bank has found you out!"
The rancher stood speechless before the unexpected words of the Indian. The clenched fist fell to his side. The young man who stood there before him, with the straight proud poise of the savage chieftain, spoke the words of the white man's warfare, the warfare of the mart and of barter. He must be met and beaten on his own ground. Clearly, he had spoken to effect, and the rancher must justify his position before his fellow ranchers, whose eyes were so intently watching him.
"You seem to know a lot about the bank's business," he began, with an attempt at sarcasm. "I suppose the president consults you on loans."
"The president did on this one," replied the Indian. The ranchers laughed.
"Then perhaps he told you that this one was amply secured by my hop receipts," boasted Lamson.
"He did."
"Then what the bloomin' —— is it to him what I do with the cash?"
"He sent me to give you back that lie about the bank."
"Well"——
"I have. I called you a liar, and then proved it. Your name is—Two Lies!"
Lamson's color came back, but this time it was the color of anger. His hand went half-way to his revolver, but a broad-shouldered rancher caught his arm.
"None o' that, Lamson."
Lamson wrenched his arm away. The big rancher faced him.
"This here Kitsap is telling the truth," said he. "I reckon he's got still more of it to give us. And we will expect you to fish or cut bait. But I'll hold this." Then he clapped his hand on Lamson's gun pocket and disarmed him. The three St. Louis hop buyers looked wistfully toward the door. But prudence held them to the spot.
"You are making a big fuss over nothing," sputtered Lamson. "Whose business is it if I do buy hops? The bank is secured on its loan."
"It's our business a whole lot," said the big rancher, gently tapping the handle of Lamson's revolver on Lamson's chest. "You give out that you are selling hops at fourteen cents and advise a lot of us fellows to do the same. Now we're told that you've been buyin' at fourteen cents. It's our business to find out which end up you're playin' this market."
"Oh, rot!" roared Lamson. "Hops are fourteen cents now. I'm buying a few to hold 'em. If I can afford to take the risk, I'm entitled to the profit."
"The bank knows that hops are eighteen cents to-day," broke in Kitsap.
"That's another lie," yelled the enraged Lamson, and the ranchers laughed at the unconscious admission.
"Is it?" said Kitsap quietly. "Do you dare to bet on it?"
"I'll bet you a hundred dollars," roared the rancher, "that you can't get over fourteen cents for hops in this valley this fall."
"I will bet you that amount that I can get at least sixteen cents for the Indians on the reservation."
"Where's your money?" said Lamson, drawing out a roll of bills.
Kitsap had not looked for this. He was puzzledfor a moment. Then he drew forth a pocket check-book, signed a check, and handed it to an Indian rancher, who endorsed it. Turning to Lamson, Kitsap said:
Native americans of all generations in the hops fieldsCopyrighted by E. S. Curtis, Seattle"ON ALL SIDES THE HOP-PICKERS WERE MAKING MERRY"
Copyrighted by E. S. Curtis, Seattle
"Will this do, or shall I telephone the cashier to assure its payment?"
"It's good," said Lamson.
"Very well. But if you are so sure about the price of hops, Mr. Two Lies, why don't you make it two to one that I can't get seventeen cents?"
"That's my money!" and Lamson began counting out another hundred.
"Or three to one that I can't get eighteen cents?"
"It goes!"
"Or four to one that I can't get nineteen cents?"
"Yes; or five to one that you can't get twenty," roared the exasperated planter.
"Five to one," replied Kitsap. "And if I win, I will throw your money in silver from the steps of the reservation school to the Indian children."
Kitsap noted the effect on the Indians in the room as the money was placed in the hands of the town marshal. He knew how every red man on the reservation would work for twenty-cent hops now.
But the Indian was not through with the white man. He turned on him again.
"If you think the bank lied when it said eighteen cents, there is a telephone. Call up the cashier at his home. He sent me here to tell the white men and Indians who are our clients. Ask him for yourself."
Lamson and the three buyers noted the words "Our clients." To Lamson it brought identification of the Indian as Johnny Kitsap, the clerk; to the buyers it was just mysterious enough to be alarming.
"Confound the cashier! All he knows is what somebody else has told him."
"Mr. Lamson, do you yourself think that fourteen cents for hops to-day is a fair price?" asked Kitsap, suddenly taking a conciliatory tone.
"Certainly I do. But if I want to buy hops at fourteen cents now and hold them on a speculation, it's my own business."
"Entirely," said the Indian. "But I believe your conduct with the ranchers who have agreed to sell is based on your statement that you had already sold your own hops to these buyers from St. Louis for fourteen cents."
"That's right," said Lamson boldly. "I can sell my hops for what I like."
"Liar," said Kitsap, "you havenotsold your hops."
Lamson sprang to his feet, but the big rancher put out a big hand and shoved him back.
"Sit down," said the big man. "Can't you see this here Kitsap's got the floor?"
"As I understand it," continued Kitsap, turning to the men who had signed the contract to sell to the raiders, "unless Mr. Lamson has already delivered his hops to the buyers under his contract, the very agreement is void, and you are all released."
"You bet your life that's right," said the big man with the gun, and from all parts of the crowd came words of confirmation.
Lamson, for the first time during the encounter, felt uneasy. He looked blankly at the three buyers. One of the gentlemen from St. Louis drew the contract from his pocket.
"The young man is right," said the gentleman from St. Louis, in a conciliatory tone. "Here is the contract, and I can safely assure our friends that Mr. Lamson has carried out his part of the agreement."
"You bet," shouted Lamson, recognizing a very pretty bluff on the part of the buyer.
"May I see the contract?" asked Kitsap.
The buyer passed it to him. Kitsap read the contract aloud, and then tossed it over his head into the hands of the men who had signed it. The buyers and Lamson came to their feet.
"Worthless paper," said Kitsap. "Lamson has not delivered his hop receipts and therefore there is no contract."
A yell of delight went up from the crowd, and a shower of tiny bits of white papers showed the fate of the instrument. Kitsap pointed his finger at the enraged Lamson, and as the shower of paper fell about him fairly shouted his denunciation:
"I, Kitsap, the clerk, am a representative of the Elliott Bay National Bank. I come here by the orders of thetyee—the president. Your hop receipts are in the bank's treasure-chest, and here is your letter received at the bank last Monday." Kitsap opened the letter that had come to him by express and read:
Picking is progressing well, and the valley will yield a big crop. A few hungry ranchers are selling at fourteen cents cash at the warehouse, but I look for better prices later. I hope you will be willing to carry my receiptstill November, when I look for a price close to twenty cents.
Picking is progressing well, and the valley will yield a big crop. A few hungry ranchers are selling at fourteen cents cash at the warehouse, but I look for better prices later. I hope you will be willing to carry my receiptstill November, when I look for a price close to twenty cents.
As Kitsap read, his voice rose, and, as he ended, there was absolute silence for an instant. Then the ranchers took their spellbound eyes from the quivering Indian and looked at the pale face of the speechless Lamson. The store-keeper looked with the others, and it was his groan that broke the spell:
"Thunder! I stood to make a thousand on the deal."
Then the overjoyed ranchers found their voices in a wild laugh, and laid enthusiastic hands on Kitsap. Lamson and the buyers slipped away, beaten and humiliated, to lament the failure of the fourteen-cent raid, and to spend a few bitter hours in planning a new offer next morning at a better price, for there was need to cover promises made to Eastern houses.
The ranchers quickly formed themselves into a meeting and sent couriers out to notify all signers of the contract that the deal was off. Then they appointed a committee to go to the bank next day with Kitsap and be witnesses to his report to his superiors.
Before another day passed, the spirit of thevalley had changed from a desire to sell quickly for cash into a determination to hold the crop for a twenty-cent market. The Elliott Bay National secured daily bulletins from inside sources and kept the world's markets before the entire valley. Picking progressed to an end, and the Indians held their last feast and departed. Then buyers came from other markets, inspected the crop, and made offers. Gradually the valley ranchers joined the lead of the reservation Indians and placed their receipts with the Elliott Bay National, to be held for a rise and sold as near twenty cents as possible. The cashier sent East for a prominent broker, who replied that he would arrive by the Sound in mid-October. Then the other buyers began bulling the market, hoping to induce a rancher here and there to sell and, by thus breaking the ranks, run prices down. But Kitsap, on the ground, and the cashier, in the bank, were able to hold them together till the new broker arrived.
The families load up their canoesCopyrighted by E. S. Curtis, Seattle"PICKING PROGRESSED TO AN END, AND THE INDIANS HELD THEIR LAST FEAST AND DEPARTED"
Copyrighted by E. S. Curtis, Seattle
The new man was business from the ground up. He knew where he could sell hops, and for what price. He inspected the valley crop of hops and frankly announced his intention to pay twenty-one cents. Then the other buyers rushed in to get a share, and the result was an agreement by which the new broker got half the crop at twenty-one cents and the late lamented fourteen-cent raiders divided the other half among themselves at twenty-three cents, the money to be distributed through the Elliott Bay National to all ranchers at the average of twenty-two cents.
Kitsap telephoned the news to the reservation, and the priest sent the son of Peter Coultee on his spotted cayuse to ride into the village with the news. DeQuincey's Royal Mail with the news of Waterloo did not create more enthusiasm than the Indian's triumphant shout. As he dashed along he yelled to the white men:
"Hops sold at twenty-two cents!"
To the Indian ranchers he called out the same news in the jargon:
"Hops marsh mox-taltum-tee-mox."
Down the street he rode, yelling and winning yells in return. The news spread from street to street, men carried it into the valley, and that night many a heart among the ranches beat quicker and many a voice at the firesides murmured the name of "Kitsap."
The town marshal made the trip to Seattle and delivered the six-hundred-dollar wager to Kitsap. The Indian told the cashier the terms of the wager and asked to be excused on thefollowing Saturday, that he might assemble the reservation children and scatter the Lamson money.
"It will be a great event to them," said Kitsap. "I shall take all of Lamson's five hundred dollars in dimes, and the whole reservation will come out to see the fun."
The cashier granted the leave of absence gladly.
"If you will hold the event in the afternoon, I think the president would be pleased to go out and see it," said he.
Kitsap needed no other hint, but went boldly to the president and invited him to witness the scattering of the coins.
"With pleasure," replied the president.
"Come on the three o'clock train, and I will have a carriage for you," said Kitsap.
The reservation had been waiting for twenty-cent hops as a band of children wait for the circus. Five thousand dimes to be thrown to less than three hundred children! It would be a rare scramble. Indian children raided their mothers' button-baskets that they might throw the buttons in the sand and practise scrambling for them. Then came the news of twenty-two cent hops, and every Indian, young or old, jumped up and down and shouted that Kitsap had won that Lamson money.
"Saturday afternoon at four o'clock," was Kitsap's message to the reservation priest, and the priest assembled ten young men for a conference. It was decided to mark off ten squares on the lawn in front of the schoolhouse. On each square a squad of thirty children should stand, the children of each squad graded so as to be nearly of a size, girls and boys in alternate squares. Before each square one of the ten young men should stand with five hundred silver coins in a dish. At a signal from Kitsap, who should stand on the school steps, the ten young men should throw the dimes in the air and the scramble would begin.
When the train stopped at the reservation station that October afternoon, the president of the Elliott Bay National found Kitsap the elder there to meet him, with a clean spring wagon. During the short drive to the reservation school, he noted that the road was deserted, but when the school was reached a scene of color and animation met his eye. The tribe was out in full regalia, even the clients of the bank, who came gravely to the president's wagon to greet him. Kitsap the elder drove to a spot reserved for the head men of the tribe, and the chief of the money-house was welcomed to a place among them. Then a hush fell upon the assembly.
A procession of young men, headed by Kitsap, decked in tribal finery, came out of the schoolhouse. Kitsap remained on the stairs, as the ten young men, bearing dishes of dimes, took their places before the squares. Every child stood waiting—every grown person held his breath. The voice of Kitsap, speaking each sentence first in the jargon and then in English, made a short harangue. The president smiled as he caught this glimpse of Kitsap's own interpretation of a bank.
"Lamson, the white man, told a lie about the money-house. The greattyeeof the treasure-chest sent Kitsap, who is a brave of the whitetyee'shouse, to tell the Puyallups the truth. The Great Spirit made Lamson angry and caused him to lose this money to Kitsap, who serves the great whitetyee. But the great whitetyeesaid: 'Behold, the Great Spirit has punished Lamson. Forever will he be called Two Lies. The money shall be for the children, as Kitsap said. I will go myself to see Kitsap throw the silver coins to the children, for it is a lesson. Let them always speak true words, or the Great Spirit will punish them, and they will have an evil name like Lamson!' And look, children, Kitsap'styeesits with thetyeeof the Puyallups to see you scramble. Remember, keep on your own square and do not strike. Push and pull, but do not strike. Show the whitetyeewho lives in the magic treasure-house that you can play your games fairly. Then he will be pleased and tell his own people of the silver coins that Kitsap throws to the children."
There was silence a moment, and then Kitsap raised a feathered wand. In the native tongue he shouted:
"All ready? Throw!"
Ten lithe Indians threw their silver treasure into the air. Five thousand silver coins flashed in the sun and fell in a sparkling shower on the heads of the tribal children. With one voice the children screamed and sprang to the scramble; with one voice the Puyallup tribe roared in glee; with one motion the tribal hats went into the air, and the president of the Elliott Bay National yelled in his enthusiasm, pounded a red man on the back, waved a silk hat on high, and became as one of these child-hearted aborigines.
Late that night, while the president sat at his club, hoarse but happy, and told what he had seen, a band of Indians out on the reservation held a ceremony in a big tent. The rite was as old as the tribal memory—the rite of formally adopting a chief—and a young man was declared to have won a great fight, and to be worthy of a high place in the councils of the tribe. They wanted to name him Chief Who-Made-The-Silver-Rain, but the young man replied that Chief Kitsap, being his father's name, was good enough for him.
Justinwas in Chicago—the fact was verified—and he would start for home on the morrow. There seemed to be no details, save the comforting one that Billy Snow was with him. After that first sharp immediate relief from suspense, Lois again felt its filminess settling down upon her.
Girard had gone back very early to the Snows' to breakfast. He talked to Lois by telephone, but he did not come to the house; while Dosia, wrapped in an outward abstraction that concealed a whirl within, went about her daily tasks, living over and over the scene of the night before. The shattering of the pitcher seemed to have shattered something else. Once he had felt, then, as she had done; once—so far away that night of disaster had gone, so long was it since she had held that protecting hand in her dreams, that the touch brought a strange resurrection of the spirit. She had an upwelling new sense of gratitude to him for something unexpressed, some quality which she passionately revered, and which other men had not always used toward her.
"Oh, he's good, he'sgood!" she whispered to herself, with the tears blinding her, as she picked up Redge's blocks from the floor. She felt Lawson's kisses on her lips, her throat—that cross of shame that she held always close to her; George Sutton's fat face thrust itself leeringly before her. How many girls have passages in their lives to which they look back with the shame that only purity and innocence can feel! Yet the sense of Girard's presence before was as nothing to her sense of it now—it blotted out the world. She saw him sitting alone in the dining-room, with his head resting on his hand, the attitude informed with life. The turn of his head, the shape of his hand, were insistent things. She saw him standing in front of her, long-limbed, erect of mien. She saw—If she looked pale and inert, it was because that inner thought of her lived so hard that the body was worn out with it.
Neither telegram nor any other message came from Justin, except the bare word that he had started home. On the second morning, just as Lois had finished dressing, she heard the hall door open and shut. She called, but cautiously, for fear of disturbing her baby, who had dropped off to sleep again.
Justin was standing by the table, looking at the newspaper, as she entered the dining-room. With a cry, she ran toward him. "Justin!"
He turned, and she put her arms around him passionately. He held her for a moment, and then said, "You'd better sit down."
"But, Justin—oh, my dearest, how ill you look!" She clung to him. "Where have you been? Why didn't you send me any word?"
"I've been to Chicago."
"Yes, yes, I know. Why did you go?"
"I don't know."
"You don'tknow?"
"Lois, will you give me some coffee?"
She poured out the cup with trembling hands, and sat while he took a swallow of the hot fluid, still scanning the newspaper. At last she said:
"Aren't you going to tell me any more?"
"There isn't any more to tell. There's no use talking about it. I believe I had some idea of selling the island when I went to Chicago, but I don't know how I got there. I didn't know I was there until I woke up two nights ago at a little hotel away out on the West Side. Billy pounded on the door, and said they told him I had been asleep for twenty-eight hours. I suppose I was dead tired out. I don't want to speak of it again, Lois; it wasn't a particularly pleasant thing to happen. Will you tell Mary to bring in the rest of the breakfast? I must catch the eight-thirty train back into town. I thought you might be bothered, so I came out first. Where are the children?"
"They are coming down now with Dosia," said his wife, helping Mary with the dishes. Redge ran up to his father, hitting him jubilantly with a small stick which he held in his chubby hand, and bringing irritated reproof down upon him at once; but Zaidee, her blue eyes open, her lips parted over her little white teeth, slid into the arm outstretched for her, and stood there leaning against "Daddy's" side, while he ate and drank hurriedly, with only one hand at his disposal. Poor Lois could not help one pang of jealousy at being shut out, but she heroically smothered it.
"Mr. Harker was here the evening before last; he brought me some money," she ventured at last.
"That was all right."
"And Mr. Girard was very kind; he stayed here all that night—until your message came."
"I hope you haven't been talking about this all over the place."
"No—oh, no," said Lois, driving back the tears at this causeless injury. "Mr. Leverich said it was best not to. Nobody knows about your being away at all. You're not goingnow, Justin—without even seeing baby?"
"I'll see him to-night when I come home," said Justin, rising. He kissed the children and his wife hastily, but she followed him into the hall, standing there, dumbly beseeching, while he brushed his hat with the hat-brush on the table, and then rummaged hastily as if for something else.
"Here are your gloves, if that is what you are looking for," she said.
"Yes, thank you." He bent over and kissed her again, as if really seeing her for the first time, with a whispered "Poor girl!" That momentary close embrace brought her a needed—oh, so needed!—crumb of comfort. She who had hungered so insatiably for recognition could be humbly thankful now for the two words that spoke of an inner bond.
But all day she could not get rid of that feeling of suspense that had been hers for five days past; the strain was to end, of course, with Justin's return, but it had not ended—in some sad, weighting fashion it seemed just to have begun. What was he so worried about? Was she never to hear any more?
That night Girard came over, but with him was another visitor—William Snow. No sun could brown that baby-fair skin of William's, but he had an indefinably large and Western air; the very way in which he wore his clothes showed his independence. Dosia did not notice his swift, covert, shamefaced glance at her when she came into the room where he was talking to Lois—his avoidance of her the year before had dropped clear out of her mind; but his expression changed to one of complacent delight as she ran to him instantly and clasped his arm with both hands to cry, "Oh, Billy, Billy, I'm so glad to see you! I am so glad—I can't tell you how glad I am!"
Little girl next to Daddy during breakfast"STOOD THERE LEANING AGAINST 'DADDY'S' SIDE"
"All right, Sweetness, you're not going to lose me again," said William encouragingly. "My, but you do knock the spots out of those Western girls. Can't we go in the dining-room by ourselves? I want to ask you to marry me before we talk any more."
"Yes, do," said Dosia, dimpling.
It was sweet to be chaffed, to be heedlessly young once more, to take refuge from all disconcerting thoughts—from a new embarrassment—with Billy, in the corner of the other room, where she sat in a low chair, and he dragged up an ottoman close in front of her. Through the open window the scent of honeysuckle came in with the gloom.
"Oh, but you've grown pretty!" he said, his hands clasped over his knees, gazing at her. "That's right, get pink—it makes you prettier. I like this slimpsy sort of dress you've got on; I like that black velvet around your throat; I—have you missed me much?"
"No," said Dosia, with the old-time sparkle. "I've hardly thought of you at all. But I feel now as if I had."
Billy nodded. "All right, I'll pay you up for that some day. Oh, Dosia, you may think I'm joking, but I'm not! There have been days and nights when I've done nothing but plan the things I was going to do and say to make you care for me—but they're all gone the moment I lay eyes on you. I'll talk of whatever you like afterward, but I've got to say first"—Billy's voice, deep and manly and confident, had yet a little shake in it—"that nobody is going to marry you but me, and don't you forget it. I'm no kid any more." Something in his tone gave his words emphasis. "I know how to look out for you better than any one else does."
"Dear Billy," said Dosia, touched, and resting her cheek momentarily against the rough sleeve of his coat, "it's so good to have you back again."
Lois, who had been longing intolerably all day for evening to come, so that she could be alone with her husband, sat in the drawing-room, trying to sew with nervous, trembling fingers, while her husband, looking frightfully tired, and Bailey Girard smoked and talked—of all things in the world!—of the relative merits of live or "spoon" bait in trolling, and afterward went minutely into details of the manufacture of artificial lures for catching trout.
Those wasted "social" hours of non-interest, non-satisfaction, how long, how unbearably long, they can seem! Lois' face twitched, as well as her fingers; she did not realize, as women often do not, that to Justin this conversation, banal and irrelevant to any action of his present life or his present anxiety, was like coming up from under-depths to breathe at a necessary air-hole.
After five days of torturing, unexplained absence, to talk of nothing but fishing, as if his life depended on it! Girard himself had wondered, but he accepted the position allotted to him as a matter of course. He had thought, from Justin's manner to-day, that he was to know something of his affairs; but if Justin did not choose to confide in him—that was all right. Possibly the affairs were all right, too; they were none of his business, anyway.
The lady and gentleman sit and chat"IT WAS SWEET TO BE CHAFFED, TO BE HEEDLESSLY YOUNG ONCE MORE"
Suddenly a word caught the ears of the two who were sitting in the dining-room.
"That was the kind Lawson Barr used when he went down on the Susquehanna. By the way, I hear that he's dead."
Lawson! Dosia's face changed as if a whip had flicked across it, and then trembled back into its normal quiet. William leaned a little nearer, his eyes curiously scanning her.
"Hadn't you heard before?"
"No; what?"
"He's dead."
"Lawsondead! Not Lawson?" Her dry lips illy formed the words.
"Yes, Dosia. Don't look like that—don't let them see in there, Girard is looking at you; turn your face toward me. Leverich told us, coming up to-night. Lawson died a week ago."
"How?"
"Fell from his horse somewhere up in a cañon—he was drunk, I reckon. They found him twenty-four hours afterward. The superintendent of the mines wrote to Leverich. He'd tried to keep pretty straight out there, all but the drinking, I guess that was too much forhim. It was the best thing he could do—to die—as Girard says. Girard hates the very sound of his name."
"Oh," breathed Dosia painfully.
"The superintendent said that some of the miners chipped in to bury him, and the woman he boarded with sent a pencil scrawl along with the superintendent's letter to say that she'd 'miss Mr. Barr dreadful,'—that he'd get up and get the breakfast when she was sick, and 'the kids, they thought the world of him.' She signed herself, 'A true mourner, Mrs. Wilson.'"
Lawson was dead!
Dosia sat there, her hand clasping Billy's sleeve as at first—something tangible to hold on to. Her gaze had gone far beyond the room; even that haunting consciousness that Bailey Girard was near her was but a far, hidden subconsciousness. She was out on a rocky slope beside a dead body—Lawson, his head thrown back, those mocking, caressing eyes, those curving, passionate lips, closed forever, the blood oozing from between his dark locks. As ever with poor Dosia, there was that sharp, unbearable pang of self-reproach, of self-condemnation. Of what avail her prayers, her belief in him, when he had died thus? Oh, she had not prayed enough. She had not been good enough to be allowed to help; she had not believed hard enough. Perhaps it had helped just a little—he had "tried to keep pretty straight, all but the drinking; that was too much for him."
That covered some resistance in an underworld of which she knew nothing. Poor Lawson, who had never had the right chance, whose youth had been poisoned at the start! In that grave where he lay, drunkard and reveler, part of the youth of her, Dosia Linden,—once his promised wife, to whom she had given herself in her soul,—must always lie too, buried with him; nothing could undo that. To die so causelessly! But the miners had cared a little; he had been kind to a woman and her little children—"the kids had thought the world of him"; she was "a true mourner, Mrs. Wilson." Dosia imagined him cheeringly cooking for this poor, worn-out mother, carrying the children from place to place as she had once seen him carry that little boy home from the ball, long, long ago.
A strain from that unforgotten music came to her now, carrying her to the stars! Oh, not for Lawson the splendid rehabilitation of the strong, except in that one moment of denial when he had risen by the might of his manhood in renunciation for her sake; only the humble virtues of his weakness could be his—yet perhaps, in the sight of the God who pities, no such small offering, after all!
"Dosia, you didn't reallycarefor him!"
She smiled with pale lips and brimming eyes—an enigmatic answer which Billy could not read. He sat beside her, smoothing her dress furtively, until she got up, and, whispering, "I must go," left the room, unconscious of Girard's following gaze.
"I think we'd better be getting back," said the latter, in an odd voice, rising in the middle of one of Justin's sentences, as Billy came straying in to join the group.
Lois' heart leaped. She had felt that another moment of live bait and reminiscences would be more than she could stand.
"You need some rest," she said gratefully. "You have been tired out in our service."
"Oh, I'm not tired at all," he returned, shortly. Her work seemed to catch his eye for the first time and, in a desire to change the subject, "What are you making?" he asked.
"A ball for Redge. I made one for Zaidee, and he felt left out—he's of a very jealous disposition," she went on abstractedly. "Are you of a jealous disposition, Mr. Girard?"
"I!" He stopped short, with the air of one not accustomed to taking account of his own attributes, and apparently pondered the question as if for the first time. When he looked up to answer, it was with abrupt decision: "Yes, I am."
"Don't look so like a pirate," said young Billy, giving him a thump on the back that sent them both out of the house, laughing, when Lois rose and went over to Justin's side.
Husband and wife were at last alone.
In the days that followed, Justin, going away in the morning very early with a set face, coming home very late in the evening with that set face still, hardly seemed to notice the children or Dosia.
"Justin has so much on his mind." Lois kept repeating the words over and over, as if she found in them something by which to hold fast. Rich in beauty as she was, full of love and tender favor, with the sweetness and the pathos of an awakening soul, her husband seemed to have no eyes, no thought for her. That one murmured sentence in the hallway was all her food to live on—his only personal recognition of her.
Sitting on the stairs, listening in her nightgown"SHE CREPT OUT UPON THE LANDING OF THE STAIRS, AND SAT THERE DESOLATELY ON THE TOP STEP"
On the other hand, he poured out his affairs and his plans to her with a freedom of confidence unknown before, a confidence which seemed to pre-suppose her oneness of interest with him. He had talked exhaustively about everything but those few days' absence; that was a sore that she must not touch, a wound that could bear no probing. She had striven very hard not to show when she didn't understand, taking her cues for assent or dissent as he evidently wished her to, letting him think aloud, since it seemed to be a relief to him, and saying little herself. The only time when she broke in on her own account was when he told her about Cater, and the defective bars, and Leverich's ultimatum. Her "Justin, you wouldn't do that; you wouldn't tell!" met his quick response: "No, I couldn't."
"Oh, I know that. I'd rather be a hundred times poorer than we are! Aren't you glad that you couldn't do it?"
"No; I think I'm rather sorry," said Justin, with a half-smile. The peculiar sharpness of the thought that it was between Cater and Leverich—his friends, Heaven save the mark!—that he was being pushed toward ruin, had not lost any of its edge.
There had been a tonic in a certain attitude of Cater's mind toward Justin—an unspoken kindliness and admiration and tenderness such as an older man who has been along a hard road may feel toward another who has come along the same way. Cater's kind, unobtrusive comradeship, the fair-dealing friendliness of his rivalry, had seemed to be one of the factors of support, of honesty, of commercial righteousness. Justin could smile proudly at Leverich, but he couldn't smile when he thought of Cater—it weighed upon and humiliated him for the man who had been his friend.
"I am glad, anyway!" said Lois. "It wouldn't have beenyouif you had! Can't you take a rest now, dear, when you look so ill? No, no; I didn't mean that—of course you can't!"
"Arest!" He rose and walked up and down the room. "Lois, do you know that, in some way, I've got to get it before the 13th? Those days in Chicago—at the worst time! It makes me wild to think of the time I've lost. I'm looking out for a partner who will buy out Leverich and Martin, and we've got a chance yet—I'll swear we have! But Lewiston's note has got to be paid first; then I can take time to breathe. Harker saw a man from Boston from whom we might have borrowed the money, if I had only been here. If we get that, we can hold over; if we don't, we go to smash, and so does Lewiston. Lewistontrustedme. I've been to several places to-day to men that would be willing enough to lend the money if they didn't know I needed it."
"George Sutton?" hazarded Lois.
Justin's lips curved bitterly. "Oh, he's a cur. He had some money invested last year when he was sweet on Dosia, and drew it all out afterward! And, after all, I went to him to-day, like a fool!"
"Can't you go to Eugene Larue?"
"No. We talked about it once, but he fought shy; he didn't think the security enough. If he thought so then, it would be worse than useless now."
"Mr. Girard?"
"There's no use telling things to him, he hasn't any money." Justin turned a dim eye on her. "I tell you, Lois, I haven't left a stone unturned, so far, that I could get at. If we could only sell the island! Girard's looking it up for me; there may be a chance of that. There are lots of chances to be thought out. I don't even know how we keep running, but we do. Harker's a trump! If I can hold up my end, we'll be all right."
"Then go to bed now," said Lois, with a quick dread that gave her courage. "And you must have something to eat first—and to drink, too. Come, Justin! Do as I say." Her voice had a new firmness in it which he unconsciously obeyed. She crept to her bed at last, aching in every limb, but with her baby pressed close to her, her one darling comfort, the source from which she drew a new love as the child drew its life from her. It was the first time in all her married life that she had borne the burden of her husband's care, a burden from which she must seek no solace from him.
She bent all her energies, these next days, to keeping him well fed, and ordering everything minutely for his comfort when he came home, aided and abetted by Dosia. The two women worked as with one thought between them, as women can work, for the well-being of one they love, with fond and minute care. Every detail, from the time he went away in the morning, stooping slightly under the weight of something mysterious and unseen, was ordered with reference to his home-coming at night—the husband and father on whose strength all this helpless little family hung for their own sustenance.
Everything that was done for him had to be done covertly, it was found; he disliked any manifestation of undue attention to his wants. Sometimes he was terribly irritable and unjust, and at others almost heartbreakingly gentle and mild. Lois had persuaded him to have the doctor, who told him seriously that he must stay home and rest—a futile prescription, which he treated with scorn. Rest! He knew very well that it was not rest that he needed,but money—money, money, the elixir of life!
It was near the end of this week when Justin came home, as Lois could see at once, revived and encouraged, though still abstracted. He had an invitation to take a ride in the doctor's motor, the doctor being a man who, when the hazard of dangerous cases had been extreme, absented himself for a couple of hours, in which, under a breathless and unholy speed of motoring, he reversed the pressure on his nerves, and came to the renewed sanity of a wind-swept brain when every idea had been rushed out of it.
Lois felt that it would be good for Justin, too, and was glad that he had been persuaded to go; yet she caught him looking at her with such strange intentness a couple of times during the dinner that it discomposed her oddly. It made her a little silent; she pondered over it after she had gone up, as usual, to the baby. Was there something wrong with her appearance? She looked anxiously in the glass, and was annoyed to find that the white fichu, open at the throat, was not on quite straight, and her hair was a little disarranged. She was pale, and there were dark lines under her eyes. She hated not to look nice. Yet it might not be that. Was it, perhaps, that something else was wrong—that he had bad news which he did not like to tell? Was he to leave her again on some journey? She turned white for a moment, and sat down to get the baby to sleep, and then resolutely tried to drive the thought from her. Yet, as she sat there rocking gently, the thought still came back to her, oddly, puzzlingly. Why had he looked at her like that? The smoke of his pipe down-stairs kept her still aware of his presence.
Presently he came up-stairs and tiptoed into the room in clumsy fashion, for fear of waking the baby, in his quest of a pair of gloves in a chiffonier drawer. After finding them, he stopped for a moment in front of her, with that odd, arrested expression once more.
"You don't mind my going out to-night and leaving you?" he murmured. "The doctor ought to have askedyou, instead; you need it more than I."
"Oh, no, no!" she hastened to reassure. "I don't mind at all, really!" Her eyes gazed up at him, limpidly clear, and emptied of self. "I have to run up and down stairs so many times to baby now that I couldn't go, no matter how much I was asked to. I'm only glad that you will have the distraction—you need it. I hope you'll have a lovely time."
She listened to his descending footsteps, and after a moment or two arose and laid the sleeping child down in his crib.
In the dim light she went about the room, picking up toys and little discarded garments left by the children, folding the clothes away, her tall, graceful figure, in the large curves of its repeated bending and straightening, seeming to exemplify some unpainted Millet-like idea of mother-work, emblematic of its unceasing round. She was hanging up a tiny cloak in the half gloom of her closet, when she heard her husband's step once more stealing into the room, and the next moment saw him beside her.
"What's the matter?" she asked, with quick premonition.
"Nothing, nothing at all; we haven't started yet." He put one arm around her and with the other lifted her face up toward his. "I only came back to tell you"—His voice broke; there seemed to be a mist over the eyes that were bent on hers. "I can't talk. I can't be as I ought to be, Lois, until all this is over—but—I don't know what's getting into me lately, you look so beautiful to me that I can't take my eyes off you! I went around all to-day counting the hours, like a foolish boy, until it was time to come back to you; I grudge every minute that I spend away from my lovely wife."
Sometimes we have a happiness so much greater, so much more blessed than our easily imagined bliss, that we can only hide our eyes from it at first, like those of old, when in some humble and unthought-of place they were visited by angels.
Very late that night Bailey Girard arrived at the house, after an absence of ten days. Dosia had gone to bed unusually early, but she could not sleep. She could not seem to sleep at all lately—the tireder she was, the more ceaselessly luminous seemed her brain; it was like trying to sleep in a white glare in which all sorts of trivial things became unnaturally distinct. Darkness brought, not a sense of rest, but that dread knowledge that she was going to lie there staring through all the hours of it. Since that night that the pitcher had broken, she was ever waiting tensely for the day to bring her something that it never brought. Lawson's death—Girard—Billy, who was getting a little troublesome lately—the dear little brothers far away, mixed up with tiny household perplexities, kept going through and through her mind. Her heart was wrung for Justin and Lois; yet they had each other! Dreams could no longer comfort and support Dosia. Prayer but wakened her further. If she could only sleep and forget!
To-night she heard Justin's return from theautomobile ride; apparently the machine had broken down, but the accident seemed only to have added to the zest. Lois was still dressed and waiting up for him. Then Girard came—he had seen the light in the window. Dosia could hear the murmuring of the voices down-stairs—Girard's sent the blood leaping to her heart so fast that she pressed her hands against it. For a moment his face seemed near, his lips almost touched hers—her heart stopped before it went on again. Why had he come now? It seemed suddenly an unbearable thing that those others down-stairs should see him and hear him, and that she could not. Why, oh, why, had she gone to bed so early to-night of all nights? She was ready to cry with the passion of a disappointment that seemed, not a little thing, but something crushing and calamitous, a loss for which she never could be repaid. She could imagine Justin and Lois meeting the kind glances of those gray eyes, smiling when he did. He was beautiful when he smiled! She was within a few yards of him, but convention, absurd yet maddening, held her in its chains. She couldn't get dressed and break in upon their intimate conference—or it seemed as if she could not. Besides, he would probably go very soon. But he did not go! After a while she could lie there no longer. She crept out upon the landing of the stairs, and sat there desolately on the top step, "in her long night-gown, sweet as boughs of May," with her little bare feet curled over each other, and her hands clasping the balustrade against which her cheek was pressed, watching and waiting for him to go. The ends of her long fair hair fell into large loose curls where it hung over her shoulder, as she bent to listen—and to listen—and to listen.
"I want to be there, too—I want to be there, too!" she whispered, with quivering lips, in her voice the sobbing catch of a very little child. "I want to be there, too. They're having it all—without me. And I want to be there, too. They might have called me to come down, and they didn't." They might have called her! All her passion, all her philosophy, all her endurance, melted into that one desire. If she had only known at first that he was going to stay so long, she would have dressed and gone down. She could hardly bear it a moment longer.
After a while a door on the landing of the second story below opened, and a little figure crept out—Zaidee. She stood irresolute in the hall, looking down; then she looked up, and, seeing Dosia, ran to her and climbed into her lap, resting her little pigtailed head confidingly against Dosia's warm young shoulder.
"They woke me up," she said placidly. "Did they woke you up, too, Cousin Dosia?"
"Yes," said Dosia, hugging the child close. "Hush! some one is coming; you'll get sent to bed again." This time it was Lois. Her abstracted gaze seemed to take in the two on the upper stairway as a matter of course.
"Oh, it's you, is it?" she said. "I thought I heard some one talking." She rested on the post below, looking up. "I came to see if you'd take Zaidee in with you for the rest of the night, Dosia. I want to give Justin's room to Mr. Girard."
"Is he going to stay?" asked Dosia.
"Yes. It's too late for him to disturb the Snows, and he's been traveling all day; he's dreadfully tired. He wanted to sleep on the sofa down-stairs, but I wouldn't let him." She was carrying Zaidee, already half asleep again, in her arms as she talked, depositing her in Dosia's bed, while Dosia followed her.
"Did he sell the island?" asked Dosia.
Lois shook her head. "No. They may really sell it next week, but not now—only that will be too late to save the business. Of course, Mr. Girard doesn't know that, and Justin will not tell him—he says Mr. Girard cannot help. Oh, Dosia, when Justin came in from that ride he looked so well, and now—" She covered her face with her hands, before recovering herself. "It's time you were both asleep."
"Can't I help you?" asked Dosia; but Lois only answered indifferently, "No, it's not necessary," and went around making arrangements, while Dosia, with Zaidee nestling close to her, slept at last.
It was late the next morning before Girard came down. Justin had had breakfast, and gone; Lois was up-stairs with the children, and Dosia, who had been tidying up the place, was arranging some flowers in the vases when he strode in. There was no vestige of that sick-hearted, imploring maiden of the night before; no desolate frenzy was to be seen in this trim, neat, capable little figure, clad in blue gingham, that made her throat very white, her hair very fair. Something in Girard's glance seemed to show an instant pleasure that she should be the one to greet him, but he bent anxiously over the watch he held in his hand.
"Will you tell me what time it is? My watch has stopped."
"It's half-past nine," said Dosia.
"Half-pastnine!" He looked at her in a sort of quick, horrified arraignment. "What do you mean?" His eye fell upon the clock, and conviction seemed to steal upon him against his will. "Heavens and earth, whywasn't I called? On this morning of all others, when every moment's of importance! I thought I asked particularly to be waked early."
"I suppose they thought you were tired and needed the rest," apologized Dosia.
"Needed the rest!" His tone was poignant; he looked outraged; but his anger was entirely impersonal—there was in it even a sort of boyish appeal to her, as if she must feel it, too.
"You had better sit down and have some breakfast."
"Oh,breakfast!" His gesture deprecated her evident intention. "Please don't. Thank you very much, but I don't want any breakfast; I only want to get to town."
"There isn't any train for twenty-five minutes, so you might as well sit down and eat," said Dosia firmly. "Come out to this little table on the piazza." She led the way to the screened corner at the end, sweet with the honeysuckle that swung its long loops in the wind, and faced him sternly. "Do you take coffee?"
"Please don't, please don't cook me anything! I'd hate to trouble you." He seemed so distressed that she relented a little.
"A glass of milk and some fruit, then; you'llhaveto take that."
"Very well—if I must. Can't I get the things myself?"
"No." She ran away to get them for him, with some new joy singing in her heart as she went backward and forward, bringing a pitcher of milk, a glass, a dish of strawberries, some cream, and the sugar, sitting down herself by the table afterward as he ate and drank. He gave her a sudden smile, so surprised and pleased that the color surged in her cheeks.
"I'm not used to this," he said simply. "What is that dress you have on—silk?"