CHAPTER IIIPROUTY
Major Prouty hung over the hitching post in front of the post office listening with a beatific smile to the sound of the saw and the hammer that came from the Opera House going up at the corner of Prouty Avenue and Wildwood Street. The Major’s eyes held the brooding tenderness of a patron saint, as he looked the length of the wide street of the town which bore his name.
“Sunnin’ yourself, Major?” inquired Hiram Butefish jocularly as he passed; then paused to add, “I’m lookin’ for a big turn-out at the Boosters Club to-night.”
“I trust so, Hiram.”
Aside from himself, no one person had contributed more to Prouty’s growth than the editor of theGrit.
Mr. Butefish had arrived among the first with the intention of opening a plumbing shop, but since the water supply was furnished by a windmill the demand for his services was not apt to be pressing for some time to come.
Therefore, with true western resourcefulness he bought the handpress of a defunct sheet and turned to journalism instead. Though less lucrative, moulding public opinion and editing a paper that was to be a recognized power in the state seemed to Mr. Butefish a step ahead.
The Middle West had responded nobly to his editorial appeals to come out and help found an Empire. The majority of the optimistic citizens who walked with theirheads in the clouds and their eyes on the roseate future were there through his efforts. Appreciative of this fact, the Major’s eyes were kindly as they gazed upon the editor’s retreating back.
His expression was benignity itself as his glance turned lovingly to the Prouty House and the White Hand Laundry—the latter in particular being a milestone on the road of Progress since it heralded the fact that the day was not far distant when a man could wear a boiled shirt without embarrassing comment. Three saloons, the General Merchandise Emporium, and “Doc” Fussel’s drug store completed the list of business enterprises as yet, but others were in contemplation and a bottling works was underway. Oh, yes, Prouty was indelibly on the map.
The Major’s complacent smile changed to a slight frown as a man in a black tall crowned hat stopped to rest his back against the post of the Laundry sign.
It had reached the Major’s ears that Mormon Joe had said that Prouty had no more future than a prairie dog town. He had been in his cups at the time but that did not palliate the offense.
Now, there—there was the kind of a man that helped a town! The Major’s brow cleared as Jasper Toomey swung round the corner by the Prouty House and clattered down the main street sitting high-headed and arrogant in a Brewster cart. Spent money like a prince—he did. A few more people like the Toomeys and the future of the country was assured.
In the meantime Toomey had brought the velvet-mouthed horse to its haunches in front of the laundry where he tossed a bundle into the sheepman’s arms, saying casually;
“Take that inside, my man.”
Without a change of expression, Mormon Joe caught it, rolled it compactly and kicked it over the horse’s back into the street.
“There’s no brass buttons sewed on my coat—take it yourself!” Mormon Joe shrugged a shoulder as he walked off.
Walter Scales of the Emporium dashed into the street and recovered the laundry with an apologetic air as though he were somehow responsible for the act.
“You have to make allowances for the rough characters that swarm into a new country,” he said, as he delivered the bundle himself.
“I’ll break that pauper sheepherder before I quit!” A vein under Toomey’s right eye and another on his temple stood out swollen and purple.
“People like him that send away for their grub and never spend a cent they can help in their home town don’t benefit a country none.” Mr. Scales did not attempt to conceal his pleasure at the foot-long list Toomey handed him. He added urgently, “Wisht you’d try and stay in for the Boosters Club to-night, Mr. Toomey. We’d like your advice.”
Toomey refused curtly.
“Get that order out at once,” he said peremptorily, as he drove off.
No invitation cordial or otherwise was extended to Mormon Joe, so it was upon his own initiative that he stumbled into the room where the Boosters Club was in session that evening. Unmistakably drunk, Joe sat down noisily beside Clarence Teeters who was the only one who made room for him.
The purpose of the meeting was to consider ways and means to build a ditch that should bring water from themountains in sufficient quantity not only to supply the town but to irrigate the agricultural land surrounding it.
Mr. Abram Pantin, a man of affairs from Keokuk, Iowa, in the vicinity with a view to locating, had been called upon for a few remarks and was just closing with the safe and conservative statement that an ample water supply was an asset to any community.
He was followed by the chairman, Mr. Butefish, who pleaded eloquently for the construction of the ditch by local capital, and having aroused the meeting to a high pitch of enthusiasm ended with a peroration that brought forth a loud demonstration of approbation.
“Gentlemen,” declared Mr. Butefish, “back there in the mountains is a noble stream waitin’ to irrigate a thirsty land. For the trifling sum of twenty thousand dollars we can turn this hull country into a garden spot! The time is comin’ when we’ll see nothin’ but alfalfa field in purple bloom as fur as the eye can reach! We’re as rich in natural resources as any section on God’s green earth. We’re lousy with ’em, gentlemen, and all we gotta do is to put our shoulders to the wheel and scratch!”
Mr. Butefish sat down and dried the inside of his collar with his handkerchief midst tumultuous applause.
The evening had been a veritable love-feast without a jarring note and everybody glowed with a feeling of neighborliness and confidence in a future that was to bring them affluence.
“Mr. Chairman, may I have a word?”
There was a general turning of heads as Mormon Joe, thick of tongue, lurched over the back of the seat in front.
“Kindly make it brief,” replied Mr. Butefish reluctantly. “We still have important business to transact.”
“I only want to say that this country hasn’t any more natural resources than a tin roof and when Prouty gotany bigger than a saloon and a blacksmith shop it overreached itself.” There was a tightening of lips as the members exchanged looks, but Mormon Joe went on, “One third of the work that you dry farmers put in trying to make ranches out of arid land,” he addressed a row of tousled gentlemen on the front seat, “would bring you independence in a state where climatic conditions are favorable to raising crops.
“As for your ditch, there never was an irrigation project yet that did not cost double and treble the original estimate. If you try to put it through without outside help, you’ll all go broke. In other words,” he jeered, “you haven’t one damned asset but your climate, and you’re wasting your time and energy until you figure out a way to realize on that.”
Shabby, undersized, distinctly drunk, Mormon Joe made an unheroic figure as he stood swaying on his feet looking mockingly into the frowning faces of the Boosters Club, and yet, somehow, his words cast a momentary depression over the room.
He stood an instant, then staggered out, indifferent to the fact that he had committed the supreme offense in a western town—he had “knocked”—and that henceforth and forever he was a marked man—a detriment to the community—to be discredited, shunned, and, if possible, driven out.
The invitation composed and printed by Mr. Butefish after much mental travail, requesting the pleasure of the Toomeys’ company at a reception and dance in the Prouty House to celebrate the third year of the town’s prosperity and progress was one of the results of this meeting of the Boosters Club.
Toomey’s thin lips curled superciliously as he glanced at it and tossed it across the breakfast table:
“Here, Hughie, why don’t you take this in?”
“You’ll go, won’t you?” the lad asked eagerly after reading it.
“We never mingle socially with the natives.” As Mrs. Toomey shook her head her smile and tone expressed ineffable exclusiveness. Seeing that the boy’s face fell in disappointment she urged, “But you go, Hughie.”
“If I knew some one to ask—”
“There’s Maggie Taylor,” Mrs. Toomey suggested.
“And Mormon Joe’s Kate,” Toomey added, laughing.
“Who’s she?” the boy asked curiously.
“Do you remember the day when you were here before that we met those people driving a band of sheep—a man and a barefooted girl in overalls?”
Hughie’s eyes sparkled:
“They stopped here, then?”
Toomey scowled.
“Yes, confound ’em! I’ve had more than one 'run in’ with ’em since over range and water. But,” he urged, “don’t let that hinder you. They live with their sheep back there in the foothills like a couple of white savages, and she’s some greener than alfalfa. Go and ask her. You’ll get some fun out of it. I dare you! I’ll bet you a saddle blanket against anything you like that you haven’t got the sand to take her.”
“Done!” Hughie Disston’s eyes were dancing. “If my nerve fails me when I see her, you are in a new Navajo.”
It was a great lark to Disston, now a tall boy of nineteen, handsome, attractive, with the soft drawl of his southern speech and the easy manners of those who have associated much with women-folk. He was in high spirits as, one morning early, he and Teeters turned offfrom the main road and took the faint trail which led up Bitter Creek.
They rode until they saw two tepees showing white through the willows.
“We’re in luck to catch them home at this hour,” said Teeters, as they heard a faint tinkle from the corrals on the other side of the creek. “They’ve got the sheep inside—must be cuttin’ out. Yes,” as they forded and drew closer, “there’s Kate at the dodge gate.”
The corral was a crude affair, built at the minimum of expense, of crooked cottonwood poles, willow sticks and brush interlaced. It was divided into three sections, with a chute running from the larger division into two smaller ones.
Kate was standing at the “dodge gate” at the end of the chute separating the sheep as they came through by throwing the gate to and fro, thus sending each into the division in which it belonged. It was work which required intense concentration, a trained eye and quick brain, and even Disston and Teeters, who knew nothing of sheep, could appreciate the remarkable skill with which the girl performed the task.
“Let ’em come, Uncle Joe!” she called in her clear confident voice.
Mormon Joe flapped a grain sack over the backs of the sheep and having started a leader the rest went through the chute on the run.
When the last one was through Kate’s aching arm dropped limply to her side and she called in a tired but jubilant voice:
“I don’t believe I’ve made a single mistake this time.”
Mormon Joe’s expression was not too friendly when he saw strangers but it changed upon recognizing Teeters.
“Maybe you don’t remember this here gent,” said thatperson, indicating Disston with his thumb after he and Mormon Joe had shaken hands. “He’s growed about four feet since you saw him.”
“I remember him very well.” Mormon Joe’s tone and manner had the suavity and polish which was so at variance with his general appearance.
Hughie, leaving Teeters and Mormon Joe to a conversation which did not interest him, rode up to see Kate at closer range.
Busy in one of the pens, the girl was still unaware of visitors, so he had had ample opportunity to observe her before she saw him.
She, too, had grown since their meeting, being now as tall and straight and slim as an Olympian runner. Her hair swung in a thick fair braid far below her waist as she darted hither and thither in pursuit of a lamb. The man’s blue flannel shirt she wore was faded and the ragged sleeves had been cut off at the elbow for convenience. Her short skirt was of stiff blue denim and a pair of coarse brown and white cotton stockings showed between the hem and the tops of boys’ shoes which disguised the slenderness of her feet. Yet, withal, she was graceful as she ran and somehow managed to look picturesque.
The boy’s face was an odd mixture of expressions as he watched her—amusement, astonishment, disapproval, and grudging admiration all in one.
Finally, catching the lamb by the hind leg she threw it by a twist acquired through much practice and buckled a bell around its neck.
As she turned it loose and straightened up, she saw Disston. When he smiled she knew him instantly and the color rose in her face as she walked towards him, suddenly conscious of her clothes and grimy hands. She was soon at her ease, however, and when he told her his errandthe radiance that leaped into her face startled him.
“Would I like to go?” she cried joyously. “There’s nothing I can think of that I would like better. I’ve never been to a dance in all my life. I’ve never been anywhere. It’s so good of you to ask me!”
“It’s good of you to go with me,” he said awkwardly, shamed by her gratitude, remembering the wager.
“But I don’t know how to dance,” she said almost tearfully.
“You don’t?” incredulously. He had thought every girl in the world knew how to dance. “Never mind,” he assured her, “I can teach you in a few lessons.”
So it was settled, and they talked of other things, laughing merrily, frequently, while Mormon Joe and Teeters discussed with some gravity the fact that it had been several months since the latter had been able to get his wages from Toomey.
“I think he’s workin’ on borried capital and they’re shuttin’ down on him,” Teeters conjectured. “His 'Old Man,'” he nodded toward Hughie, “has got consider'ble tied up in the Outfit, I’ve an idea. Anyhow, if I git beat out of my money after the way Toomey’s high-toned it over me—” He cast a significant look at a fist with particularly prominent knuckles.
“You hang on a while,” Mormon Joe cautioned. “You may be boss of the Scissor Outfit yet—stranger things have been waiting around the corner.”
Teeters shifted his weight in the saddle.
“Say,” he confessed in some embarrassment, “a sperrit told me somethin’ like that only day 'fore yisterday. I was settin’ in a circle over to Mis’ Taylor’s and an Injun chief named ‘Starlight’ spelled out on the table that all kinds of honor and worldly power was comin’ to me.It makes me feel cur'ous, hearin’ you say it—like they was somethin’ in it.”
Mormon Joe smiled quizzically but made no comment; perhaps he suspected that the privilege of touching fingers with Miss Maggie Taylor while waiting for the spirits to “take holt” had as much to do with Teeters' interest in the unseen world as the messages he received from it. He asked:
“You remember what I said at the Boosters’ Club the other night?”
“I ain’t apt to fergit it anyways soon,” replied Teeters, dryly, “seein’ as ‘Tinhorn’ riz and put it to a vote as to whether they should tar and feather you or jest naturally freeze you out.”
“The truth is acid,” he laughed. “It’s a fact though, Teeters, that this country’s chief asset is its climate, and,” with his quizzical smile, “this Scissor Outfit would make a fine dude-ranch.”
Kate did not tell Mormon Joe of her invitation until the sheep were bedded for the night, the supper dishes out of the way and they were sitting, as was their custom, on two boxes watching the stars and talking while Mormon Joe smoked his pipe.
“Our company this morning made me forget to tell you how well you handled the gate; it was a clean cut.” Mormon Joe added in obvious pride, “You’re the best sheepman in the country, Katie, bar none.”
“Then I wish you’d listen to me and buy some of those Rambouillets and grade up our herd.”
“We’re doing all right,” he returned, indifferently.
“Anybody would know you didn’t like sheep.”
“They’re a means to an end; they keep me in the hills out of mischief and furnish a living for us both.”
“I wonder that you haven’t more ambition, Uncle Joe.”
“That died and was buried long ago. The little that I have left is for you. I want you to have the benefit of what I have learned from books and life; I want you to be happy—I can’t say that I’m interested in anything beyond that.”
She threw him a kiss.
“You’re too good to be true almost.” Then, with a quite inexplicable diffidence she faltered, “Uncle Joe, that—that boy asked me to go to a dance.”
He turned his head quickly and asked with a sharp note in his voice:
“Where?”
“In Prouty.”
“Do you want to go?”
“I can’t tell you how much!” she cried eagerly. “I can hardly believe it is me—I—invited to a dance. I’ve never been out in the evening in all my life. I don’t know a single woman and may be I’ll never have such a chance again to get acquainted and make friends.”
“I didn’t know that you had been lonely, Katie,” he said after a silence.
“Just sometimes,” she admitted.
“You said you didn’t want to go to Prouty again because the children bleated at you the last time you were in.”
“But that was long ago—a year—they wouldn’t do that now—they’re older, and, besides, there are others who have sheep. We’re not the only ones any more. But,” with a quaver in her voice, “don’t you want me to go, Uncle Joe?”
“I don’t want you to put yourself in a position to get hurt.”
“What—what would anybody hurt me for?” she asked, wide-eyed.
His answer to the question was a shrug. Then, as though to himself, “They may be bigger than I give them credit for.”
He had not refused to let her go, but he had chilled her enthusiasm somewhat so they were silent for a time, each occupied with his own thoughts.
As Mormon Joe, with his hands clasped about his knee, his pipe dead in his mouth, sat motionless in the starlight, he ceased to be conscious of the beauty of the night, of the air that touched his face, soft and cool as the caress of a gentle woman, of the moist sweet odors of bursting buds and tender shoots—he was thinking only that the child who had run into his arms for safety had come to be the center of the universe to him. He could not imagine life without her. He had mended her manners, corrected her speech, bought her books of study to which she had diligently applied herself in the long hours while she herded sheep, and nothing else in life had given him so much pleasure as to watch her mind develop and her taste improve.
Anybody that would hurt her! Instinctively his hands clenched. Aloud he said:
“Go to your party, Katie, and I hope with all my heart it will be everything you anticipate.”
CHAPTER IVDISILLUSIONMENT
It was the most ambitious affair that had been attempted in Prouty—this function at the Prouty House. The printed invitations had made a deep impression; besides, wild rumors were flying about as to the elaborate costumes that were to be worn by the socially prominent.
It was whispered that Mrs. Abram Pantin, wife of the wealthy capitalist from Keokuk, now “settled in their midst,” was to be seen in electric blue silk with real lace collar and cuffs; while Mrs. Sudds, wife of a near-governor, who had moved to Prouty from another part of the state, was to appear in her lansdowne wedding dress. Mrs. Myron Neifkins, too, if report could be believed, was to be gowned in peach-blow satin worked in French knots.
He was a dull clod indeed who could not feel the tremors in the air that momentous Saturday and by night there was not tying space at any hitching rack.
If the ball loomed so large to the townfolks, it may be assumed that Kate’s anticipation was no less. As a matter of fact, she could scarcely sleep for thinking of it. She did not know much about God—Mormon Joe was not religious—but she felt vaguely that she must have Him to thank for this wonderful happiness. It was the most important happening since she had run, terrified, from home that black night three years ago.
There had not been a night since Hughie had givenher the invitation that she had not lain awake for hours staring at the stars with a smile on her lips as she visualized situations. She saw herself dividing dances as belles did in books, taking her part in lively conversations, the center of merry groups. Oh, no, life would never be the same again; she was certain of it.
Hughie had kept his word and ridden over several times to teach her the steps, and they had practised them on the hard-trodden ground in front of the cook tent, where the dust could be kept down by frequent sprinkling. If the waltz and the polka and schottische sent her blood racing under such adverse conditions, what must it be like on a real floor with real music, she asked herself ecstatically. These dancing lessons were provocative of much merriment and teasing from the Toomeys. While Hugh did not resent it or defend Kate, he did not join in their ridicule of her. She was “green,” he could not deny that, yet not in the sense the Toomeys meant. Naïve, ingenuous, he felt were better words. She knew nothing of social usages, and she was without a suspicion of the coquetry that he looked for in girls before they had begun to do up their hair. She spoke with startling frankness upon subjects which he had been taught were taboo. He admired and was accustomed to soft, helpless, clinging femininity, and it grated upon him to see Kate at the woodpile swinging an axe in a matter-of-fact way.
“It’s because there’s no one else around,” he told himself, to explain the eagerness with which he rode over while he was teaching Kate to dance.
The boy was intelligent enough to recognize the fact that, however unschooled Kate might be in the things that counted in the outside world, she was not ignorant when it came to those within her ken. She knew the habits and peculiarities of wild animals and insects, every characteristicof sheep, and she was a nearly unfailing weather prophet through her interpretation of the meaning of wind and sky and clouds. Her knowledge of botany was a constant surprise to him, for she seemed to know the name and use of the tiniest plant that grew upon the range.
But, after all, he demanded of himself, what did a girl want to know such things for? He would have liked better to see her in the shade with an embroidery hoop.
Restraining their trembling haste, yet fearing that they might miss something, the initiated townfolks managed to stay away from the Prouty House until the fashionably late hour of eight, but the simpler rural guests having eaten at six were ready and holding down the chairs in the office before “the music” had arrived. There was a flutter of puzzled inquiry among the Early Birds when Mrs. Abram Pantin, Mrs. Sudds and Mrs. Myron Neifkins with an air of conscious importance stationed themselves in a row at the door opening into the dining room, which was now being noisily cleared of tables and chairs.
Mrs. Pantin, as gossip had surmised, wore electric blue with collar and cuffs of lace that presumably was real, while angular Mrs. Sudds looked chaste, if somewhat like a windmill in repose, in her bridal gown. Mrs. Neifkins, too, came up to expectations in her peach-blow satin.
For a while the ladies of the receiving line found their position somewhat of a sinecure, for nobody knew what they were standing there for until Mrs. Rufus Webb, the wife of Prouty’s new haberdasher, arrived. Mrs. Webb had been called home to her dying mother’s bedside, but fortunately had been able to return from her sad errand in time for the function at the Prouty House. When she laid aside her wrap it was observed that she had gone into red.
Kate was an unconscionable time in dressing, Hugh thought, as he waited in the office, considering that the flour sack tied behind her saddle had seemed to contain her wardrobe easily enough.
His attention was focused upon Mrs. Neifkins, whom he had last seen in a wrapper and slat sunbonnet, when a lull in the hubbub that became a hush caused him to look up. His eyes followed the gaze of every other pair of eyes to the head of the stairs that came down from the floor above into the office. He saw Kate—dreadful as to clothes as a caricature or a comic valentine! She had a wreath of red paper roses in her hair and a chain of them reached from one shoulder nearly to the hem of her skirt on the other side. The dress itself was made without regard to the prevailing mode and of the three-cent-a-yard bunting bought by sheepmen by the bolt to be used for flags to scare off coyotes in lambing time. The body of the dress was blue, trimmed with the same material in red. The sleeves were elbow length, and she wore black mitts. But the crowning horror, unless it was the wreath, was the string of red wild-rose seed pods around her neck.
Kate had cut out her gown without a pattern and with no mirror to guide her, the skirt was several inches shorter behind than in front, and a miscalculation put the gathers chiefly in one spot.
She was not recognized at first, for her visits to Prouty had been made at too long intervals for her to be known save by a few. Then, quickly—“Mormon Joe’s Kate!” was whispered behind hands and passed from mouth to mouth.
The girl’s eager glowing face was the one redeeming thing of her appearance. Half way down the stairs she stopped involuntarily and looked with an expression ofwondering inquiry into the many staring eyes focused upon herself. Then a titter, nearly inaudible at first, grew into a general snicker throughout the room.
They were laughing at her! There was no mistake about that. Kate shrank back as though she had been struck; while the radiance faded from her face, and it turned as white as the wall at her back.
What was the matter? What had she done? Wasn’t she all right? she asked herself, while her heart gave a great throb of fear. She gripped the bannister while her panic-stricken eyes sought Hughie in the crowded office. Where was he? Did he mean to leave her alone? It seemed minutes that she stood there, though it was only one at most.
In spite of his worldly air and social ease, Disston was only a boy after all, with a boy’s keen sensitiveness to ridicule, and this ordeal was something outside the experience of his nineteen years. The worst he had expected was that she would be frumpish, or old-fashioned, or commonplace like these other women standing about, but it had not occurred to him that she might be conspicuously grotesque.
There was a moment of uncertainty which seemed as long to the boy as it did to Kate, and then the chivalry of his good southern blood responded gallantly to the appeal in her eyes. His dark face was dyed with the blood that rushed to the roots of his hair, and his forehead was damp with the moisture of embarrassment, but he rose from his seat and went to meet her with a welcoming smile.
“Oh, Hughie!” she gasped tremulously in gratitude and relief as she ran rather than walked down the remaining stairs.
The grinning crowd parted to let them pass as, self-consciousand stiffly erect, they walked the length of the office towards the dining room. Figuratively speaking, Prouty stood on tip-toe to see what sort of reception they would meet from the receiving line. It was tacitly understood that lesser social lights would take their cue from them.
Of its kind, it was as thrilling a moment as Prouty had experienced. Mrs. Myron Neifkins had recognized Kate immediately and passed the word along to Mrs. Pantin who, although a comparative stranger, had been properly supplied with information as to the community’s undesirables. “Mormon Joe’s Kate,” the daughter of the notorious Jezebel of the Sand Coulee Roadhouse, naturally was included in the list.
Hugh, who had met these ladies previously and found them as amiable as any one could wish—particularly Mrs. Pantin, who had regarded him as somebody to cultivate because of his connection with the exclusive Toomeys of the Scissor Ranch—now had something of the sensation of a person who had stepped into the frigid atmosphere of a cold storage plant.
Mrs. Pantin’s eyes had all the warm friendliness of two blue china knobs and her thin lips were closed until her mouth looked merely a vivid scratch. Yet, somehow, the boy managed to say with his manner of deferential courtesy:
“Mrs. Pantin, do you know Miss Prentice?”
Ordinarily, a part of Mrs. Pantin’s society manner was a vivacious chirp, but now she said coldly between her teeth:
“I haven’t that pleasure.” She gave Kate her extreme finger tips with such obvious reluctance that the action was an affront.
Disston glanced at Mrs. Sudds in the hope of findingfriendliness. That lady had drawn herself up like an outraged tragedy queen. No one would have dreamed, seeing Mrs. Sudds at the moment with her air of royal hauteur, that in bygone days she had had her own troubles making twelve dollars a week as a stenographer.
His glance passed on to Mrs. Neifkins, who was picking at a French knot in a spasm of nervousness lest Kate betray the fact that they had met.
Disston was aware that Mrs. Neifkins knew Kate and his lip curled at her cowardice. He raised his head haughtily; he would not subject his partner to further rebuffs.
“Come on, Katie,” he said, curtly, and they passed into the dining room.
The girl’s cheeks were flaming as they sat down on the chairs ranged against the wall.
“Hughie,” her fingers were like ice as she clasped them together in her lap. “What’s the matter? Do I look—queer?”
He answered shortly:
“You’re all right.”
They sat watching the crowd file in. Suddenly Hughie exclaimed in obvious relief:
“There’s Teeters, and Maggie Taylor and her mother! Wait here—I’ll bring them over.”
He went up to them with assurance, for their friendliness and hospitality had been marked upon the several occasions that he had accompanied Teeters, who always had some transparent excuse for stopping at their ranch.
Mrs. Taylor, with her backwoods’ conceit and large patronizing manner, had been especially amusing to Hughie, but now in this uncomfortable situation she looked like a haven in a storm as he saw her towering by nearly half a head above the tallest in the crowd.
It was Mrs. Taylor’s proud boast that she came of a race of giants. Even upon ordinary occasions she bore a rather remarkable resemblance to a mountain sheep, but to-night the likeness was further increased by a grizzled bunch of frizzled hair that stood out on either temple like embryo horns. Mrs. Taylor looked, as it were, “in the velvet.” She wore a brown sateen basque secured at the throat by a brooch consisting of a lock of hair under glass. It was observed, also, that for the evening she had removed the string which she commonly wore around her two large and widely separated front teeth, and which were being drawn together by this means at about the rate the earth is cooling off.
Mrs. Taylor dated events from the time “Mr. Taylor was taken,” though there was always room for doubt as to whether Mr. Taylor was “taken” or quite deliberately went.
Miss Maggie was tall and sallow and was anticipating matrimony with an ardor that had made the maiden one of the country’s stock jokes, since the sharer of it seemed to be of secondary importance to the fact. All her spare change and waking hours were spent buying and embroidering linen for the “hope chest” that spoke of her determined confidence in the realization of her ambition.
The three greeted Hughie warmly. Miss Maggie flashed her dazzling teeth; Teeters reached out and smote him with his fist between the shoulder blades; Mrs. Taylor laid her hand upon his arm with her large smug air of patronizing friendliness, and, stooping, beamed into his face.
“We were not looking for you here. Did Mr. and Mrs. Toomey come? Are you alone?”
“I brought Katie Prentice—she’s sitting over there.”
“Oh!” Mrs. Taylor’s expression changed.
The boy looked at her pleadingly as he added:
“She has so few pleasures, and she would so like to have acquaintances—to make friends.”
“I dare say,” dryly.
“She—she doesn’t know any one. Won’t you—all come and join us?” There was entreaty in the boy’s voice.
Mrs. Taylor rose out of her hips until she looked all of seven feet tall to Hughie.
“You must excuse me, Mr. Disston.” She hesitated, then added in explanation: “When we came West I told myself that I must not allow myself to deteriorate in rough surroundings, and I have made it a rule never to mingle with any but the best, Mr. Disston. My father,” impressively, “was a prominent undertaker in Philadelphia, and as organist in a large Methodist church in that city I came in contact with the best people, so you understand,” blandly, “don’t you, why I cannot—”
The boy was red to the rim of his ears as he bowed formally to mother and daughter.
“I don’t in the least,” he replied, coldly.
The pain in Kate’s eyes hurt him when he returned to his seat and she asked.
“They wouldn’t come?”
He hesitated, then answered bluntly:
“No.”
“H-had we better stay?”
“Yes,” he replied, doggedly, “we’ll stay.”
Their efforts at conversation were not a success, and it was a relief to them both when Hiram Butefish, as Floor Manager, commanded everybody to take partners for a waltz.
Hughie arose and held out his hands to Kate.
“Hughie, I can’t,” she protested, shrinking back. “I’m—afraid.”
“Yes, you can,” determinedly. “Don’t let these people think they can frighten you.”
“I’ll try because you want me to,” she answered, “but it’s all gone out of my head, and I know I can’t.”
“You’ll get it directly,” as he took her hand. “Just remember and count. One, two, three—now!”
The bystanders tittered as she stumbled. The sound stung the boy like a whip, his black eyes flashed, but he said calmly enough:
“You make too much of it, Katie. Put your mind on the time and count.”
She tried once more with no better result. She merely hopped, regardless of the music.
“I tell you I can’t, Hughie,” she said, despairingly. “Let’s sit down.”
“Never mind,” soothingly as he acquiesced, “we’ll try it again after a while. The next will very likely be a square dance and I can pilot you through that.”
“You’re so good!”
He looked away to avoid her grateful eyes. What would she say if she knew the reason he had brought her there? On a bet! He had seen only what appeared to be the humorous side. Hughie’s own pride enabled him to realize how deep were the hurts she was trying so pluckily to hide. But why did they treat her so? Even her dreadful get-up seemed scarcely to account for it.
The next number, as he surmised, was a square dance.
“Take your pardners fer a quadrille!”
There was a scrambling and a sliding over the floor, accompanied by much laughter, to the quickly formed “sets.”
“There’s a place, Kate—on the side, too, so you have only to watch what the others do.”
She hesitated, but he could see the longing in her eyes.
He taunted boyishly, “Don’t be a 'fraidy cat,'” at which for the first time they both laughed with something of naturalness.
Mr. Scales of the Emporium and his plump bookkeeper were there, and the willowy barber with the stylish operator of the new telephone exchange, while Mr. and Mrs. Neifkins made the third couple, and Hugh and Kate completed the set.
There was an exchange of looks as the pair came up. The stylish operator lifted an eyebrow and drew down the corners of her mouth. The bookkeeper said, “Well!” with much significance,—but it remained for Mrs. Neifkins to give the real offense. The expression on her vapid face implied that she was aghast at their impudence. Gathering the fullness of her skirt as though to withdraw it from contamination she laid the other hand on her husband’s arm:
“There’s a place over there, Myron, where we can get in.”
“It’s nearer the music,” said Neifkins with an apologetic grin to the others.
Those who stayed had something of the air of brazening it out. In vain Mr. Butefish called sternly for, “One more couple this way!”
It was Scales of the Emporium who said, finally:
“Looks like we don’t dance—might as well sit down.”
Every one acted on the suggestion with alacrity save Kate and Hughie. When he turned to her, he saw that she was swallowing hard at the lump that was choking her.
“It’s on account of me that they act so, Hughie! You stay if you want to; I’m going.”
“Stay here?” he cried in boyish passion. “You’re the only lady in the room so far as I can see! What would I stay for?”
The citizens of Prouty were still deeply impressed by each other’s pretensions, as the reputations the majority had left in their “home towns” had not yet caught up with them. Therefore, being greatly concerned about what his neighbor thought of him, no one would have dared be friendly to the ostracized couple even if he had the disposition.
Kate and Hughie walked out, very erect and looking straight ahead, followed by a feeling of satisfaction that this opportunity had presented itself for the new order to show where it stood in the matter of accepting doubtful characters on an equal social footing. It had properly vindicated itself of the charge that western society was lax in such matters. That they had hurt—terribly hurt—another, was of small importance.
CHAPTER VFOR ALWAYS
In the little room upstairs, where less than an hour before she had dressed in happy excitement, Kate tore off the paper flowers and wild rose pods. She threw them in a heap on the floor—the cherished mitts, the bunting dress—while she sobbed in a child’s abandonment, with the tears running unchecked down her cheeks. The music floating up the stairway and through the transom, the scuffling sound of sliding feet, added to her grief. She had wanted, oh, how she had wanted to dance!
The thought that Hughie had suffered humiliation because of her was little short of torture. But he had not deserted her—he had stuck—even in her misery she gloried in that—and how handsome he had looked! Why, there was not a man in the room that could compare with him! His clothes, the way he had borne himself, the something different about him which she could not analyze. It was a woman’s pride that shone in her swollen red-lidded eyes as she told herself this, while she pinned on her shabby Stetson in trembling haste, buckled the spurs on her boots and snatched up her ugly mackinaw.
Hugh was waiting for her in the office below.
The horses were tied to the hitching rack. Kate gulped down the lump that rose in her throat as she swung into the saddle. The orchestra was playing the “Blue Danube,” and she especially loved that waltz. The strains followed them up the street, and tears she couldnot keep back fell on the horse’s mane as she drooped a little over the saddlehorn.
She looked down through dimmed eyes upon the lights streaming from the windows of the Prouty House, as they climbed the steep pitch to the bench above town, and the alluring brightness increased the aching heaviness of her heart, for she felt that she was leaving all they represented behind her forever. She knew she never could find the courage to risk going through such an ordeal again.
A childhood without playmates had created a longing for companionship that was pathetic in its eagerness, and the yearning had not been modified by the isolation and monotony of her present life. To dance, to be merry, to have the opportunity to please, seemed the most important thing in the world to the girl and now she seemed to realize, in mutinous despair, that through no fault of her own she was going to be cheated of that which was her right—of that which was every girl’s right—to have the pleasures which belonged to her years.
Kate’s standards were the standards of the old west and of the mountains and plains, which take only personal worth into account, so she did not yet comprehend clearly what it was all about. She herself had done nothing to merit such treatment from people whose names she did not even know. She rode for a long time without speaking, trying, in her tragic bewilderment, to puzzle it out.
The silence was in painful contrast to the high spirits in which they had ridden into town. Then, they had found so much to talk about, so much to anticipate—and it had all turned out to be so different, so far removed from anything they had dreamed. Each shrank from being the first to broach the subject of their humiliating retreat.
The moon came up after a while, full and mellow, and the night air cooled Kate’s flaming cheeks. The familiar stars, too, soothed her like the presence of old friends, but, more than anything, the accustomed motion of her horse, as it took its running walk, helped to restore her mental poise.
At the top of a hill both drew rein automatically. Walking down steep descents to save their horses and themselves was an understood thing between them. At the bottom they still trudged on, leading their horses and exchanging only an occasional word upon some subject far removed from their real thoughts. It was Kate who finally said with seeming irrelevance:
“Uncle Joe brought home two collie puppies once—fat, roly-poly little things that didn’t do anything but play and eat, and they were—oh, so innocent! They were into everything, and always under foot, afraid of nothing or nobody, because they never had been hurt.
“One night a storm came up—a cold rain that was almost snow. They ran into my tent and settled themselves on my pillow all shivering and wet. In squirming around to make a nest for themselves they pulled my hair. It made me cross. I was half asleep and I slapped them.
“They paid no attention to it at first—they couldn’t believe I meant it, so they kept on trying to cuddle up to me to get warm. I slapped them harder. They whimpered, but still they couldn’t realize that I meant to hurt them. Finally, I struck them—hard—again and again—until they howled with pain. They understood finally that they were not wanted—and they went crying and whimpering out into the rain.
“It awakened me, thinking what I had done, how they had come to me so innocent—taking kindness as a matterof course because they never had known anything else, and I had been the first to hurt them. I was the first to spoil their confidence in others—and themselves. I couldn’t sleep for thinking of it, and finally I got up, and, to punish myself, went out barefooted into the storm and brought them back. They forgave me and soon settled down, but they never were quite the same, for they had learned what pain was and what it meant to be afraid.
“When I went there to-night I was like those puppies, just as green and confident—just as sure of everybody’s kindness.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry, Katie,” he replied in a low tone.
“I don’t mean to whine,” she went on, “but you see I wasn’t expecting it, and, like the puppies, it took me a long time to understand. I thought at first it was my dress—that I looked—funny, somehow; but you said it wasn’t that, so I thought maybe it was because we were 'in sheep,' but so is Neifkins, and nobody treated them as they did me.”
“The upstarts!” savagely. “I’ll never forgive myself for taking you there!”
She protested quickly:
“You’re not to blame. How could you know? You meant to do something nice for me, Hughie.”
He winced at that. It would have required more courage than he had to have told her at the moment the exact truth.
He held the horses back and stopped suddenly.
“Katie,” turning to her, “I’d do anything in the world to make amends for what happened to-night. Isn’t there some way—something I can do for you? Anything at all,” he pleaded. “Just tell me—no matter what it is—you’ve only to let me know.”
She looked at him with grateful eyes, but shook her head.
“No, Hughie, there’s nothing you can do for me.” She caught her breath sharply and added, “Ex—except to go on liking me. It would break my heart if you went back on me, too.”
“Kate!”
“If you didn’t like me any more—” She choked and the swift tears filled her eyes.
“Like you!” impetuously. “I’d do more than like you if I never had seen you before to-night!” He dropped the bridle reins and laid a hand on either shoulder, holding her at arms’ length. “Your eyes are like stars! And your mouth looks so—sweet! And your hair is so soft and pretty when the wind blows it across your forehead and face like that! I wish you could see yourself. You’re beautiful in the moonlight, Kate!”
“Beautiful?” incredulously. Then she laughed happily, “Why, I’m not even pretty, Hughie.”
“And what’s more,” he declared, “you’re a wonderful girl—different—a fellow never gets tired of being with you.”
“You are making up to me for what happened to-night! I nearly forget it when you tell me things like that.”
“I didn’t know how much I did care until they hurt you. I could have killed somebody if it wouldn’t have made things worse for you.”
“As much as that?” She looked at him wistfully. “You care as much as that? You see,” she added slowly, “nobody’s ever taken my part except Uncle Joe—not even my mother; and it seems—queer to think that anybody else likes me well enough to fight for me.”
The unconscious pathos went straight to the boy’s chivalrous heart.
“Oh, Honey!” he cried impulsively, and taking her hand in both of his he held it tight against his breast.
Her eyes grew luminous at the word and the caress.
“Honey!” she repeated in a wondering whisper. “I like that.”
Her lids lowered before the new and strange expression in his face.
“You’ve always seemed so independent and self-reliant, like another fellow, somehow. I didn’t know you were so sweet. I’m just finding you out.”
She looked at him before replying, but he trembled before the soft light shining in her eyes.
He stood for a moment uncertainly, fighting for his self-control, then, casting off restraint, he threw his arms about her, crying passionately:
“I love you! I love you, Katie! There’s nobody like you in the whole world. Kiss me—Sweet!”
She drew back startled, looking into his eyes. Her own seemed to melt under what she saw there, and she slowly lifted her lips. When she could speak—
“You’ll love me for always, Hughie?”
“For always,” huskily. “For ever and ever, Katie.”