She came forward and shook hands with Saxton.
"I don't know how it can be 'squared.' This is onlyone of father's lapses, Mr. Saxton. You may be sure he didn't mean to do it."
"No, indeed," declared Porter, "but I'm ashamed of myself. Guess I'm losing my wits." He waved the young people to seats with his hat, as if anxious to have the apologies over as quickly as possible. "Positively no reflection,—no, sir. Why, the last time it happened—"
"A week ago to-night," his daughter interpolated.
"The victim was the lord mayor of somewhere, who was passing through town, and I asked him and his gang for dinner, and actually didn't telephone to the house about it until half-past five in the afternoon. I'm losing my wits, that's all." He continued to paint his social crimes, while his daughter disappeared to correct his latest error by having a plate laid for the unannounced guest. When she returned he left the room, but reappeared at the lower door of the drawing-room, still holding his hat, and exclaimed sharply: "Evelyn, I'm sure I must have told you about Mr. Saxton being here when we were talking of the Poindexter place last night. I told you some one was coming out to take charge of those things."
"Very well, father," she said patiently, turning toward him. He again vanished into the hall having, he thought, justified himself before his guest.
"This is one of our standing jokes, you see, and father feels that he must defend himself. I was away for so long and father lived down town until his domestic instinct has suffered."
"But I'm sure he hasn't lost his instinct of hospitality," said Saxton.
"No; but it's his instinct of consideration for the housekeeper that's blunted." She was still smiling over the incident in a way that had the effect of including Saxton as a party to the joke, rather than as its victim. He found himself feeling altogether comfortable and was able to lead off into a discussion of the heat and of the appearance of the grounds, which he pronounced charming.
"Oh, that's father's great delight," she said. "I tell him he's far more interested in the grounds than the house. He's an easy prey to the compilers of flower catalogues, and people who sell trees go to him first; then they never need to go any farther. He always buys them out!"
They were touching upon the beneficence of Arbor Day when Porter returned with an appearance of clean cuffs and without his hat, and launched into statistics as to the number of trees that had been planted in the state by school children during the past year. The maid came to announce dinner, and Porter talked on as he led the way to the dining-room. As they were taking their seats a boy of twelve took the place opposite Saxton.
"This is my brother Grant," said Miss Porter. The boy was shy and silent and looked frail. The efforts of his sister to bring him into the talk were fruitless. When his father or sister spoke to him it was with an accented kindness. He would not talk before a stranger; but his face brightened at the humor of the others.
There was a round table very prettily set with glass candlesticks at the four plates and a bowl of sweet peas in the center. Porter began a discussion of someproblems relating to improvements and changes in the grounds, talking directly across to his daughter, as she served the soup. Her manner with him was very gentle. She added "father" to most of her sentences in addressing him, and there was a kind of caress in the word as she spoke it. Her head, whose outlines had seemed graceful to Saxton as he studied them in the mirror, was now disclosed fully in the soft candle-light of the table. She had a pretty way of bending forward when she spoke which was characteristic and quite in keeping with the frankness of her speech; there was no hint of coquetry or archness about her. Her eyes, which Saxton had thought blue in the drawing-room, were now gray by candle-light. She was very like her father; she had his clear-cut features, though softened and refined, and thoroughly feminine. His eyes were smaller, and there was a quizzical, furtive play of humor in them, which hers lacked. William Porter always seemed to be laughing at you; his daughter laughed with you. You might question the friendliness of her father's quiet joking sometimes, but there was nothing equivocal in her smile or speech.
A woman who is not too subservient to fashion may reveal a good deal of herself in the way she wears her hair. The straight part in Evelyn Porter's seemed to be akin to her clear, frank eyes, contributing to an impression of simplicity and directness. The waves came down upon her forehead and then retreated quickly to each side, as if they had been conscious intruders there, and were only secure when they found refuge in the knot that was gathered low behind. There was in her hair that pretty ripple which men arereluctant to believe is acquired by processes in which nature has little part. The result in Evelyn's case was to give the light a better playground, and it caught and brightened wherever a ripple held it. Her arms were bare from the elbow and there were suppleness and strength in their firm outlines; her hands were long and slender and had known vigorous service with racket and driver.
Porter was full of a scheme for planting a line of poplars around some lots, which, it seemed, he owned in another part of the town; but he dropped this during a prolonged absence of the waitress from the room, to ask where the girl had gone and whether there was going to be any more dinner.
"It's bad enough, child, for us to forget we've got a guest for dinner, but we needn't rub it in by starving him after he's at the table."
"There is food out there, father, if you'll abide in patience. This is a new girl and she's pretty green. She let Mr. Saxton in and then forgot to tell anybody he'd come." She wished to touch on this, without recurring to the awkward plight in which Saxton had been placed; and John now seized the chance to minimize it so that the incident might be closed.
"Oh, it was very flattering to me! She left me alone with an air that implied my familiar acquaintance with the house. It was much kinder than asking for credentials."
"You're not hard enough on these people, Evelyn," declared Porter. "That's something they didn't teach you at college. If you let the impression get out that you're easy, you'll never make a housekeeper. Firethem! fire them whenever you find they're no good!" He looked to Saxton for corroboration, with a severe air, as if this were something that masculine minds understood but which was beyond the reach of women.
When all were served he grew abstracted as he ate, and Saxton appealed to his hostess, as one college graduate may appeal to another, along the line of their college experiences. They had, it appeared, several acquaintances in common, and Saxon recalled that some of his classmates had often visited the college in which Miss Porter had been a student; and a little of the old ache crept into his heart as he remembered the ways in which the social side of college life had meant so much less to him than to most of the men he knew; but as she talked freely of her own experience, he found that her humor was contagious, and he even fell so far under its spell as to recount anecdotes of his own student life in which his part had not been heroic. Porter came back occasionally from the land of his commercial dreams, and they all laughed together at the climaxes. He presently directed the talk to the cattle business.
"You'd better get Mr. Saxton to tell you how much fun ranching is," he said, turning to the boy, who at once became interested in Saxton.
"I'm going to be a ranchman," the lad declared. "Father's going to buy me the Poindexter ranch some day."
"That's one of Mr. Saxton's properties. Maybe he'd trade it to you for a tin whistle."
"Is it as bad as that?" asked Saxton.
"Just wait until you see it. It's pretty bad."
"The house must have been charming," said Miss Porter.
"And that's about all it was," replied her father.
The dinner ended with a salad. This was not an incident but an event. The highest note of civilization is struck when a salad is dressed by a master of the chemistry of gastronomy. The clumsy and unworthy hesitate in the performance of this sacred rite, and are never sure of their proportions; the oil refuses intimacy with the vinegar, and sulks and selfishly creates little yellow isles for itself in the estranging sea of acid. The salt becomes indissoluble and the paprika is irrecoverable flotsam. The clove of garlic, always recalcitrant under clumsy handling, refuses to impart the merest hint of its wild tang, but the visible and tangible world reeks with it. It was a joy to John Saxton to see the deftness with which Evelyn Porter performed her miracle; he did not know much about girls, but he surmised that a girl who composed a salad dressing with such certainty did many things gracefully and well. There were no false starts, no "ohs" of regret and appeal, no questions of quantity. The light struck goldenly on the result as she poured it finally upon the crisply-curling lettuce leaves which showed discreetly over the edge of a deep Doulton bowl. It seemed to him high treason that his host should decline the dressing thus produced by an art which realized the dreams of alchemy, and should pour vinegar from the cruet with his own hand upon the helpless leaves.
Porter demanded cigars before the others had finished, and smoked over his coffee. He was in a hurry to leave, and at the earliest possible moment led the way tothe veranda, picking up his hat as he stepped blithely along.
It was warmer outside than in, but Porter pretended that it was pleasanter out of doors, and insisted that there was always a breeze on the hill at night. He ran on in drawling monologue about the weather conditions, and how much cooler it was in Clarkson than at the summer places which people foolishly sought at the expense of home comforts. He made his shy boy report his experiences of the day. In addressing the lad he fell into his quizzical manner, but the boy understood it and yielded to it with the same submission that his father's customers adopted when they sought a loan and knew that Porter must prod them with immaterial questions, and irritate them with petty ironies, before he finally scribbled his initials in the corner of their notes and passed them over to the discount clerk.
Raridan appeared at the step presently. They all rose as he came up, and he said to Saxton as he shook hands with him last: "I see you've found the way to headquarters. All roads lead up to this Alpine height,—and I fear—I fear—that all roads lead down again," he added, with a doleful sigh, and laughed. He drew out his cigarettes and began making himself greatly at home. He assured Mr. Porter, with amiable insolence, that his veranda chairs were the most uncomfortable ones he knew, and went to fetch himself a better seat from the hall.
"Mr. Raridan likes to be comfortable," said Miss Porter in his absence.
"But he finds pleasure in making others comfortable, too," Saxton ventured.
"Oh, he's the very kindest of men," Miss Porter affirmed.
"What a nuisance you are, Warry," said Porter, as the young man fussed about to find a place for his chair. "We were all very easy here till you came. Even the breeze has died out."
"Father insists that there has been a breeze," said Miss Porter. "But it really has gone."
"Et tu, Brute?What we ought to do, Mr. Porter," said Raridan, who had at last settled himself, "is to organize a company to supply breezes. 'The Clarkson Breeze Company, Limited.' I can see the name on the factory now, in my mind's eye. We'd get up an ice trust first, then bring in the ice cream people and make vast fortunes out of it, besides becoming benefactors of our kind. The ice and the ice cream would pay for the cold air; our cold air service would bring a clear profit. We'd guarantee a temperature through the summer months of, say, seventy degrees."
"Then," Porter drawled, "the next thing would be to get the doctors in, for a pneumonia branch; and after that the undertakers would demand admission, and then the tombstone people. You're a bright young man, Warry. I heard you stringing that Englishman at the club the other day about your scheme for piping water from the Atlantic Ocean to irrigate the American desert, and he thought you meant it."
"Then we'll all suffer," Miss Porter declared, "for he'll go home and put it in a book, and there'll be no end of it."
Raridan was in gay spirits. He had come from a call on a young married couple who had just gone tohousekeeping. He had met there a notoriously awkward young man, who moved through Clarkson houses leaving ruin in his wake.
"There ought to be some way of insuring against Whitely," said Raridan, musingly. "Perhaps a social casualty company could be formed to protect people from his depredations. You know, Mr. Saxton, they've really had to cut him off from refreshments at parties,—he was always spilling salads on the most expensive gowns in town. And these poor young married things, with their wedding loot huddled about them in their little parlors! There is a delightful mathematical nicety in the way he sweeps a tea table with his coat tails. He never leaves enough for a sample. But this was the worst! You know that polar bear skin that Mamie Shepard got for a wedding present; well, it makes her house look like a menagerie. Whitely was backing out—a thing I've begged him never to try—and got mixed up with the head of that monster; kicked all the teeth out, started to fall, gathered in the hat rack, broke the glass out of it, and before Shepard could head him off, he pulled down the front door shade."
"But Mr. Whitely sings beautifully," urged Miss Porter.
"He'd have to," said Warry, "with those feet."
"You needn't mind what Raridan says," Mr. Porter remarked. "He's very unreliable."
"The office of social censor is always an ungrateful one," Raridan returned, dolefully. "But I really don't know what you'd do without me here."
"I notice that you never give us a chance to try," said Mr. Porter, dryly.
"That is the unkindest cut; and in the shadow of your own house, too."
Saxton got up to go presently and Raridan rose with him, declaring that they had been terribly severe and that he could not be left alone with them.
"I hope you'll overlook that little slip of mine," said Mr. Porter, as he shook hands with Saxton. "You'd better not tell Raridan about it. It would be terrible ammunition in his hands."
"And we'll all do better next time," said Miss Porter; "so do come again to show that you don't treasure it against us."
"I don't know that anything's happened," pleaded John, "except that I've had a remarkably good time."
"I fear that's more generous than just; but the next time I hope the maid will do better."
"And next time I hope I shan't frighten you," Saxton went on. Raridan and Mr. Porter had walked down the long veranda to the steps, and Saxton and Miss Porter were following.
"Oh, but you didn't!" the girl laughed at him.
"But you dropped the flowers—"
"But you shouldn't have noticed! It wasn't gallant!"
They had reached the others, and Raridan broke in with his good night, and he and Saxton went down the walk together.
"They seem to have struck up an acquaintance," observed Mr. Porter, settling himself to a fresh cigar.
"Mr. Saxton is very nice," said Evelyn.
"Oh, he's all right," said her father, easily.
John Saxton trotted his pony through a broken gate into a great yard that had once been sown in blue grass, and at the center of which lay the crumbled ruins of a fountain. This was clearly no ordinary establishment, as he had been warned, and he was uncertain how to hail it. However, before he could make his presence known, a frowsy man in corduroy emerged from the great front door and came toward him.
"My name's Saxton, and you must be Snyder."
"Correct," said the man and they shook hands.
"Going to stay a while?"
"A day or two." John threw down the slicker in which he had wrapped a few articles from his bag at Great River, the nearest railway station.
"I got your letter all right," said Snyder. "Walk in and help yourself." He led the pony toward the outbuildings, while Saxton filled his pipe and viewed the pile before him with interest. He had been making a careful inspection of all the properties that had fallen to his care. This had necessitated a good deal of traveling. He had begun in Colorado and worked eastward, going slowly, and getting the best advice obtainable as to the value of his principals' holdings. Much of theirproperty was practically worthless. Title had been gained under foreclosure to vast areas which had no value. A waterworks plant stood in the prairie where there had once been a Kansas town. The place was depopulated and the smokestack stood as a monument to blighted hopes. Ranch houses were inhabited by squatters, who had not been on his books at all, and who paid no tribute to Boston. He was viewed with suspicion by these tenants, and on inquiry at the county seats, he found generally that they were lawless men, and that it would be better for him to let them alone. It was patent that they would not pay rent, and to eject them merely in the maintenance of a principle involved useless expense and violence.
"This certainly beats them all," Saxton muttered aloud.
He had reached in his itinerary what his papers called the Poindexter property. He had found that the place was famous throughout this part of the country for the idiosyncrasies of its sometime owners, three young men who had come out of the East to show how the cattle business should be managed. They had secured an immense acreage and built a stone ranch house whose curious architecture imparted to the Platte Valley a touch of medievalism that was little appreciated by the neighboring cattlemen. One of the owners, a Philadelphian named Poindexter, who had a weakness for architecture and had studied the subject briefly at his university, contributed the buildings and his two associates bought the cattle. There were one thousand acres of rolling pasture here, much of it lying along the river, and a practical mancould hardly have failed to succeed; but theft, disease in the herd and inexperience in buying and selling, had wrought the ranchmen's destruction. Before their money was exhausted, Poindexter and his associates lived in considerable state, and entertained the friends who came to see them according to the best usages of Eastern country life within, and their own mild approximation of Western life without. Tom Poindexter's preceptor in architecture, an elderly gentleman with a sense of humor, had found a pleasure which he hardly dared to express in the medieval tone of the house and buildings.
"All you need, Tom," he said, "to make the thing complete, is a drawbridge and a moat. The possibilities are great in the light of modern improvements in such things. An electric drawbridge, operated solely by switches and buttons, would be worth while." The folly of man seems to express itself naturally in the habitations which he builds for himself; the folly of Tom Poindexter had been of huge dimensions and he had built a fairly permanent monument to it. He and his associates began with an ambition to give tone to the cattle business, and if novel ideas could have saved them, they would not have failed. One of their happy notions was to use Poindexter's coat of arms as a brand, and this was only abandoned when their foreman declared that no calf so elaborately marked could live. They finally devised an insignium consisting of the Greek Omega in a circle of stars.
"There's a remnant of the Poindexter herd out there somewhere," Wheaton had said to Saxton. "The fellow Snyder, that I put in as a caretaker, ought to havegathered up the loose cattle by this time; that's what I told him to do when I put him there."
Saxton turned and looked out over the rolling plain. A few rods away lay the river, and where it curved nearest the house stood a group of cottonwoods, like sentinels drawn together for colloquy. Scattered here and there over the plain were straggling herds. On a far crest of the rolling pastures a lonely horseman paused, sharply outlined for a moment against the sky; in another direction, a blur drew his eyes to where a group of the black Polled Angus cattle grazed, giving the one blot of deep color to the plain.
Snyder reappeared, and Saxton followed him into the house.
"It isn't haunted or anything like that?" John asked, glancing over the long hall.
"No. They have a joke about that at Great River. They say the only reason is that there ain't any idiot ghosts."
There was much in the place to appeal to Saxton's quiet humor. The house was two stories high and there was a great hall, with an immense fireplace at one end. The sleeping rooms opened on a gallery above the hall. An effort had been made to give the house the appearance of Western wildness by introducing a great abundance of skins of wild beasts,—a highly dishonest bit of decorating, for they had been bought in Chicago. How else, indeed, would skins of German boars and Polar bears be found in a ranch house on the Platte River! Under one wing of the stairway, which divided to left and right at the center of the hall, was the dining-room; under the other was the ranch office.
"Those fellows thought a good deal of their stomachs," said Snyder, as Saxton opened and shut the empty drawers of the sideboard, which had been built into one end of the western wall of the room, in such a manner that a pane of glass, instead of a mirror, filled the center. The intention of this was obviously to utilize the sunset for decorative purposes, and Saxton chuckled as he comprehended the idea.
"I suppose our mortgage covers the sunset, too," he said. Nearly every portable thing of value had been removed, and evidently in haste; but the heavy oak chairs and the table remained. Snyder did his own modest cooking in the kitchen, which was in great disorder. The floor of the office was littered with scraps of paper. The original tenants had evidently made a quick settlement of their business affairs before leaving. Snyder slept here; his blanket lay in a heap on the long bench that was built into one side of the room, and a battered valise otherwise marked it as his lodging place. Saxton viewed the room with disgust; it was more like a kennel than a bedroom. His foot struck something on the floor; it was a silver letter-seal bearing the peculiar Poindexter brand, and he thrust it into his pocket with a laugh.
"My ranching wasn't so bad after all," he muttered.
"What's that?" asked Snyder, who was stolidly following him about.
"Nothing. If you have a pony we'll take a ride around the fences."
They spent the day in the saddle riding over the range. The ridiculous character of the Poindexter undertaking could not spoil the real value of the land. There was,Saxton could see, the making here of a great farming property; he felt his old interest in outdoor life quickening as he rode back to the house in the evening.
Snyder cooked supper for both of them, while Saxton repaired a decrepit windmill which had been designed to supply the house with water. He had formed a poor opinion of the caretaker, who seemed to know nothing of the property and who had, as far as he could see, no well defined duties. The man struck him as an odd person for the bank to have chosen to be the custodian of a ranch property. There was nothing for any one to do unless the range were again stocked and cattle raising undertaken as a serious business. Saxton was used to rough men and their ways. He had a happy faculty of adapting himself to the conversational capacities of illiterate men, and enjoyed drawing them out and getting their point of view; but Snyder's was not a visage that inspired confidence. He had a great shock of black hair and a scraggy beard. He lacked an eye, and he had a habit of drawing his head around in order to accommodate his remaining orb to any necessity. He did this with an insinuating kind of deliberation that became tiresome in a long interview.
"This place is too fancy to be of much use," the man vouchsafed, puffing at his pipe. "You may find some dude that wants to plant money where another dude has dug the first hole; but I reckon you'll have a hard time catching him. A real cattleman wouldn't care for all this house. It might be made into a stable, but a horse would look ridiculous in here. You might have a corn crib made out of it; or it would do for a hotel if you could get dudes to spend the summer here; but Ireckon it's a little hot out here for summer boarders."
"The only real value is in the land," said Saxton. "I'm told there's no better on the river. The house is a handicap, or would be so regarded by the kind of men who make money out of cattle. Have you ever tried rounding up the cattle that strayed through the fences? The Poindexter crowd must have branded their last calves about two years ago. Assuming that only a part of them was sold or run off, there ought to be some two-year-olds still loose in this country and they'd be worth finding."
Snyder took his pipe from his mouth and snorted. "Yer jokin' I guess. These fellers around here are good fellers, and all that, but I guess they don't give anything back. I guess we ain't got any cattle coming to us."
"You think you'd rather not try it?"
"Not much!" was the expressive reply. The fellow smoked slowly, bringing his eye into position to see how Saxton had taken his answer.
John was refilling his own pipe and did not look up.
"Who've you been reporting to, Snyder?"
"How's that?"
"Who have you been considering yourself responsible to?"
"Well, Jim Wheaton at the Clarkson National hired me, and I reckon I'd report to him if I reported to anybody. But if you're going to run this shebang and want to be reported to, I guess I can report to you." He brought his turret around again and Saxton this time met his eye.
"I want you to report to me," said John quietly. "Inthe first place I want the house and the other buildings cleaned out. After that the fences must be put in shape. And then we'll see if we can't find some of our cows. You can't tell; we may open up a real ranch here and go into business."
Snyder was sprawling at his ease in a Morris chair, and had placed his feet on a barrel. He did not seem interested in the activities hinted at.
"Well, if you're the boss I'll do it your way. I got along all right with Wheaton."
He did not say whether he intended to submit to authority or not, and Saxton dropped the discussion. John rose and found a candle with which he lighted himself to bed in one of the rooms above. The whole place was dirty and desolate. The house had never been filled save once, and that was on the occasion of a housewarming which Poindexter and his fellows had given when they first took possession. One of their friends had chartered a private car and had brought out a party of young men and women, who had enlivened the house for a few days; but since then no woman had entered the place. In the Poindexter days it had been carefully kept, but now it was in a sorry plight. There had been a whole year of neglect and vacancy, in which the house had been used as a meeting place for the wilder spirits of the neighborhood, who had not hesitated to carry off whatever pleased their fancy and could be put on the back of a horse. Saxton chose for himself the least disorderly of the rooms, in which the furniture was whole, and where there were even a few books lying about. He determined to leave for Clarkson the following morning, and formulated in his mind theresult of his journey and plans for the future of the incongruous combination of properties that had been entrusted to him. He sat for an hour looking out over the moon-lit valley. He followed the long sweep of the plain, through which he could see for miles the bright ribbon of the river. A train of cars rumbled far away, on the iron trail between the two oceans, intensifying the loneliness of the strange house.
"I seem to find only the lonely places," he said aloud, setting his teeth hard into his pipe.
In the morning he ate the breakfast of coffee, hard-tack and bacon which Snyder prepared.
"I guess you want me to hustle things up a little," said Snyder, more amiably than on the day before. He turned his one eye and his grin on Saxton, who merely said that matters must take a new turn, and that if a ranch could be made out of the place there was no better time to begin than the present. He had not formulated plans for the future, and could not do so without the consent and approval of his principals; but he meant to put the property in as good condition as possible without waiting for instructions. Snyder rode with him to the railway station.
"Give my regards to Mr. Wheaton," he said, as Saxton swung himself into the train. "You'll find me here at the old stand when you come back."
"A queer customer and undoubtedly a bad lot," was Saxton's reflection.
When Saxton had written out the report of his trip he took it to Wheaton, to get his suggestions before forwarding it to Boston. He looked upon the cashier as his predecessor, and wished to avail himself of Wheaton'sknowledge of the local conditions affecting the several properties that had now passed to his care. Wheaton undoubtedly wished to be of assistance, and in their discussion of the report, the cashier made many suggestions of value, of which Saxton was glad to avail himself.
"As to the Poindexter place," said Saxton finally, "I've been advertising it for sale in the hope of finding a buyer, but without results. The people at headquarters can't bother about the details of these things, but I'm blessed if I can see why we should maintain a caretaker. There's nothing there to take care of. That house is worse than useless. I'm going back in a few days to see if I can't coax home some of the cattle we're entitled to; they must be wandering over the country,—if they haven't been rustled, and then I suppose we may as well dispense with Snyder."
He had used the plural pronoun out of courtesy to Wheaton, wishing him to feel that his sanction was asked in any changes that were made.
"I don't see that there's anything else to do," Wheaton answered. "I've been to the ranch, and there's little personal property there worth caring for. That man Snyder came along one day and asked for a job and I sent him out there thinking he'd keep things in order until the Trust Company sent its own representative here."
There were times when Wheaton's black eyes contracted curiously, and this was one of the times.
"I don't like discharging a man that you've employed," Saxton replied.
"Oh, that's all right. You can't keep him if heperforms no service. Don't trouble about him on my account. How soon are you going back there?"
"Next week some time."
"Traveling about the country isn't much fun," Wheaton said, sympathetically.
"Oh, I rather like it," replied Saxton, putting on his hat.
Saxton was not surprised when he returned to the ranch to find that Snyder had made no effort to obey his instructions. He made his visit unexpectedly, leaving the train at Great River, where he secured a horse and rode over to the ranch. He reached the house in the middle of the morning and found the front door bolted and barred on the inside. After much pounding he succeeded in bringing Snyder to the door, evidently both surprised and displeased at his interruption.
"Howdy, boss," was the salutation of the frowsy custodian; "I wasn't feeling just right to-day and was takin' a little nap."
The great hall showed signs of a carousal. The dirt had increased since Saxton's first appearance. Empty bottles that had been doing service as candlesticks stood in their greasy shrouds on the table. Saxton sat down on a keg, which had evidently been recently emptied, and lighted a pipe. He resolved to make quick work of Snyder.
"How many cattle have you rounded up since I was here?" he demanded.
"Well, to tell the truth," began Snyder, "there ain't been much time for doing that since you was here."
"No; I suppose you were busy mending fences and cleaning house. Now you have been drawing fortydollars a month for doing nothing. I'll treat you better than you deserve and give you ten dollars bonus to get out. I believe the pony in the corral belongs to you. We'll let it go at that. Here's your money."
"Well, I guess as Mr. Wheaton hired me, he'd better fire me," the fellow began, bringing his eye to bear upon Saxton.
"Yes, I spoke to Mr. Wheaton about you. He understands that you're to go."
"He does, does he?" Snyder replied with a sneer. "He must have forgot that I had an arrangement with him by the year."
"Well, it's all off," said Saxton, rising. He began throwing open the windows and doors to let in fresh air, for the place was foul with the stale fumes of whisky and tobacco.
"Well, I guess I'll have to see Mr. Wheaton," Snyder retorted, finding that Saxton was paying no further attention to him. He collected his few belongings, watching in astonishment the violence with which Saxton was gathering up and disposing of rubbish.
"Going to clean up a little?" he asked, with his leer.
"No, I'm just exercising for fun," replied Saxton. "If you're ready, you'd better take your pony and skip."
Snyder growled his resentment and moved toward the door with a bundle under his arm and a saddle and bridle thrown over his shoulder.
"I'll be up town to see Mr. Wheaton in a day or two," he declared, as he slouched through the door.
"He seems to be more interested in Wheaton than Wheaton is in him," observed Saxton to himself.
Saxton spent a week at Great River. He hired aman to repair fences and put the house in order. He visited several of the large ranch owners and asked them for aid in picking out the scattered remnants of the Poindexter herd. Nearly all of them volunteered to help, with the result that he collected about one hundred cattle and sold them at Great River for cash. He expected to see or hear of Snyder in the town but the fellow had disappeared.
The fact was that Snyder had ridden over to the next station beyond Great River for his spree, that place being to his liking because it was beyond the jurisdiction of the sheriff whose headquarters were maintained at Great River,—an official who took his office seriously, and who had warned Snyder that his latest offense—getting drunk and smashing a saloon sideboard—must not be repeated. After he had been satisfactorily drunk for a week and had gambled away such of his fortune as the saloonkeeper had not acquired in direct course of commerce, Snyder came to himself sufficiently to send a telegram. Then he sat down to wait, with something of the ease of spirit with which an honest man sends forth a sight draft for collection from a town where he is a stranger, and awaits returns in the full enjoyment of the comforts of his inn.
On the third day, receiving no message from the outside world, Snyder sold his pony and took the train for Clarkson.
Evelyn Porter had come home in June to take her place as mistress of her father's house. The fact that she alone of the girls belonging to families of position in the town had gone to college had set her a little apart from the others. During her four years at Smith she had evinced no unusual interest in acquiring knowledge; she was a fair student only and had been graduated without honors save those which her class had admiringly bestowed on her. She had entered into social and athletic diversions with zest and had been much more popular with her fellow students than with the faculty. She brought home no ambition save to make her father's home as comfortable as possible. She said to herself that she would keep up her French and German, and straightway put books within reach to this end. She had looked with wonder unmixed with admiration upon the strenuous woman as she had seen her, full of ambition to remake the world in less than six days; and she dreaded the type with the dread natural in a girl of twenty-two who has a sound appetite, a taste in clothes, with money to gratify it, and a liking for fresh air and sunshine.
She found it pleasant to slip back into the life of thetown; and the girl friends or older women who met her on summer mornings in the shopping district of Clarkson, remarked to one another and reported to their sons and husbands, that Evelyn Porter was at home to stay, and that she was just as cordial and friendly as ever and had no airs. It pleased Evelyn to find that the clerks in the shops remembered her and called her by name; and there was something homelike and simple and characteristic in the way women that met in the shops visited with one another in these places. She caught their habit of going into Vortini's for soda water, where she found her acquaintances of all ages sitting at tables, with their little parcels huddled in their laps, discussing absentees and the weather. She found, in these encounters, that most of the people she knew were again agitated, as always at this season, because Clarkson was no cooler than in previous years; and that the women were expressing their old reluctance to leave their husbands, who could not get away for more than two weeks, if at all. Some were already preparing for Mackinac or Oconomowoc or Wequetonsing, and a few of the more adventurous for the remoter coasts of New Jersey and Massachusetts. The same people were discussing these same questions in the same old spirit, and, when necessary, confessing with delightful frankness their financial disabilities, in excusing their presence in town at a season when it was only an indulgence of providence that all the inhabitants did not perish from the heat.
As a child Evelyn had played in the tower of the house on the hill, and she now made a den of it. Some of her childish playthings were still hidden away in thewindow seat, and stirred freshly the remembrance of her mother,—her gentleness, her frailty, her interest in the world's work. She often wondered whether the four years at college had realized all that her dead mother had hoped for; but she was not morbid, and she did not brood. She found a pleasure in stealing up to the tower in the summer nights, and watching the shifting lights of the great railway yards far down the valley, but at such times she had no romantic visions. She knew that the fitful bell of the switch engine and the rumble of wheels symbolized the very practical life of this restless region in which she had been born. She cherished no delusion that she was a princess in a tower, waiting for a lover to come riding from east or west. She had always shared with her companions the young men who visited her at college. When they sometimes sent her small gifts, she had shared these also. Warrick Raridan had gone to see her several times, as an old friend, and he had on these occasions, with characteristic enterprise, made the most of the opportunity to widen his acquaintance among Evelyn's friends, to whom she frankly introduced him.
On the day following John Saxton's introduction to the house, Evelyn was busy pouring oil on rusty places in the domestic machinery, when three cards were brought up to her bearing unfamiliar names. They belonged, she imagined, to some of the newer people of the town who had come to Clarkson during her years from home.
"Mrs. Atherton?" she said inquiringly, pausing before the trio in the drawing-room.
Two of the ladies looked toward the third, with whom Evelyn shook hands.
"Miss Morris and Mrs. Wingate," murmured the lady identified as Mrs. Atherton. They all sat down.
"It's so very nice to know that you are at home again," said Mrs. Atherton, "although I've not had the pleasure of meeting you before. I knew your mother very well, many years ago, but I have been away for a long time and have only recently come back to Clarkson.
"It is very pleasant to be at home again," Evelyn responded.
Mrs. Atherton smiled nervously and looked pointedly at her companions, evidently expecting them to participate in the conversation. The younger woman, who had been presented as Miss Morris, sat rigid in a gilt reception chair. She was of severe aspect and glared at Mrs. Atherton, who threw herself again into the breach.
"I hope you do not dislike the West?" Mrs. Atherton inquired of Evelyn.
"No, indeed! On the other hand I am very proud of it. You know I am a native here, and very loyal."
Miss Morris seized this as if it had been her cue, and declared in severe tones:
"We of the West are fortunate in living away from the artificiality of the East. There is some freedom here; the star of empire hovers here; the strength of the nation lies in the rugged but honest people of the great West, who gave Lincoln to the nation and the nation to Liberty." There was a glitter of excitement in the woman's eyes, but she spoke in lowmonotonous tones. Evelyn thought for a moment that this was conscious hyperbole, but Miss Morris's aspect of unrelenting severity undeceived her. Something seemed to be expected of her, and Evelyn said:
"That is all very true, but, you know, they say down East that we are far too thoroughly persuaded of our greatness and brag too much."
"But," continued Miss Morris, "they are coming to us more and more for statesmen. Look at literature! See what our western writers are doing! The most vital books we are now producing are written west of the Alleghanies!"
"You know Miss Morris is a writer," interrupted Mrs. Atherton. "We should say Doctor Morris," she continued, with a rising inflection on the title,—"not an M.D. Miss Morris is a doctor of philosophy."
"Oh," said Evelyn. "What college, Doctor Morris?"
"The University of North Dakota," with emphasis on the university. "I had intended going to Heidelberg, but felt that we loyal Americans should patronize home institutions. The choruses of Euripides may ring as grandly on our Western plains as in Athens itself," she added with finality. She enunciated with great care and seemed terribly in earnest to Evelyn, who felt an uncontrollable desire to laugh. But there was, she now imagined, something back of all this, and she waited patiently for its unfolding. The dénouement was, she hoped, near at hand, for Miss Morris moved her eyeglasses higher up on her nose and appeared even more formidable than before.
"I have heard that great emphasis is laid at Smith on social and political economy. You must be very anxiousto make practical use of your knowledge," continued Miss Morris.
Evelyn recalled guiltily her cuts in these studies.
"Carlyle or somebody"—she was afraid to quote before a doctor of philosophy, and thought it wise to give a vague citation—"calls political economy the dismal science, and I'm afraid I have looked at it a little bit that way myself." She smiled hopefully, but Miss Morris did not relax her severity.
"Civic responsibility rests on women as strongly as on men; even more so," declared Miss Morris.
"Well, I think we ought to do what we can," assented Evelyn.
"Now, our Local Council has been doing a great deal toward improving the sanitation of Clarkson."
"Oh yes," exclaimed Mrs. Wingate from her corner.
"And we feel that every educated woman in the community should lend her aid to all the causes of the Local Council."
"Yes?" said Evelyn, rather weakly. She felt that the plot was thickening. "I really know very little of such things, but—" The "but" was highly equivocal.
"And we are very anxious to get a representative on the School Board," continued Miss Morris. "The election is in November. Has it ever occurred to you how perfectly absurd it is for men to conduct our educational affairs when the schools are properly a branch of the home and should be administered, in part, at least, by women?" She punctuated her talk so that her commas cut into the air. Mrs. Wingate, the third and silent lady, approved this more or less inarticulately.
"I know there's a great deal in that," said Evelyn.
"And we, the Executive Committee of the Council, have been directed to ask you"—Mrs. Wingate and Mrs. Atherton moved nervously in their seats, but Miss Morris now spoke with more deliberation, and with pedagogic care of her pronunciation—"to become a candidate for the School Board."
Evelyn felt a cold chill creeping over her, and swallowed hard in an effort to summon some word to meet this shock.
"Your social position," continued Miss Morris volubly, "and the prestige which you as a bachelor of arts have brought home from college, make you a most natural candidate."
"Destiny really seems to be pointing to you," said Mrs. Atherton, with coaxing sweetness in her tone.
"Oh, but I couldn't think of it!" exclaimed Evelyn, recovering her courage. "I have had no experience in such matters! Why, that would be politics!—and I have always felt,—it has seemed to me,—I simply can't consider it!"
She had gained her composure now. She had been called a bachelor of arts, and she felt an impulse to laugh.
"Ah! we had expected that it would seem strange to you at first," said Mrs. Atherton, who appeared to be in charge of the grand strategy of the call, while Miss Morris carried the rapid firing guns and Mrs. Wingate lent moral support, as of a shore battery.
Mrs. Atherton had risen.
"We have all set our hearts on it, and you must not decline. Think it over well, and when you come tothe first meeting of the Council in September, you will, I am sure, be convinced of your duty."
"Yes; a very solemn obligation that wealth and education have laid upon you," Miss Morris amplified.
"A solemn obligation," echoed Mrs. Wingate.
The three filed out, Miss Morris leading the way, while Mrs. Atherton lingeringly covered their retreat with a few words that were intended to convey a knowledge of the summer frivolities then pending.
"I should be very glad to have you come to see me at my rooms," said Miss Morris, wheeling in her short skirt as she reached the door. "I have rooms in the Ætna Building."
"Do come and see us, too," murmured the convoy, smiling in relief as they turned away.
Evelyn sat down in the nearest chair and laughed.
"I wonder whether they think college has made me like that?" she asked herself.
At dinner she gave her father a humorous account of the interview. Grant was away dining with a playmate and they were alone. Porter was in one of his perverse moods, and he began gruffly:
"I should like to know why not! Haven't I spent thousands of dollars on your education? The lady was right; you are, at least so I have understood, a bachelor of arts. Why a bachelor I'm sure I don't know—" He was buttering a bit of bread with deliberation and did not look at Evelyn, who waited patiently, knowing that he would have his whim out.
"It seems to me," he went on, "a proper recognition of your talents and education, and also of me, as one of the oldest citizens of Clarkson. I tell you it is good toget a little recognition once in a while. I have a painful recollection of having been defeated for School Commissioner about ten years ago. Now here's a chance for the family to redeem itself. Of course you accepted the nomination, and after your election I'll expect you to bring the school funds to my bank, and I'll say to you now that the directors will do the right thing by you."
He was still avoiding Evelyn's eyes, but his humor was growing impatient for recognition.
"Now, father!" she pleaded, and they laughed together.
"Father," she said seriously, "I don't want these people here to get an idea that I'm not an ordinary being."
"That's an astonishing statement," he began, ready for further banter; but she would not have it.
"There are," she said, "certain things that a woman ought to do, whether she's educated or not; and I have ideas about that. So you think these people here are expecting great things of me,—"
"Of course they are, and with reason," said Porter, still anxious to return to his joke.
"But I do not intend to have it! When I'm forty years old I may change my mind, but right now I want—"
She hesitated.
"Well, what do you want, child?" he said gently, with the fun gone out of his voice. They had had their coffee, and she sat with her elbow on the table and her chin in her hand.
"Why, I'm afraid I want to have a good time," she declared, rising.
"And that's just what I want you to have, child," he said kindly, putting his arm about her as they went out together.
Evelyn declined the honor offered her by the local council, at long range, in a note to Doctor Morris, giving no reasons beyond her unfamiliarity with political and school matters. These she knew would not be considered adequate by Doctor Morris, but the latter, after writing a somewhat caustic reply, in which she dwelt upon the new woman's duties and responsibilities, immediately announced her own candidacy. The incident was closed as far as Evelyn was concerned and she was not again approached in the matter.
Her father continued to joke about it, and a few weeks later, when they were alone, referred to it in a way which she knew by experience was merely a feint that concealed some serious purpose. Men of Porter's age are usually clumsy in dealing with their own children, and Porter was no exception. When he had anything of weight on his mind to discuss with Evelyn, he brooded over it for several days before attacking her. His manner with men was easy, and he was known down town as a good bluffer; but he stood not a little in awe of his daughter.
"I suppose things will be gay here this winter," he said, as they sat together on the porch.
"About the same old story, I imagine. The people and their ways don't seem to have changed much."
"You must have some parties yourself. Better startthem up early. Get some of the college girls out, and turn it on strong."
"Well, I shan't want to overdo it. I don't want to be a nuisance to you, and entertaining isn't as easy as it looks."
"It'll do me good, too," he replied. He fidgeted in his chair and played with his hat, which, however, he did not remove, but shifted from one side to the other, smoking his cigar meanwhile without taking it from his mouth. He rose and walked out to one of his sprinklers which had been placed too near the walk and kicked it off into the grass. She watched him with a twinkle in her eyes, and then laughed. "What is it, father?" she asked, when he came back to the porch.
"What's what?" he replied, with assumed irritation. He knew that he must now face the music, and grew composed at once.
"Well, it's this,—" with sudden decision.
"Yes, I knew it was something," she said, still laughing and not willing to make it too easy for him.
"You know the Knights of Midas are quite an institution here—boom the town, and give a fall festival every year. The idea is to get the country people in to spend their money. Lots of tom-foolishness about it,—swords and plumes and that kind of rubbish; but we all have to go in for it. Local pride and so on."
"Yes; do you want me to join the Knights?"
"No, not precisely. But you see, they have a ball every year in connection with the festival, with a queen and maids of honor. I guess you've never seen one of these things, as they have them in October, and you've always been away at school. Now the committee onentertainment has been after me to see if you'd be queen of the ball this year—"
"Oh!—" ominously.
"Just hold on a minute." He was wholly at ease now, and assumed the manner which he had found effective in dealing with obstreperous customers of his bank. "I'm free to say that I don't like the idea of this myself particularly. There's a lot of publicity about it and you know I don't like that—and the newspapers make an awful fuss. But you see it isn't wise for us"—he laid emphasis on the pronoun—"to set up to be better than other people. Now", with a twinkle in his eye, "you turned down this School Board business the other day and said you wanted to have a good time, just like other girls, and I reckon most of the girls in town would be tickled at a chance like this—"
"And you want me to do it, father? Is that what you mean? But it must be perfectly awful,—the crowd and the foolish mummery."
"Well, there's one thing sure, you'll never have to do it a second time." Porter smiled reassuringly.
"But I haven't said I'd do it once, father."
"I'd like to have you; I'd like it very much, and should appreciate your doing it. But don't say anything about it." Some callers were coming up the walk, so the matter was dropped. Porter recurred to the subject again next day, and Evelyn saw that he wished very much to have her take part in the carnival, but the idea did not grow pleasanter as she considered it. It was quite true, as she had told her father, that she wanted to enjoy herself after the manner of other young women, and without constant reference to her advantages, asshe had heard them called; but the thought of a public appearance in what she felt to be a very ridiculous function did not please her. On the other hand, her father rarely asked anything of her and he would not have made this request without considering it carefully beforehand.
In her uncertainty she went for advice to Mrs. Whipple, the wife of a retired army officer, who had been her mother's friend. Mrs. Whipple was a woman of wide social experience and unusual common sense. She had settled in her day many of those distressing complications which arise at military posts in times of national peace. Young officers still came to her for advice in their love affairs, which she always took seriously, but not too seriously. Warry Raridan maintained unjustly that Mrs. Whipple's advice was bad, but that it did the soul good to see how much joy she got out of giving it. The army had communicated both social dignity and liveliness to Clarkson, as to many western cities which had military posts for neighbors. In the old times when civilians were busy with the struggle for bread and had little opportunity for social recreation, army men and women had leisure for a punctilious courtesy. The mule-drawn ambulance was a picturesque feature of the urban landscape as it bore the army women about the rough streets of the new cities; it was not elegant, but it was so eminently respectable! There might be an occasional colonel that was a snob, or a major that drank too much; or a Mrs. Colonel who was a trifle too conscious of her rights over her sisters at the Post, or a Mrs. Major whose syntax was unbearable; but the stars and stripes covered them all, even asthey cover worse people and worse errors in our civil administrators.
It gave Evelyn a pleasant sensation to find herself again in the little Whipple parlor. The furniture was the same that she remembered of old in the commandant's house at the fort. It had at last found repose, for the Whipples' marching days were over. They made an effort to have an Indian room, where they kept their books, but they refrained from calling the place a library. On the walls were the headdress of a Sioux chief, and a few colored photographs of red men; the couch was covered with a Navajo blanket, and on the floor were wolf and bear skins. When chairs were needed for callers, the general brought them in from other rooms; he himself sat in a canvas camp chair, which he said was more comfortable than any other kind, but which was prone to collapse under a civilian. The wastepaper-basket by the general's table, and a basket for fire-wood were of Indian make, dyed in dull shades of red and green.
"My dear child," Mrs. Whipple began, when Evelyn had explained her errand; "this is a very pretty compliment they're paying you,—don't you know that?"
"Yes, but I don't want it," declared the girl, with emphasis.
"That is wholly unreasonable. There are girls in Clarkson that could not afford to take it; the strength of your position is that you can afford to do it! It's not going to injure you in any way; can't you see that? Everybody knows all about you,—that you naturally wouldn't want it. Why, there's that Margrave girl, whose father does something or other in one of therailways,—she had this honor that is worrying you two years ago, and her father and all his friends worked hard to get it for her."
Evelyn laughed at her friend's earnestness. "I'm afraid you're trying to lift this to an impersonal plane, but I'm considering myself in this matter. I simply don't want to be mixed up in that kind of thing."
"These business men work awfully hard for all of us," Mrs. Whipple continued. "It seems to me that their daily business contests and troubles are fiercer than real wars. I'd a lot rather take my chances in the army than in commercial life,—if I were doing it all over again,—that is, from the woman's side. The government always gives us our bread if it can't supply the butter; and if the poor men lose a fight they are forgiven and we still eat. But in the business battle—" she shrugged her shoulders to indicate the sorry plight of the vanquished.
"Yes, I suppose that's all true," Evelyn conceded. "But you mustn't be so abstract! I really haven't a philosophical mind. I came here to ask you to tell me how to get out of this, but you seem to be urging me in!"
Mrs. Whipple rallied her forces while she poured the iced tea which a maid had brought.
"We can't always have our 'ruthers.' Now this looks like a very large sacrifice of comfort and dignity to you. I'll grant you the discomfort, but not any loss of dignity. If you were vain and foolish, I'd take your side, just to protect you, but you have no such weaknesses. You must not consider at all that girls in Eastern cities don't do such things; that's because there aren't the things to do. Our great-grandchildren won't be doingthem either. But these carnivals, and things like that, are necessary evils of our development. Army people like ourselves, who have always been cared for by a paternal government, can hardly appreciate the troubles of business people; and a girl like you, who has always led a carefully sheltered life, with both comforts and luxuries given her without the asking, must try to appreciate the fact that everybody is not so fortunate. I don't know whether these affairs are really of any advantage to the town commercially; I have heard business men say that they are not; but so long as they have them, the rest of us have got to submit to the confetti throwers and the country brass bands, on the theory that it's good for the town."
Mrs. Whipple covered all the ground when she talked. She had daringly addressed department commanders in this ample fashion when her husband was only a second lieutenant, and she was not easily driven from her position.
"But what's good for the town isn't necessarily good for me," pleaded Evelyn. Her animation was becoming, and Mrs. Whipple was noting the points of the girl's beauty with delight. "Any other girl's clothes would look just as sweet to the multitude," Evelyn asserted.
"That's where you are mistaken. If it's a sacrifice, the town is offering Iphigenia, and only our fairest daughter will do. I'll be talking fine language in a minute, and one of us will be lost." She laughed; Mrs. Whipple always laughed at herself at the right moment. She said it discounted the pleasure other people might have in laughing at her. "Now Evelyn Porter, you're a nice girl and a sensible one. So far as you can seeyou're going to spend your days in this town, and it isn't a bad place. We preferred to live here after the general retired because we liked it, and that was when we had the world to choose from. I've lived in every part of this country, but the people in this region are simple and honest and wholesome, and they have human hearts in them, and at my age that counts for a good deal. The general and I were both born in Massachusetts, where you hear a lot about ancestors and background; but I've driven over these plains and prairies in an army ambulance, since before the Civil War, and it hasn't all been fun, either; I love every mile of the country, and I don't want you, who are the apple of my eye, to come home with patronizing airs—"
"Not guilty!" exclaimed Evelyn throwing up her hands in protest. "I have no such ideas and you know it; but you ignore the point. What I can't see is that there's any question of patriotism in this Knights of Midas affair, as far as I'm concerned, and I'm not so young as I was. The queen of the ball should be much younger than I am."
"Well, if you're reduced to that kind of argument, I think we'll have to call the debate closed. But remember,—you're asked to give only an hour of your life to please your father, and a great many other people. And you'll be doing your town a great service, too."
"Well," said Evelyn dolefully, as she got up to go, "this isn't the kind of counsel I came for. If I'd expected this from you, I'd have taken my troubles elsewhere." She had risen and stood swinging her parasol back and forth and regarding the tip of her boot. "You almost make it seem right."
"You'd better make a note of it as one of those things that are not pleasant, but necessary. If I thought it would harm you, child, I'd certainly warn you against it—I'd do that for your mother's sake."
"I like your saying that," said Evelyn, softly.
Mrs. Whipple had been a beauty in the old army days, and was still a handsome woman. She had retained the slenderness of her girlhood, and the hot suns and blighting winds of the plains and mountains had dealt gently with her. She took both of Evelyn's hands at the door, and kissed her.
"Don't go away hating me, dear. Come up often; and after it's all over, I'll tell you how good you've been."
"Oh, I'll go to a convent afterward," Evelyn answered; "that is, if I find that you've really persuaded me!"