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When nearing their destination, they were joined by two more horsemen, Brenchfield––his left foot heavily bound round the ankle––and one of his white ranch hands. The Mayor was surly as usual and seemed in desperation to get in touch with Chief Palmer, who obligingly dropped behind with him. As they brought up the rear, they indulged in a very earnest conversation.
When the wagons were safely harboured in the Police Yard and the thieves safely jailed under lock and key, the Chief, as if to make amends for his previous surliness, shook hands all round and congratulated the men on their coup.
“This will help to make an interesting calendar for the next Assizes, boys. I’ll be after all of you for witnesses, so don’t get on the rampage anywhere in between times.”
“I guess, Morrison, old chap,” broke in Brenchfield, “this will end the flour and feed racket for some time to come. We fellows will have a chance to make a little profit out of our businesses at last.”
“Oh, you haven’t much to worry over,” replied Morrison. “You haven’t all your eggs in one basket like I have. It is just pin-money for you, but it means bread and butter and bed for me and mine.”
Brenchfield steered his horse alongside and laid his hand sympathetically on the old man’s shoulder.
“Never mind, Morrison! It is all over now,––so here’s to better days.”
Morrison was not very responsive, and the Mayor excused himself on the plea of his ankle, his want of sleep and the further pressure of mayoral business.
“Darn it!” exclaimed Morrison to Jim and Phil, as he left them at the end of the avenue, “I used to like Brenchfield, but I don’t know what’s come over me lately with him. When he laid his hand on me a few minutes184ago, I felt as if a wet toad was squatting on the back of my neck.”
When they reached home, Jim did not go to his own room immediately. He followed into Phil’s and sat down on the edge of the bed as Phil commenced to get out of his clothes preparatory to having a bath.
“Well!––what did you think of it, Phil?” he asked, glad, evidently, to be alone with his comrade where he could at last express his thoughts and pent-up feelings freely.
“Pretty work!”
“What?”
“I said I thought it was pretty work. We did a clean job;––got all we went out for.”
“Like the devil we did!” shot out Jim.
“Why!––what did we forget, grouchy?”
“Everything! They’re too blamed wise for us, that bunch, and they’re too many.”
Phil stopped pulling off a sock and looked over at Jim.
“Aw, come off!” cried the other. “Let in the daylight, man! What did we get anyway?”
“We got the thieves, didn’t we?”
“Not by a jugfull! Half a dozen half-breed teamsters,––that’s all!”
“Armed and driving stolen goods!”
“Yes! I grant that, but what good is that going to do?”
“Well, Jim,––you’ve discovered the plan they have been operating for doing away with the stuff. That is something.”
“Sure!––that too, and it will end the wholesale thieving for a bit, till they find another way. It will give poor old Morrison a chance to recoup.”
185
“Then I guess you always expect too much, Jim. You’re never contented.”
“Why should I be;––with Brenchfield’s foreman and head-boss rotter Red McGregor, and that sneaky little devil Stitchy Summers not among the casualties.”
“But Palmer will get them, won’t he?”
“Not on your life!”
“Why not? We stopped each of them making for the gang to warn them off.”
“How are we to prove that? They might have been going anywhere. Why man!––that pair could pretty nearly nail us for unprovoked assault.”
Phil laughed.
“And they were the men who were conducting the entire steal when I fell in among them in the cellar;––but I can’t prove it.”
“You’re sure they were, Jim?”
“Of course I’m sure. Red hit me on the head with the butt-end of his quirt. I’ll get him one for it too, before I’m done.”
“And they engineered the whole affair, set the teamsters on their journey, then beat it ahead for Redmans?”
“‘Oh noble judge! O excellent young man,’” Jim quoted sarcastically.
Phil felt the thrust. He went over to the bed, tilted up Jim’s chin with his forefinger and looked straight into his mischievous eyes.
“Seeing you know so much, Jim Langford,––tell me more. What side is Brenchfield on in this affair?”
Jim grew serious all of a sudden.
“Now you’re talking!” he exclaimed, his eyes snapping angrily and his voice throwing fire. “I’ve had no darned use for that son-of-a-gun for some considerable time. He has his nose in everything. He pretty nearly bosses the whole Valley. He’s political boss, Mayor,186rancher, and God knows what else. If he isn’t crooked, why does he have his biggest ranch right in the thick of that Indian settlement? He has the whole of the breeds on the reservation under his thumb. He’s a party heeler, a grafter from away back, and everybody falls for him. And yet,––good Land!––if you did so much as open your mouth against him, you’d get run out of town.”
“Go on! Go on!” applauded Phil. “I like to hear you.”
“Yes!––andyou’vegot the biggest grudge against him of any for something or other, or I’m not Wayward Langford. But you’re so darned tight about it.”
Phil’s applause ended abruptly.
“Thought that would stop you!” grinned Jim. “But that man, and the blindness of the so-called wise men of this wee burg make me positively sick in the stomach.
“Who’s at the back of the whole feed steal?––Brenchfield! Half-breeds didn’t make that tunnel. It is a white man’s job all through. It was all nicely done. Oh, ay! A tunnel to the three warehouses, Brenchfield’s included! Thieving right and left and Brenchfield always losing a bit––to himself––every time; just to keep up appearances; and getting richer and richer every theft until he owns about as much land and gear as Royce Pederstone does!”
“Well then, Jim;––why can’t that fertile brain of yours devise something to land him on this?”
“Weel ye may ask!” answered Jim, breaking into the Doric, “and I canna answer ye.
“We can’t prove a thing on him. He would plead absolute ignorance of the entire affair; that he had been away for weeks and only got in yesterday with Royce Pederstone, and was at the dance when it happened. Everybody would believe him and sympathise with him187too because of an apparent endeavour to blacken the character of a public man, a prominent citizen and a local benefactor––one who himself had lost so much by the thefts––for, mark you, Brenchfield has made much of it in his conversations.”
“Can’t Chief Palmer make the half-breeds talk? They will surely be pretty sore over the raw deal that has been handed out to them.”
“Palmer be jiggered! He is another of Brenchfield’s cronies, and is feathering his nest like the rest of them. I’ll be very much surprised if the innocent Howden isn’t fired by this time for his share in this morning’s work. I’m half sorry I dragged him into it.”
“Couldn’t a good lawyer wriggle something out of the Indians at the trial?”
“He might,––but the Indians will be darned well paid to keep their mouths shut. Believe me!––it’ll fizzle out. You watch and see!”
Jim sat quiet for a bit, then he began again.
“And that kind of animal has the nerve to want to marry little Eilie Pederstone. Oh, hell!––I’d better stop or I’ll burst a blood-vessel or something.
“Say!”
“Speak on!”
“Are you going to work after breakfast?”
“Of course!” answered Phil. “Aren’t you?”
“No!”
“Are you going to bed?”
“Not yet! This is Saturday morning, man. My usual monthly ‘Penny Horrible’ is only half finished and it has to be ready before mail time.”
Phil laughed.
“What is the name of it this month, Jim?”
“‘Two Fingered Pete’s Come-back, a Backwoods Mystery.’”
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“Sounds exciting!” remarked Phil. “I think I would like to read that one. Save a copy for me, Jim, when it comes along.”
“De’il the fear! It’ll never be said that Jim Langford, alias Captain Mayne Plunkett, alias Aunt Christina, ever put anything your way that would fire you, in your rashness, to disgrace me and make a fool of yourself.”
Jim changed the subject again.
“Phil, why don’t you cut that bluffer, Brenchfield, out?”
“Me? What harm have I done, Jim?”
“That’ll do, laddie. You can’t brazen it out that way. Man, I’d give my wee pinkie to see it happen.”
“Oh, don’t talk rot!” returned Phil, serious as an owl, nevertheless pale at the lips. “What chance has an impecunious day-labourer like me with Miss Pederstone?
“Why don’t you try yourself? You’re mighty good at arranging things for your friends.”
Jim laughed.
Phil turned his head and glared at him; and Jim laughed more uproariously.
“What are you yelling your Tom-fool head off for? I don’t see anything funny about the proposition.”
“What? You can’t see anything funny in it? Gee, Phil!––but you’re dull. Eileen Pederstone hitched to Wayward Langford, booze fighter, ne’er-do-weel, good-for-nothing, never-worked-and-never-will; a-penny-a-liner; Aunt Christina and Captain Mayne Plunkett!”
He became sober again.
“Man, Phil!––I’m ashamed of you even suggesting it. I once fell in love. Don’t get anxious; it was a long time ago when I had ambitions of becoming Lord Chief Justice, or at least a High Court Judge.”
“Yes!”
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“The lady and I fell out over her father. He asked me one night how much money I had in the bank. I was eighteen.
“I told him I had twenty pounds.
“‘Tuts, tuts!’ said the old fellow, who was one of those human fireworks––all fizzle and flare,––‘that isn’t enough to keep a cat.’
“‘We know it,’ I answered, speaking for both of us, ‘but we thought we might manage to run along for a while without the cat.’”
Phil laughed.
“The old chapie got angry, and the girl sacked me because I was rude to papa and flippant about the most serious thing in the world––marriage. She couldn’t see the joke. Imagine, Phil, being married to a woman that couldn’t see a joke!
“That was the very nearest I ever got. And believe me–––!
“Now you, for instance; you’re different, you’re just made for married life; you’re young, big, handsome, mannerly, sober, sometimes diligent, ambitious. You don’t smoke much, you don’t swear––not all the time––and you can chop wood and brush your own boots. You–––”
But Jim got no further. A cushion, well aimed, stopped his flow of talk.
“All right, all right! We’ll say no more. Go and have your bath! You need it. Give your soul a touch o’ soap and water when you are at it.”
190CHAPTER XVSol’s Matrimonial Mix-Up
For the few days following, the robbery and the rounding-up of the thieves were the talk of the district; but despite this, it was surprising how littleThe Vernock and District Advertiserhad to say about it.
Phil openly commented on the peculiarity, but Jim just stuck his tongue in his cheek.
Neither McLean nor the wounded half-breed were seriously hurt, and in a week both were well again––the one going lamely about his business and the other in jail beside his fellows.
The trial was placed on the calendar for the next Assizes which had been arranged for the following month, when most of the Fall crops would be in and shipped, thereby leaving twelve good men and true free to devote some of their time to the requirements of law and justice.
Jim went back again to the Court House as Government Agent Thompson’s assistant. Phil kept to the forge, serious and tremendously earnest in following the calling he had been so strangely thrust into.
He could not fail to notice, day by day, the gradual change that was coming over Sol Hanson. Sol had not been drunk for weeks. He dressed himself much more neatly than formerly, although what it was exactly that gave him the smarter appearance, Phil could not make out until Smiler led him to understand by signs and grimaces that Sol now washed his face and hands mornings191and evenings, instead of every Sunday morning as formerly.
But there was something else.
Sol’s blue eyes had contracted a habit of gazing into the heart of the fire while he leaned abstractedly on the bellows handle. He became interested in the train arrivals. He posted letters and called every day at the post office for mail. Whether he got any or not Phil was unable to say definitely. But he got a sneaking suspicion after a while, that the soft-hearted, simple, big fellow was either answering letters through the SeattleMatrimonial Times, or corresponding with some lady friend. He felt convinced that Sol was badly, or rather, madly in love.
He probed the big Swede with the sharp end of a question now and again, but Sol was wonderfully impervious.
One day, Jim and Phil were strolling leisurely up Main Street from the Kenora Hotel where they had been having an early lunch together. The north train had just come in and a few drummers, some incoming Chinamen and a number of straggling passengers were spreading themselves for their different destinations, carrying grips and canvas bags with their samples and their belongings as the case might be.
Neither Jim nor Phil was paying any heed to what was a daily occurrence, until they were stopped by a buxom, fair-haired, blue-eyed maiden, with a pleasant smile on her big, innocent face. She was cheaply but becomingly dressed and filled her clothes with attractive generosity. As she laid down her two hand-bags, her smile broadened and beamed until it broke into a merry dimple on each of her cheeks and parted her ruddy lips to the exposure of a mouthful of fresh, creamy-looking, well-formed teeth.
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There was no gainsaying who was the object of her smiles:––it was Jim Langford and Jim alone, and there was nothing left for either him or Phil to do but to doff their hats and wait the lady’s good pleasure.
She seemed in no hurry to speak.
As Jim gazed at her in surprise, waiting; her fingers––hard, red fingers they were––began to twist a little nervously about the painfully new gloves she carried, and her eyes dropped, looked up, and dropped again.
“Guess you don’t know me!” she ventured at last.
“No! I’m sorry! I can’t remember ever meeting you before,” he answered.
“Ho, ho!” muttered Phil under his breath.
“See you later, Jim!” he said loudly, making to move off.
“Here, you piker! You wait a minute.” Jim grabbed Phil’s coat sleeve.
The young lady’s cheeks began to take on the added attractiveness of a blush.
“You ain’t ever met me before, I know,” she said. “But don’t you know me by my picture?”
Jim shook his head in perplexity.
“I’d a-knowed you any place.”
For the first time in Phil’s experience of Jim, the latter stood abashed.
“You might have come to meet me at the train though. Guess you was just comin’. I wrote you three days since.”
“You did, eh! Well,––I never got your letter,” bantered Jim, recovering his composure.
She was a pretty piece of femininity, despite her poor language and her somewhat tawdry finery.
“I think you’re stringing me. But say!––I’m awful hungry, and I’ve been two days in the train.
“Ain’t you goin’ to get me some eats, Sol?”
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“Sol!” exclaimed Jim with a gulp that spoke intense relief. “Why, my good girl, my name’s not Sol!”
“Oh, yes it is!” she answered bravely, with the smile fading. “I tell you I’d a-knowed you anywheres.”
“You’re making a mistake, dear lassie. My name is certainly not Sol.”
A glimmer of light was beginning to break in on Phil, but he kept that glimmer miserly to his inmost self.
“Yes it is! Oh, yes it is!” she said again, putting her hand on Jim’s arm, but with a peculiar little expression of uncertainty in her eyes.
“You can’t fool me, Sol Hanson,––and, say boy!––I’ve come a long ways for you, and I’m awful tired.”
“Hanson! Good Lord!” blurted out Jim. “Me––Sol Hanson! Lassie, lassie, I didna think I was so good looking. Are ye looking for Sol Hanson?”
The girl did not answer. A moisture began to gather in her big, blue eyes, and a tear toppled over.
Jim was all baby at once.
“Dinna greet!––there’s a good lass! Dinna greet here in the street,” he coaxed. “If it is Sol Hanson ye want, we can soon help ye to get him.”
The girl bent down and opened up one of her hand-bags, bringing out a large photograph, pasted on a creamy-coloured, gay-looking cardboard mount. She handed it to Jim, searching his face with her tear-dimmed eyes.
Jim gazed at it in bewilderment. Then he scratched his head and gazed again.
“Ain’t that your picture?” the young lady asked. “Don’t tell me that it ain’t, for it wouldn’t be true; and I came all this way because you wrote so nice and looked so big and good. I––I didn’t think you was a bluffer like––like other men.”
Her breath caught and she began to sob.
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“My dear lassie,––I am bewildered,––confounded. I––I–––That is my photo, but where in all the world did ye get it from?”
The girl looked at him a little angrily, for she had pluck in plenty.
“Where do you think? I ain’t stole it. You sent it to me. Where else could I get it?”
Jim stood foolishly.
“I certainly never sent it. Why, woman!––I never saw ye before. I don’t know your name even. I––I–––
“There, there! Dinna start to greet again. We’ll fix you up, if you’ll only tell Phil and me your trouble.”
“––And your name ain’t Sol Hanson?” she queried, with a trembling lip.
“No!––I am sorry to say it is not!”
From her grip, the girl picked out a bundle of envelopes, well filled, and done up in lavender-coloured ribbon.
“––And––and you never wrote them letters to me?”
Jim looked at the writing and shook his head.
“No,––I never did!”
“––And––and you don’t know my name’s Betty Jornsen?”
“I didn’t, but I do now, Betty,” gallantly answered Jim, while Phil was beside himself trying to stifle his amusement one moment, and endeavouring to keep back his feelings of sympathy for the girl, the next.
Several passers-by turned round and stared in open interest at the strange meeting.
“Shut up your bag, lassie! Don’t show us any more o’ your gear,” appealed Jim in perturbation at the thought of what might come out next.
The buxom, fair-haired woman began to sob again. She turned and appealed to Phil.
“Oh, what am I to do, mister? I had a good job at Nixon’s Café in Seattle. Sol wrote to me through the195Matrimonial Times. I wrote back to him. I sent him my picture and he sent me his––this one––and now he says he ain’t him.”
“That isn’t his photo, woman,––it is mine,” interrupted Jim.
“But he’s you,” she whimpered.
“Then who the mischief am I?” asked Jim in perplexity.
“You told me you had a house, and fruit trees, and a blacksmith’s shop, and plenty of money and, if I came to Canada, we’d get married. I throwed up my good job and I’ve come and now you say you ain’t him,” she sailed on breathlessly, her ample bosom labouring excitedly.
“Phil,” said Jim, aside. “How the devil do you suppose that big idiot got my photo? It looks like one taken off one I used to have, and lost.”
“I guess that is just what it is,” grinned Phil.
“Well,––we’ve got to see this little woman right, and incidentally give Sol Hanson the biggest fright he ever got in his natural.
“Miss––Miss Jornsen,––there’s a mistake somewhere. My name is Jim Langford, and that is my photograph; but I never sent it to you. We happen to know Sol Hanson though. He lives here all right. This gentleman works with him.
“Sol is a Swede?”
“Yes,––yes!” put in Betty, “same as I am.”
“I’m thinking he was afraid he wasn’t good-looking enough and he was scared to take chances, so he sent you my photo instead of one of his own,” he went on, without even a blush of conceit.
“And––and he ain’t such a good-looker as you?” she queried.
“Well,––well, of course, tastes differ. You might like him fine,” he grinned, with becoming modesty.
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“But he’s got a house, and fruit trees, and a blacksmith shop, and he can work?” she asked.
“You bet! He’s well fixed. Come along and we’ll see him now. He will never be able to resist you.”
Betty perked up at the compliment.
Then nervously and timidly she set herself to rights, finally consenting to allow Jim and Phil to escort her to the smithy.
“You wait here!” instructed Jim at the corner of the block. “We’ll go and break the news to Sol. We’ll come back for you.
“Give me that picture, though. I have a word to say in his ear about that.”
Betty opened her bag, gazed fondly on Jim’s photo, then at him, before she slowly delivered it up.
Phil went into the smithy, hung up his coat, put on his apron and started in to work.
Jim followed him a few minutes later.
Sol Hanson was busy shoeing a horse. Jim went over to him.
“Here, Sol,” he cried, “come over and see this.”
The good-natured big fellow stopped his work and followed Jim to the dust-begrimed window.
Jim stuck the photograph under Sol’s nose.
“Do you know who that is?”
“Ya,––sure thing! You bet! Dam-good picture too, Jim!” he commented, with an innocence well assumed.
“Yes,––you certainly seem to like it. I can’t say it is very like you, you son-of-a-gun.”
“Me? No! Pretty like you though, Jim,” Sol stammered.
“Look here, you big lump of humanity;––what the devil do you mean by sending my photo all over the country and saying it is yours?”
“Me?––I ain’t––I didn’t––I–––”
197
“Cut it out, you big bluffer! You couldn’t lie decently to save your neck.”
Sol laughed at last.
“You not been goin’ for to get mad, Jim. Just a little joke I have on some girl. See!”
“Oh,––it was! Darned good joke for me––and you too!”
“Ya!––you see I find it one day on floor here. You drop it some time. I ain’t much of a swell looker for girls. All girls like face like yours. I get Vancouver man make me twelve pictures all same as this one. I send them just for little joke to girls I write to some time.”
Jim clutched at his own hair despairingly, as Phil furiously worked the bellows in his mirth.
“Great jumping Cæsar! Twelve! Are you going to start a harem?”
“Ach, no! Just have a little fun,––that’s all. You don’t go and been for to get mad at that.”
“Great fun! Great joke!” commented Jim, “but you’ve put your foot in it this time, old cock. One of these women is in town, looking for your scalp. She is asking everybody in Vernock where Sol Hanson hangs out.”
Sol’s big face grew a shade paler and his jaw dropped. He became excited.
“You––you didn’t been for to tell her,––Jim?”
“Sure I did! Why not? You’re going to marry her,––aren’t you? She’s telling everybody that.”
Sol, who had been standing with his big hands spread on his leather apron and his mouth agape, now showed signs of anxiety.
“But,––I––I––Which one is it, Jim? What she call herself?”
“Oh,––there are several, you blooming Mormon?”
Sol ran to his coat and pulled a bundle of letters and198miscellaneous photographs from the pocket. He handed them to Jim.
“Look at them,” he cried in excitement. “Tell me quick which one come.”
He mopped the perspiration from his brow. “By hell!––I guess I been got in a bad fix this time for sure.”
Jim slowly went over the documents and photographs.
“No! No! No! No!” he exclaimed, as he handed them back to Sol one by one.
“Not one,––by gosh, Jim! That pretty funny. Must be one, though. Sure you look at every one?”
“She’s not there, Sol. Trot out the others, old man.”
“I ain’t got no more, Jim. Honest! That every dam-one,––honest!
“Say,––maybe she tell you her name? Is it––is it Gracie Peters?”
“No!”
“Is it Sal Larigan?”
“No!”
“Betty–––”
“Yes,––that’s it! Betty––Betty Jornsen!”
“What? Betty she come? Jumpin’ Yiminy! Let me get my hat and coat. Where is she now? By gosh, Jim,––she dam-fine little peach.”
Sol became more and more excited. “I got her picture here. You miss it up. See!”
He ran over the photographs.
“There,” he exclaimed, holding it up admiringly.
It was Betty’s photograph, and a perfectly charming little picture she made too. But Jim had intentionally passed it over, for he was not through with Sol Hanson. He had still his pound of flesh to exact.
“Ain’t that dam-fine girl?” Sol went on. “See that, Phil! I been going to marry her. You bet! Tra-la-la!”199he half sang. “Come on!––let’s go and find her, Jim. Come on!”
“Wait a bit!––Bide a wee!” returned canny Scot Langford. “That isn’t the picture of the woman who is here for you.”
Sol’s face fell.
“What? But you say her name’s Betty Jornsen?”
“Yes! That is what she told me.”
“Well!––that’s Betty;––that’s her.”
“Oh, no it isn’t! Don’t you fool yourself, mister man. You’re mixed up in your women, Sol.”
“No siree! You look on back,” Sol returned triumphantly. “See that! ‘With love and kisses to Sol from Betty Jornsen.’”
Jim stood for a moment in silence.
“She nice little girl;––come up, maybe, to your shoulder?” queried Sol.
“No, Sol!––she’s six feet high if she is an inch.”
“She got fair hair and blue eyes; nice white teeth?”
“No, laddie!––she has carroty red hair; and her eyes, I mean her eye––for she has only one––is a bleary, grey colour.”
Sol commenced to perspire afresh, and to hop from one foot on to the other.
“Aw, you foolin’ me, Jim!”
“Devil a fool! It is too serious for that. She’s big; she’s got one eye; she’s lost her teeth in front and she is evidently a widow or she has three kids with her, two at her skirts and one in her arms.”
“Good Christopher Columbus!” exclaimed Sol, pulling at his hair.
“And, and, Sol,––she is coming here for you, in five minutes.”
The big blacksmith was in desperation.
200
“Sol,––you’re done;––you’re done brown,” Jim went on relentlessly, “and it serves you darned well right.”
“But, Jim,––you been a lawyer. She can’t go make me marry her?”
“Yes she can!”
“But she lie to me. She send me picture of nice girl and say it her and she Betty Jornsen. I tell her to come to me, from her picture,––see!”
“You big, blue-eyed, innocent baby! You’re done;––you’re in the soup;––your goose is cooked. Take it from me,––she’s got you, and got you good.
“Didn’t you send her my photo and say it was yours?”
Sol stood aghast.
“Aw,––that just a joke!” he persisted.
“Hadn’t she a perfect right to do the same thing to you? Well––evidently she has done it. Poor Sol!”
“But––but–––”
“It’s no good. There aren’t anybutsto this. She is here. She is expecting Sol Hanson to be a fine looking fellow like me, and the poor thing is going to get a pie-faced, slop-eyed individual like yourself.
“Now, you’re expecting a pretty little blonde and you’re getting,––well,––something totally different.”
Jim slapped Sol on the back.
“Too bad! Take your medicine, though, old man! Be a sport! You’re distinctly up against it.”
Phil was metaphorically in knots by the furnace fire.
Sol rushed for his coat.
“No dam-fear!” he cried. “I go to coop first. She ain’t been going to run any bluff on Sol Hanson,––see! You tell her, and her carrots-hair, and her one eye, and her three dam-kids, to go plumb toboggan to hell.
“I come back sometime––maybe.”
Sol made a dart for the front door. Then he changed his mind and made for the back one. But he guessed the201wrong one––or, perhaps after all, it was the right one.
As he was going out, Betty Jornsen, with her two grips, came in and blocked up his exit.
She had evidently wearied of waiting at the corner, and had determined to investigate matters for herself.
Sol made to brush past. Suddenly he stopped. He looked at Betty. He stared. His eyes became big and nearly popped out of his head in his amazement.
Betty looked up at him in surprise.
They gaped thus at each other for a few seconds, then Sol staggered to the side of the door and leaned against it, breathing hard as if he had run a mile.
At last he found his tongue and himself, and straightened up.
“Betty,––by gosh! Betty,––little Betty, by Yiminy!” he exclaimed, throwing his long arms about her, knocking her grips aside and sending her hat awry. He lifted her up high and kissed her fair on the mouth. He swung her round and round the smithy, all oblivious of his amused spectators.
Meantime, Betty kicked and struggled, and finally succeeded in smacking his face loudly with a free hand.
Sol set her down and rubbed his cheek foolishly, white she stamped her foot at him.
“You great big––great big––boob!” she cried.
Jim stepped out from the shadow.
“Miss Jornsen,––allow me to introduce you to Mr. Sol Hanson!”
Betty looked at Jim querulously, and then at Sol who was standing nervously by, gazing at her.
Slowly and shyly she sidled up to the big blacksmith. She put her hands on the lapels of his ill-fitting coat and slid her fingers down them tenderly; then she laid her head on his chest, while his big arms went about her again.
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“Come on, Phil!” said Jim, “this is no place for the proverbial parson’s son.”
Sol’s eyes took on a new light.
“Jim,––by gosh!––maybe it been no place for a parson’s son,” he grinned, “but it a dam-fine place for a parson. What you think, eh, Betty?”
“You fellows wait. We all go together, get it over right now. What you think, my little Betty?”
“Sure! There ain’t no good in waitin’,” answered Betty. “And say, Mister––Mister Langford!––I ain’t tryin’ to be insultin’, nor anything like that, but if you think you’re a better looker than my big Sol, then you’ve got another think comin’.”
Sol’s head went up and his chest went out, as they were entitled to do, for Jim was considered quite a handsome fellow in his own way.
203CHAPTER XVIThe Breakaway
The hour that followed was a busy one. Betty was whisked away by Phil to Mrs. Clunie’s for a good, substantial home-made dinner and a general overhaul. Sol rushed home for his new, check suit, then off to the registrar’s for the marriage license accompanied by Jim. Phil next unearthed the valiant Smiler from the basement of a Chinese restaurant in Wynd Alley where he was busy sampling the current day’s bill of fare, gratis. Phil hauled him off to the barber’s for a wash and a haircut, then to the O.K. Supply Store for new clothes, over and under, which set the poor dumb little rascal wondering as to what sin he had committed to warrant the infliction.
The Reverend Anthony Stormer––the venerable old Lutheran pastor––was next informed of the expected arrivals; and, by the time Jim came along upholding Sol in a state of nervous prostration, all was in readiness for the ceremony.
Ten minutes later, Mrs. Clunie arrived escorting Betty Jornsen; pretty, buxom and beaming, and as full of confidence as Smiler was of Chinese noodles.
Smiler could not understand then what the ceremony was all about, nor did he seem to gain any further enlightenment on the matter at any later date.
It was all over within two hours of Betty’s arrival in Vernock.
Sol was for sending Betty to her new home till supper204time, intending himself to go back to the smithy with Phil and get down to the heavy work that lay there awaiting completion. But Phil and Jim would have none of it. And when Betty and Mrs. Clunie backed them up, there was nothing left for Sol to do but to obey; so, with three or four hand-bags––half of them borrowed––they were bundled into the Kelowna stage, and nothing more was heard of them for two weeks.
Smiler attended to his own needs as he had had to do often before, and he was back in the basement of the Chinese restaurant in Wynd Alley, finishing his dinner sampling,––with his new rig-out rolled up in a bundle under his arm and garbed in his much beloved rags and tatters.
That was the first of a dozen occasions upon which Smiler was dressed up by various well-meaning members of the community and it was the first of twelve occasions that Smiler resented the interference and went back, at the earliest opportunity, to his old, familiar and well-ventilated draperies.
The next fourteen days were desperate ones for Phil. From the moment he got back to the smithy, repair work piled in on him. Reapers and binders gave way in various parts and had to be put to rights at once, for it was nearing the end of the harvest season and the cold weather was already creeping along. Every horse in the Valley seemed suddenly to require reshoeing; wagon springs broke; buggy tires came off or wore out as they had never done before; morning, noon and night Phil slaved trying to cope with the emergency. There was no help that he could call in, and he would not for worlds have sent word to Sol to end his holiday a moment sooner that might be.
He snatched his meals when and where he could, while everyone clamoured for the immediate execution of his requirements. Finally Phil got up so early and he205worked so late, that he made his bed for the time being on a bundle of straw covered with sacking, in a corner beside the forge.
He was young and strong, and he knew his work. He loved the rush of it and he gloried in the doing of things that other men would have groaned at. Above all, he was glad to think that he was now considered of some value in a work-a-day community.
It did not occur to him that day and night labour, even for a little time, had a terribly wearing effect on the physique; that he was losing weight with every twenty-four hours of it and that his cheeks grew paler and a little more gaunt every day of that week or so of extra push.
He chased Jim from the smithy as a worthless time-waster––whenever that worthy showed face––and Jim, for the nonce, had to find companionship and entertainment in his world of Penny Dreadful creation and his Love Knot Untanglements.
One glorious gleam of sunshine burst in on Phil’s world of toil and set his muscles dancing and his heart singing in merry time to the ring of his hammer on the anvil. A perfumed note, bearing an invitation to him from Eileen Pederstone to attend a reception on the sixth evening of the month following, at her new home on the hill, was the dainty messenger of joy.
And what cared Phil if Brenchfield should be there? He had held his own before;––he could do it again. What counted all this hard work?––a puff of wind;––he was going to Eileen Pederstone’s. What matter it how the world wagged?––a tolling bell;––he would dance again with the dainty, little vision with the merry brown eyes, the twinkling feet and the ready tongue. Ho!––life was good; life was great! Life was heaven itself!
Come on! Fill the smithy and the yard with your206horses, and I’ll shoe all of them! Block the roads and the by-ways with your wagons and buggies;––what care I for toil? Heap your broken reapers and binders a mountain high, and I’ll stand on top of them before nightfall, with my hammer held defiantly to the heavens and shout “Excelsior, the work is done.” The Fairy Princess has stopped in her procession; she looks my way; she smiles: her galloping courier brings a perfumed favour; she beckons me. Ah, surely! what a Paradise, after all, is this we live in!
In a sweet little world of dreams––in which even a blacksmith may live at times––Phil battled with his tasks and overcame them one by one.
And it was little he cared about the week’s growth of beard that sat on his gaunt face, or for the sweat that ran over his forehead and splashed to his great, bared chest. Pride did not chide him for hands that were horny and begrimed, nor for arms that were red and scarred from the bite of flying sparks.
But it was thus that the lady of his dreams found him, as she wafted in from a gallop over the ranges, with a shoe in her hand and leading a horse that wore only three.
A smile was on her happy face, her cheeks were aglow and her eyes were dancing in childish delight.
Little wonder then that Phil’s heart stopped, then raced with all the mad fury of a runaway; little wonder his face grew pale and his eyes gleamed as he moved back against the wall beside his furnace.
And Eileen’s merry smile faded away like the heat of an Indian Summer’s day before the cool of the approaching night. She stared with widening eyes at the figure before her, for she saw, not the young, sturdy, country blacksmith, but a picture of the past, a fugitive from207the police, a gaunt tired man, spent and almost beaten, seeking sanctuary.
And on this occasion, she did not take time to consider how much the man before her still craved for sanctuary.
Her lips parted in fear. Her hand went to her heart and she stepped slowly backward toward the door.
“Oh,––oh,––oh!” was all she uttered.
She dropped the horseshoe at her feet, and, pressing her hands to her eyes as if to shut out a sight that was unwelcome, she ran the remaining distance to the door, pulled herself into her saddle and rode quickly away.
She did not come back, as some might have done, to view the havoc she had wrought. She did not know even that she had wrought havoc; but three hours later, faithful, dumb, little Smiler found the man he so much adored lying on a pile of horseshoes, breathing scarcely at all, and strangely huddled.
That was the day that big, happy Sol Hanson came back to bear his share of the load––and, for the week that followed, he had to bear all of it, for Phil’s overtaxed brain refused to awaken for seventy-two hours and his overworked body declined to limber up for seventy-two hours more.
On the morning of Phil’s return to the smithy, at a moment when Sol’s back was turned, the little perfumed note––which had brought the message from Fairyland––was dropped on the glowing furnace fire and thrust with an iron deep into the red coals.
With it, Phil fancied he was thrusting the little fairy dream, and he felt ever so glad of it. But he did not know, foolish man, that the fires have never been kindled that can burn dreams from Fairyland; that nothing can keep them from whispering back, at unexpected moments, and beckoning to the dreamer through208the flames; ay, even through the cold, grey, dead ashes, when these are all that remain of the dancing passion-fires that have revelled and rioted themselves to exhaustion and oblivion.
On the evening of the reception at John Royce Pederstone’s, Phil failed to land home from work at his usual time, and, as the hour drew near when they should be leaving, Jim Langford worried himself not a little, for he knew that Phil had received an invitation––the same as he had done––and he had noticed also how happy his friend had seemed over it. Of course, of the recognition at the smithy between Eileen and Phil he knew nothing, and even if he had known he would not have understood, for, so far, he had not even guessed at Phil’s previous history nor at the connection there was between Phil and Graham Brenchfield.
Before going up to Pederstone’s, Jim called at the smithy, but found the place closed up for the night. He hurried along to Sol Hanson’s little home, but the lovebirds there could tell him no more than that Phil had quit work at the accustomed hour, that Smiler was also a truant; which made it possible that the two had gone off together on some boyish adventure. There was nothing left for Jim to do after that but to go to Royce Pederstone’s alone, in the hope that Phil would be there or would show up later.
Everyone in Vernock of any importance was at the reception, in the company of his wife or sweetheart; but there was no sign of Phil. And the hours wore quickly on without his appearing.
Eileen––bright, blushing, buoyant and busy––found time to corner Jim.
“What has happened to Mr. Ralston? I––I thought he would be sure to be here.”