"You bet!" says I, f'r he seemed to be gettin' wound up an' cast in it, "that's the exact situation!"
"Would be dissatisfaction," he went on, "if cattle of the type which in the great markets is considered best, were furnished here. And I have great confidence in his judgment."
"So've I," I says. "He's one of the judgmentiousest fellers you ever see."
"So let that phase of the question pass," says he, "for the present. But there's a clause in this contract—"
"Don't let that worry you," says I. "There's claws in all of 'em if you look close."
He never cracked a smile, but unfolded it, and went on.
"Here's a clause," says he, "calling for a hundred and fifty cows with calves at foot, for the dairy herd, I presume."
"Cavvs at what?" says I.
"At foot," says he, p'intin' at a spot along toward the bottom. "Right there!"
"It's impossible!" says I. "They don't wear 'em that way."
He studied over it quite a while, at that, an' I begun to think I'd won out, but at last he says: "That's the way it reads, an' while I shall not insist upon any particular relation of juxtaposition in offspring and dam-"
"Whope!" says I, "back up an' come ag'in pardner."
"It seems to be my duty to insist upon the one hundred and fifty cows and calves. Now the point is, I don't find any such description of creatures among the—the bunches in seeming readiness for delivery."
"O!" says I, "that's what's eating yeh, is it? W'l don't worry any more. The cow kindergarten's furder up the river. We didn't want to put the tender little devils where they'd be tramped on by them monstrous big oxen you noticed around the corrals. This caff business is all right, trust us!"
Whaley's man was waitin' fer me down at the saloon, an' when I told him about the cavvs, he shrunk into himself like a collapsed foot-ball, an' wilted.
"Hain't yeh got 'em?" says I.
"Huh!" says he, comin' out of it. "Don't be a dum fool, Aconite. This is the first I understood of it, an' whoever heared of an inspector readin' a contrack? And there ain't them many cavvs to be got by that time in all Dakoty. Le's hit the wires f'r instructions!"
The telegrams runs something like this:
To Senator Patrick Whaley, Washington, D. C.:Contract calls for a hundred and fifty cows with calves at foot. What shall I do?Reddy.
To Senator Patrick Whaley, Washington, D. C.:
Contract calls for a hundred and fifty cows with calves at foot. What shall I do?Reddy.
To Reddy Withers, Chamberlain, S. D.:Wire received. Calves at what? Explain, collect.Whaley.
To Reddy Withers, Chamberlain, S. D.:
Wire received. Calves at what? Explain, collect.Whaley.
Hundred and fifty cows and calves. What do you advise?Reddy.
Hundred and fifty cows and calves. What do you advise?Reddy.
See inspector.Whaley.
See inspector.Whaley.
Won't do. Inspector wrong.Reddy.
Won't do. Inspector wrong.Reddy.
Fix inspector or get calves.Whaley.
Fix inspector or get calves.Whaley.
I'd got about the same kind of a telegram to Mr. Elkins, addin' that the Whaley crowd was up in the air. I sent it by Western Union to Sturgis, and then up Wolf Nose Crick by the Belle Fourche and Elsewhere Telephone Line. The O. M., as usual, cuts the melon with a word. His wire was as follows.
Take first train Chicago. Call for letter Smith & Jones Commission merchants Union Stock Yards.Elkins.
Take first train Chicago. Call for letter Smith & Jones Commission merchants Union Stock Yards.Elkins.
This was sure an affliction on me, f'r I had fixed up a deal to go with Miss Ainsley an' her friends on a campin' trip, lastin' up to the day of the issue. She'd been readin' one of Hamlin Garland's books about a puncher who'd scooted through the British aristocracy, hittin' only the high places in a social way, on the strength of a gold prospect an' the diamond hitch to a mule-pack. She wanted to see the diamond hitch of all things. There orto be a law ag'inst novel-writin'. I got Reddy to learn me the diamond hitch so I could make good with Gladys, an' here was this mysterious caff expedition to the last place in the world, Chicago, a-yankin' me off by the night train.
I went over to tell her about it. First, I thought I'd put on the clo'es I expected to wear to Chicago, a dandy fifteen dollar suit I got in town. An' then I saw how foolish this would be, an' brushed up my range clo'es, tied a new silk scarf in my soft roll collar, an' went. Here's my diagram of the hook-up: Any o' them mortar-board-hat, black-nightie fellers she had pitchers of, could probably afford fifteen dollar clay-worsteds; but it was a good gamblin' proposition that none of 'em could come in at the gate like a personally-conducted cyclone, bring up a-stannin' from a dead run to a dead stop's if they'd struck a stone wall, go clear from the bronk as he fetched up an' light like a centaur before her, with their sombrero in their hand. Don't light, you say? Wal, I mean as a centaur would light if he took a notion. You'd better take a hike down to see how the steed's gettin' along, Bill, 'r else subside about this Greek myth biz. It helps on with this story—not!
The p'int is, that gals and fellers both like variety. To me, the "y" in her name, the floss in her hair, the kind of quivery lowness in her voice, the rustle of her dresses as she walked, the way she looked like the pitchers in the magazines an' talked like the stories in 'em, all corroborated to throw the hooks into me. An' I s'pose the nater's-nobleman gag went likewise with her. Subsekent happenin's—but I must hold that back.
We sot in the hammock that night—the only time Aconite Driscoll ever was right up against the real thing in ladies' goods—an' she read me a piece about a Count Gibson a-shooting his lady-love's slanderers so full o' holes at a turnament that they wouldn't hold hazel-brush. They was one verse she hesitated over, an' skipped.
I ast her if she thought she—as a supposed case—could live out in this dried-up-an'-blowed-away country; an' she said the matter had really never been placed before her in any such a way as to call for a decision on her part. Purty smooth, that! Then she read another piece that wound up with "Love is best!" from the same book, an' forgot to take her hand away when I sneaked up on it, an'—Gosh! talk about happiness: we never git anything o' quite that kind out here! I never knowed how I got to the train, 'r anything else ontil we was a-crossin' the Mississippi at North McGregor. Here the caff question ag'in unveiled its heejus front, to be mulled over till I reached the cowman's harbor in Chicago, the Exchange Building at the Yards, an' found Jim Elkins' instructions awaitin' me. They read:
"Dear Aconite:"The Chicago stockyards are the nation's doorstep for bovine foundlings. New-born calves are a drug on the market there, owing to abuses in the shipping business which we won't just now take time to discuss, to say nothing about curing 'em. What is done with 'em is a mystery which may be solved some day; but that they perish in some miserable way is certain. Two carloads of them must perish on the Rosebud instead of in Packingtown—in the Sioux soup kettles, instead of the rendering tanks, if you can keep them alive to reach Chamberlain—and I have great confidence in your ability to perform this task imposed upon you by the carelessness of Senator Whaley's men either at Washington or at the range. I have heard that one or two raw eggs per day per calf will preserve them, and it looks reasonable. Smith and Jones will have them ready loaded for you for the next fast freight west. I hope you'll enjoy your trip!"
"Dear Aconite:
"The Chicago stockyards are the nation's doorstep for bovine foundlings. New-born calves are a drug on the market there, owing to abuses in the shipping business which we won't just now take time to discuss, to say nothing about curing 'em. What is done with 'em is a mystery which may be solved some day; but that they perish in some miserable way is certain. Two carloads of them must perish on the Rosebud instead of in Packingtown—in the Sioux soup kettles, instead of the rendering tanks, if you can keep them alive to reach Chamberlain—and I have great confidence in your ability to perform this task imposed upon you by the carelessness of Senator Whaley's men either at Washington or at the range. I have heard that one or two raw eggs per day per calf will preserve them, and it looks reasonable. Smith and Jones will have them ready loaded for you for the next fast freight west. I hope you'll enjoy your trip!"
Well, you may have listened to the plaintive beller of a single caff at weanin' time, 'r perhaps to the symferny that emanates from the pen of three 'r four. Furder'n this the experience of most don't go. Hence, I don't hope to give yeh any idee of the sound that eckered over northern Illinois from them two cars o' motherless waifs. The cry of the orphan smote the air in a kind of endless chain o' noise that at two blocks off sounded like a chorus of steam calliopes practicin' holts at about middle C. Nothin' like it had ever been heared of or done in Chicago, an' stockmen, an' reporters, an' sight-seers swarmed around wantin' to know what I was a-goin' to do with the foundlin's—an' I wa'nt in any position to be interviewed, with the Chicago papers due in Chamberlain before I was. I'd 'ave had a dozen scraps if it hadn't been f'r the fear of bein' arrested. But with the beef issue comin' on a-pacin', I had to pass up luxuries involvin' delay. I sot in the caboose, an object of the prurient curiosity of the train-crew ontil we got to Elgin 'r som'eres out there, where I contracted eight cases of eggs an' one of nervous prostration.
Here it was I begun ministering to the wants of my travelin' orphan asylum. They was from four hours to as many days old when the accident of birth put 'em under my fosterin' care. I knowed that it was all poppy-cock givin' dairy 'r breedin' herds to them Injuns, an' that these would do as well f'r their uses, 'sif they had real mothers instid o' one as false as I felt. But to look upon 'em as they appeared in the cars, would 'ave give that consciencious but onsophisticated inspector the jimjams. Part of 'em was layin' down, an' the rest trampin' over 'em, an' every one swellin' the chorus o' blats that told o' hunger an' unhappiness. I took a basket of eggs an' went in among 'em, feelin' like a animal trainer in a circus parade as the Reubens gethered around the train, an' business houses closed f'r the show. I waited till the train pulled out, an' begun my career as nurse-maid-in-gineral.
"How cruel!" said the Bride.
"Thanks," said Aconite. "It shore was!"
Ever try to feed a young caff? Ever notice how they faint with hunger before you begin, an' all at once develop the strength of a hoss when you stand over 'em an' try to hold their fool noses in the pail? Ever see a caff that couldn't stand alone, run gaily off with a two-hundred-an'-fifty-pound farmer, poisin' a drippin' pail on his nose, an' his countenance a geyser of milk? Well, then you can form some faint idee of the practical difficulty of inducin' a caff, all innercent o' the world an' its way o' takin' sustenance, to suck a raw egg. But nothin' but actual experience can impart any remote approach to a notion o' what it means to incorporate the fruit o' the nest with the bossy while bumpin' over the track of a northern Iowa railroad in a freight car, movin' at twenty-five miles an hour. I used up two cases of eggs before I was sure of havin' alleviated one pang of hunger, such was the scorn my kindly offers was rejected with. The result was astoundin'. Them cars swept through the country, their decks slippery with yaller gore, an' their lee scuppers runnin' bank-full, as the sailors say, with Tom-an'-Jerry an' egg shampoo. An' all the time went on that symferny of blats, risin' an' fallin' on the prairie breeze as we rolled from town to town, a thing to be gazed at an' listened to an' never forgot; to be side-tracked outside city limits f'r fear of the Board of Health and the S. P. C. A., an' me ostrichized by the very brakey in the caboose as bein' unfit f'r publication, an' forced to buy a mackintosh to wrap myself in before they'd let me lay down on their old seats to sleep. An' when my visions revorted back to the Oberlin people, I couldn't dream o' that yaller hair even, without its seemin' to float out, an' out, an' out into a sea of soft-boiled, in which her an' me was strugglin', to the howlin' of a tearin' tempest of blats.
"And next when Aconite he rides," remarked the Poet, "may I be there to see!"
At last we arrived at Chamberlain. An' here's where the head-end collision of principles comes in, that I mentioned a while ago. Here's where Aconite Driscoll, who for days had been givin' a mother's care to two hundred cavvs, was condemned f'r cruelty; an' when he'd been strainin' every nerve an' disturbin' the egg market to keep from bustin' a set of concealed claws in a gover'ment contract, he was banished as an eggcessory to the crime of bilkin' poor Lo. This tradegy happens out west o' the river at the Issue House.
Reddy had a string of wagons with hog-racks onto 'em waitin' in the switch-yards when we whistled in, an' the way we yanked them infants off the cars and trundled 'em over the pontoon bridge, an' hit the trail f'r the Issue House, was a high-class piece o' teamin'. We powdered across the country like the first batch of sooners at a reservation openin'. Out on the prairie was Reddy an' his punchers, slowly dribblin' the last of his steers into the delivery, too anxious f'r me an' the cavvs to be ashamed of their emaciation. Out behind a butte, he had concealed a bunch of cow-stuff he'd deppytized as motherspro temto my waifs. The right way t've done, o' course, would've been to incorporated the two bunches in a unassumin' way at a remoter place, an' drove 'em gently in as much like cattle o' the same family circles as yeh could make 'em look. But they wan't time. The end-gates was jerked out, an' the wagons ongently emptied like upsettin' a sleigh comin' home from spellin' school. Most all the orphans could an' did walk, an' I was so tickled at this testimonial to the egg-cure f'r youthful weakness, that we had 'em half way to the place where the knives o' their owners-elect was a waitin' 'em when I looked around an' seen Miss Ainsley, an' the Chamberlain lady she was a-stayin' with, standin' where they must 'a' seen the way we mussed the cavvs hair up in gettin' of 'em on the ground.
Gladys' eyes was a-blazin', an' they was a red spot in each cheek. She seemed sort o' pressin' forwards, like she wanted to mix it up, an' her lady friend was tryin' to head her off. I saw she didn't recognize me, an' I didn't thirst f'r recognition. I knew that love ain't so blind as she's been advertised, an' that I wouldn't never, no, never, be a nater's nobleman no more if she ever tumbled to the fact that the human omelette runnin' this caff business was A. Driscoll. It was only a case of sweet-gal-graduate palpitation o' the heart anyhow, an' needed the bronzed cheek, the droopin' mustache, the range clo'es, the deadly gun, the diamond hitch, and the centaur biz to keep it up to its wonted palp.
An' what was it that was offered to the gaze o' this romantic piece o' calicker? Try to rearlize the truth in all its heejusness. Here was the aforementioned Driscoll arrayed in what was once an A1 fifteen-dollar suit of clay-worsteds, a good biled shirt, an' a new celluloid collar. But how changed from what had been but three short days ago the cinnersure of the eye of every sure-thing or conman on South Halsted Street? Seventy-five per cent. of eight cases of eggs had went billerin' over him. The shells of the same clung like barnacles to his apparel. His curlin' locks was matted an' mucilaged like he'd made a premature getaway from some liberal-minded shampooer; an' from under his beetlin' brows that looked like birds' nests from which broods had just hatched, glared eyes with vi'lence an' crime in every glance. Verily, Aconite was a beaut! An' here, a-comin' down upon him like the angel o' the Lord on the Assyrian host, come a starchy, lacey, filmy, ribbiny gal, that had onst let him hold her hand, by gum! her eyes burnin' with vengeance, an' that kinder corn-shucky rustlin' that emanated mysterious from her dress as she walked, a drawin' nearder an' nearder every breath.
"Gladys! Gladys!" says her lady friend. An' as Gladys slowed up, she says, lower: "I wouldn't interfere in this if I were you, dear!"
"I must!" says Gladys. "It's my duty! I can't permit dumb animals to be treated so without a protest. It is civic cowardice not to do disagreeable things for principle. I wish to speak to the man in charge, please!"
I kep' minglin' with the herd, not carin' to have disagreeable things done to me for principle, but she cuts me out, an' says, says she, "Do you know that there's a law against cruelty to dumb animals?"
"They ain't dumb," says I, trying to change my voice, an' officin' up to Reddy to shove 'em along to their fate while I held the foe in play. "When you've associated with these cute little cusses as long an' intermately as I have, ma'am, you'll know that they have a language an' an ellerquence all their own, that takes 'em out of the pervisions o' that law you speak of, an'—"
Here's where I overplays my hand, an' lets her get onto the genuyne tones of my voice. I ortn't to done this, f'r she'd heared it at close range. An' to make a dead cinch out of a good gamblin' proposition, I looked her in the eyes. It was all off in a breath. She give a sort of gasp as if somethin' cold had hit her, an' went petrified, sort o' slow like.
"Oh!" says she, turnin' her head to her friend. "I understand now what it was your husband was laughing about, and his odious jokes about fooling the inspector; and the bearing of the article he showed us in the Chicago paper! O, Mr. Driscoll, you to be so cruel; and to impose these poor motherless creatures upon those ignorant Indians, who are depending upon their living and becoming the nucleus of their pastoral industry; and the first step to a higher civilization! I don't wonder that you look guilty, or try—"
"I don't!" says I, f'r I didn't, as fer as the stock was concerned. "It's these here eight cases of eggs that make me look so. It's a matter o' clo's. An' the reds'll never raise cattle," says I, "or anything but trouble, in God's world. An' if these cavvs had as many mothers as a Mormon kid," I went on, "they'd be no better f'r stew!"
"Mr. Driscoll," says she, "don't ever speak to me again. I shall expose this matter to the inspector!"
I tried to lift my hat, but it was stuck to my hair; an' the sight of me pullin' desperately at my own head had some effect on her, f'r she flees to her friend, actin' queer, but whuther laffin' 'r cryin' I couldn't say, an' I don't s'pose she could. It's immaterial anyway, the main p'int bein' that her friend's husband, a friend of the senator's, persuaded her from havin' us all pinched, when she found that Reddy'd beat her to it with the cavvs, the last one of which was expirin' under the squaws' hatchets as she hove in sight of the issue, an' the soup-kittles was all a-steamin. It reely was too late to do anything, I guess.
That night I slep' in Oacoma jail. You naturally gravitate that way when fate has ground you about so fine, an' you begin to drift with the blizzard. I could 'a' stood the throw-down, but to be throwed down in a heap with eggs an' dirty clo'es, was too much. I took that suit an' made a bundle of it, an' out on the pontoon bridge I poked it into the Missouri with a pole. They're usin' the water to settle coffee with, I'm told, as fur down as Saint Joe, to this day—'s good as the whites of eggs, the cooks say. Then, havin' wired my resignation to Elkins, feelin' that the world held no vocation f'r me but the whoop-er-up business, I returned to the west side of the river as the only place suited to my talons, an' went forth to expel the eggs an' tender memories from my system with wetness. I broke jail in the mornin' but in a week I come to myself ag'in on the same ol' cot in the same prehistoric calaboose, an' Mr. Elkins was keepin' the flies off me with one o' them brushes made of a fringed newspaper tacked to a stick.
"I've come," says he, "to take you home, Aconite."
"All right," says I, "but can you fix it up with the authorities?"
"I'm just going over to get your discharge," replies he. "They seem quite willing to part with you, now that they discover that none of your victims have anything deeper than flesh wounds. I've give bonds not to let you have your guns this side of the Stanley County line. I'll be back in half-an-hour with the horses."
An' here's where I had a narrow escape. I wouldn't have faced her, the girl, you know, f'r no money; but as Jim went away, right at the door I seen through a little winder a shimmerin' of white and blue. It was her, herself! She must have met Jim before, f'r I heared her speak his name an' mine. He seemed to be perlitely arguin' with her; an' then she went away with him. I breathed easier to see her go; an' then set down an' cried like a baby. A feller'll do that easy, when he's been on a tear, you know.
Jim an' I rode all that day sayin' never a word. But when we'd turned in that night I mentioned the matter.
"Mr. Elkins," says I, "she sure has got it in f'r me pretty strong, to foller me to jail to jump on me!"
"Aconite," says he, "I'll not deceive you. She has. Forget it!"
"Good night, Aconite," said the Bride. "I forgive you—and I think I know just how that girl felt toward you!"
The Bride's luggage came down from Gardiner, that she might be arrayed in her purple and fine linen—and silks, satins, ribbons, laces and fallals—for the dinner. And then her heart failed her; and she took counsel of the Groom.
"Wear 'em!" said he. And she did. She floated into their banquet room in a costume that would have been the envy of every woman in the room if the function had been at one of the mansions along the Sheridan Road or the Lake Shore Drive, instead of at the Mammoth Hot Springs Hotel. Aconite gasped, wrenched for a moment at his new silk neckerchief of the sort whose local color had won for him the Bride and Groom as fares, and bowed as he backed into a corner, where the Hired Man joined him. But after the Groom, the Artist and the Poet had made their appearance in their outing suits, and the Colonel in nothing more formal than a black frock, they gradually recovered, and were soon in the group which hung about the Bride paying homage to those twin gods of all our adoration, Beauty and Millinery. From soup to nuts they discussed their adventures, and re-trod their marvelous road. As the Bride rose to withdraw when the coffee and cigars were served, there was a loud adverse vivâ voce vote. The Bride must stay; she had stayed at the camp-fire, and she should not leave them in the banquet hall. So it was an unbroken circle that listened to the last of the Yellowstone Nights' tales, as it fell from the Poet's lips. The story was suggested, as most of its predecessors had been, by the events of the day. They had seen antelope and elk and deer as they drove in from Yancey's, and had talked of hunting adventures and accidents. The Poet began by speaking of the way in which men are sometimes the hunters, sometimes the hunted—quoting the lines from Hiawatha,
"The fiery eyes of Pauguk,Glare upon him in the darkness."
"The fiery eyes of Pauguk,Glare upon him in the darkness."
"Pauguk," said he, "is Death. And I will tell you the true story of how a man stalked Pauguk through the Minnesota woods."
This story has been told elsewhere, and has been blamed for its lack of a moral. People seem to expect one so to put to the rack the facts in the case that they will shriek out some well-tried message. Some have behaved as if they thought the moral here, but faulty. Colonel Loree of the Solar Selling Company, however, thinks the affair rich in thehic-fabula-docetelement. So does Williamson, soliciting-agent for the Mid-Continent Life; and so—emphatically so—does the Mid-Continent itself. Trudeau, the "breed" guide, has had so few years in which to turn it over in his slow-moving mind as he has lain rolled in his blankets while the snow sifted through the moaning pines, that he has not made up his mind. As for Foster Van Dorn and Gwendolyn, their opinions—but the story itself is not long.
Williamson says that when he left Van Dorn's office with the application, he was as near walking on air as insurance men ever are. People had been so slow in writing their autographs on the dotted line—and here was a six-figure application, with a check. These, accompanied by the wide-eyed Williamson, exploded into the mid-December calm of the agency headquarters like the news of a Tonopah strike in the poker-playing ennui of a Poverty Flat.
"What's that, Williamson?" ejaculated the cashier. "Five hundred—you don't meanthousand?"
"Why, confound you," sneered Williamson, "look at that application!"
"Let me see it!" panted the manager, bursting in. "'Foster G. Van Dorn;' half a million! Holy cat, Williamson; but this will put you and the agency in the lead, for—Is he good for it, Williamson?"
"Why don't you see thatcheck?" inquired the lofty solicitor. "I tell you, fellows, there's always a way to land any man. Why, for a year, I've—by George! I'm forgetting to send Doctor Watson over to make the examination. Van Dorn's going on a hunting trip, and we've got to hustle, and get him nailed before he goes!"
The manager stood by Williamson during the telephoning. "Who is Mr. Van Dorn?" he asked, as the agent hung up the receiver.
"President of the Kosmos Chemical Company," replied Williamson. "Son-in-law and enemy of Colonel Loree of the Solar Selling Company, you know," said the cashier.
"Oh-h-h-h!" replied the manager, as if recalling something. "I remember the 'romance' in the newspapers; but I thought the young fellow was poor. Fixed it up with the colonel, I suppose—the usual thing."
"Not on your life!" replied Williamson. "Loree would kill him if he dared—old aristocrat, you know; but Van Dorn's too smart for him. You remember he was an engineer for Loree's company, and met the daughter on some inspection trip. Love at first sight—moonlight on the mountains—runaway and wedding on the sly—father's curse—turned out to starve, and all that."
"I remember that," answered the manager; "but it doesn't seem to lead logically up to this application."
"Well," went on Williamson, "Van Dorn turns up with a company formed to work a deposit of the sal-ammoniac, or asphaltum, or whatever the stuff the Solar Company had cornered may be, and began trust-busting. The colonel swore the new deposit really belonged to his company because Van Dorn found it while in his employ, and called him all sorts of a scoundrel. But the young man's gone on, all the same, floating his company, and flying high."
"I heard that Loree was sure to ruin him," interposed the cashier.
"Ruin nothing!" said Williamson. "It was a case of the whale and the swordfish. Van Dorn's got him licked—why, don't you see that check!"
"That does look like success," replied the manager. "I hope his strenuous life hasn't hurt his health—Watson is fussy about hearts and lungs."
"That's the least of my troubles," replied Williamson. "Van Dorn's an athlete, and a first-class risk. There's nothing the matter with Van Dorn!"
And yet, Trudeau the guide, far up in the Minnesota woods, looked at the young man and wondered if there wasn't something the matter with Van Dorn. They had come by the old "tote-road" to the deserted lumber-camp armed and equipped to hunt deer. Most young men in Van Dorn's situation were keen-eyed, eager for the trail and the chase—at least until tamed by weariness. But Van Dorn was like a somnambulist. Once Trudeau had left him behind on the road, and on retracing his steps to find him, had discovered him standing by the path, gazing at nothing, his lips slowly moving as if repeating something under his breath—and he had started as if in fright at Trudeau's hail. He had been careful to give Trudeau his card, and admonished him to keep it; but he seemed careless of all opportunities of following up the acquaintance. Most of these city hunters were anxious to talk; but what troubled Trudeau, was the manner in which Van Dorn sat by the fire, wrote in a book from time to time, and gazed into the flames. Now that they had reached the old camp, Trudeau hoped that actual hunting would bring to his man's eyes the fire of interest in the thing he had come so far to enjoy.
"I'll fix up camp," said he. "If you like, you hunt. Big partieChicageau men ove' by lake—keep othe' way."
"How far to their camp?" asked the fire-gazer.
"'Bout two mile," answered Trudeau.
"Chicago men?" queried Van Dorn. "How many?"
"Mebbe ten," answered Trudeau; "mebbe six. She have car on track down at depot. Big man—come ev'ry wintaire. Jacques Lacroix guide heem, Colonel Lorie—big man!"
"Colonel Loree! From Chicago?" cried Van Dorn.
"Oui, yes!" replied Trudeau. "You know heem?"
"No," said Van Dorn.
The man who did not know Loree went to his knapsack and took out a jacket made of deerskin tanned with the hair on. It was lined with red flannel. He held it up and looked at it fixedly. Trudeau started as it met his gaze, and he came up to Van Dorn and pointed to the garment.
"You wear zat?" asked he.
"Yes," said the other. "It is a good warm jacket."
"A man w'at wear deerskin zhaquette," said Trudeau, "in zese wood', in shootingseasone, sartaine go home in wooden ove'coat—sure's hell!"
"Oh, I guess there's no danger!" said Van Dorn, his lips parting with a mirthless smile.
"Non?" queried Trudeau. "You ben in zese wood' before?"
"Oh, yes!" replied Van Dorn. "Lots of times!"
"Zen you know!" asserted Trudeau. "Zen you are zhokingwiz me. Zese huntaire sink brown cloth coat, gray coat, black coat, anysing zat move—she sink zem every time a deer. Las' wintaire lots men killed for deer. Pete St. Cyr's boy kill deer, hang heem in tree, and nex' morning take heem on back an' tote. A city huntaire see deer-hide wiz hair on moving, an him! sof'-nose bullet go thoo deer, thoo Pete St. Cyr's boy's head! Zat zhaquette damn-fool thing!"
"It goes either side out," said the hunter. "I can turn it, you know."
"Iturn heem!Iturn heem!" said Trudeau, suiting the action to the word. "Red is bettaire, by gosh—in zese wood'."
Trudeau watched his companion as he made his laborious way through the cut-over chaos until he disappeared; but he did not see him pause when out of sight of camp, and turn toward the lake.
"I would rather it were any one else," said Van Dorn, as if to something that walked by his side; "but what difference does it make? Why not let him finish his work?"
The sheer difficulty of the country brought back to Van Dorn something like the forester's alertness. The lust for lumber had ravaged the spiry forest, and left, inextricably tangled, the wrecks of the noble trees—forest maidens whose beauty had been their destruction; only the crooked and ugly having escaped. So deep and complex was the wreckage that it seemed like the spilikins of a giants' game of jack-straws—gnarled logs, limbs likechevaux-de-frise, saplings and underbrush growing up through chaos. And spread over and sifted through all was the snow, as light as down.
Van Dorn must have told the truth as to his former visits; for he went on like one used to this terrible maze. Nowhere could he take three steps straight forward: it was always climbing up, or leaping down, or going around, or crawling under. Here thick leaves upheld the snow, and in the dry pine straw on the ground he could hear the forest mice rustle and scurry. There a field was smoothed over by the snow, as a trap is hidden by sand, covering débris just high enough to imperil the limbs of the pedestrian. Yonder was a tamarack swamp too thick to be pierced: and everywhere it was over and under and up and down, and desperately hard, for miles and miles, with no place for repose.
He gazed away over the strange abomination of desolation, blindly reflecting upon man's way of coming, doing his worst, and passing on with sated appetite, leaving ruin—as he had done here. He wondered why that tall tract of virgin pine over at the right had been allowed to escape, standing against the sky like a black wall, spiked with tall rampikes. He stared fixedly at the snow, the blue shadows, the black pines, somnambulistic again.
To the something that seemed to walk by his side, he spoke of these things, as if it had been visible. Strange actions, strange thoughts for the president of the Kosmos Chemical Company, the great antagonist of Loree of the Solar Selling Company, the David to Loree's Goliath, the swordfish to the colonel's whale! Think, however, of David, with all the stones spent against the giant's buckler, and cowering within the lethal reach of that spear like a weaver's beam; or of the swordfish, with broken weapon, hunted to the uttermost black depths by the oncoming silent yawning destruction. And in Van Dorn's case, the enemy was an avenger as well as a natural foe.
Poor little Kosmos Chemical Company with its big name, its great deposits of "a prime commercial necessity"—see prospectus—its dependence on railways with which Loree was on terms of which Van Dorn never dreamed, its old and wily foe, skilled to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat, raging for the loss of his ewe lamb, whom, notwithstanding his giantship, he had loved for twenty years to Van Dorn's two, and had dreamed dreams and committed crimes for! Not very strange after all, perhaps, that the man went on muttering somnambulistically. They say that one gripped in the lion's mouth is numb and filled with delusions.
Suddenly, putting life into the dead scene, a bounding form came into view past a thicket—a noble buck with many-pointed antlers, moving with great deliberate leaps among the giants' spilikins. The delicate, glassy hoofs, the slender, brittle limbs and horns, fragile as china, seemed courting destruction in those terrific entanglements. Yet the beautiful animal, as if by some magic levitation, rose lightly from a perilous crevice between two logs, turned smoothly in mid-leap, struck the four pipe-stem limbs into the only safe landing-place, shot thence with arrowy spring between two bayonet-like branches to another foothold, and so on and on, every rod of progress a miracle.
He stopped, snuffing the air. Instinctively the hunter leveled his rifle; and then came into view the buck's retinue, two does, one large and matronly, the other a last summer's fawn. The sleep-walker's eyes softened, the rifle swung downward from the point-blank aim, snapping a twig in its descent, and with swift, mighty bounds, the deer vanished, putting a clump of bushes between themselves and the foe with unerring strategy.
"Toward the lake," said the hunter. "I'll follow!"
There came the report of a distant rifle from the direction of the deer's flight, then another and another. Some one was working a repeater rapidly. The hunter stopped, took off his deerskin jacket, turned it hair side out, and like a soldier making for the firing-line, pressed forward after the deer.
Trudeau saw his man halt on the edge of the firelight that evening, turn his jacket, and come weariedly into camp. Trudeau sat and thought that night, while the other slept heavily. Next morning there was a raging storm, and the guide was puzzled that the hunter refused to brave its dangers. It was not sure then that monsieur desired the wooden overcoat? He told Van Dorn many stories of death in these storms, and watched for the effect.
"W'en man is lost in blizzaird," said Trudeau, "ze vidow mus' wait an' wait, an' mebbe nevaire know if he is vidow or not."
"It would be better," said the other reflectively, "to have the proof ample—ample!"
Trudeau, pondering over this, watched his charge putting names in a book opposite amounts in figures; but he did not know that here was the lost fortune of an old aunt, there the savings of a college chum. Van Dorn looked them over calmly as if it had been a bills-payable sheet to be paid in the morning. Then the strange pleasure-hunter began writing a letter to a sweetheart to whom he seemed to be able to say only that he loved her better than life, that she must try to love his memory, and to train up the baby to respect his name, that the right thing is not always easy to discern, that sometimes one has only a choice of evils, that when a man has made a mess of it which he can straighten out by stepping off the stage, he might as well do it—and that he had had his share of happiness since she had been with him anyhow, and was far ahead of the game! Trudeau could not know what a foolish, silly, tragic letter it was, this product of insane commercialism. He thought life and the woods enough, and wondered at the shaking of the man's shoulders, and was amazed to see the tears dropping through his fingers as he bowed his head upon his hands—a man with a fifty-dollar sleeping-bag!
Over at the Loree headquarters there were roaring fires, fresh venison, a skilful chef, jolly companions, and the perfection of camp-life. The storm cleared. That strong old hunter, Loree, declaring that his business was to stalk deer, marched off in the solitary quest which is the only thing that brings the haunch to the spit in the Minnesota cut-over forest. He was bristly bearded, keen of eye and vigorous, handled his gun cannily, and craftily negotiated the fallen and tangled timbers, his glance sweeping every open vista for game. There was no time to think of anything but the making of his way, and of the chase. Troubles and triumphs retired to the outer verge of consciousness. Primeval problems claimed his thoughts, and the primeval man rose to meet them. It was in this ancient and effective wise that he had sharpened his weapons, set his snares, and hunted down Foster Van Dorn—and left him in the money-jungle, apparently unhurt, but really smitten to the heart and staggering to his fall. It was the Loree way. As an old hunter, he knew just where his shaft had struck, and how long the quarry could endure the hemorrhage. Had he not said that the fellow should be made to rue the Loree displeasure?
Like a flash these half-thoughts became no thoughts, as a dark blotch caught his eye, far off on the snow, beyond a little thicket.
"What is that?" he said to himself. It is a little hard to say, but the matter is worth looking into. Just the color of a deer! Just where a deer would rest! We must work up the wind a little closer, for some men are so foolish as to wear those duns and browns; but that!—that is a deer's coat. It won't do to jump him and trust a shot as he goes—those firs will hide him at the first leap. A long shot at a standing target—there! He moved! There's not a second to lose!
A long shot, truly; but that graceful rifle thinks nothing of half a mile. There are many intervening bushes and saplings; but the steel-jacketed bullet would kill on the farther side of the thickest pine, and even a soft-nosed one will cut cleanly to this mark. The colonel's practised left hand immovably supported the barrel; the colonel's keen eye through the carefully adjusted sights saw plainly the blotch of deerskin down the little glade; and the colonel's steady forefinger confidently pressed the lightly-set trigger. Spat! The colonel felt the rifleman's delicious certitude that his bullet had found its mark, threw in another shell, and stood tensely ready to try the bisecting of the smitten deer's first agonized bound—but the blur of fur just stirred a little, and slipped down out of sight.
Panting in the killer's frenzy, Loree struggled over the débris to reach his game. How oddly the deer had fallen! Heart, or brain, likely; as it went down like a log. Here was the thicket, and on the other side—yes, a patch of reddened snow, and the body of—no, not a deer, but a man, dead, it seemed, clad in a deerskin jacket, a rifle by his side and in his hand a note-book full of figures, its pages all stained and crumpled!
There was a shout in the far distance, but Loree heard it not. He knew his solitude, and never looked for aid. The white strangeness of the face of the man he had shot overcame the sense of something familiar in it; and the colonel, after a moment's scrutiny of it, addressed himself frantically to the stanching of the blood. A deep groan seemed to warrant hope; and stooping beneath the body Loree took it up and began bearing it toward the camp. He had an overwhelming consciousness of the terrible task before him; but the realization of the human life dashed out, some home blasted, some infinity of woe, and the bare chance of rescue rolled sickeningly over him, and he set his teeth and attacked the task like an incarnate will.
Logs and boughs and dead-wood held him back; countless obstacles exhausted him. He felt like crying out in agony as he realized that his age was telling against him. He felt strangely tender at this meeting with death in its simple and more merciful form. He clenched his teeth hard, felt his heart swell as if to burst, his lungs labor in agonized heavings—and when Trudeau the guide overtook him, he found him a frenzied man, covered with dark streaks and splashes of blood, unconquerably hurling upon his impossible task his last reserves of strength, with all that iron resolution with which he had beaten down resistance in his long battle with a relentless world.
"For God's sake," he panted hoarsely, "help me get him to camp! We've got a doctor there!"
"How's the colonel?" said the doctor, when he had done all he could for the colonel's victim.
"Knocked all to pieces," answered a young man. "Wants to know if we've found out who the man is."
Colonel Loree was interrogating Trudeau; surprised that he did not know the name of the wounded man.
"Non," answered Trudeau, "she tell me his name, and give mecarte, but I lose heem an' forget firs' day. Remember wood', remember trail, remember face ver' well—but name; she I forget. She write lettaire an' cry, an' all time put fig' in book. Zis is heem; mebbeshetell name!"
The smutched names were strange to the colonel; but on another page there were some inexplicable references to Kosmos Chemical affairs; and on the cover were dim initials that looked like "F. V. D."
"I know something is wrong," went on Trudeau; "for I tell her it bentrès dangéreuseto wear deerskin zhaquette in zese wood' in shootingseasone. I turn zhaquette red out. She go toward your camp. I watch. I see her turn heem hair out. I tell you, messieurs, zat man want to go home in wooden ove'coat. She have hungaire to die."
"Here's a letter we found in his pocket," said the young man. "Look at it, Colonel."
The colonel looked, saw his daughter's name, remembered the familiar look in the white, agonized, pitiful face; and saw the whole situation as by some baleful flash-light.
"Good God! Good God!" he cried. "It's Van Dorn! Get things ready to carry him in his bed to the car—quick, Johnson! And get to the wire as soon as you can. Have Tibbals bring Gwennie—Mrs. Van Dorn—to Duluth. Wire the hospital there! You know what's needed—look after things right, Johnson, for I think—I think—I'm going mad, old man!"
Mrs. Van Dorn ran into her father's arms in the hospital anteroom. Through mazes of frenzied anxiety she felt an epoch open in her life with that embrace from the father who had put her out of his life for ever, as they thought.
"Dear, dear papa!" she whispered, "let me go to Foster, quick!"
"Not just now, Gwennie, little girl," said he, patting her shoulder. "He's asleep. Did you bring the—the baby?"
"No, no! I thought—but Foster?" cried Gwendolyn. "Will he—will he—"
"He'll live, by Heaven!" cried the colonel. "I fired one fool for hinting that he wouldn't; and now they're all sure he'll pull through. Why, he's got to live, Gwennie!"
The colonel reached for his handkerchief, much hampered by Gwendolyn's arms.
"And when he's well," said he, "I want your help—in a business way. I'm too old to fight a man like Foster. He's got me down, Gwennie—beaten me to earth. If he won't come in with me, it's all up with the Solar. He's a fine fellow, Gwen—I—like him, you know—but he don't know how hard he hits. You'll help your old dad, won't you, Gwennie?"
To this point had the appeal of concrete, piteous need brought Colonel Loree, the ferocious, whose heart had never once softened while he did so much more cruel things than the mere shooting of Van Dorn. It broke Gwendolyn's heart afresh.
"Oh, don't papa!" she cried. "I can't sta-stand it! He sha'n't use his strength against you! I'll be on your side. He's generous, papa—he wanted to name baby Loree—and, oh, I must go to him, papa! I can't wait!"
The cigars had burned out, and the coffee cups and their saucers were messy with ashes. The Hired Man nodded in his chair. Aconite was slowly formulating some comment on the Poet's story—when the Bride rose.
"You've all been awfully nice to me," said she, "and I feel almost weepy when I think of never seeing you again. So I am not going to think of it. I shall hope to meet you," said she to Aconite, "in the stories which my friends bring back from the Park—for I'm going to tell them all to come, and to ride with you, and learn about Old Jim Bridger. And you, Mr. Bill, I shall see when I pass through the corn country sometime—I feel sure of it. You will be plowing corn, and I shall wave my hand from the car window as you look up at the speeding train. I shall always see a friend in every plowman now. And you, sir, I shall watch for in the Poet's Corner of the Hall of Fame; and you in the Artist's alcove. And, Colonel, I know I shall see you sometime, for every one passes through Omaha sooner or later. Good-by, and God bless you, every one! We have made a continued story of our trip—for that, thanks to all, and now let us close the book, after writing