XIII
BITTER-SWEET
Taking his cue from certain passages in the book of painful memories,Lidgerwood meant to obey his first impulse, which prompted him to followMr. Brewster to the private office state-room in the forward end of thecar, disregarding the couple in the _tete-a-tete_ contrivance. But thetriumphantly beautiful young woman in the nearer half of thecrooked-backed seat would by no means sanction any such easy solution ofthe difficulty.
"Not a word for me, Howard?" she protested, rising and fairly compellinghim to stop and speak to her. Then: "For pity's sake! what have you beendoing to yourself to make you look so hollow-eyed and anxious?" Afterwhich, since Lidgerwood seemed at a loss for an answer to thehalf-solicitous query, she presented her companion of the "S"-shapedchair. "Possibly you will shake hands a little less abstractedly withMr. Van Lew. Herbert, this is Mr. Howard Lidgerwood, my cousin, severaltimes removed. He is the tyrant of the Red Butte Western, and I canassure you that he is much more terrible than he looks--aren't you,Howard?"
Lidgerwood shook hands cordially enough with the tall young athlete who,it seemed, would never have done increasing his magnificent stature ashe rose up out of his half of the lounging-seat.
"Glad to meet you, Mr. Lidgerwood, I'm sure," said the young man,gripping the given hand until Lidgerwood winced. "Miss Eleanor has beentelling me about you--marooned out here in the Red Desert. By Jove!don't you know I believe I'd like to try it awhile myself. It's agessince I've had a chance to kill a man, and they tell me----"
Lidgerwood laughed, recognizing Miss Brewster's romancing gift, or theresults of it.
"We shall have to arrange a little round-up of the bad men from BitterCreek for you, Mr. Van Lew. I hope you brought your armament along--theregulation 45's, and all that."
Miss Brewster laughed derisively.
"Don't let him discourage you, Herbert," she mocked. "Bitter Creek is inWyoming--or is it in Montana?" this with a quick little eye-stab forLidgerwood, "and the name of Mr. Lidgerwood's refuge is Angels. Also,papa says there is a hotel there called the 'Celestial.' Do you live atthe Celestial, Howard?"
"No, I never properly lived there. I existed there for a few weeks untilMrs. Dawson took pity on me. Mrs. Dawson is from Massachusetts."
"Hear him!" scoffed Miss Eleanor, still mocking. "He says that as if tobe 'from Massachusetts' were a patent of nobility. He knows I had thecruel misfortune to be born in Colorado. But tell me, Howard, is Mrs.Dawson a charming young widow?"
"Mrs. Dawson is a very charming middle-aged widow, with a grown son anda daughter," said Lidgerwood, a little stiffly. It seemed entirelyunnecessary that she should ridicule him before the athlete.
"And the daughter--is she charming, too? But that says itself, since shemust also date 'from Massachusetts.'" Then to Van Lew: "Every one outhere in the Red Desert is 'from' somewhere, you know."
"Miss Dawson is quite beneath your definition of charming, I imagine,"was Lidgerwood's rather crisp rejoinder; and for the third time he madeas if he would go on to join the president in the office state-room.
"You are staying to luncheon with us, aren't you?" asked Miss Brewster."Or do you just drop in and out again, like the other kind of angels?"
"Your father commands me, and he says I am to stay. And now, if you willexcuse me----"
This time he succeeded in getting away, and up to the luncheon hourtalked copper and copper prospects to Mr. Brewster in the seclusion ofthe president's office compartment. The call for the midday meal hadbeen given when Mr. Brewster switched suddenly from copper to silver.
"By the way, there were a few silver strikes over in the Timanyonisabout the time of the Red Butte gold excitement," he remarked. "Some ofthem have grown to be shippers, haven't they?"
"Only two, of any importance," replied the superintendent: "the Ruby, inRuby Gulch, and Flemister's Wire-Silver, at Little Butte. You couldn'tcall either of them a bonanza, but they are both shipping fair ore ingood quantities."
"Flemister," said the president reflectively. "He's a character. Knowhim personally, Howard?"
"A little," the superintendent admitted.
"A little is a-plenty. It wouldn't pay you to know him very well,"laughed the big man good-naturedly. "He has a somewhat paralyzing wayof getting next to you financially. I knew him in the old Leadvilledays; a born gentleman, and also a born buccaneer. If the men he hasheld up and robbed were to stand in a row, they'd fill a Denver street."
"He is in his proper longitude out here, then," said Lidgerwood rathergrimly. "This is the 'hold-up's heaven.'"
"I'll bet Flemister is doing his share of the looting," laughed thepresident. "Is he alone in the mine?"
"I don't know that he has any partners. Somebody told me, when I firstcame over here, that Gridley, our master-mechanic, was in with him; butGridley says that is a mistake--that he thinks too much of hisreputation to be Flemister's partner."
"Hank Gridley," mused the president; "Hank Gridley and 'his reputation'!It would certainly be a pity if that were to get corroded in any way.There is a man who properly belongs to the Stone Age--what you mightcall an elemental "scoundrel."
"You surprise me!" exclaimed Lidgerwood. "I didn't like him at first,but I am convinced now that it was only unreasoning prejudice. Heappeals to me as being anything but a scoundrel."
"Well, perhaps the word is a bit too savage," admitted Gridley'saccuser. "What I meant was that he has capabilities that way, and notmuch moral restraint. He is the kind of man to wade through fire andblood to gain his object, without the slightest thought of theconsequences to others. Ever hear the story of his marriage? No? Remindme of it some time, and I'll tell you. But we were speaking ofFlemister. You say the Wire-Silver has turned out pretty well?"
"Very well indeed, I believe. Flemister seems to have money to burn."
"He always has, his own or somebody else's. It makes little differenceto him. The way he got the Wire-Silver would have made Black-Beard thepirate turn green with envy. Know anything about the history of themine?"
Lidgerwood shook his head.
"Well, I do; just happen to. You know how it lies--on the western slopeof Little Butte ridge?"
"Yes."
"That is where it lies now. But the original openings were made on theeastern slope of the butte. They didn't pan out very well, and Flemisterbegan to look for a victim to whom he could sell. About that time a man,whose name I can never recall, took up a claim on the western slope ofthe ridge directly opposite Flemister. This man struck it pretty rich,and Flemister began to bully him on the plea that the new discovery wasonly a continuation of his own vein straight through the hill. You canguess what happened."
"Fairly well," said Lidgerwood. "Flemister lawed the other man out."
"He did worse than that; he drove straight into the hill, past his ownlines, and actually took the money out of the other man's mine to use asa fighting fund. I don't know how the courts sifted it out, finally; Ididn't follow it up very closely. But Flemister put the other man to thewall in the end--'put it all over him,' as your man Bradford would say.There was some domestic tragedy involved, too, in which Flemister playedthe devil with the other man's family; but I don't know any of thedetails."
"Yet you say Flemister is a born gentleman, as well as a bornbuccaneer?"
"Well, yes; he behaves himself well enough in decent company. He isn'texactly the kind of man you can turn down short--he has education, goodmanners, and all that, you know; but if he were hard up I shouldn't lethim get within roping distance of my pocket-book, or, if I had given himoccasion to dislike me, within easy pistol range."
"Wherein he is neither better nor worse than a good many others whotake the sunburn of the Red Desert," was Lidgerwood's comment, and justthen the waiter opened the door a second time to say that luncheon wasserved.
"Don't forget to remind me that I'm to tell you Gridley's story,Howard," said the president, rising out of the depths of hislounging-chair and stripping off the dust-coat, "Reads li
ke aromance--only I fancy it was anything but a romance for poor LizzieGridley. Let's go and see what the cook has done for us."
At luncheon Lidgerwood was made known to the other members of theprivate-car party. The white-haired old man who had been dozing in hischair was Judge Holcombe, Van Lew's uncle and the father of the prettierof the two young women who had been entertaining Jefferis, thecurly-headed collegian. Jefferis laughingly disclaimed relationship withanybody; but Miss Carolyn Doty, the less pretty but more talkative ofthe two young women, confessed that she was a cousin, twice removed, ofMrs. Brewster.
Quite naturally, Lidgerwood sought to pair the younger people when thetable gathering was complete, and was not entirely certain of hisprefiguring. Eleanor Brewster and Van Lew sat together and wereapparently absorbed in each other to the exclusion of all thingsextraneous. Jefferis had Miss Doty for a companion, and the afflictionof her well-balanced tongue seemed to affect neither his appetite norhis enjoyment of what the young woman had to say.
Miriam Holcombe had fallen to Lidgerwood's lot, and at first he thoughtthat her silence was due to the fact that young Jefferis had gotten uponthe wrong side of the table. But after she began to talk, he changed hismind.
"Tell me about the wrecked train we passed a little while ago, Mr.Lidgerwood," she began, almost abruptly. "Was any one killed?"
"No; it was a freight, and the crew escaped. It was a rather narrowescape, though, for the engineer, and fireman."
"You were putting it back on the track?" she asked.
"There isn't much of it left to put back, as you may have observed,"said Lidgerwood. Then he told her of the explosion and the fire.
She was silent for a few moments, but afterward she went on,half-gropingly he thought.
"Is that part of your work--to get the trains on the track when they runoff?"
He laughed. "I suppose it is--or at least, in a certain sense, I'mresponsible for it. But I am lucky enough to have a wrecking-boss--twoof them, in fact, and both good ones."
She looked up quickly, and he was sure that he surprised something morethan a passing interest in the serious eyes--a trouble depth, he wouldhave called it, had their talk been anything more than the ordinaryconventional table exchange.
"We saw you go down to speak to two of your men: one who wore his hatpulled down over his eyes and made dreadful faces at you as hetalked----"
"That was McCloskey, our trainmaster," he cut in.
"And the other----?"
"Was wrecking-boss Number Two," he told her, "my latest apprentice, anda very promising young subject. This was his first time out under myadministration, and he put McCloskey and me out of the running at once."
"What did he do?" she asked, and again he saw the groping wistfulness inher eyes, and wondered at it.
"I couldn't explain it without being unpardonably technical. But perhapsit can best be summed up in saying that he is a fine mechanicalengineer with the added gift of knowing how to handle men."
"You are generous, Mr. Lidgerwood, to--to a subordinate. He ought to bevery loyal to you."
"He is. And I don't think of him as a subordinate--I shouldn't even ifhe were on my pay-roll instead of on that of the motive-powerdepartment. I am glad to be able to call him my friend, Miss Holcombe."
Again a few moments of silence, during which Lidgerwood was staringgloomily across at Miss Brewster and Van Lew. Then another curiouslyabrupt question from the young woman at his side.
"His college, Mr. Lidgerwood; do you chance to know where he wasgraduated?"
At another moment Lidgerwood might have wondered at the young woman'spersistence. But now Benson's story of Dawson's terrible misfortune wascrowding all purely speculative thoughts out of his mind.
"He took his engineering course in Carnegie, but I believe he did notstay through the four years," he said gravely.
Miss Holcombe was looking down the table, down and across to where herfather was sitting, at Mr. Brewster's right. When she spoke again thepersonal note was gone; and after that the talk, what there was of it,was of the sort that is meant to bridge discomforting gaps.
In the dispersal after the meal, Lidgerwood attached himself to MissDoty; this in sheer self-defense. The desert passage was still in itsearlier stages, and Miss Carolyn's volubility promised to be the less oftwo evils, the greater being the possibility that Eleanor Brewster mightseek to re-open a certain spring of bitterness at which he had beenconstrained to drink deeply and miserably in the past.
The self-defensive expedient served its purpose admirably. For thebetter part of the desert run, the president slept in his state-room,Mrs. Brewster and the judge dozed in their respective easy-chairs, andJefferis and Miriam Holcombe, after roaming for an uneasy half-hour fromthe rear platform to the cook's galley forward, went up ahead, at one ofthe stops, to ride--by the superintendent's permission--in the enginecab with Williams. Miss Brewster and Van Lew were absorbed in a book ofplays, and their corner of the large, open compartment was the onefarthest removed from the double divan which Lidgerwood had chosen forMiss Carolyn and himself.
Later, Van Lew rolled a cigarette and went to the smoking-compartment,which was in the forward end of the car; and when next Lidgerwood brokeMiss Doty's eye-hold upon him, Miss Brewster had also disappeared--intoher state-room, as he supposed. Taking this as a sign of his release, hegently broke the thread of Miss Carolyn's inquisitiveness, and went outto the rear platform for a breath of fresh air and surcease from thefashery of a neatly balanced tongue.
When it was quite too late to retreat, he found the deep-recessedobservation platform of the _Nadia_ occupied. Miss Brewster was not inher state-room, as he had mistakenly persuaded himself. She was sittingin one of the two platform camp-chairs, and she was alone.
"I thought you would come, if I only gave you time enough," she said,quite coolly. "Did you find Carolyn very persuasive?"
He ignored the query about Miss Doty, replying only to the first part ofher speech.
"I thought you had gone to your state-room. I hadn't the slightest ideathat you were out here."
"Otherwise you would not have come? How magnificently churlish you canbe, upon occasion, Howard!"
"It doesn't deserve so hard a name," he rejoined patiently. "For themoment I am your father's guest, and when he asked me to go to Angelswith him----"
--"He didn't tell you that mamma and Judge Holcombe and Carolyn andMiriam and Herbert and Geof. Jefferis and I were along," she cut inmaliciously. "Howard, don't you know you are positively spiteful, attimes!"
"No," he denied.
"Don't contradict me, and don't be silly." She pushed the other chairtoward him. "Sit down and tell me how you've been enduring the interval.It is more than a year, isn't it?"
"Yes. A year, three months, and eleven days." He had taken the chairbeside her because there seemed to be nothing else to do.
"How mathematically exact you are!" she gibed. "To-morrow it will be ayear, three months, and twelve days; and the day after to-morrow--mercyme! I should go mad if I had to think back and count up that way everyday. But I asked you what you had been doing."
He spread his hands. "Existing, one way and another. There has alwaysbeen my work."
"'All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy,'" she quoted. "You areexcessively dull to-day, Howard. Hasn't it occurred to you?"
"Thank you for expressing it so delicately. It seems to be mymisfortune to disappoint you, always."
"Yes," she said, quite unfeelingly. Then, with a swift relapse into puremockery: "How many times have you fallen in love during the one year,three months, and eleven days?"
His frown was almost a scowl. "Is it worth while to make an unendingjest of it, Eleanor?"
"A jest?--of your falling in love? No, my dear cousin, several timesremoved, no one would dare to jest with you on that subject. But tellme; I am really and truly interested. Will you confess to three times?That isn't so very many, considering the length of the interval."
"No."
"No."
"Still no? That reduces it to one--the charming Miss Dawson----"
"You might spare her, even if you are not willing to spare me. You knowwell enough there has never been any one but you, Eleanor; that therenever will be any one but you."
The train was passing the western confines of the waterless tract, and acool breeze from the snowcapped Timanyonis was sweeping across the openplatform. It blew strands of the red-brown hair from beneath the closelyfitting travelling-hat; blew color into Miss Brewster's cheeks and adaring brightness into the laughing eyes.
"What a pity!" she said in mock sympathy.
"That I can't measure up to your requirements of the perfect man? Yes,it is a thousand pities," he agreed.
"No; that isn't precisely what I meant. The pity is that I seem to youto be unable to appreciate your many excellencies and your--constancy."
"I think you were born to torment me," he rejoined gloomily. "Why didyou come out here with your father? You must have known that I washere."
"Not from any line you have ever written," she retorted. "Alicia Fordtold me, otherwise I shouldn't have known."
"Still, you came. Why? Were you curious?"
"Why should I be curious, and what about?--the Red Desert? I've seendeserts before."
"I thought you might be curious to know what disposition the Red Desertwas making of such a failure as I am," he said evenly. "I can forgivethat more easily than I can forgive your bringing of the other man alongto be an on-looker."
"Herbert, you mean? He is a good boy, a nice boy--and perfectlyharmless. You'll like him immensely when you come to know him better."
"You like him?" he queried.
"How can you ask--when you have just called him 'the other man'?"
Lidgerwood turned in his chair and faced her squarely.
"Eleanor, I had my punishment over a year ago, and I have been hopingyou would let it suffice. It was hard enough to lose you without beingcompelled to stand by and see another man win you. Can't you understandthat?"
She did not answer him. Instead, she whipped aside from that phase ofthe subject to ask a question of her own.
"What ever made you come out here, Howard?"
"To the superintendency of the Red Butte Western? You did."
"I?"
"Yes, you."
"It is ridiculous!"
"It is true."
"Prove it--if you can; but you can't."
"I am proving it day by day, or trying to. I didn't want to come, butyou drove me to it."
"I decline to take any such hideous responsibility," she laughedlightly. "There must have been some better reason; Miss Dawson,perhaps."
"Quite likely, barring the small fact that I didn't know there was aMiss Dawson until I had been a month in Angels."
"Oh!" she said half spitefully. And then, with calculated malice,"Howard, if you were only as brave as you are clever!... Why can't yoube a man and strike back now and then?"
"Strike back at the woman I love? I'm not quite down to that, I hope,even if I was once too cowardly to strike for her."
"Always _that!_ Why won't you let me forget?"
"Because you must not forget. Listen: two weeks ago--only two weeksago--one of the Angels--er--peacemakers stood up in his place and shotat me. What I did made me understand that I had gained nothing in ayear."
"Shot at you?" she echoed, and now he might have discovered a note ofreal concern in her tone if his ear had been attuned to hear it. "Tellme about it. Who was it? and why did he shoot at you?"
His answer seemed to be indirection itself.
"How long do you expect to stay in Angels and its vicinity?" he asked.
"I don't know. This is partly a pleasure trip for us younger folk.Father was coming out alone, and I--that is, mamma decided to come andmake a car-party of it. We may stay two or three weeks, if the otherswish it. But you haven't answered me. I want to know who the man was,and why he shot at you."
"Exactly; and you have answered yourself. If you stay two weeks, or twodays, in Angels you will doubtless hear all you care to about mytroubles. When the town isn't talking about what it is going to do tome, it is gossiping about the dramatic arrest of my would-be assassin."
"You are most provoking!" she declared. "Did you make the arrest?"
"Don't shame me needlessly; of course I didn't. One of our locomotiveengineers, a man whom I had discharged for drunkenness, was the hero. Itwas a most daring thing. The desperado is known in the Red Desert as'The Killer,' and he has had the entire region terrorized so completelythat the town marshal of Angels, a man who has never before shirked hisduty, refused to serve the warrant. Judson, the engineer, made thecapture--took the 'terror' from his place in a gambling-den, disarmedhim, and brought him in. Judson himself was unarmed, and he did thetrick with a little steel wrench such as engineers use about alocomotive."
Miss Brewster, being Colorado-born, was deeply interested.
"Now you are no longer dull, Howard!" she exclaimed. "Tell me in wordsjust how Mr. Judson did it."
"It was an old dodge, so old that it seemed new to everybody. As I toldyou, Judson was discharged for drunkenness. All Angels knows him for afighter to the finish when he is sober, and for the biggest fool and themost harmless one when he is in liquor. He took advantage of this,reeled into the gambling-place as if he were too drunk to see straight,played the fool till he got behind his man--after which the mattersimplified itself. Rufford, the desperado, had no means of knowing thatthe cold piece of metal Judson was pressing against his back was not themuzzle of a loaded revolver, and he had every reason for supposing thatit was; hence, he did all the things Judson told him to do."
Miss Eleanor did not need to vocalize her approval of Judson; the darkeyes were alight with excitement.
"How fine!" she applauded. "Of course, after that, you took Mr. Judsonback into the railway service?"
"Indeed, I did nothing of the sort; nor shall I, until he demonstratesthat he means what he says about letting the whiskey alone."
"'Until he demonstrates'--don't be so cold-blooded, Howard! Possibly hesaved your life."
"Quite probably. But that has nothing to do with his reinstatement as anengineer of passenger-trains. It would be much better for Rufford tokill me than for me to let Judson have the chance to kill a train-loadof innocent people."
"And yet, a few moments ago, you called yourself a coward, cousin mine.Could you really face such an alternative without flinching?"
"It doesn't appeal to me as a question involving any special degree ofcourage," he said slowly. "I am a great coward, Eleanor--not a littleone, I hope."
"It doesn't appeal to you?--dear God!" she said. "And I have beencalling you ... but would you do it, Howard?"
He smiled at her sudden earnestness.
"How generous your heart is, Eleanor, when you let it speak for itself!If you will promise not to let it change your opinion of me--youshouldn't change it, you know, for I am the same man whom you held up toscorn the day we parted--if you will promise, I'll tell you that forweeks I have gone about with my life in my hands, knowing it. It hasn'trequired any great amount of courage; it merely comes along in the lineof my plain duty to the company--it's one of the things I draw my salaryfor."
"You haven't told me why this desperado wanted to kill you--why you arein such a deep sea of trouble out here, Howard," she reminded him.
"No; it is a long story, and it would bore you if I had time to tell it.And I haven't time, because that is Williams's whistle for the Angelsyard."
He had risen and was helping his companion to her feet when Mrs.Brewster came to the car door to say:
"Oh, you are out here, are you, Howard? I was looking for you to let youknow that we dine in the _Nadia_ at seven. If your duties willpermit----"
Lidgerwood's refusal was apologetic but firm.
"I
am very sorry, Cousin Jessica," he protested. "But I left a deskfulof stuff when I ran away to the wreck this morning, and really I'mafraid I shall have to beg off."
"Oh, don't be so dreadfully formal!" said the president's wifeimpatiently. "You are a member of the family, and all you have to do isto say bluntly that you can't come, and then come whenever you can whilewe are here. Carolyn Doty is dying to ask you a lot more questions aboutthe Red Desert. She confided to me that you were the most interestingtalker----"
Miss Eleanor's interruption was calculated to temper the passed-onpraise.
"He has been simply boring me to death, mamma, until just a few minutesago. I shall tell Carolyn that she is too easily pleased."
Mrs. Brewster, being well used to Eleanor's flippancies, paid noattention to her daughter.
"You will come to us whenever you can, Howard; that is understood," shesaid. And so the social matter rested.
Lidgerwood was half-way down the platform of the Crow's Nest, headingfor his office and the neglected desk, when Williams's engine camebacking through one of the yard tracks on its way to the roundhouse. Atthe moment of its passing, a little man with his cap pulled over hiseyes dropped from the gangway step and lounged across to thehead-quarters building.
It was Judson; and having seen him last toiling away man-fashion at thewreck in the Crosswater Hills, Lidgerwood hailed him.
"Hello, Judson! How did you get here? I thought you were doing a turnwith McCloskey."
The small man's grin was ferocious.
"I was, but Mac said he didn't have any further use for me--said I wastoo much of a runt to be liftin' and pullin' along with growed-up men. Icame down with Williams on the '66."
Lidgerwood turned away. He remembered his reluctant consent toMcCloskey's proposal touching the espial upon Hallock, and was sorry hehad given it. It was too late to recall it now; but neither by word norlook did the superintendent intimate to the discharged engineer that heknew why McCloskey had sent him back to Angels on the engine of thepresident's special.
The Taming of Red Butte Western Page 13
