The Fighting Shepherdess

by Lockhart, Caroline

  The speech stung her. She glared at him across the narrow table, and, in the moment, each had a sense of unreality. The quarrel was like a bolt from the blue, as startling and unexpected—as most quarrels are—the bitterest and most lasting. Then she sprang to her feet and hurled a taunt at him some Imp of Darkness must have suggested:

  “You’re jealous!” She stamped a foot at him. “That’s the real reason. You’re jealous of everybody that would be friends with me! You’re jealous of Hughie. You didn’t like his coming here and you don’t like his writing to me! I hate you—I won’t stay any longer!” It was the blood of Jezebel of the Sand Coulee talking, and there was the look of her mother on the girl’s face, in her reckless, uncontrolled fury.

  Mormon Joe winced, exactly as though she had struck him. He sat quite still while the color faded, leaving his face bloodless. Kate never had known anything like the white rage it depicted. Persons at the Sand Coulee who lost their temper cursed volubly and loudly, and threatened or made bodily attacks upon the cause of it. In spite of herself she shrank a little as he, too, got up slowly and faced her. She didn’t know him at all—this man who first threw his cigarette away carefully, as though he were in a drawing room and must regard the ashes—he was a personality from an environment with which she was unfamiliar. Then, as though she were his equal in years, experience and intelligence, he spoke to her in a tone that was cool and impersonal, yet which went slash! slash! slash! like the fine, deep, quick cut of a razor.

  “I had no notion that you entertained any such feeling towards me. It is something in the nature of a—er—revelation. You are quite right about leaving. Upon second thought, you are quite right about everything—right to keep your promise to Mrs. Toomey, since you gave it, right in your assertion that I am jealous. I am—but not in the sense in which you mean it.

  “I have been jealous of your dignity—of the respect that is due you. I have resented keenly any attempt to belittle you. That is why Disston was not welcome when he came to see you. It is the reason why I have not shown a pleasure I did not feel in his writing you!”

  “What do you mean?” she demanded.

  “I mean that he took you to that dance on a wager—a bet—to prove that he had the courage. To make a spectacle of you—for a story with which to regale his friends and laugh over.”

  She groped for the edge of the table.

  “Who told you?”

  “Toomey.”

  “I don’t believe it!”

  “Teeters verified it.”

  She sat down on the box from which she had risen.

  Unmoved by the blow he had dealt her, he continued:

  “You went to that dance against my wishes. What I expected to happen did happen, though you did not choose to tell me.

  “In my descent through various strata of society I have learned something of types and of human nature. In protesting, my only thought was to save you pain and disappointment—as in this instance—but experience, it seems, is the only teacher.

  “To-morrow I am going to Prouty, hire a herder to do your work and mortgage the outfit for half its value. It will be yours to use as it pleases you. You have earned it. Then,” with a gesture of finality, “the door is open to you. I want you to go where you will be happy.”

  With his usual deliberation of movement he put on his hat and went out to change the horses on picket, while Kate, stunned by the incredible crisis and the revelation concerning Hugh Disston, sat where she had dropped, staring at the agate-ware platter upon which the mutton grease was hardening.

  It was Mormon Joe’s invariable custom to help her with the dishes, but he did not return, so she arose, finally, and set the food away automatically, with the unseeing look of a hypnotic subject. She washed the dishes and dried them, trying to realize that she would be leaving this shortly—that there would be a last time in the immediate future. Her anger was lost in grief and amazement. There was something so implacable, so steel-like in Mormon Joe’s hardness that it did not occur to her to plead with him for forgiveness. And Hughie! She told herself that she could not turn to a traitor for help or sympathy. She blew out the lantern, tied the tent flap behind her, and ran through the fast falling snow to her wagon.

  Kate dozed towards morning after a sleepless night of wretchedness and was awakened by a horse’s whinny. Listening a moment, she sprang out and looked through the upper half of the door which opened on hinges. It was a white world that she saw, with some four inches of snow on the level, though the fall had ceased and it was colder. Mormon Joe, dressed warmly in leather “chaps” and sheep-lined coat, was riding away on one of the work horses.

  Never since they had been together had he gone to Prouty without some word of farewell—careless and casual, but unfailing. Nor could she remember when he had not turned in the saddle and waved at her before they lost sight of each other altogether. This time she waited vainly. He went without looking behind him, while she stood in the cold watching his peaked high-crowned hat bobbing through the giant sagebrush until it vanished. She had thrust out a hand to detain him—to call after him—and had withdrawn it. Her pride would not yet permit her to act as her heart prompted.

  * * *

  CHAPTER VIII

  THE MAN OF MYSTERY

  The cold that dried the new-fallen snow to powder sent the mercury down until it broke all records.

  While the improvident did, indeed, wonder what they had done with their summer wages, the thrifty contemplated their piles of wood and their winter vegetables with a strong feeling of satisfaction.

  Speaking colloquially, the Toomeys were “ga'nted considerably,” and in their usual state of semistarvation, but were in no immediate danger of freezing, owing to the fact that Toomey had succeeded in exchanging a mounted deer head for four tons of local coal mined from a “surface blossom,” which was being exploited by the Grit as one of the country’s resources.

  Vastly delighted with his bargain, until he discovered that he no sooner had arrived from the coalhouse with a bucket of coal than it was necessary for him to make a return trip with a bucket of ashes, Toomey now hurled anathemas upon the embryo coal baron. It was not empty verbiage when he asserted that, by spring, at the rate he was wearing a trench to the ash can, nothing but the top of his head would be visible.

  Mrs. Toomey, however, was grateful, for she felt that if there was one thing worse than being hungry it was being cold, so she stoked the kitchen range with a free hand and luxuriated in the warmth though it necessitated frequent trips outside in Toomey’s absence.

  Mrs. Toomey was returning from the ash can when she saw Mormon Joe going into his shack on the diagonal corner. She slackened her trot to a walk and watched while he unlocked the door, as though to read from his back something of his intentions in regard to the loan Kate had promised so confidently.

  It had seemed too good to be realized, so she had not told Jap of their meeting. She must not count on it, however—she had been disappointed so often that she dreaded the feeling. Ugh! What frightful cold! Mrs. Toomey ran into the house and forgot the incident.

  Later in the afternoon Toomey came home in high spirits.

  “They got in!” he announced. “I hardly thought they’d start, such weather. It’s twenty-five below now and getting colder.”

  “Who?” inquired Mrs. Toomey, absently.

  “The show people.”

  “Oh, did they?”

  “Might as well take it in, mightn’t we?” in feigned indifference.

  “How can we? It’s a dollar a ticket, isn’t it?”

  For answer he produced two strips of pink pasteboard from his waistcoat pocket.

  “Jap?” wonderingly.

  “Yes’m.”

  “Where did you get the money?”

  “I raised it.”

  “But how?”

  He hesitated, looking sheepish.

  “On the range.”

  Mrs. Toomey sat down weakly.

  “The cook stov
e! You mortgaged it?”

  “I had to give some security, hadn’t I?” he demanded with asperity.

  “Who to?”

  “Teeters. I got five dollars.”

  Mrs. Toomey found it convenient to go into the pantry until she had regained control of her feelings.

  It was twenty-eight degrees below zero when the doors of the Opera House were opened to permit the citizens of Prouty to hear the World Renowned Swiss Bell Ringers and Yodlers.

  The weather proved to be no deterrent to a community hungry for entertainment, and they swarmed from all directions, bundled to shapelessness, like Esquimaux headed for a central igloo. Infants in arms and the bedridden in wheel chairs, helped to fill the Opera House to its capacity, emptying the streets and houses for a time as completely as an exodus.

  While the best people, among whom were the Toomeys, occupied the several rows of reserved chairs and smiled tolerantly upon the efforts of the performers, and the proletariat stamped and whistled through its teeth and cracked peanuts, a man muffled to the ears by the high collar of a mackinaw coat, his face further concealed by the visor of a cap and ear-laps, rode to the top of the bench, drew rein and looked down upon the lights of Prouty.

  It was not a night one would select for traveling on horseback, unless his business was urgent. However, the man’s seemed to be of this nature, for he rode behind a large signboard which advertised the wares of the Prouty Emporium, dismounted, tied his horse to the prop that held the signboard upright, and with a show of haste took a coil of rope from his saddlehorn, an axe—the head of which was wrapped in gunny sacking—and a gun that swung in loops of saddle thongs at an angle to fit comfortably in the bend of the rider’s knee.

  He did not follow the road, but took a shorter cut straight down the steep side of the bench to the nearest alley, through which he ran as noiselessly as a coyote. He ran until he came to Main Street, which the alley bisected. In the shade of the Security State Bank he peered around the corner and listened. The street was deserted, not even a dog or prowling cat was visible the entire length of it.

  The man crossed it hurriedly, looking up and down and over his shoulder furtively, like some cautious animal which fears itself followed. In the protection of the alley he ran again until he came to Mormon Joe’s tar-paper shack setting square and ugly in the middle of the lot—an eyesore to the neighbors.

  The door was locked, but it was the work of a second to tear off the axe-head’s covering and pry it open. He stepped inside and closed the door quietly. Lighting the candle he took from his pocket, with his hand he shielded the flame from the one window, and looked about with a glance that took in every detail of the shack’s arrangement.

  A single iron bedstead extended into the room and a soogan and two blankets, thin and ragged from service, were heaped in the middle. There was no pillow, and a hard cotton pad constituted the mattress. An empty whiskey bottle stood by the head of the bed.

  A small pine table that at most might have cost a couple of dollars set against the wall by the window. The starch box that served as a chair was shoved under the table, and another box in the corner did duty as a washstand. There was a cake of soap and a tin basin upon the latter and a grimy hand towel hung close by from a spike driven into the unplaned boards. Facing the door was a sheet-iron camp stove, rusty and overflowing with ashes. The rickety, ill-fitting pipe was secured with the inevitable baling wire.

  After his swift survey, the man stepped to the washstand and let a few drops of melted candle grease drip upon one corner. In this he held the candle until it hardened in place. Then he went to work with the businesslike swiftness of skill and experience.

  He laid the shotgun on the stove and untwisted the baling wire which held the stovepipe, giving a grunt of satisfaction when he found the wire was longer than he had anticipated. He stooped and gathered some kindling that was under the stove, singled out two or three sticks that suited him, and then he laid them across the top of the stove and rested the barrel of the shotgun upon them. After all was complete, he stepped back against the door and squinted, gauging the elevation. It was to his satisfaction. With supple wrist and quick movements he uncoiled the small cotton rope he had brought with him and took two turns around the trigger of the shotgun. The rest of the rope he passed around a rod in the foot of the bed, which gave a direct back pull on the trigger, and thence he carried it over the upper hinge of the door, which opened inward, and finally down to the knob and back again to the foot of the bed, where he secured it.

  All was executed without a superfluous movement, and a panther could not have been more noiseless. But the man was breathing heavily when he had finished, as hard as though he had been exercising violently. He stepped to the washstand to blow out the candle, but before he did so he gave a final rapid survey of his work. His eyes glittered with sinister satisfaction. Evidently it suited him. He held his numbed fingers over the flame of the candle to warm them before he extinguished it.

  Reaching for the axe, he pried the window from its casing and set it quietly against the wall. He leaned the axe beside it and cursed under his breath when he tore a button from his mackinaw as he squeezed through the narrow opening. He dropped lightly to the ground and, crouching, ran for the alley. Where it crossed Main Street he stopped and listened, then peered around the corner of the White Hand Laundry. The street was still empty.

  While he stood, the sound of laughter came faintly from the Opera House. His heart was pounding under his mackinaw. On the other side of the street red and violet lights were shining through the frosted windows of “Doc” Fussel’s drug store. They looked warm and alluring, and he hesitated.

  A whinny pierced the stillness. It was his horse pawing with cold and impatience behind the signboard. He looked up at the indistinct black object on the bench, then back wistfully at the red and violet lights of the drug store. He had an intense desire to be near some one—some one who was going carelessly about his usual occupation.

  He crossed over and went into the little apothecary. The clerk was sitting on the back of his neck with his feet to a counter listening to the phonograph. “Has anybody here seen Kelly?” the machine screeched as the stranger entered. The clerk got up and went to the tobacco counter.

  “Hell of a night,” he observed, languidly.

  “Some chilly,” replied the stranger, indicating the brand he wanted.

  “It’ll be close to forty below before morning,” passing out the tobacco.

  “Everybody’s gone to the show but me,” plaintively.

  “A drug clerk might as well be a dog chained up in a kennel.” He stopped the phonograph and changed the needle.

  The stranger sat down beside the stove and placed his feet on the nickel railing. He left the collar of his mackinaw turned up, but untied his ear-laps. They looked rather foolish, dangling. His eyes were shadowed by the visor of his cap, so that really only his nose and cheek bones were visible. He glanced at the big clock on the wall frequently, and at intervals wiped the palms of his hands on the knees of his corduroy trousers as though to remove the moisture.

  The clerk was putting on “When the Springtime Comes, Gentle Annie” when the opening door let in a breath from the Arctic and a tall person wearing new overalls, a coat of fleece-lined canvas and a peak-crowned Stetson. He had a scarf wound about his neck after the fashion of sheepherders.

  “Hello, Bowers! Sober?” inquired the clerk, casually.

  “Kinda. What you playin’?”

  The clerk told him.

  “Got a piece called 'The Yella Rose o’ Texas Beats the Belles o’ Tennessee'?”

  “Never heard of it.”

  “Got—'Whur the Silver Colorady Wends its Way'?”

  The clerk replied in the negative.

  “Why don’t you git some good music?”

  “Why aren’t you at the show?”

  “Too contrary, I reckon. When I’m out in the hills I’m a hankerin’ to see somebody. When I git in town I wan
t to git away from everybody. I’m goin’ out to-morrow.”

  “Where you going?”

  “Hired out to Mormon Joe this evenin’.”

  The stranger stirred slightly.

  “I’ll look around a little—I don’t want nothin’,” said Bowers.

  “Help yourself,” replied the clerk, amiably, so the sheepherder stared at the baubles of cut glass on the shelf with a pleased expression and hung over the counter where the rings, watches and bracelets glittered. Then he examined a string of sponges carefully—sponges always interested him—they suggested picturesque scenery and adventures. He lingered over the toilet articles, sniffing the soaps and smelling at the bottles of perfume, trying those whose names he especially fancied on the end of his nose by rubbing it with the glass stopper. Then he sat down on the other side of the stove from the stranger and spelled out the queer names on the jars of drugs, speculating as to their contents and uses. He never yet had exhausted the possibilities of a drug store as a means of entertainment.

  A few minutes after ten the advance guard came from the Opera House—laughing. The World’s Greatest Prestidigitator had dropped the egg which he intended taking from the ear of Governor Sudds where it had broken into the ample lap of Mrs. Vernon Wentz of the White Hand Laundry. The cold, however, promptly put a quietus upon their merriment and they scuttled past, bent on getting out of it as quickly as possible.

  There were two customers for cigars, and the Toomeys. Toomey bought chocolates while Mrs. Toomey held her hands to the stove and shivered.

  “Come on, Dell.” Toomey’s glance as he took the candy included the stranger.

  “How’re you?” he nodded carelessly.

  They were to be the last, apparently, for when their footsteps died away the street again grew silent.

  The clerk planted his feet on the nickel railing and stared at the stove gloomily.

  “I’d have to keep this store open till half-past 'leven if I was dyin’,” he grumbled.

  “But you ain’t,” said Bowers, cheerfully.