The Fighting Shepherdess

by Lockhart, Caroline

  He smoked continuously, ate little, drank more coffee than ever she had known him to, and at night twisted and turned restlessly. She could not account for it, since, so far as she knew, there was no more to trouble him than the usual worry as to where their next meals were coming from.

  She surreptitiously studied his face wearing this new expression, and asked herself what would become of him with his violent temper, illogical reasoning and lack of balance, if it were not for the restraint of their association? Daily he became a stronger convert to the doctrine that the world owed every one—himself in particular—a living. It was one Mrs. Toomey did not hold with.

  She was thankful now that she had not told him of Kate and her promise and aroused hopes that would only have meant further disappointment, in view of developments. She knew, of course, the current gossip to the effect that the Security State Bank was about to foreclose and “set Kate afoot,” as the phrase was.

  Mrs. Toomey was truly sorry. Her liking for Kate was more genuine than any feeling of the kind she had had for another woman in a longer time than she could remember. Because, perhaps, the girl was so strikingly her opposite in every particular, she admired Kate exceedingly. The freshness of her candid friendly face, her general wholesomeness attracted her. She felt also the latent strength of character beneath the ingenuous surface, and the girl’s courage and self-reliance drew her in her own trembling uncertainty at this period, like a magnet.

  Mrs. Toomey’s impulses were more often kind than otherwise, and she would have liked nothing better than to have gone to Kate in this crisis, for she believed thoroughly in Kate’s innocence and guessed how much she needed a woman’s friendship. Mrs. Toomey had a rather active conscience and it troubled her.

  Naturally, she had not forgotten the “handshake agreement” which was to cement their friendship, but she argued that as Kate had not been able to fulfill her share of it she could not be expected to live up to her end, since it would mean opposition from Jap and no benefit to offset it. But in her heart Mrs. Toomey knew that it was not Jap she feared so much as the disapproval of Mrs. Abram Pantin.

  Toomey was brooding as usual, when footsteps were heard on the wooden sidewalk and a sharp rap followed.

  Mrs. Toomey was kneading bread on the kitchen table. Toomey had sold a pair of silver sugar tongs to a cowpuncher who opined that they were the very thing he had been looking for with which to eat oysters. The slipperiness of a raw oyster annoyed and embarrassed him, so he purchased the tongs gladly, and the sack of flour which resulted gave Mrs. Toomey a feeling of comparative security while it lasted.

  She called through the doorway:

  “You go, Jap. I’m busy.”

  He arose mechanically, opened the door, started back, then stepped out and closed it after him. At the kitchen table Mrs. Toomey saw the pantomime and was curious.

  The sound of voices raised in altercation followed. She recognized that of Teeters.

  “I tell you it is, Toomey! I’ll swear to it! I’d know it anywhere because of that peculiarity!”

  She could not catch the words of a second speaker, but the tone was equally aggressive and unfriendly.

  “Then prove it!” Toomey’s voice was shrill with excitement and defiant.

  They all lowered their voices abruptly as though they had been admonished, but the tones reached her, alternately threatening, argumentative, even pleading.

  What in the world was it all about, she wondered as she kneaded.

  For twenty minutes or more it lasted, and then Teeters’ voice came clearly, vibrating with contempt as well as purpose:

  “You got a yellow streak a yard wide and if it takes the rest of our natural life Lingle and me between us are goin’ to prove it!”

  Toomey’s answer was a jeering laugh of defiance, but when he came in and slammed the door behind him, she saw that his face was a sickly yellow and his shaking hand spilled the tobacco which he tried to pour upon a cigarette paper.

  She waited a moment for an explanation but, since it was not forthcoming, asked anxiously:

  “What’s the matter, Jap?”

  He did not hear her.

  She persisted:

  “Who was it?”

  “Teeters and Lingle.”

  “The deputy sheriff?”

  He nodded.

  She came a little further into the room with her flour-covered hands.

  “What did they want, Jap, that’s so upset you?”

  “I’m not upset!” He glared at her. His trembling hand could not touch the match to the cigarette paper.

  “It’s only right that you should tell me,” she said firmly.

  His eyes wavered.

  “It’s about the cook stove; Teeters wants to foreclose the mortgage.”

  She regarded him fixedly, turned, and started for the kitchen. She knew that he was lying.

  * * *

  CHAPTER XI

  KATE KEEPS HER PROMISE

  One of the things which Mrs. Abram Pantin’s worst enemy would have had to admit in her favor was that, strictly speaking, she was not a gossip, though this virtue was due as much to policy as to principle. It was her custom, however, to retain in her memory such morsels of common knowledge news as she accumulated during the day with which to entertain Mr. Pantin at evening dinner, for she observed that if his thoughts could be diverted from business it aided his digestion and he slept better, so she strove always to have some bright topic to introduce at the table.

  Having said a silent grace, Mr. Pantin inquired mechanically:

  “Will you have a chop, Prissy?” Since there were only two he did not use the plural.

  Mrs. Pantin looked across the fern centerpiece and made a mouth as she regarded the chop doubtfully.

  “I’m afraid I am eating too much meat lately.”

  Impaled on a tine of the fork, the chop was of a thinness to have enabled one to read through it without much difficulty.

  Mr. Pantin placed the chop on his own plate with some little alacrity.

  As his wife took one of the two dainty rolls concealed in a fringed napkin on the handsome silver bread tray, she endeavored to recall what it was in particular that she had saved to tell him. Oh, yes!

  “What do you think I heard to-day, Abram?”

  Abram was figuring interest and murmured absently:

  “I have no idea.”

  “They say,” in her sprightliest manner, “that that girl who killed her lover was refused credit at every store in Prouty. No one would trust her for even five dollars’ worth of groceries. Rather pathetic, isn’t it?”

  Mr. Pantin looked up quickly.

  “Who told you that?”

  “Everyone seems to know it.”

  Mr. Pantin frowned slightly.

  “If you mean Miss Prentice, I wouldn’t speak of her in that fashion, Priscilla.”

  “Mormon Joe’s Kate, then, if you like that better,” replied Mrs. Pantin, nettled.

  “Or 'Mormon Joe’s Kate,' either,” curtly.

  “So sorry; I didn’t know you knew her. Do you?”

  Mr. Pantin, who at his own table was given the privilege of taking bones in his fingers, pointed the chop at her.

  “Let me tell you something, Priscilla,” impressively. “Someone who is cleverer than I am has said that it is never safe to snub a pretty girl, because there is always the possibility that she’ll marry well and be able to retaliate. The same thing applies to one who has brains and is in earnest. I’ve made it a rule never to disparage the efforts of a person who had a definite purpose and works to attain it. It’s about a fifty-to-one shot that he’ll land—sometime.”

  Mrs. Pantin looked at her husband suspiciously. There were times when she had a notion that she had not explored the furthermost recesses of his nature—when she wondered if it had not ramifications and passages unknown to her. It had. It was Mr. Pantin’s dearest wish to come home boiling drunk with his hat smashed and his necktie hanging. He longed to kick the fr
ont door in and see his wife cower before him. The mental orgies in which he indulged while sitting placidly in the bow window automatically snapping his Romeo against the heel of his foot by a muscular contraction of the toes—would have curdled the blood of Priscilla Pantin.

  It was an interesting case of atavism. There was little doubt but that Mr. Pantin was a throwback to a sportive ancestor who had kept a pacer that could do a little better than 2.13 when conditions were favorable, but had rendered the family homeless by betting one hundred and sixty acres of black walnut timber against a horse that left him so far behind that the spectators urged him to throw something overboard to see if he was moving. All this was family history. Mr. Pantin fought against his predilection to gamble on anything or anybody as he would have fought an impulse to take human life.

  It did not escape Mrs. Pantin’s attention now that her husband had not answered her question as to whether he knew this notorious character. She repeated it.

  Mr. Pantin returned her searching look with one in which she could discern no guile, but his words irritated her still further.

  “I happened to be in the bank the other day when the girl was begging Wentz for time on the loan which Mormon Joe had contracted for running expenses,” Mr. Pantin explained with somewhat elaborate carelessness. “It wasn’t due, but they were putting the screws on her to serve their own purpose—or Neifkins’ purpose, rather. He wants her leases. It was a mistake of judgment, for she would have been a good borrower. Bankers are born, not made, anyway,” complacently, “and Vernon isn’t one of them.”

  “It seems to me his judgment in this instance is excellent,” Mrs. Pantin contradicted tartly. “It’s quite evident the business men of Prouty agree with him, since none of them will trust her.”

  “That doesn’t alter my opinion.” Mr. Pantin’s reply was calm. “It’s the person behind a loan that counts, anyway—not the security. If I had been in Wentz’s place when she said she could handle those sheep and meet the obligation when due, I should have believed her.” Again Mr. Pantin waved the chop for emphasis as he added with something very like enthusiasm: “She has honesty, strength of character, intelligence, personal magnetism—”

  “It appears to me that you made rather a close study, considering your limited opportunity,” Mrs. Pantin interrupted acidly.

  “She interested me.”

  “Evidently. But why this sudden change of opinion? I’ve heard you say a hundred times that all women are pinheads in business.”

  “Because she’s no ordinary woman,” Mr. Pantin defended. “The girl hasn’t struck her gait yet; her mind is immature, her character undeveloped; but if she doesn’t make good—” he paused while he fumbled for a convincing figure—“I’ll eat my panama!”

  Mrs. Pantin stared, both at the intemperate language and the rare display of animation. From a state of indifference, she felt distinct hostility toward Mormon Joe’s Kate stirring in her bosom. Mr. Pantin should have known better—he did know better—but he had felt reckless, somehow. To make amends he said ingratiatingly:

  “This mince pie is excellent, Prissy! Did you tell me there was no meat in it?”

  “Tomatoes,” frigidly. “It’s mock mincemeat.” A triumph in economy—an achievement! But Mr. Pantin’s flattery and conciliating smile were alike futile. Like many another overzealous partisan, he had made for Kate one more enemy.

  * * *

  It seemed aeons ago to Mrs. Toomey that Jap had appeared to her in the light of a handsome conquering daredevil, whose dash and confident personality made all things possible.

  The real test of Toomey’s character had come with his misfortunes. So long as he had money to spend and could ride, arrogant and high-handed, over the obsequious shopkeepers who benefited by his prodigality, and the poor ranchers who had not the means, or often the spirit, to oppose him, he continued to appear to her in the light in which she had first seen him. She adored his imperious temper, his erratic lavish generosity, his Quixotic standards, but with the reversal of their fortunes she was slowly brought to realize that money had provided most of the glamor which surrounded him. To be imperious with no one to obey makes for absurdity, and this trait, in his poverty, made him ridiculous, as did the extravagances in which he indulged at the expense of necessities.

  It was not often Mrs. Toomey would admit to herself the real cause of the heartsickness which filled her as she watched her husband deteriorate, but with every excuse known to a woman who loves she tried to bolster up her waning faith in the man and his ability. With an obstinacy which was pathetic, she endeavored to keep him on the pedestal where she had placed him. She listened with a fixed smile of interest to the extraordinary schemes he outlined to her, sometimes hypnotizing herself into believing in them, until he returned with the exaggerated swagger which proclaimed another failure. Then she would join him in his denunciation of those who could not see the value of his plan and refused to aid him.

  But the conviction that Jap had not the qualities to win material success did not hurt as did the knowledge that he was not too brave to lie, too proud to borrow from those he considered his social inferiors and with no notion of repaying the obligation, nor too honest to obtain money by any subterfuge that occurred to him.

  When she had attempted to borrow money from Abram Pantin, the light esteem in which that astute person held her husband had been as painful as her disappointment, for it was her first definite knowledge of others’ estimate of him. Since then, with her eyes opened, she had come to see that Jap was regarded in Prouty as something between a joke and a pest.

  Mrs. Toomey was thinking of Mormon Joe’s murder one morning while she dusted, and of Kate—conjecturing as to what would become of the girl when the bank foreclosed and she lost everything. She sighed as, with the corner of her apron, she removed a smudge from her nose before the mirror. Wasn’t there anything in the world any more but trouble for people who had no money?

  She glanced casually out of the window and stiffened in something very like horror.

  Kate was in front, tying her horse to a transplanted cottonwood sapling. What if Prissy Pantin should see her! She was visibly agitated, when she opened the door for Kate—stammering a welcome that had a doubtful ring, but Kate did not appear to notice. She looked older, Mrs. Toomey thought, in swift scrutiny. Yes, she had suffered terribly. Her heart went out to the girl, even while she glanced furtively through the windows to see who of the neighbors might be looking.

  While Mrs. Toomey wondered what excuse she could make for Kate’s presence, if anyone called, she indicated a chair and said nervously:

  “I’ve been hoping to see you and tell you how sorry I am for all that’s happened.”

  “I’ve been disappointed that you haven’t,” Kate replied, simply, “for your friendship has loomed like a mountain to me in my trouble.”

  She was still counting on it! Mrs. Toomey got out a frightened:

  “Really?”

  “When we shook hands on it up there in the draw,” Kate went on, sadly, “I didn’t dream how soon or how much I should need you. And women do need each other in trouble, don’t they?” earnestly.

  Mrs. Toomey nervously tucked in her “scolding locks.”

  “Er—of course,” constrainedly. Her mind was rambling from Jap to Mrs. Pantin and the vigilant neighbors.

  Kate rose suddenly, and crossing the room stooped to lay her gloved hand upon Mrs. Toomey’s thin shoulders. Looking into her eyes she demanded:

  “You don’t believe I did it, do you?”

  This was a question Mrs. Toomey could answer truthfully and she did, with convincing sincerity:

  “No, I don’t!”

  “I knew it!” There was a joyous note in Kate’s voice, and gratitude. “I was sure you were true-blue, and I know I’m going to love you!”

  Lifting the woman to her feet, with an arm about her shoulders, Kate kissed her impulsively. She was so slight, so crushable, that Kate experienced a sense of shock as
one does when he feels the bones of a little bird through its feathers. Her frailty appealed to something within the girl that was like masculine chivalry, awakening a desire that was keener than ever to protect and help her, while, as before, Mrs. Toomey felt the magnetism of the younger woman’s health and strength and courage. Nevertheless, she was panic-stricken at what Kate was taking for granted and her quick little mind was darting about like some frightened rodent from corner to corner, thinking how she was going to disentangle herself from the situation with the minimum of hurt to the girl’s feelings.

  There was a suggestion of her former buoyancy in Kate’s manner. Her eyes had something of their old-time sparkle as she reached inside the blousing front of her flannel shirt and laid in Mrs. Toomey’s hand a packet of crisp banknotes secured by bands of elastic.

  “You see—I’ve kept my promise.”

  Mrs. Toomey stood motionless, staring.

  “Why! Where did you get it?” when speech came back to her.

  “That’s my secret,” Kate replied, gently. “But it’s yours to use as long as you need it.”

  Without warning, Mrs. Toomey burst into tears.

  “I c-can’t help it!” she sobbed on Kate’s shoulder. “It’s so—unexpected.”

  Relief was paramount to all other emotions, but she vowed as she wept that she would show her gratitude, and would be Kate’s friend as she had promised, and she would—the feeling of the money in her hand gave her courage—defy Prissy Pantin, if necessary.

  Kate and Mrs. Toomey separated with the warm handclasp of friendship.

  Mrs. Toomey waited in a tremulous state of eagerness for her husband’s return. It was months since she had known such a feeling of relief; it was as though years suddenly had dropped from her. She went about the house humming, trying to decide upon the most effective way of surprising him, and planning how she would spend the money to derive the most good from it. At intervals she opened the top drawer of the bureau and looked at the banknotes to be sure she was not dreaming. They would pay a little on their most urgent bills, to show their good intentions, and then buy supplies enough to render impossible any such experiences as those they had undergone recently. A goodly portion would be kept for emergencies until Jap got into something.