On his part Harold did not care—he scarcely noticed these figures. Their whispers were as unimportant as the sound of aspen leaves, their footfalls as little to be heeded as those of rabbits on the pine needles of his camp. Before him sat the one human being in the world who could command him and she was absorbed in interest of his story. He grew to a tense, swift, eager narration as he went on. It pleased him to see her glow with interest and enthusiasm over the sights and sounds of the wild country. At last he ended.
"And so—I feel as though I could settle down—if I only had you. The trail got lonesome that last year—I didn't suppose it would—but it did. After three years of it I was glad to get back to my old friends, the Reynolds. I thought of you every day—but I didn't listen to hear you sing, because I thought you were King's wife—I didn't want to hear about you ever—but that's all past now—I am here and you are here. Will you go back to the mountains with me this time?"
She looked away. "Come and see me to-morrow, I must think of this. It is so hard to decide—our lives are so different——" She arose abruptly. "I must go now. Come into the concert, I'm going to sing." She glanced at him in a sad, half-smiling way. "I can't sing If I Were a Voice for you, but perhaps you'll like my aria better."
As they walked along the corridor together they formed a singularly handsome couple. He was clad in a well-worn but neat black suit, which he wore with grace. His big-rimmed black hat was crushed in his left hand. Mary was in pale blue which became her well, and on her softly rounded face a thoughtful smile rested. She always walked with uncommon dignity, and the eyes of many young men followed her. There was something about her companion not quite analyzable to her city friends—something alien and savage and admirable.
Entering the hall they found it well filled, but Mary secured a seat near the side door for Harold, and with a smile said, "I may not see you till to-morrow. Here is my address. Come up early. At three. I want a long talk with you."
Left to himself the plainsman looked around the hall which seemed a splendid and spacious one to him. It was filled with ladies in beautiful costumes, and with men in clawhammer coats. He had seen pictures of evening suits in the newspapers but never before had he been privileged to behold live men in them. The men seemed pale and puny for the most part. He had never before seen ladies in low-necked dresses and one just before him seemed shamelessly naked, and he gazed at her in astonishment. He was glad Mary had more modesty.
The concert interested him but did not move him. The songs were brilliant but without meaning. He waited with fierce impatience for Mary to come on, and during this wait he did an inordinate amount of thinking. A hundred new conceptions came into his besieged brain—engaging but by no means confusing him. He perceived that Mary was already as much a part of this high-colored life as she had been of the life of Marmion, quite at ease, certain of herself, and the cañon between them widened swiftly. She was infinitely further away from him than before. His cause now entirely hopeless, he had no right to ask any such sacrifice of her—even if she were ready to make it.
As she stepped out upon the stage in the glare of the light, she seemed as far from him as the roseate crown of snow on Sierra Blanca, and he shivered with a sort of awe. Her singing moved him less than her delicate beauty—but her voice and the pretty way she had of lifting her chin thrilled him just as when he sat in the little church at Marmion. The flowerlike texture of her skin and the exquisite grace of her hands plunged him into gloom.
He did not join in the generous applause which followed—he wondered if she would sing If I Were a Voice for him. He felt a numbness creeping over his limbs and he drew his breath like one in pain. Mary looked pale as a lily as she returned and stood waiting for the applause to die away. Then out over the tense audience, straight toward him, soared her voice quivering with emotion—she dared to sing the old song for him.
Suddenly all sense of material things passed from the wild heart of the plainsman. He saw only the singer who stood in the center of a white flame. A soft humming roar was in his ears like the falling of rain drops on the leaves of maple trees. He remembered the pale little girl in the prison—this was not Mary—but she had the voice and the spirit of Mary——
Then the song stopped! The singer went away—the white light went with her and the yellow glare of lamps came back. He heard the passionate applause—he saw Mary reappear and bow, a sad smile on her face—a smile which he alone could understand—her heart was full of pity for him. Then once more she withdrew, and staggering like one suffering from vertigo—the eagle-hearted youth went out of the hall and down the polished stairway like an outcast soul, descending from paradise into hell.
That radiant singer was not for such as Black Mose.
* * *
CHAPTER XX
A DARK DAY WITH A GLOWING SUNSET
The clerk at the station window was not the kindly young man who had received Harold's ticket for safe keeping. He knew nothing of it and poked around for several minutes before finding it. After glancing keenly at its date he threw it down and brusquely said:
"Time's out on this, my friend."
Harold looked at him sharply. "Oh, no, that can't be; it's a thirty-day trip."
The agent grew irritable. "I know it is; it was good to the fifteenth; this is the seventeenth; the ticket is worthless."
Harold took up the slip of paper and stared at it in bewilderment. The agent was right; he had overstayed the limit and was without five dollars in his pocket. He turned weak with a sudden sense of his helplessness and the desolation of his surroundings. He was like a man whose horse fails him on a desert. Taking a seat on a bench in a dark corner of the waiting room he gave himself up to a study of the situation. To be alone in the Needle Range was nothing to worry about, but to be alone and without money in a city scared him.
For two hours he sat there, his thoughts milling like a herd of restless cattle, turning aimlessly around and around in their tracks. He had foolishly neglected his opportunity to escape, and the mountains became each moment more beautiful as they swiftly receded into unattainable distance. He had expected to be riding back into the safe and splendid plains country, back to friends and familiar things, and had trusted to the joy of his return to soften the despair of his second failure to take Mary back with him.
It was a sorrowful thing to see the young eagle in somber dream, the man of unhesitating action becoming introspective. Floods of intent business men, gay young girls, and grizzled old farmers in groups of twos and threes, streamed by, dimly shadowed in his reflective eyes. All these people had purpose and reward in their lives; he alone was a stray, a tramp, with no one but old Kintuck to draw him to any particular spot or keep him there.
"I am outside of everything," he bitterly thought. "There is nothing for me."
Yes, there was Cora and there was little Pink—and then he thought of Mrs. Raimon, whose wealth and serenity of temper had a greater appeal than ever before. He knew perfectly well that a single word from him would bring her and her money to his rescue at once. But something arose in him which made the utterance of such a word impossible. As for Cora and the little one, they brought up a different emotion, and the thought of them at last aroused him to action.
"I'll get something to do and earn money enough to go back on," he finally said to himself; "that's all I'm fit for, just to work by the day for some other man; that's my size. I've failed in everything else I've ever undertaken. I've no business to interfere with a girl like Mary. She's too high class for a hobo like me; even if I had a ranch it would be playing it low down on a singer like her to ask her to go out there. It's no use; I'm worse than a failure—I'm in a hole, and the first thing I've got to do is to earn money enough to get out of it."
He was ashamed to go back to the little hotel to which he had said good-by with so much relief. It was too expensive for him, anyhow, and so he set to work to find one near by which came within his changed condition. He secured lodging at last in an o
ld wooden shack on a side street not far from the station, where rooms could be had for twenty cents a night—in advance. It was a wretched place, filled with cockroaches and other insects, but it was at least a hole in which he could den up for a few nights when sleep overcame him. Thus fortified, he wandered forth into the city, which was becoming each moment more remorseless and more menacing in his eyes.
Almost without knowing it, he found himself walking the broad pavement before the musical college wherein he found Mary. He had no definite hope of seeing her again, but that doorway was the one spot of light in all the weltering black chaos of the city, which now threatened him with hunger and cold. The awe and terror he felt were such as a city dweller would feel if left alone in a wild swamp filled with strange beasts and reptiles.
After an hour's aimless walking to and fro, he returned to his bed each night, still revolving every conceivable plan for earning money. His thought turned naturally to the handling of cattle at the stockyards, and one morning he set forth on his quest, only to meet with a great surprise. He found all the world changed to him when it became known that he was looking for a job. When he said to the office boys, "I want to see the man who has charge of hiring the hands," they told him to wait a while in a tone of voice which he had never before encountered. His blood flamed hot in an instant over their calm insolence. Eventually he found his way into a room where a surly fat man sat writing. He looked up over his shoulder and snarled out:
"Well, what is it? What do you want?"
Harold controlled himself and replied: "I want to get a job; I'm a cattleman from Colorado, and I'd like——"
"I don't care where you're from; we've got all the men we want. See Mr. White, don't come bothering me."
Harold put his hand on the man's shoulder with the gesture of an angry leopard, and a yellow glare filled his eyes, from which the brutal boss shrank as if from a flame.
With a powerful effort he pulled himself up short and said: "Treat the next cattleman that comes your way a little more decent or you'll get a part of your lung carried away. Good day."
He walked out with the old familiar numbness in his body and the red flashes wavering before his eyes. His brain was in tumult. The free man of the mountain had come in contact with "the tyrant of labor," and it was well for the big beast that Harold was for the moment without his gun.
Going back to his room he took out his revolver and loaded every chamber. In the set of his lips was menace to the next employer who dared to insult and degrade him.
In the days that followed he wandered over the city, with eyes that took note of every group of workmen. He could not bring himself to go back to the stockyards, there was danger of his becoming a murderer if he did; and as he approached the various bosses of the gangs of men in the street, he found himself again and again without the resolution to touch his hat and ask for a job. Once or twice he saw others quite as brutally rebuffed as he had been, and it was only by turning away that he kept himself from taking a hand in an encounter. Once or twice, when the overseer happened to be a decent and sociable fellow, Harold, edging near, caught his eye and was able to address him on terms of equality; but in each case the talk which followed brought out the fact that men were swarming for every place; indeed Harold could see this for himself. Ultimately he fell into the ranks of poor, shivering, hollow-cheeked fellows who stood around wistfully watching the excavation of cellars or hanging with pathetic intentness above the handling of great iron beams or pile drivers.
Work came to be a wonderful thing to possess. To put hand to a beam or a shovel seemed now a most desirable favor, for it meant not only warm food and security and shelter, but in his case it promised a return to the mountains which came each hour to seem the one desirable and splendid country in the world—so secure, so joyous, so shining, his heart ached with wistful love of it.
Each night he walked over to the Lake shore, past the college and up the viaduct, till he could look out over the mysterious, dim expanse of water. It reminded him of the plains, and helped him with its lonely sweep and its serene majesty of reflected stars. At night he dreamed of the cattle and of his old companions on the trail; once he was riding with Talfeather and his band in the West Elk Mountains; once he was riding up the looping, splendid incline of the Trout Lake Trail, seeing the clouds gather around old Lizard Head. At other times he was back at the Reynolds ranch taking supper while the cattle bawled, and through the open door the light of the setting sun fell.
He had written to Reynolds, asking him to buy his saddle and bridle (he couldn't bring himself to sell Kintuck) and each day he hoped for a reply. He had not stated his urgent need of money, but Reynolds would know. One by one every little trinket which he possessed went to pay his landlord for his room. He had a small nugget, which he had carried as a good-luck pocket-piece for many months; this he sold, and at last his revolvers went, and then he seemed helpless.
No word from Reynolds came, and the worst of it was, if the money did come it would not now be enough to carry him back. If he had been able to put it with the money from his nugget and revolvers it would at least have taken him to Denver. But now it was too late.
At last there came a day when he was at his last resource. He could find no work to do in the streets, and so, setting his teeth on his pride, he once more sought the stockyards and "Mr. White." It was a cold, rainy day, and he walked the entire distance. Weak as he was from insufficient food, bad air, and his depression, he could not afford to spend one cent for car fare.
White turned out to be a very decent fellow, who knew nothing whatever of Harold's encounter with the other man. He had no work for him, however. He seemed genuinely regretful, and said:
"As a matter of fact, I'm laying off men just now; you see the rush is pretty well over with."
Harold went over to the Great Western Hotel and hung about the barroom, hoping to meet some one he knew, even though there was a certain risk of being recognized as Black Mose. Swarms of cattlemen filled the hotel, but they were mainly from Texas and Oklahoma, and no familiar face met his searching eyes. He was now so desperately homesick that he meditated striking one of these prosperous-looking fellows for a pass back to the cattle country. But each time his pride stood in the way. It would be necessary to tell his story and yet conceal his name—which was a very difficult thing to do even if he had had nothing to cover up.
Late in the evening, faint with hunger, he started for his wretched bunk as a starving wolf returns, after an unsuccessful hunt, to his cold and cheerless den. His money was again reduced to a few coppers, and for a week he had allowed himself only a small roll three times a day. "My God! if I was only among the In-jins," he said savagely; "they wouldn't see a man starve, not while they had a sliver of meat to share with him; but these Easterners don't care; I'm no more to them than a snake or a horned toad."
The knowledge that Mary's heart would bleed with sorrow if she knew of his condition nerved him to make another desperate trial. "I'll try again to-morrow," he said through his set teeth.
On the way home his curious fatalism took a sudden turn, and a feeling that Reynolds' letter surely awaited him made his heart glow. It was impossible that he should actually be without a cent of money, and the thought filled his brain with an irrational exaltation which made him forget the slime in which his feet slipped. He planned to start on the limited train. "I'll go as far from this cursed hole of a city as I can," he said; "I'll get out where men don't eat each other to keep alive. He'll certainly send me twenty dollars. The silver on the bridle is worth that alone. Mebbe he'll understand I'm broke, and send me fifty."
He became so sure of this at last that he stepped into a saloon and bought a big glass of brandy to ward off a chill which he felt coming upon him, and helped himself to a lunch at the counter. When he arose his limbs felt weak and a singular numbness had spread over his whole body. He had never been drunk in his life—but he knew the brandy had produced this effect.
"I shouldn't
have taken it on an empty stomach," he muttered to himself as he dragged his heavy limbs out of the door.
When he came fairly to his senses again he was lying in his little room and the slatternly chambermaid was looking in at him.
"You aind seek alretty?" she asked.
"Go away," he said with a scowl; "you've bothered me too much."
"You peen trinken—aind it. Chim help you up de stairs last nide."
"What time is it?" he asked, with an effort to recall where he had been.
"Tweluf o'clock," she replied, still looking at him keenly, genuinely concerned about him.
"Go away. I must get up." As she went toward the door he sat up for a moment, but a terrible throbbing pain just back of his eyes threw him back upon his pillow as if he had met the blow of a fist. "Oh, I'm used up—I can't do it," he groaned, pressing his palms to his temples. "I'm burning up with fever."
The girl came back. "Dat's vat I tought. You dond look ride. Your mudder vouldn't known you since you gome here. Pedder you send for your folks alretty."
"Oh, go out—let me alone. Yes, I'll do it. I'll get up soon."
When the girl returned with the proprietor of the hotel Harold was far past rational speech. He was pounding furiously on the door, shouting, "Let me out!" When they tried to open the door they found it locked. The proprietor, a burly German, set his weight against it and tore the lock off.
Harold was dangerously quiet as he said: "You'd better let me out o' here. Them greasers are stampeding the cattle. It's a little trick of theirs."
"Dot's all right; you go back to bed; I'll look out for dot greaser pisness," said the landlord, who thought him drunk.
"You let me out or I'll break you in two," the determined man replied, and a tremendous struggle took place.
Ultimately Harold was vanquished, and Schmidt, piling his huge bulk on the worn-out body of the young man, held him until his notion changed.
The Eagles Heart Page 22
