A bell-boy stood holding a rare scarlet azalea in full flower. In its jardiniere of Satsuma ware it was all his arms could compass, and a second boy followed with the costly Japanese stand that accompanied it. There was no need to read the name on the card tied conspicuously among the stiff leaves. The gift was from Frederic Morganstein. It had arrived, doubtless, on an Oriental steamer that had docked the previous evening while the Aquila made her landing. Mrs. Weatherbee had the plant placed where the sunshine reached it through the window of the alcove, and it made a gay showing against the subdued gray of the walls. Involuntarily her glance moved from it to the harbor, seeking the Minnesota, now under full headway off Magnolia Bluff. It was as though, in that moment, her imagination out-traveled the powerful liner, and she saw before her that alluring country set on the farther rim of the Pacific.
The steamship passed from sight; she turned from the window. The boy had taken away the breakfast tray and had left a box on the table. It was modest, violet-colored, with Hollywood Gardens stamped on the cover, but she hurried with an incredulous expectancy to open it. For an instant the perfume seemed to envelop her, then she lifted the green waxed paper, and a soft radiance shone in her face. It was only a corsage bouquet, but the violets, arranged with a few fronds of maidenhair, were delightfully fresh. She took them out carefully. For a moment she held them to her cheek. But she did not fasten them on her gown; instead she filled a cut-glass bowl with water and set them at the open casement in the shade. A cloud of city smoke, driving low, obscured the Aquila; the freighter bound for Prince William Sound rounded Magnolia Bluff, but clearly she had forgotten these interests; she stood looking the other way, through the southeast window, where Rainier rose in solitary splendor. A subdued exhilaration possessed her. Did she not in imagination travel back over the Cascades to that road to Wenatchee, where, rising to the divide, they had come unexpectedly on that far view of the one mountain? Then her glance fell again to the violets, and she lifted the bowl, leaning her cheek, her forehead, to feel the touch of the cool petals and inhale their fragrance.
She had not looked for Tisdale's card, but presently, in disposing of the florist's box, she found it tucked in the folds of waxed paper. He had written across it, not very legibly, with his left hand,
“I want to beg your pardon for that mistake I made. I know you never will put any man in David Weatherbee's place. You are going to think too much of him. When you are ready to make his project your life work, let me know.”
She was a long time reading the note, going back to the beginning more than once to reconsider his meaning. And her exhilaration died; the weariness that made her suddenly older settled over her face. At last she tore the card slowly in pieces and dropped it in the box.
Her telephone rang, and she went over and took down the receiver. “Mrs. Weatherbee,” she said, and after a moment. “Yes. Please send him up.”
The bell-boy had left the door ajar, and she heard the elevator when it stopped at her floor; a quick, nervous step sounded along the corridor, the door swung wider to some draught, and a short, wiry man, with a weather-beaten face, paused on the threshold. “I am Lucky Banks,” he said simply, taking off his hat. “Mr. Tisdale asked me to see you got this bundle.”
Involuntarily her glance rested on the hand that held the package in the curve of his arm, and she suppressed a shiver; the dread that the young and physically perfect always betray at the sight of deformity sprang to her eyes. “Thank you for troubling,” she said, then, having taken the bundle, she waited to close the door.
But Banks was in no hurry. “It wasn't any trouble, my, no,” he replied. “I was glad of the chance. It's a little bunch of stuff that was Dave's. And likely I'd have come up, anyhow,” he added, “to inquire about a tract of land you own east of the mountains. I heard you talked of selling.”
Instantly her face brightened. “Yes. But come in, will you not?” She turned and placed the package on the table, and took one of two chairs near the alcove. The azalea was so near that its vivid flowers seemed to cast a reflection on her cheeks. “I presume you mean my tract in the Wenatchee Mountains?” she went on engagingly. “A few miles above Hesperides Vale.”
“Well, yes.” Banks seated himself on the edge of the other chair and held his hat so as to conceal the maimed hand. “I didn't know you had but one piece. It's up among the benches and takes in a kind of pocket. It's off the line of irrigation, but if the springs turn out what I expect, it ought to be worth sixty dollars an acre. And I want an option on the whole tract for ten thousand.”
“Ten thousand dollars?” Her voice fluted incredulously. “But I am afraid I don't understand exactly what an option is. Please explain, Mr. Banks.”
“Why, it's this way. I pay something down, say about three thousand, and you agree to let the sale rest for well, say six months, while I prospect the ground and see how it is likely to pan out. Afterwards, if I fail to buy, I naturally forfeit the bonus and all improvements.”
“I see,” she said slowly. “I see. But—you know it is wild land; you have been over the ground?”
“Not exactly, but I know the country, and I've talked with a man I can bank on, my, yes.”
“How soon”—she began, then, covering her eagerness, said: “I agree to your option, Mr. Banks.”
He laid his hat on the floor and took out his billbook, in which he found two printed blanks, filled according to his terms and ready for her signature. “I thought likely we could close the deal right up, ma'am, so's I could catch the Wenatchee train this afternoon. Your name goes here above mine.”
She took the paper and started buoyantly to the secretary, but the little man stopped her. “Read it over, read it over,” he cautioned. “All square, isn't it? And sign this duplicate, too. That's right. You're quite a business woman.”
He laughed his high, mirthless laugh, and, taking a check from the bill-book, added some bright gold pieces which he stacked on the table carefully beside the package he had brought. “There's your three thousand,” he said.
“It's out of a little bunch of dust I just turned in at the assay office.”
“Thank you.” She stood waiting while he folded his duplicate and put it away, but he did not rise to go, and after a moment, she went back to her chair by the scarlet azalea.
“They are doing really wonderful things in the Wenatchee Valley,” she said graciously, willing to make conversation in consideration of that little pile of clean, new coin that had come so opportunely, “the apples are marvelous. But”—and here her conscience spoke—“you understand this tract is unreclaimed desert land; you must do everything.”
“Yes, ma'am, I understand that; but what interests me most in that pocket is that it belonged to David Weatherbee. He mapped out a project of his own long before anybody dreamed of Hesperides Vale. He told me all about it; showed me the plans. That piece of ground got to be the garden spot of the whole earth to him; and I can't stand back and see it parcelled out to strangers.”
He paused. The color deepened a little in her face; she looked away through the west window. “I thought an awful lot of Dave,” he went on. “I'd ought to. Likely you don't know it—he wasn't the kind to talk much about himself—but I owe my life to him. It had commenced”—he held up the crippled hand and smiled grimly—“when Dave found me curled up under the snow, but he stayed, in the teeth of a blizzard, to see me through. And afterwards he lost time, weeks when hours counted, taking care of me,— operated when it came to it, like a regular doctor, my, yes. And when I got to crawling around again, I found he'd made me his partner.”
“He had made a discovery,” she asked, “while you were ill?”
“Yes, and you could bank on Dave it was a good one. He knew the gravel every time. But we had to sell; it was the men who bought us out that struck it rich. You see, Dave had heavy bills pressing him down here in the States; he never said just what he owed, but he had to have the money. And, my, when he was doing the bulk of the wor
k, I couldn't say much. It was so the next time and the next. We never could keep a claim long enough for the real clean-up. So, when I learned to use my hand, I cut loose to try it alone.”
He halted again, but she waited in silence with her face turned to the harbor. “I drifted into the Iditarod country,” he went on, “and was among the first to make a strike. It was the luckiest move I ever made, but I wish now I had stayed by Dave. I was only a few hundred miles away, but I never thought of his needing me. That was the trouble. He was always putting some other man on his feet, cheering the rest along, but not one of us ever thought of offering help to Dave Weatherbee. A fine, independent fellow like him.
“But I sure missed him,” he said. “Many a time there in the Iditarod I used to get to wishing we had that voice of his to take the edge off of things. Why, back on the Tanana I've seen it keep a whole camp heartened; and after he picked me up in that blizzard, when I was most done for and couldn't sleep, it seemed like his singing about kept me alive. Sometimes still nights I can hear those tunes yet. He knew a lot of 'em, but there was Carry Me Back to Old Virginny, and Heart Bowed Down, and You'll Remember Me. I always thought that song reminded him of some girl down here in the States. He never told me so, always put me off if I said a word, and none of us knew he was married then; but when he got to singing that tune, somehow he seemed to forget us boys and the camp and everything, and went trailing off after his voice, looking for somebody clear out of sight. I know now, since I've seen you, I was likely right.”
Still she was silent. But she moved a little and lifted her hand to the edge of the Satsuma jardiniere; her fingers closed on it in a tightening grip; she held her head high, but the lashes drooped over her eyes. Watching her, the miner's seamed face worked. After a moment he said: “The other night I paid seven dollars for a seat at the Metropolitan just to hear one of those first-class singers try that song. The scenery was all right. There were the boys and two or three women sitting around a camp-fire. And the fiddles got the tune fine, but my, my! I couldn't understand a word. Seemed like that fellow was talking darn Dago.”
At this she lifted her eyes. The shadow of a smile touched her mouth, though her lashes were wet. “And he was, Mr. Banks,” she said brightly. “He was. I know, because I was there.”
Banks picked up his hat and rose to his feet. “We were all mighty proud of Dave,” he said. “There wasn't one of us wouldn't have done his level best to reach him that last stampede; but I'm glad the chance came to Hollis Tisdale. There wasn't another man in Alaska could have done what he did. Yes, I'm mighty glad it was Tisdale who—found him.” He paused, holding his hat over the crippled hand, then added: “I suppose you never knew what it means to be cold.”
She rose. The smile had left her lips, and she stood looking into his withered face with wide eyes. “I mean so cold you don't care what happens. So cold you can lie down in your tracks, in a sixty-mile-an-hour blizzard and go to sleep.”
“No.” She shivered, and her voice was almost a whisper. “I am afraid not.”
“Then you can't begin to imagine what Tisdale did. You can't see him fighting his way through mountains, mushing ahead on the winter trail, breaking road for his worn-out huskies, alone day after day, with just poor Dave strapped to the sled.”
She put her hands to her ears. “Please, please don't say any more,” she begged. “I know—all—about it.”
“Even about the wolves?”
She dropped her hands, bracing herself a little on the table, and turned her face, looking, with that manner of one helplessly trapped, around the room.
“Even about the wolves?” he persisted.
“No. No,” she admitted at last.
He nodded. “I thought likely not. Hollis never told that. It goes against his grain to be made much of. He and Dave was cut out of the same block. But last night in the lobby to the hotel, I happened on a fellow that met him in the pass above Seward. There were four of 'em mushing through to some mines beyond the Susitna. It was snowing like blazes when they heard those wolves, and pretty soon Tisdale's dogs came streaking by through the smother. Then a gun fired. It kept up, with just time enough between shots to load, until they came up to him. He had stopped where a kind of small cave was scooped in the mountainside and put the sled in and turned the huskies loose. He had had the time, too, to make a fire in front of the hole, but when the boys got there, his wood was about burned out, and the wolves had got Dave's old husky, Jack. He had done his best to help hold off the pack. There's no telling how many Hollis killed; you see the rest fell on 'em soon's they dropped. It was hell. Nothing but hair and blood and bones churned into the snow far as you could see. Excuse me, ma'am; I guess it sounds a little rough. I'm more used to talking to men, my, yes. But the fellow who told me said Hollis knew well enough what was coming at the start, when he heard the first cry of the pack. He had a chance to make a roadhouse below the pass. Not one man in a thousand would have stayed by that sled.”
His withered face worked again. He moved to the door. “But Dave would have done it.” His voice took a higher pitch. “Yes, ma'am, Dave would have done the same for Hollis Tisdale. They was a team; my, yes.” He laughed his hard, mirthless laugh. “Well, so long,” he said.
She did not answer. Half-way down the corridor Banks looked back through the open door. She had not moved from the place where he had left her, though her face was turned to the window. A little farther on, while he waited for the elevator, he saw she had taken the package he had brought from Tisdale. She stood weighing it, undecided, in her hands, then drew out the table drawer and laid it in. She paused another instant in uncertainty and, closing the drawer, began to gather up the pieces of gold.
CHAPTER XIX. LUCKY BANKS AND THE PINK CHIFFON
On his way down from Vivian Court, the mining man's attention was caught by the great corner show window at Sedgewick-Wilson's, and instantly out of the display of handsome evening gowns his eyes singled a dancing frock of pink chiffon. “She always looked pretty,” he told himself, “but when she wore pink—my!” and he turned and found his way through the swinging doors. A little later the elevator had left him at the second floor. For a moment the mirrors bewildered him; they gave a sense of vastness, repeating the elegant apartment in every direction, and whichever way he glanced there was himself, seated on the edge of a chair, his square shoes set primly on the thick green carpet, his hat held stiffly over the crippled hand. Then an imposing young woman sauntered towards him. “Well,” she said severely, “what can I show you?”
Banks drew himself a little stiffer. “A dress,” he said abruptly in his highest key, “ready-made and pink.”
“What size?”
“Why”—the little man paused, and a blush that was nearer a shadow crossed his weather-worn face—“let me see. She's five feet seven and a quarter, in her shoes, and I judge a couple of inches wider through the shoulders than you.” His glance moved to another saleswoman, who came a step nearer and stood listening, frankly amused. “You look more her figure,” he added.
“Takes a thirty-eight.” The first saleswoman brought out a simple gown of pink veiling and laid it on the rack before Banks, and he leaned forward and took a fold between his thumb and forefinger, gravely feeling the texture.
“This is priced at twenty-five dollars,” she said. “How does that suit?”
Banks drew himself erect. “There's one down-stairs in the front window I like better,” he said.
The woman looked him shrewdly over. He had put his hat down, and her glance rested involuntarily on his maimed hand. “That pink chiffon is a hundred and twenty-five,” she explained.
“I can stand it; the price doesn't cut any figure, if it's what I want.” He paused, nodding a little aggressively and tapping the carpet with one square foot. “The lady it's for is a mighty good judge of cloth, and I want you to show me the best you've got.”
She glanced at the other saleswoman, but she had turned her back—her shoulders sho
ok—and she hurried to bring out a duplicate of the pink chiffon, which she arranged carefully on the rack. Bank's face softened; he reached to touch it with a sort of caress. “This is more like it,” he said; then, turning to the second girl, “but I can tell better if you'll put it on. You don't seem very busy,” he added quickly, “and I'll pay you your time.”
“Why, that's all right,” she answered and came to pick up the gown. “I'll be glad to; that's what I'm here for.”
She disappeared, laughing, into a dressing-room, and presently the first saleswoman excused herself to wait on new customers. The girl came back transformed. She had a handsome brunette face, with merry dark eyes and a great deal of black hair arranged in an elaborate end striking coiffure. “Isn't it swell?” she asked, walking leisurely before him. “But you'll have to fasten it for her; it hooks in the back.” Then she stopped; the fun went out of her face; her glance had fallen to his crippled hand. “I'm awfully sorry,” she stammered. “Of course she can manage it herself; we all have to sometimes.”
But the little man was rapt in the gown. “I'll take it!” he said tremulously. “It suits you great, but, my! She'll be a sight.”
“I'll bet she's pretty,” said the girl, still trying to make amends. “I'd like to see her in this chiffon. And I guess your party will be swell.”
Banks looked troubled. “It isn't a party; not exactly. You see she's been away from town quite a spell, and I thought likely she'd be a little short on clothes. I guess while I'm about it I may as well take along everything that naturally goes with this dress; shoes and socks and a hat and— flannels—”
He paused in uncertainty, for the girl had suddenly turned her back again. “I'd like to leave the rest to you,” he added. “Pick out the best; the whole outfit straight through.”
The Rim of the Desert Page 21
