On the instant her chin went haughtily in the air and there was a dangerous sparkle in her eyes as she replied:
“You are presumptuous, Mr. Sprudell. Your manner is offensive—very.”
He ignored her resentment and laid his hand none too gently upon her arm, as though he would have turned her forcibly toward the door. The action, the familiarity it implied, incensed her.
“Take your hand away,” Helen said quietly but tensely.
“I tell you not to talk to him!” But he obeyed.
“I intend to hear what Mr. Burt has to say.”
“You mean that?”
“I do.”
“Then you’ll listen alone,” he threatened. “You can get home the best you can.”
“Suit yourself about that,” Helen replied coolly. “There are taxicabs at the door and the cars run every six minutes.”
Bruce contributed cordially:
“Sprudell, you just dust along whenever you get ready.”
“You’ll repent this—both of you!” His voice shook with chagrin and fury—“I’ll see to that if it takes the rest of my life and my last dollar.”
Bruce warned in mock solicitude:
“Don’t excite yourself, it’s bad for your heart; I can tell that from your color.”
Sprudell’s answer was a malignant look from one to the other.
“On the square,” said Bruce ruefully when the last turn of the revolving door had shut Sprudell into the street, “I hadn’t an idea of stirring up anything like this when I spoke to you.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Helen answered coldly. “It will disabuse his mind of the notion that he has any claim on me.”
“It did look as though he wanted to give that impression.”
Bruce was absurdly pleased to find himself alone with her, but Helen’s eyes did not soften and her voice was distant as she said, moving toward the nearest parlor:
“If you have anything to say to me, please be brief. I must be going.”
“I want to know what Sprudell has told you that you should look at me almost as if you hated me?”
“How else would I look at the man who murdered my brother in cold-blood.”
He stared at her blankly in an astonishment too genuine to be feigned.
“I murdered your brother in cold-blood! You are Slim’s sister, then?”
“I’m Frederic Naudain’s sister, if that’s what you mean—his half-sister.”
The light of understanding grew slowly on Bruce’s face. The revelation made many things plain. The difference in the name accounted for his inability to trace her. It was easy enough now to account for Sprudell’s violent opposition to their meeting.
“He told you that it was a premeditated murder?”
Watching him closely Helen saw that his tanned skin changed color.
She nodded.
“Why, I came East on purpose to find you!” he exclaimed. “To make amends—”
“Amends!” she interrupted, and the cold scorn in her voice made the perspiration start out on his forehead.
“Yes, amends,” he reiterated. “I was to blame in a way, but not entirely. Don’t be any harder on me than you can help; it’s not any easy thing to talk about to—his sister.”
She did not make it easier, but sat waiting in silence while he hesitated. He was wondering how he could tell her so she would understand, how not to shock her with the grewsome details of the story. Through the wide archway with its draperies of gold thread and royal purple velvet a procession of bare-shouldered, exquisitely dressed women was passing and Bruce became suddenly conscious of the music of the distant orchestra, of the faint odor of flowers and perfume, of everything about him that stood for culture and civilization. How at the antipodes was the picture he was seeing! For the moment it seemed as though that lonely, primitive life on the river must be only a memory of some previous existence. Then the unforgettable scene in the cabin came back vividly and he almost shuddered, for he felt again the warm gush over his hand and saw plainly the snarling madman striking, kicking, while he fought to save him. He had meant to tell her delicately and instead he blurted it out brutally.
“I made him mad and he went crazy. He came at me with the axe and I threw him over my shoulder. He fell on the blade and cut an artery. Slim bled to death on the floor of the cabin.”
“Ugh—how horrible!” Bruce imagined she shrank from him. “But why did you quarrel—what started it?”
Bruce hesitated; it sounded so petty—so ridiculous. He thought of the two old partners he had known who had three bloody fights over the most desirable place to hang a haunch of venison. “Salt,” he finally forced himself to answer.
“Sprudell told me that and I could not believe it.”
She looked at him incredulously.
“We were down to a handful, and I fed it to a band of mountain-sheep that came to the cabin. I had no business to do it.”
“You said that he went crazy—do you mean actually?”
“Actually—a maniac—raving.”
“Then why do you blame yourself so much?”
“Because I should have pulled out when I saw how things were going. We had quarrelled before over trifles and I knew he would be furious. You can’t blame me more than I blame myself, Miss Dunbar. I suppose you think they should hang me?” There was a pleading note in the question and he wiped the perspiration from his forehead while he waited for her answer.
She did not reply immediately but when she finally looked him squarely in the eyes and said quietly: “No, because I believe you,” Bruce thought his heart turned over with relief and joy.
“What you have told me shows merely that he had not changed—that my hopes for him were quite without foundation. Even as a child he had a disposition—a temper, that was little short of diabolical. We have all been the victims of it. I should not want to see another. He disgraced and ruined us financially. Now,” Helen said rising, “you must go back to your friends. I’ll take a taxicab home—”
“Please let me go with you. They can wait for me—or something,” he added vaguely. The thought of losing sight of her frightened him.
She shook her head.
“No—no; I won’t listen to it.” She gave him her hand: “I must thank you for sending back my letter and picture.”
“Sprudell gave them to you!”
“Yes, and the money.”
“Money?”
“Why, yes.” She looked at him inquiringly.
Just in time Bruce caught and stopped a grin that was appearing at the thought that Sprudell had had to “dig up” the money he had returned to him out of his own pocket.
“That’s so,” he agreed. “I had forgotten. But Miss Dunbar,” eagerly. “I must see you on business. Your brother left property that may be valuable.”
“Property? Mr. Sprudell did not mention it.”
“I suppose it slipped his mind,” Bruce answered drily. “You’ll give me your address and let me come to-morrow?”
“Will you mind coming early—at nine in the morning?”
“Mind! I’ll be sitting on the steps at sunrise if you say so,” Bruce answered heartily.
How young she looked—how like the little girl of the picture when she laughed! Bruce looked at his watch as he returned to his party to see how many hours it would be before nine in the morning.
* * *
The shabbiness of the hotel where Helen lived surprised him. It was worse than his own. She had looked so exceptionally well-dressed the previous evening he had supposed that what she called ruin was comparative affluence, for Bruce had not yet learned that clothes are unsafe standards by which to judge the resources of city folks, just as on the plains and in the mountains faded overalls and a ragged shirt are equally untrustworthy guides to a man’s financial rating. And the musty odor that met him in the gloomy hallway—he felt how she must loathe it. He had wondered at the early hour she’d set but when Helen came down she quickly explained.
“I must leave here at half past and if you have not finished what you have to say I thought you might walk with me to the office.”
“The office?” It shocked him that she should have to go to an office, that she had hours, that anybody should have a claim upon her time by paying for it.
Quizzically:
“Did you think I was an heiress!”
“Last night you looked as though you might be.” His tone told her of his admiration.
“Relics of past greatness,” Helen replied smiling. “A remodelled gown that was my mother’s. One good street suit at a time and a blouse or two is the best I can do. I am merely a wonderful bluff in the evening.”
Bruce felt that it was a sore spot although she was smiling, and he could not help being glad, for it meant she needed him. If he had found her in prosperous circumstances the success or failure of the placer would have meant very little to her. He must succeed, he told himself exuberantly; his incentive now was to make her life happier and easier.
“If everything goes this summer as I hope—and expect—” he said slowly, “you need not be a ‘bluff’ at any hour of the day.”
Her eyes widened.
“What do you mean?”
Then Bruce described the ground that he and Slim had located. He told of his confidence in it, of his efforts to raise the money to develop it, and the means by which he had accomplished it. Encouraged by her intelligent interest he talked with eager enthusiasm of his plans for working it, describing mercury traps, and undercurrents, discussing the comparative merits of pole and block, Hungarian and caribou rifles. Once he was well started it seemed to him that he must have been saving up things all his life to tell to this girl. He talked almost breathlessly as though he had much to say and an appallingly short time to say it in.
He told her about his friend, Old Felix, and about the “sassy” blue-jays and the darting kingfisher that nested in the cut-bank where he worked, of the bush-birds that shared his sour-dough bread. He tried to picture to her the black bear lumbering over the river bowlders to the service berry bush across the river, where he stood on his hind legs, cramming his mouth and watching over his shoulder, looking like a funny little man in baggy trousers. He told her of his hero, the great Agassiz, of his mother, of whom even yet he could not speak without a break in his voice, and of his father, as he remembered him, harsh, silent, interested only in his cattle.
It dawned upon Bruce suddenly that he had been talking about himself—babbling for nearly an hour.
“Why haven’t you stopped me?” he demanded, pausing in the middle of a sentence and coloring to his hair. “I’ve been prattling like an old soldier, telling war stories in a Home. What’s got into me?”
Helen laughed aloud at his dismay.
“Honest,” he assured her ruefully, “I never broke out like this before. And the worst of it is that I know with the least encouragement from you I’ll start again. I never wanted to talk so much in my life. I’m ransacking my brain this very minute to see if there’s anything else I know that I haven’t told you. Oh, yes, there is,” he exclaimed putting his hand inside his coat, “there’s some more money coming to you from Slim—I forgot to tell you. It isn’t a great deal but—” he laid in her hand the bank-notes Sprudell had been obliged to give him in Bartlesville after having denied finding her.
Helen looked from the money to Bruce in surprised inquiry:
“But Mr. Sprudell has already given me what Freddie left.”
“Oh, this is another matter—a collection I made for him after Sprudell left,” he replied glibly. It was considerable satisfaction to think that Sprudell had had to pay for his perfidy and she would benefit by it.
The last thing that Helen had expected to do was to cry, but the money meant so much to her just then; her relief was so great that the tears welled into her eyes. She bit her lip hard but they kept coming, and, mortified at such an exhibition, she laid her arm on the back of the worn plush sofa and hid her face.
Tears, however embarrassing, have a way of breaking down barriers and Bruce impulsively took in his the other hand that lay in her lap.
“What is it, Miss Dunbar? Won’t you tell me? If you only knew how proud and happy I should be to have you talk to me frankly. You can’t imagine how I’ve looked forward to being allowed to do something for you. It means everything to me—far more than to you.”
Bruce remembered having seen his mother cry, through homesickness and loneliness, softly, uncomplainingly, as she went about her work in the ugly frame house back there on the bleak prairie. And he remembered the roars of rage in which Peroxide Louise had voiced her jealousy. But he had seen few women cry, and now he was so sorry for her that it hurt him—he felt as though someone had laid a hand upon his heart and squeezed it.
“It’s relief, I suppose,” she said brokenly. “It’s disgusting that money should be so important.”
“And do you need it so badly?” Bruce asked gravely.
“I need it if I am to go on living.” And she told him of the doctor’s warning.
“You must go away at once.” Brace’s voice was sharp with anxiety. “I wish you could come West,” he added wistfully.
“I’d love it, but it is out of the question; it’s too far—too expensive.”
Bruce’s black eyebrows came together. His poverty had never seemed so galling, so humiliating.
“I must go.” She got up quickly. “I’m late. Do my eyes look very badly?”
“They’re all right.” He turned abruptly for his hat. He knew that if he looked an instant longer he should kiss her! What was the matter with him anyhow? he asked himself for the second time. Was he getting maudlin? Not content with talking a strange girl to death he would put on the finishing touch by kissing her. It was high time he was getting back to the mountains!
He walked with her to the office, wishing with all his heart that the blocks were each a mile long, and in his fear lest he miss a single word she had to say he pushed divers pedestrians out of his way with so little ceremony that only his size saved him from unpleasant consequences.
It was incredible and absurd that he should find it so hard to say good-bye to a girl he had just met, but when they reached the steps it was not until he had exhausted every infantile excuse he could think of for detaining her just an instant longer that he finally said reluctantly:
“I suppose you must go, but—” he hesitated; it seemed a tremendous thing to ask of her because it meant so much to him—“I’d like to write to you if you’d answer my letter. Pardners always write to each other, you know.” He was smiling, but Helen was almost startled by the wistful earnestness in his eyes. “I’d like to know how it feels,” he added, “to draw something in the mail besides a mail-order catalogue—to have something to look forward to.”
“To be sure—we are partners, aren’t we?”
“I’ve had a good many but I never had one I liked better.” Bruce replied with such fervor that Helen felt herself coloring.
“I don’t like being a silent partner,” she returned lightly. “I wish I could do my share. I’m even afraid to say I’ll pray for your success for, to the present, I’ve never made a prayer that’s been answered. But,” and she sobered, “I want to tell you I do believe in you. It’s like a fairy tale—too wonderful and good to be true—but I’m going to bank on it and whatever happens now—no matter how disagreeable—I shall be telling myself that it is of no importance for in a few months my hard times will all be done.”
Bruce took the hand she gave him and looked deep into her eyes.
“I’ll try—with all my might,” he said huskily, and in his heart the simple promise was a vow.
He watched her as she ran up the steps and disappeared inside the wide doors of the office building—resenting again the thought that she had “hours”—that she had to work for pay. If all went well—if there were no accidents or miscalculations—he should be able to see her again by—certainly by October. W
hat a long time half a year was when a person came to think of it! What a lot of hours there were in six months! Bruce sighed as he turned away.
He looked up to meet the vacant gaze of a nondescript person lounging on the curbing. It was the fourth or fifth time that morning he thought he had seen that same blank face.
“Is this town full of twins and triplets in battered derbies?” Bruce asked himself, eying the idler sharply as he passed, “or is that hombre tagging me around?”
* * *
XVII
A Practical Man
Bruce’s thoughts were a jumble of dynamos and motors, direct and alternating currents, volts and amperes, when James J. Jennings’ papier-mache suitcase hit him in the shins in the lobby of a hotel which was headquarters for mining men in the somnolent city on the Pacific coast.
Jennings promptly dropped the suitcase and thrust out a hand which still had ground into the knuckles oil and smudge acquired while helping put up a power-plant in Alaska.
“Where did you come from—what are you doing here?” Bruce had seen him last in Alberta.
“Been up in the North Country, but”—James lifted a remarkable upper lip in a shy grin of ecstasy—“I aims to git married and stay in the States.”
“Shoo—you don’t say so!” Bruce exclaimed, properly surprised and congratulatory.
“Yep,” he beamed, then dropped, as he added mournfully, “So fur I’ve had awful bad luck with my wives; they allus die or quit me.”
Bruce ventured the hope that his luck might change with this, his last—and as Jennings explained—fifth venture.
“I kinda think it will,” the prospective bridegroom declared hopefully. “Bertha looks—er—lasty. But what about you?—I never knew you’d even saw a city.”
“I’m a sure enough Sourdough,” Bruce admitted, “but I did stray out of the timber. Register, and I’ll tell you all about it—maybe you can help me.”
Jennings, Bruce commented mentally as he watched him walk to the desk, was not exactly the person he would have singled out as the hero of five serious romances. Even five years before, in the Kootnai country, Jennings had been no matinee idol and Time had not been lenient.
The Man from the Bitter Roots Page 16
