The Girl at the Halfway House Part 28

"No, it's no use; it'd only let us in his field, an' maybe we couldn't hit the trail on the fur side. We got to follow the fence a way. May G.o.d everlastingly d.a.m.n any man that'll fence up the free range!--Whoa, Jack! Whoa, Bill! Git out o' here! Git up!"

They tried to parallel the fence, but the horses edged away from the wind continually, so that it was difficult to keep eye upon the infrequent posts of the meagre, straggling fence that this man had put upon the "public lands."

"Hold on, Sam!" cried Franklin. "Let me out."

"That's right, Cap," said Sam. "Git out an' go on ahead a way, then holler to me, so'st I kin come up to you. When we git around the corner we'll be all right."

But when they got around the corner they were not all right. At such times the mind of man is thrown off its balance, so that it does strange and irregular things. Both these men had agreed a moment ago that the wind should be on the right; now they disagreed, one thinking that Hanc.o.c.k's house was to the left, the other to the right, their ideas as to the direction of the Buford ranch being equally at variance. The horses decided it, breaking once again down wind, and striking a low-headed, sullen trot, as though they would out-march the storm. And so the two argued, and so they rode, until at last there was a lurch and a crash, and they found themselves in rough going, the sled half overturned, with no fence, no house, no landmark of any sort visible, and the snow drifting thicker than before. They sprang out and righted the sled, but the horses doggedly pulled on, plunging down and down; and they followed, clinging to reins and sled as best they might.

Either accident or the instinct of the animals had in some way taken them into rough, broken country, where they would find some shelter from the bitter level blast. They were soon at the bottom of a flat and narrow valley, and above them the wind roared and drove ever on a white blanket that sought to cover them in and under.

"We've lost the trail, but we done the best we could," said Sam doggedly, going to the heads of the horses, which looked questioningly back at him, their heads drooping, their breath freezing upon their coats in spiculae of white.

"Wait!" cried Franklin. "I know this hole! I've been here before.

The team's come here for shelter--"

"Oh, it's the White Woman breaks--why, sure!" cried Sam in return.

"Yes, that's where it is. We're less than half a mile from the house.

Wait, now, and let me think. I've got to figure this out a while."

"It's off there," said Sam, pointing across the _coulee_; "but we can't get there."

"Yes, we can, old man; yes, we can!" insisted Franklin. "I'll tell you. Let me think. Good G.o.d! why can't I think? Yes--see here, you go down the bottom of this gully to the mouth of the _coulee_, and then we turn to the left--no, it's to the right--and you bear up along the side of the draw till you get to the ridge, and then the house is right in front of you. Listen, now! The wind's north-west, and the house is west of the head of the _coulee_; so the mouth is east of us, and that brings the wind on the left cheek at the mouth of the _coulee_, and it comes more and more on the right cheek as we turn up the ridge; and it's on the front half of the right cheek when we face the house, I'm sure that's right--wait, I'll mark it out here in the snow. G.o.d! how cold it is! It must be right. Come on; come! We must try it, anyway."

"We may hit the house, Cap," said Sam calmly, "but if we miss it we'll go G.o.d knows where! Anyhow, I'm with you, an' if we don't turn up, we can't help it, an' we done our best."

"Come," cried Franklin once more. "Let's get to the mouth of the _coulee_. I know this place perfectly."

And so, advancing and calling, and waiting while Sam fought the stubborn horses with lash and rein out of the shelter which they coveted. Franklin led out of the flat coulee, into the wider draw, and edged up and up to the right, agonizedly repeating to himself, over and over again, the instructions he had laid down, and which the dizzy whirl of the snow mingled ever confusedly in his mind. At last they had the full gale again in their faces as they reached the level of the prairies, and cast loose for what they thought was west, fearfully, tremblingly, the voyage a quarter of a mile, the danger infinitely great; for beyond lay only the cruel plains and the bitter storm--this double norther of a woeful Christmastide.

Once again Providence aided them, by agency of brute instinct. One of the horses threw up its head and neighed, and then both pressed forward eagerly. The low moan of penned cattle came down the wind. They crashed into a fence of lath. They pa.s.sed its end--a broken, rattling end, that trailed and swept back and forth in the wind.

"It's the chicken corral," cried Sam, "an' it's down! They've been burnin'--"

"Go on! go on--hurry!" shouted Franklin, bending down his head so that the gale might not quite rob him of his breath, and Sam urged on the now willing horses.

They came to the sod barn, and here they left the team that had saved them, not pausing to take them from the harness. They crept to the low and white-banked wall in which showed two windows, glazed with frost.

They could not see the chimney plainly, but it carried no smell of smoke. The stairway leading down to the door of the dugout was missing, the excavation which held it was drifted full of snow, and the snow bore no track of human foot. All was white and silent. It might have been a vault far in the frozen northern sea.

Franklin burst open the door, and they both went in, half pausing.

There was that which might well give them pause. The icy breath of the outer air was also here. Heaps and tongues of snow lay across the floor. White ashes lay at the doors of both the stoves. The table was gone, the chairs were gone. The interior was nearly denuded, so that the abode lay like an abandoned house, drifted half full of dry, fine powdered snow. And even this snow upon the floors had no tracks upon its surface. There was no sign of life.

Awed, appalled, the two men stood, white and huge, in the middle of the abandoned room, listening for that which they scarce expected to hear.

Yet from one of the side rooms they caught a moan, a call, a supplication. Then from a door came a tall and white-faced figure with staring eyes, which held out its arms to the taller of the snow-shrouded forms and said: "Uncle, is it you? Have you come back?

We were so afraid!" From the room behind this figure came a voice sobbing, shouting, blessing the name of the Lord. So they knew that two were saved, and one was missing.

They pushed into the remaining room. "Auntie went away," said the tall and white-faced figure, shuddering and s.h.i.+vering. "She went away into her room. We could not find the fence any more. Uncle, is it you?

Come!" So they came to the bedside and saw Mrs. Buford lying covered with all her own clothing and much of that of Mary Ellen and Aunt Lucy, but with no robe; for the buffalo robes had all gone with the wagon, as was right, though unavailing. Under this covering, heaped up, though insufficient, lay Mrs. Buford, her face white and still and marble-cold. They found her with the picture of her husband clasped upon her breast.

"She went away!" sobbed Mary Ellen, leaning her head upon Franklin's shoulder and still under the hallucination of the fright and strain and suffering. She seemed scarce to understand that which lay before them, but continued to wander, babbling, s.h.i.+vering, as her arms lay on Franklin's shoulder. "We could not keep her warm," she said. "It has been very, very cold!"

CHAPTER x.x.xIV

THE ARTFULNESS OF SAM

In the early days of Ellisville society was alike in costume and custom, and as unsuspicious as it would have been intolerant of any idea of rank or cla.s.s. A "beef" was a beef, and worth eight dollars.

A man was a man, worth as much as his neighbour, and no more. Each man mended his own saddle. Thus society remained until there ensued that natural division which has been earlier mentioned, by which there became established two groups or cla.s.ses--the dwellers in the Cottage and the dwellers in the Stone Hotel. This was at first a matter of choice, and carried no idea of rank or cla.s.s distinction,

For a brief time there might have been found support for that ideally inaccurate statement of our Const.i.tution which holds that all men are born free and equal, ent.i.tled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. With all our might we belie this clause, though in the time of Ellisville it might have had some footing. That day has long since pa.s.sed.

The men of the Cottage Hotel continued big, brown, bespurred and behatted, yet it might have been observed that the tenantry of the Stone Hotel became gradually less sunburned and more immaculate.

Mustaches swept not so sunburned, blonde and wide, but became in the average darker and more trim. At the door of the dining-room there were hat racks, and in time they held "hard hats." The stamping of the social die had begun its work. Indeed, after a time there came to be in the great dining-room of the Stone Hotel little groups bounded by unseen but impa.s.sable lines. The bankers and the loan agents sat at the head of the hall, and to them drifted naturally the ministers, ever in search of pillars. Lawyers and doctors sat adjacent thereunto, and merchants not far away. There was yet no shrug at the artisan, yet the invisible hand gradually swept him apart. Across the great gulfs, on whose sh.o.r.es sat the dining-room tables, men and women looked and talked, but trod not as they came in to meat, each person knowing well his place. The day of the commercial traveller was not yet, and for these there was no special table, they being for the most part a.s.signed to the Red Belt; there being a certain portion of the hall where the tablecloths were checkered red and white. It was not good to be in the Red Belt.

Sam, the owner of the livery barn, had one table in the corner, where he invariably sat. His mode of entering the dining-room varied not with the pa.s.sing of the years. Appearing at the door, he cast a frightened look at the occupants who had preceded him, and in whose faces he could imagine nothing but critical censure of his own person.

Becoming aware of his hat, he made a dive and hung it up. Then he trod timidly through the door, with a certain side-draught in his step, yet withal an acceleration of speed which presently brought him almost at a run to his corner of refuge, where he dropped, red and with a gulp.

Often he mopped his brow with the unwonted napkin, but discovery in this act by the stern eye of Nora, the head waitress, caused him much agony and a sudden search for a handkerchief. When Nora stood at his chair, and repeated to him frostily the menu of the day, all the world went round to Sam, and he gained no idea of what was offered him. With much effort at nonchalance, he would again wipe his face, take up his fork for twiddling, and say always the same thing.

"Oh, I ain't very hungry; jes' bring me a little pie an' beef an'

coffee." And Nora, scornfully ignoring all this, then departed and brought him many things, setting them in array about his plate, and enabling him to eat as really he wished. Whether Sam knew that Nora would do this is a question which must remain unanswered, but it is certain that he never changed the form of his own "order."

Sam was a citizen. He had grown up with the town. He was, so to speak, one of the charter members of Ellisville, and thereby ent.i.tled to consideration. Moreover, his business was one of the most lucrative in the community, and he was beyond the clutching shallows and upon the easy flood of prosperity. No man could say that Sam owed him a dollar, nor could any man charge against him any act of perfidy, except such as might now and then be connected with the letting of a "right gentle"

horse. There was no reason why Sam might not look any man in the face, or any woman. But this latter Sam had never done. His admiration for Nora bade fair to remain a secret known of all but the one most interested. Daily Sam sat at the table and listened to Nora's icy tones. He caught his breath if the glitter of her gla.s.ses faced him, and went in a fever as he saw her sail across the floor. Daily he arose with the stern resolve that before the sun had set he would have told this woman of that which so oppressed him; yet each day, after he had dined, he stole furtively away to the hat rack and slouched across the street to his barn, gazing down at his feet with abas.e.m.e.nt on his soul. "I ain't afeard o' any hoss that ever stood up," said he to himself, "but I can't say a word to that Nory girl, no matter how I try!"

It was one of Sam's theories that some day he would go in late to dinner, when there was no one else left in the great hall. He would ask Nora to come to serve him. Then he would grasp her hand, there as she stood by him, and he would pour forth to her the story of his long unuttered love. And then--but beyond this Sam could not think. And never yet had he dared go into the dining hall and sit alone, though it was openly rumoured that such had been the ruse of Curly with the "littlest waiter girl," before Curly had gone north on the Wyoming trail.

Accident sometimes accomplishes that which design fails to compa.s.s.

One day Sam was detained with a customer much later than his usual dinner hour. Indeed, Sam had not been to dinner at the hotel for many days, a fact which the district physician at the railway might have explained. "Of course," said Sam, "I done the drivin', an' maybe that was why I got froze some more than Cap Franklin did, when we went down south that day." Frozen he had been, so that two of his fingers were now gone at the second joint, a part of his right ear was trimmed of unnecessary tissue, and his right cheek remained red and seared with the blister of the cold endured on that drive over the desolated land.

It was a crippled and still more timid Sam who, unwittingly very late, halted that day at the door of the dining-room and gazed within. At the door there came over him a wave of recollection. It seemed to him all at once that he was, by reason of his afflictions, set still further without the pale of any possible regard. He dodged to his table and sat down without a look at any of his neighbours. To him it seemed that Nora regarded him with yet more visible scornfulness.

Could he have sunk beneath the board he would have done so. Naught but hunger made him bold, for he had lived long at his barn on sardines, cheese, and crackers.

One by one the guests at the tables rose and left the room, and one by one the waiter girls followed them. The dining hour was nearly over.

The girls would go upstairs for a brief season of rest before changing their checked gingham mid-day uniform for the black gown and white ap.r.o.n which const.i.tuted the regalia for the evening meal, known, of course, as "supper." Sam, absorbed in his own misery and his own hunger, awoke with a start to find the great hall apparently quite deserted.

It is the curious faculty of some men (whereby scientists refer us to the ape) that they are able at will to work back and forth the scalp upon the skull. Yet other and perhaps fewer men retain the ability to work either or both ears, moving them back and forth voluntarily. It was Sam's solitary accomplishment that he could thus move his ears.

Only by this was he set apart and superior to other beings. You shall find of very many men but few able to do this thing. Moreover, if you be curious in philosophy, it shall come to be fixed in your memory that woman is disposed to love not one who is like to many, but to choose rather one who is distinct, superior, or more fit than his fellow-men; it being ever the intent of Nature that the most excellent shall attract, and thus survive.

As Sam sat alone at the table, his spoon rattling loud upon his plate in evidence of his mental disturbance, he absent-mindedly began to work back and forth his ears, perhaps solicitous to learn if his accomplishment had been impaired by the mishap which had caused him other loss. As he did this, he was intensely startled to hear behind him a burst of laughter, albeit laughter quickly smothered. He turned to see Nora, his idol, his adored, standing back of him, where she had slipped in with professional quiet and stood with professional etiquette, waiting for his departure, so that she might hale forth the dishes he had used. At this apparition, at this awful thought--for never in the history of man had Nora, the head waitress, been known to smile--the heart of Sam stopped forthwith in his bosom.

"I-I-I-I b-b-beg your--I-I d-didn't know you was there," he stammered in abject perturbation.

Nora sniffed. "I should think you might of knowed it," said she.

"I d-d-don't b-b-blame you fer laughin', M-M-Miss M-M-M-Markley," said Sam miserably.