The Freebooters of the Wilderness Part 28

"I beg your pardon," said Eleanor.

"Oh, I guess tha' wuz my fault," and a mouthful of gold teeth above an ash colored V of neck and below the most wonderful straw stack of wheat colored hair simpered up at Eleanor from beneath the black cart-wheel-hat; simpered and ended up in a funny little t.i.ttering laugh. Eleanor took a quick glance at her neighbors, all men but the cart-wheel-hat to one side and a little young-old lady opposite with a hectic flush, and very protuberant hard mouth and beady little brown eyes. Eleanor noticed the brown eyes were accompanied by red hair, and she recognized the presiding genius of the English Colony.

"A beautiful morning for a ride down the Valley," remarked Eleanor absently.

"What? I beg your pardon? Did you speak to me?"

It wasn't the words. It was the hard tone of surprise.

"We're in luck to have such a morning to ride down," amplified Eleanor.

"Yes," said the lady with the hectic flush; and Eleanor felt the gold teeth simpering beneath the undertaker's plumes.

What was it? Eleanor took a second look at the two women, and recognized both, the Sheriff's wife and the English lady. They were arrayed gorgeously, her neighbor across in lavender silk, her elbow traveller in black with a profusion of cheap lace round the ash colored V of exposed skin: Eleanor wished the woman had powdered all the way down. She, herself, had come garbed for the dust of stage travel, a broad brimmed English sailor and a kakhi duster motoring coat. Was it because she was not garbed as the others that they rebuffed her friendly overtures, she wondered. At the next stop, she pa.s.sed out to go up and ride on the driver's seat, manifestly an impossible feat for ladies in lavender and undertaker's plumes. A fat hand reached forward to shove the door open. It was Bat Brydges'. She nodded her thanks, and the handy man bowed with a sweep of his hat naming her aloud for the whole stage to hear. If a look could have blasted Mr. Bat Brydges, he would have been dissolved in gaseous matter from the expression that pa.s.sed over the face under the sailor hat. She heard the hilarity break bounds inside as she mounted the driver's seat; and felt very much as you have felt when you have come out of the clatter of the orchestra pit where you have chanced to sit next to a musk-scented neighbor.

But she forgot the lavender grandee and the gold teeth and the undertaker's plumes, as she sat on the upper seat with the one-armed driver behind the double tandem grays. The sun was coming up over the Rim Rocks in a half fan of fire; and the light was on the Ridge; and all the silver cataracts tossing down the sheer wall shone wind-blown spray against the evergreens. The Valley widened as it dropped to the leap and fume and swirl of the foaming river; and the double tandem grays kept step with a proud chacking up of heads and bristling of arched necks and movement of thigh and shoulder muscles under satin skin like shuttles.

"You must be very proud of your beautiful horses," she said to the driver.

The driver 'lowed he was: that 'un dappled on the rump there, that 'un was foaled, let me see? year o' the rush to the Black Hills, with a squirt of chewing tobacco over the front wheel and a d.a.m.n't, and another squirt and more d.a.m.n't's; and before Eleanor realized the one-armed driver had asked her if she wouldn't like to learn to drive double tandems; and she had the reins in her hands; and the double tandem grays took the bit in their teeth to show what double tandem grays and ample oats could do.

"How-do," called the driver with a squirt of tobacco over the front wheel at a rancher loping across the trail. "How-do; y' are up early, y' son of a gun! What d' y' know?"

"Senator's goin' t' stand again this fall," called the man.

The driver emitted another d.a.m.n't in true Western style just as innocently as an Easterner says "Oh, yes, indeed," or an Englishman says "My word." In fact Eleanor lost count of the d.a.m.n't's.

"How ever do you manage it?" she asked s.h.i.+fting the reins.

"With my one arm, y' mean?" The stage driver laughed and aimed more chewing tobacco at that innocent front wheel; and the question drew out such a story of heroism in spite of the d.a.m.n't's and the tobacco squids as made her proud of human clay, just as she had been ashamed of human something or other inside the stage with the lavender silk and the gold teeth and Bat's frozen tallow smile.

"Why, it was the year o' the Kootenay rush, ye mind? No, ye don't mind, ye weren't born then, were y'? d.a.m.n't," and a punctuation in tobacco. "Wall, 'twas in the early days 'fore we had steam hoists an'

things." (Another punctuation mark--a good big one.) "We was usin' an old hand hoist. Guess the shaft was about hundred feet down--straight down, an' we was gettin' in the pay streak, bringin' up barrels o' rock showin' more color every load. Wall, them loads was hauled up to the dumps by a hand hoist y' onderstand, kind of winch, like y' turn a handle in old fas.h.i.+oned down East wells. Wall--" (Another punctuation mark and another dip for ink, so to speak, from the plug in the hand of the one-armed driver.) "boys were all down under. Say--'twas in the days when ol' Calamity was runnin' the hills. Know Calamity? She was a wild 'un in _her_ day; an' they say MacDonald, the rich sheep man, has kind o' sorter given her a home these late years. Wall--I ain't the one t' say he shouldn't. Her morals weren't much better in them days than the crazy patch quilts ladies used to make down East when I was a boy; but she's settled down I hear; an' I ain't the one to say MacDonald don't deserve credit for what he's done. She saved many a poor miner's life from the Indians in them ol' days, saved 'em by a shave, carried 'em in on her shoulder to the Deadwood Hospital, or nussed 'em well on the spot, an' all the while, she wazn't no better than she ought t' be; wazn't there a woman in Scripture like that?

Kind o' seems to me the church folks forgets that Rahub gurl!

Wall--'twas about those days." (More showers of d.a.m.n't's and tobacco on that front wheel.) "Boys was all under. Big load of rock was comin' up. I waz man at the hoist, man on the easy job that day.

Wall--wad y' believe it, the d.a.m.n thing bruk--bruk plum whoop an'

started spinnin' round back side first with the load o' rock an' the boys under comin' up the ladder. I yelled for a kid we had workin'

round to get me a jack wrench, a hand spike, h.e.l.l, any ol' thing to stop her kitin' that load o' rock down on the boys! Kid stood gopin'

there an' sayin' 'What d'y' say?' Say,--d.a.m.n't--an' that load o' rock goin' plumb down on the boys, heavy enough to smash 'em to pulp. There weren't nothin' handy near 'cept me, so I jumped this here arm that you find missin' right into the wheel! It stopped her all right, the load didn't fall on the boys; and they got up all right by the ladder; but--say, mebbe the cogs o' that d.a.m.n wheel didn't do a thing to my arm. Say--the doctor didn't need to amputate it. That winch did him out o' his job."

"You mean," said Eleanor, slowing the grays to a reluctant walk down grade, while the driver clamped the front wheel brake with his foot, "you mean because there was no crowbar, or anything to stop the hoist flying backwards and killing the men under the load of rock, you mean because there was no crowbar, you jumped into the wheel, yourself?"

"Sure," said the man astonished at her question; and because Eleanor was a true Westerner and didn't mind the tobacco squids and the d.a.m.n't's in the least (where they belonged) she gave that one-armed driver a look that would have made any man proud: only the one-armed driver didn't see it.

"They took up a purse an' wanted to give me a perscription--d.a.m.n't, but I told 'em t' turn it in t' the Horspital. Any man w'd a' done same for a yellow dog. What d'y' want t' give a fellow a medal for not bein' stinkin' coward?"

Eleanor laughed. It was a happy silver laugh like the light on the Ridge cataracts. Somehow, the one-armed stage driver with his unconscious heroism and equally unconscious profanity gave her a sense of the big wholesome unconscious outdoor world, just as the lavender silks and undertaker's plumes and tallow smile inside smothered her with a drugged sense of heavy unwholesome musk. The one-time miner did not know it; but what Eleanor was saying to herself was--"So much bad in the best of us and so much good in the worst of us." Then she thought of the Senator and his genial smile and his voice soft as a woman's, and his love of flowers. He, too, must have his vein of heroism, if one could only find it. She thought and thought as the tandem grays arched their necks at the sound of the tramway bells in the nearing city; thought and thought, vague wordless thoughts full of hope; vague womanish thoughts that women have thought since time began of finding that magic vein of heroism in the Man that is to trans.m.u.te slag into gold, hog into human, and greed into generosity, and l.u.s.t into love; thought and thought the gentle womanish hoping-against-hope thoughts that women have worn out their lives thinking and enslaved their bodies and p.a.w.ned their souls. If only one could find _that_ vein in the Senator, the battle would be won without the letting of blood and smas.h.i.+ng of reputations; as if peace without victory were ever worth while since time began.

Then, the stage was rattling over the pressed brick pavement of Smelter City; and the tandem grays were pretending to shy at the electric cars; and the one-armed driver came near expectorating his entire internal anatomy out of sheer joy and pride in the arched necks and the frail driver with the black curls under the broad brimmed English sailor hat handling the reins. She had pulled off her heavy buckskin gloves; and she never knew how absurdly like matches her fingers looked to the big one-time miner beside her; nor how the exhilaration brought the tints of the painters' flower to her cheeks and the light of the Alpine pools to her eyes. Every man on the street turned and looked back, while the gold teeth inside blinked with self conscious certainty that _they_ did it; and the lavender silks wore a peculiarly cynical smile. Loafers sat up and followed the stage with eager eyes far as they could see it and said, "By Gawd--whose gurl is that?" Oh, Mr. Bat Brydges intended every bar room buffer and loafer in the State should know, 'whose girl'

that was before night. Everything was fair in love and war; and Bat considered he had run down a case of both. According to his lights, he had; but his lights were s.m.u.tty and in need of tr.i.m.m.i.n.g.

The stage dropped the gold teeth at a dentist's office, and the lavender silks at a manicure's 'studio,' I believe she called it; and Bat swung off while the coach was still moving; and Eleanor reluctantly gave up the reins at the transcontinental station.

"Thank you so much. I don't know when I have had as good a time," she said, giving the stage driver the sensation of a king in disguise.

And, of course, the transcontinental was late. When was it not late, when you were in a hurry?

"How late?"

"Four hours, last report," the operator answered.

She sent her suit case across to the hotel, and shopped, and loitered up and down the platform. It was not until afterwards she remembered one of the loafer brigade dangling legs from the station platform looking over his shoulder with an evil smile.

"Say--d' y' see the evening paper?" he had asked. "That's her;" and there was a laugh that somehow sent her back inside the station feeling vaguely uneasy.

"I think I'll telephone them up at the Ranch not to keep dinner waiting," she said to the operator.

He was reading the paper. He looked at her a moment before answering.

If a human face could have been expressed in a punctuation mark, that agent's face should have been drawn in a big question mark, with the eyes put somewhere in the hook, and the neck growing longer and longer as he looked.

"Public telephone right across the road," he said.

In avoidance of the loafers' looks, she had walked unheeding straight into the Senator's office. Her first instinct was to withdraw. Then, she saw Brydges; and that curious sensation of repulsion obsessed her.

She literally shot the handy man in full retreat with one glance.

Then, the joy of the ride down, the heroism of the driver, came back.

Perhaps it was the jar of roses, but the thought came what if _she_ could find that vein of heroism in the Senator. When women risk their souls on that "if" and the souls of friends and children; is it vanity, I wonder, or is it the will o' the wisp light that lights erring feet to darkness?

She thought more highly of the Senator that he did not offer to shake hands, just as most of us would think more highly of Judas Iscariot if he had not kissed Christ. Being a Westerner, she had the Westerner's horror of a maverick sporting the brand of a thoroughbred. The Senator took off his gla.s.ses and sat tapping them above the U. S. Geological Survey map.

"I trust," he began, "that my man expressed to you my deep regret--my deep distress over--"

"Don't . . . please, don't," interrupted Eleanor, with a pa.s.sionate break in her voice. "I know you are honest, Senator Moyese, honest to what you believe is right; and I don't want you to feel that you have to lie because I am a woman."

The Senator opened his mouth, took a breath, and shut it again.

She understood him well enough to know that if he had to toy with his gla.s.ses for a twelve month, he would wait for her to play down first.

Yet she recognized the instinct of his manhood to rescue the confusion of her embarra.s.sment when he put forward his hand casually and said--"See my roses, Miss Eleanor? They are a new variety of American Beauties. See, each petal has a white veining? Know how those roses are produced? Ages and ages of poor trash worthless common roses have been sacrificed to produce this perfect type."

"That's your theory of life, isn't it?" she asked, vaguely conscious that the dragon was disarming her anger.

"Isn't it nature's?" asked Moyese gently. "The fit survive because they are fit; the exceptional; the few; while the worthless go to waste?"

Before Eleanor realized, she had lost all consciousness of self and was pleading pa.s.sionately leaning forward across the desk.

"Isn't Christ's theory better, Senator, to make all the unfit into fit?

Isn't Christ's theory the theory of science? Science aims to make a whole field of perfect corn; not just one perfect cob. I know that; for I read it in your speech at the opening of the Agricultural College. If we keep on sacrificing the interests of the many to the interests of the few, aren't we working back to savagery, Senator?"