Bruce of the Circle A Part 1

Bruce of the Circle A.

by Harold t.i.tus.

CHAPTER I

THE WOMAN

Daylight and the Prescott-Phoenix train were going from Yavapai. Fifty paces from the box of a station a woman stood alone beside the track, bag in hand, watching the three red lights of the observation platform dwindle to a ruby unit far down the clicking ribbons of steel. As she watched, she felt herself becoming lost in the s.p.a.ciousness, the silence of an Arizona evening.

Ann Lytton was a stranger in that strange land. Impressions pelted in upon her--the silhouetted range against the cerise flush of western sky; the valley sweeping outward in all other directions to lose itself in the creeping blue-grays of night; droning voices of men from the station; a sense of her own physical inconsequence; her loneliness ...

and, as a background, the insistent vastness of the place.

Then, out of the silence from somewhere not far off, came a flat, dead crash, the report of a firearm. The woman was acutely conscious that the voices in the station had broken short with an abruptness which alarmed her. The other sound--the shot--had touched fear in her, too, and the knowledge that it had nipped the attention of the talking men sent a cool thrill down her limbs.

A man emerged from the depot and his voice broke in,

"Wonder where that--"

He stopped short and the woman divined the reason. She strained to catch the thrum of running hoofs, knowing intuitively that the man, also, had ceased speaking to listen. She was conscious that she trembled.

Another man stepped into the open and spoke, hurriedly, but so low that Ann could not hear; the first replied in the same manner, giving a sense of stealth, of furtiveness that seemed to the woman portentous. She took a step forward, frightened at she knew not what, wanting to run to the men just because she was afraid and they were human beings. She checked herself, though, and forced reason.

This was nonsense! She laid it on her nerves. They were ragged after the suspense and the long journey, the dread and hopes. A shot, a galloping horse, a suspected anxiety in the talk of the two men had combined to play upon them in their overwrought condition.

Then, the first speaker's voice again, in normal tone,

"Trunk here, but I didn't see anybody get off."

Ann wanted to laugh with relief. Just that one sentence linked her up with everyday life again, took the shake from her knees and the accented leap from her heart. She was impelled to run to him, and held herself to a walk by effort.

"I beg your pardon. Can you tell me the name of the best hotel?" she asked.

The man who had seized the trunk stopped rolling it toward the doorway and turned quickly to look at the woman who stood there in the pallid glow from the one oil lamp. He saw a blue straw toque fitting tightly over a compact ma.s.s of black hair; he saw blue eyes, earnest and troubled; red lips, with the fullness of youth; flushed cheeks, a trim, small body clothed in a close fitting, dark suit.

"Yes, ma'am; it's th' Manzanita House. It's th' two-story buildin' up th' street. Is this your trunk?"

"Yes. May I leave it here until morning?"

The man nodded. "Sure," he answered.

"Thank you. Is there a carriage here?"

He set the trunk on end, wiped his palms on his hips and smiled slightly.

"No, ma'am. Yavapai ain't quite up to hacks an' things yet. We're young.

You can walk it in two minutes."

Ann hesitated.

"It's ... all right, is it?"

He did not comprehend.

"For me to walk, I mean. Just now.... It sounded as if some one shot, I thought."

He laughed.

"Oh, Yavapai's a safe place! Somebody just shot at somethin', I guess.

But it's all right. We ain't got no hacks, but we don't have no killin's either."

"I'm glad of the one anyhow," Ann smiled, and started away from him not, however, wholly rea.s.sured.

She walked toward the array of yellow lighted windows that showed through the deepening darkness, making her way over the hard ground, hurriedly, skirt lifted in the free hand. She had not inspected the shadowy town beyond glancing casually to register the ill-defined impressions of scattered stock pens, sprawling buildings, a short string of box-cars, a water-tank. The country, the location of the settlement, was the thing which had demanded her first attention, for it was all strange, new, a bit terrifying in the twilight. Two men pa.s.sed her, talking; their voices ceased and she knew that they turned to stare; then one spoke in a lowered tone ... and the night had them. A man on horseback rode down the street at a slow trot. She wondered uneasily if that was the horse which had raced away at the sound of the shot. From the most brilliantly lighted building the sound of a mechanical piano suddenly burst, hammering out a blatant melody.

A thick sprinkling of stars had p.r.i.c.ked through the darkening sky and Ann, as she walked along, scanned the outline that each structure made against them. Once she laughed shortly to herself and thought,

"_The_ two-story building!"

And, almost with that thought, she stood before it. An oil lamp on an uncertain post was set close against the veranda and through an open window she saw a woman, bearing a tray, pause beside a table and deposit steaming dishes. She walked up the steps, opened the screen door, and entered an unlighted hall, barren, also, to judge from the sounds. On one side was the dining room; on the other, a cramped office.

"This is the Manzanita House?" she asked a youth who, hat on the back of his head, read a newspaper which was spread over the top of a small gla.s.s cigar case on the end of a narrow counter.

"Yes, ma'am"--evidently surprised.

He saw her bag, looked at her face again, took off his hat shyly and opened a ruled copybook to which a pencil was attached by a length of grimy cotton twine. He pushed it toward her, and the woman, as she drew off her glove, saw that this was the hotel register.

In a bold, large hand she wrote:

"Ann Lytton, Portland, Maine."

"I'd like a room for to-night," she said, "and to-morrow I'd like to get to the Sunset mine. Can you direct me?"

A faint suggestion of anxiety was in her query and on the question the youth looked at her sharply, met her gaze and let his waver off. He turned to put the register on the shelf behind him.

"Why, I can find out," he answered, evasively. "It's over thirty miles out there and th' road ain't so very good yet. You can get th'

automobile to take you. It's out now--took the doctor out this afternoon--and won't be back till late, prob'ly."

He took the register from the shelf again and, on pretext of noting her room number on the margin of the leaf, re-read her name and address, moving his lips in the soundless syllables.

"I'd ... I'd like to go to my room, if I may," the woman said, and, picking up one of the two lighted lamps, the other led her into the hall and up the narrow flight of stairs.

Ten minutes later, the young man stood in the hotel kitchen, the house register in his hands. Over his right shoulder the waitress peered and over his left, the cook breathed heavily, as became her weight.

"Just Ann. It don't say Miss or Missus," the waitress said.

"I know, Nora, but somehow she don't look like _his_ Missus," the boy said, with a shake of his head.