Under Handicap Part 8

"Miss Crawford--for you are Miss Crawford, aren't you?" began Conniston.

She nodded.

"I should have introduced myself. I am William Conniston, Junior, son of William Conniston, Senior, as one might guess. This is my friend, Mr. Hapgood."

The girl inclined her head very slightly and turned toward Conniston.

"If you have come all the way from the hills this morning," she was saying, "and if you plan to go on to Crawfordsville, you will want to rest until the cool of the evening. We have eleven-o'clock luncheon in summer, and have already eaten. But if you will come in I think that we can find something. And, anyway, you can rest until evening. If you are not in a hurry to go right on?"

"We have all the time in the world!" Conniston hastened to a.s.sure her.

And Hapgood of the aching muscles added fervently, "If it's more than a mile to Crawfordsville, I've got to rest awhile!"

"It is something more than that." She rose and moved toward the house.

"Through the short cut straight back into the mountains it's twenty."

Lonesome Pete was turning to drive toward a gap in the encircling trees when the girl called to him to take Conniston's horse. And then the three went to the house.

The flight of steps led them to a wide veranda, eloquent of comfort with its deep wicker rockers and hammocks piled temptingly with cus.h.i.+ons. Then came the wide double doors, and, within, a long, high-ceilinged room whose appointment in every detail spoke of wealth and taste and the hand of a lavish spender. And into this background the slender form of the girl in the close-fitting, becoming gown entered as harmoniously as it had the other day when clad in khaki and against a background of limitless desert.

The floor here was of hard wood, polished until it shone dully like a mirror in a shaded room. No rugs save the two great bear-skins, one black, the other white; no pictures beyond the one great painting against the farther wall. There was a fire-place, wide and deep and rock-bound. And yonder, a dull gleam as of ebony, a grand piano.

Leather chairs, all elegant, soft, luxurious.

She would leave them here, she said, smiling, and see if there was anything left to eat. And while they marveled at finding the splendid comfort of Fifth Avenue here on the far rim of the desert, a little j.a.panese boy in snowy linen bowed himself in to them and invited them to follow. They went down a long hallway after his softly pattering footsteps and were shown into a large airy bath-room, with a glimpse beyond of a cozy sitting-room.

"You wish prepare for luncheon, honorable sirs," said the boy, his teeth and eyes s.h.i.+ning in one flash. "You find rest-room there. I call for you. Anything?"

Conniston told him that there was nothing further required, and he withdrew, stepping backward as from royalty, bowing deeply.

"Here's where I lose about half of the desert I've been carrying around with me," muttered Hapgood. "The Lord knows when we'll see another tub!"

Luxury of luxuries! The bath-room was immaculate in white tiling, the tub shone resplendently white, and there was steaming-hot water!

Conniston, having strolled into the "rest-room," where he found a deep leather chair with a table close to its elbow decorated simply but none the less effectively with a decanter of whisky and a silver box containing cigarettes, leaned back, enjoying himself and the sound of the splas.h.i.+ng in the bath-room.

Once more in familiar and comfortable environment, even Hapgood for the moment forgot to be miserable, and as he smoked a good cigarette and watched the water running into the tub now and then hummed a Broadway air. As for Conniston, his serene good nature under most circ.u.mstances, his greatest a.s.set in the small frays he had had with the world, was untroubled by a spot.

"How do you like the West, Roger?" he called, banteringly.

"Something like, eh, Greek?" Hapgood laughed back. "Do you know, I believe I'll stay! And the dame, isn't she some cla.s.s, eh?"

He finished his bath finally, and at last emerged, half dressed, to lounge in the big chair while his friend took his plunge. He heard Conniston singing to the obligato of the running water, and, with eyes half closed, leaned back and watched his smoke swirl ceilingward.

Presently the bath-room door opened again, and he saw Conniston, his trousers in his hand, standing in the doorway, grinning as though at some rare laughter-provoking thought.

"Well, old man," Hapgood smiled back at him, "whence the mirth?"

Conniston chuckled gleefully.

"Another joke, Roger, my boy! I wonder when the Fates are going to drop us in order to give their undivided attention to some other lucky mortals? You know that twenty-seven dollars and sixty cents?"

"Well?"

"I've lost it!" Conniston laughed outright as his ready imagination depicted amusing complications ahead. "Every blamed cent of it!"

"What!" Hapgood was upon his feet, staring. Hapgood's complacency was a thing of the past.

Conniston nodded, his grin still with him.

"Every cent of it! And here we are the Lord knows how far from home--"

"Have you looked through all your pockets?"

"Every one. And I found--"

"What?"

"A hole," chuckled Conniston. "Just a hole, and nothing more."

Hapgood jerked the trousers from the shaking hand of the man whom such a catastrophe could move to laughter, and made a hurried search.

"What the devil are we going to do?" he gasped, when there was at last no doubting the truth.

Conniston shrugged. "I haven't had time to figure out that part of it.

Haven't you any money?"

"About seven dollars," snapped Hapgood. "And a long time that will keep the two of us. It's up to you, Greek!"

"Meaning?"

"Meaning that you've got to wire your dad for money. There's nothing left to do. Dang it!" he finished, bitterly, throwing the empty trousers back to Conniston, "I was a fool to ever come with you."

"You've said that before. But"--his good humor still tickled by his loss, which he refused to take seriously in spite of the drawn face staring into his--"I haven't even the money to wire the old gent!"

"Oh, I'll pay for it."

"I didn't want to do it so soon," Conniston hesitated. "But it begins to look as though--"

"There's nothing to it. You've got to do it! Why, man, do you realize what a confounded mess you've got us into?"

Conniston went back into the bath-room rather seriously. But a moment later Hapgood heard him chuckling again.

The j.a.panese boy came to summon them, and they followed him, once more clean and feeling respectable, into a cozy little breakfast-room where their hostess was waiting for them. And over their cold meat, tinned fruits and vegetables, and fresh milk Conniston told her of their misfortune. She laughed with him at his account of the winning of the two horses and seemed disposed to indorse his careless view of the whole episode rather than Hapgood's pessimistic outlook.

"It's all right, I suppose, since Conniston has a rich father," Roger admitted, with a sigh.

She regarded him curiously for a moment.

"Some men," she said, quietly, "have been known to go to work and make money for themselves when they needed it."

Conniston told her of his little friend William, of Indian Creek, adding, carelessly, "I'm glad I don't have to feel like that."