Bunch Grass Part 28

"Naturally, I don't see much of them," said Wilkins.

He picked up an old photograph alb.u.m, and began to turn over its pages. Obviously, his thoughts were elsewhere; and the sound of his own voice must have startled him.

"By Jove--it's old Sam!"

He spoke in a whisper, as if to himself.

"Yes--it's old Sam," said Ajax quickly. "You were at Harrow?"

Wilkins' eyelids fluttered; then he met our glance with a shrug of his shoulders.

"Yes."

He stared at the portrait of Sam, the Custos of the School, the familiar of the Yard, of the Fourth Room Form, Sam, the provider of birches, Sam of the port wine nose.

"_We_ were at Harrow," said Ajax. "What house was yours?"

Wilkins hesitated; then he said slowly: "Tommy's."

"We were at Billy's."

Wilkins abruptly changed the subject, and soon after he left us. We rushed to the Harrow register. Yes, in Tommy's house, some seven years before our time, there had been a certain Theodore Vane Wilkins. Ajax, whose imagination runs riot, began to prattle about a Dinah, a Delilah of a Dinah, who had wrecked our schoolfellow's life. And, during the ensuing week, Dinah was continually in his mouth. Wilkins had moved camp, and we saw nothing of him. What we heard, however, must be set down. Silas Upham asked us to spend Sunday at his house. At dinner I sat next pretty little Hetty, and at once she spoke of Wilkins. To my annoyance, Ajax introduced the ridiculous Dinah, the perfidious creature of his fancy. Ajax was in his salad days, but he ought to have known, even then, that if you want to interest a maid in a man, tell her that the man has suffered at the hands of another maid.

Hetty's blue eyes sparkled, her dimpled cheeks glowed with sympathy and indignation.

"Schoolfellow o' yours, was he? Well--I may make that feller foreman one o' these days," said Silas, with a fond, foolish glance at his daughter. Hetty could do what she pleased with her sire--and knew it.

"Poppa," said Miss Hetty, "you're all sorts of a darling, and I must kiss you."

Then she and Ajax strolled on to the verandah, and I found myself alone with my host. He said meaningly: "Wilkins has had a tough row to hoe--eh? But he's a perfect gentleman, straight, sober, and a worker.

I've been looking for a man that is a man to run things here, now that I'm getting a bit stiff in the joints. Hetty likes him first-rate too."

All this in an interrogatory tone. Of course, it was easy to fill the _lacunae_ in the text. Silas Upham adored his daughter and his ranch. If Hetty married Wilkins, the artful Silas would gain an able- bodied, capable major-domo, and he would not lose his pet lamb. I said, rather tartly--

"Look here, Upham, you know nothing of Wilkins, and I advise you and-- er--Miss Hetty to go slow."

"I do go slow," said my host, "but Hetty likes to buzz along. She's a mover, she is."

As we rode home I told Ajax that Opportunity had thrust into Wilkins'

hand a very tempting morsel. Was he going to swallow it? And ought we to ask some questions?

I think it was on the following Wednesday that Wilkins walked over to the ranch-house, and asked for a job.

"I've left Upham," he said curtly.

We had not much to offer; such as it was, Wilkins accepted it. Ajax drove to Upham's to fetch Wilkins' blankets and belongings. When he came back, he drew me aside.

"Silas offered him the billet of foreman. Wilkins _refused it_."

A month pa.s.sed. Wilkins worked hard at first, and his ability, his shrewdness, confounded us, as it had confounded Silas Upham. Then, he began to slack, as boys put it. Small duties were ill done or not done at all. But we liked him, were, indeed, charmed by him. As Ajax remarked, Fascination does not trot in the same cla.s.s with Respect.

Twice I caught that shameless little witch, Hetty, in our back pasture, where Wilkins was splitting rails. Thrice a week she called at the ranch-house on her way to the post office.

"She means to marry Wilkins," said Ajax to me. "And why not? If one woman has made him--er--invertebrate, let Hetty Upham put backbone into him."

That evening we asked Wilkins to witness a legal paper, some agreement or other. He signed his name Henry Wilkins. Ajax stared at me; then he walked to the bookcase. His voice was very hard, as he turned, Harrow register in hand, and said: "The only Wilkins at Tommy's was Theodore Vane Wilkins."

Wilkins rose, shrugged his shoulders, and laughed. Ajax scowled.

"We told Silas Upham that you were an old Harrovian," began my brother.

"So I am; but my name is not Wilkins." He lit a cigarette, before he continued quietly: "I'm a fraud. I'm not even an Englishman. My father was a Southerner. He settled in England after the war. He used to say bitterly that he had been born the wrong side of the Atlantic. He died soon after I left Harrow. With what money he left me I travelled all over the world: shooting, fis.h.i.+ng, and playing the fool.

"When I found myself stony-broke, I hunted up my Baltimore relations.

Some of them told me it was easier to marry money than to make it. My name--I'll keep that to myself, if you don't mind--had a certain value in the eyes of a rich girl I knew. At the same time there was another girl----"

"Ah--Dinah," Ajax murmured.

"We'll call her Dinah. Dinah," his voice shook for a moment, "Dinah cared for me, and I--I cared for her. But the girl with money had a blaring, knock-me-down sort of beauty that appeals to men. Lots of fellows were after her. Dinah had only me. Dinah was mine, if I chose to claim her; the other had to be won. The compet.i.tion, plus the coin, ensnared me. I became engaged to the rich girl. I don't think I knew then what I was doing to--Dinah. Within a fortnight I was struck down with scarlet fever. The rich girl--she was game as a pebble--nursed me. I became delirious. My nurse listened to my ravings for two days and nights; then she went away. I came to my senses to find Dinah at my bedside. The other wrote later, releasing me from the engagement and bidding me marry the girl whose name had been on my lips a thousand times. I laughed, and showed the letter to Dinah. A friend promised me work. Dinah and I were going to live in a cottage, and be happy for ever and ever....

"And then she--sickened!"

In the dreary silence that followed, neither Ajax nor I were able to speak.

"And--and she died."

The poor fellow left us next day, and we never saw him again. It is to be remembered that he never encouraged Hetty Upham, whose infatuation was doubtless fanned by his indifference. She offered him bread, nay, cakes and ale, but he took instead a stone, because cakes and ale had lost their savour. We heard, afterwards, that he died on the Skagway Pa.s.s in an attempt to reach the Klond.y.k.e too early in the spring. He was seeking the gold of the Yukon placers; perhaps he found, beyond the Great White Silence, his Dinah.

XI

A POISONED SPRING

In our bunk-house three of the boys were about to turn into bed. They had worked hard all day, driving cattle into the home-pasture for the spring _rodeo_, and on the morrow they would have to work harder still, cutting out the steers and branding the calves.

"Who is this Perfessor?" asked Dan.

Jimmie, who was rubbing tallow on to his lariat, answered--

"There's a piece about him in the _Tribune_."

Pete picked up the county paper, which happened to be lying on the floor. He read aloud, in a sing-song drawl--