A Mountain Woman Part 7

Weeks went by, and though Gillispie and Waite were often at Catherine's, Henderson never came. Gillispie gave it out as his opinion that Henderson was an ungrateful puppy; but Waite said nothing. This strange man, who seemed like a mere untoward accident of nature, had changed during the summer. His big ill-shaped body had grown more gaunt; his deep-set gray eyes had sunk deeper; the gentleness which had distinguished him even on the wild ranges of Montana became more marked.

Late in August he volunteered to take on himself the entire charge of the night watch.

"It's nicer to be out at night," he said to Catherine. "Then you don't keep looking off at things; you can look inside;" and he struck his breast with his splay hand.

Cattle are timorous under the stars. The vastness of the plains, the sweep of the wind under the unbroken arch, frighten them; they are made for the close comforts of the barn-yard; and the apprehension is contagious, as every ranchman knows. Waite realized the need of becoming good friends with his animals. Night after night, riding up and down in the twilight of the stars, or dozing, rolled in his blanket, in the shelter of a knoll, he would hear a low roar; it was the cry of the alarmist. Then from every direction the cattle would rise with trembling awkwardness on their knees, and answer, giving out sullen bellowings.

Some of them would begin to move from place to place, spreading the baseless alarm, and then came the time for action, else over the plain in mere fruitless frenzy would go the whole frantic band, lashed to madness by their own fears, trampling each other, heedless of any obstacle, in pitiable, deadly rout. Waite knew the premonitory signs well, and at the first warning bellow he was on his feet, alert and determined, his energy nerved for a struggle in which he always conquered.

Waite had a secret which he told to none, knowing, in his una.n.a.lytical fas.h.i.+on, that it would not be believed in. But soon as ever the dark heads of the cattle began to lift themselves, he sent a resonant voice out into the stillness. The songs he sang were hymns, and he made them into a sort of imperative lullaby. Waite let his lungs and soul fill with the breath of the night; he gave himself up to the exaltation of mastering those trembling brutes. Mounting, melodious, with even and powerful swing he let his full notes fall on the air in the confidence of power, and one by one the rea.s.sured cattle would lie down again, lowing in soft contentment, and so fall asleep with noses stretched out in mute attention, till their presence could hardly be guessed except for the sweet aroma of their cuds.

One night in the early dusk, he saw Catherine Ford hastening across the prairie with Bill Deems. He sent a halloo out to them, which they both answered as they ran on. Waite knew on what errand of mercy Catherine was bent, and he thought of the children over at the cabin alone. The cattle were quiet, the night beautiful, and he concluded that it was safe enough, since he was on his pony, to ride down there about midnight and see that the little ones were safe.

The dark sky, p.r.i.c.ked with points of intensest light, hung over him so beneficently that in his heart there leaped a joy which even his ever-present sorrow could not disturb. This sorrow Waite openly admitted not only to himself, but to others. He had said to Catherine: "You see, I'll always hev to love yeh. An' yeh'll not git cross with me; I'm not goin' to be in th' way." And Catherine had told him, with tears in her eyes, that his love could never be but a comfort to any woman. And these words, which the poor fellow had in no sense mistaken, comforted him always, became part of his joy as he rode there, under those piercing stars, to look after her little ones. He found them sleeping in their bunks, the baby tight in Kitty's arms, the little boy above them in the upper bunk, with his hand in the long hair of his brown spaniel. Waite softly kissed each of them, so Kitty, who was half waking, told her mother afterwards, and then, bethinking him that Catherine might not be able to return in time for their breakfast, found the milk and bread, and set it for them on the table. Catherine had been writing, and her unfinished letter lay open beside the ink. He took up the pen and wrote,

"The childdren was all asleep at twelv.

"J. W."

He had not more than got on his pony again before he heard an ominous sound that made his heart leap. It was a frantic dull pounding of hoofs. He knew in a second what it meant. There was a stampede among the cattle. If the animals had all been his, he would not have lost his sense of judgment. But the realization that he had voluntarily undertaken the care of them, and that the larger part of them belonged to his friends, put him in a pa.s.sion of apprehension that, as a ranchman, was almost inexplicable. He did the very thing of all others that no cattle-man in his right senses would think of doing. Gillispie and Henderson, talking it over afterward, were never able to understand it. It is possible--just barely possible--that Waite, still drunk on his solitary dreams, knew what he was doing, and chose to bring his little chapter to an end while the lines were pleasant. At any rate, he rode straight forward, shouting and waving his arms in an insane endeavor to head off that frantic mob. The noise woke the children, and they peered from the window as the pawing and bellowing herd plunged by, trampling the young steers under their feet.

In the early morning, Catherine Ford, spent both in mind and body, came walking slowly home. In her heart was a prayer of thanksgiving. Mary Deems lay sleeping back in her comfortless shack, with her little son by her side.

"The wonder of G.o.d is in it," said Catherine to herself as she walked home. "All the ministers of all the world could not have preached me such a sermon as I've had to-night."

So dim had been the light and so perturbed her mind that she had not noticed how torn and trampled was the road. But suddenly a bulk in her pathway startled her. It was the dead and mangled body of a steer. She stooped over it to read the brand on its flank. "It's one of the three Johns'," she cried out, looking anxiously about her. "How could that have happened?"

The direction which the cattle had taken was toward her house, and she hastened homeward. And not a quarter of a mile from her door she found the body of Waite beside that of his pony, crushed out of its familiar form into something unspeakably shapeless. In her excitement she half dragged, half carried that mutilated body home, and then ran up her signal of alarm on the stick that Waite himself had erected for her convenience. She thought it would be a long time before any one reached her, but she had hardly had time to bathe the disfigured face and straighten the disfigured body before Henderson was pounding at her door. Outside stood his pony panting from its terrific exertions.

Henderson had not seen her before for six weeks. Now he stared at her with frightened eyes.

"What is it? What is it?" he cried. "What has happened to you, my--my love?"

At least afterward, thinking it over as she worked by day or tossed in her narrow bunk at night, it seemed to Catherine that those were the words he spoke. Yet she could never feel sure; nothing in his manner after that justified the impa.s.sioned anxiety of his manner in those first few uncertain moments; for a second later he saw the body of his friend and learned the little that Catherine knew. They buried him the next day in a little hollow where there was a spring and some wild aspens.

"He never liked the prairie," Catherine said, when she selected the spot. "And I want him to lie as sheltered as possible."

After he had been laid at rest, and she was back, busy with tidying her neglected shack, she fell to crying so that the children were scared.

"There's no one left to care what becomes of us," she told them, bitterly. "We might starve out here for all that any one cares."

And all through the night her tears fell, and she told herself that they were all for the man whose last thought was for her and her babies; she told herself over and over again that her tears were all for him. After this the autumn began to hurry on, and the snow fell capriciously, days of biting cold giving place to retrospective glances at summer. The last of the vegetables were taken out of the garden and buried in the cellar; and a few tons of coal--dear almost as diamonds--were brought out to provide against the severest weather. Ordinarily buffalo chips were the fuel. Catherine was alarmed at the way her wretched little store of money began to vanish. The baby was fretful with its teething, and was really more care than when she nursed it. The days shortened, and it seemed to her that she was forever working by lamp-light The prairies were brown and forbidding, the sky often a mere gray pall. The monotony of the life began to seem terrible. Sometimes her ears ached for a sound. For a time in the summer so many had seemed to need her that she had been happy in spite of her poverty and her loneliness. Now, suddenly, no one wanted her. She could find no source of inspiration.

She wondered how she was going to live through the winter, and keep her patience and her good-nature.

"You'll love me," she said, almost fiercely, one night to the children--"you'll love mamma, no matter how cross and homely she gets, won't you?"

The cold grew day by day. A strong winter was setting in. Catherine took up her study of medicine again, and sat over her books till midnight.

It occurred to her that she might fit herself for nursing by spring, and that the children could be put with some one--she did not dare to think with whom. But this was the only solution she could find to her problem of existence.

November settled down drearily. Few pa.s.sed the shack. Catherine, who had no one to speak with excepting the children, continually devised amus.e.m.e.nts for them. They got to living in a world of fantasy, and were never themselves, but always wild Indians, or arctic explorers, or Robinson Crusoes. Kitty and Roderick, young as they were, found a never-ending source of amus.e.m.e.nt in these little grotesque dreams and dramas. The fund of money was getting so low that Catherine was obliged to economize even in the necessities. If it had not been for her two cows, she would hardly have known how to find food for her little ones.

But she had a wonderful way of making things with eggs and milk, and she kept her little table always inviting. The day before Thanksgiving she determined that they should all have a frolic.

"By Christmas," she said to Kitty, "the snow may be so bad that I cannot get to town. We'll have our high old time now."

There is no denying that Catherine used slang even in talking to the children. The little pony had been sold long ago, and going to town meant a walk of twelve miles. But Catherine started out early in the morning, and was back by nightfall, not so very much the worse, and carrying in her arms bundles which might have fatigued a bronco.

The next morning she was up early, and was as happy and ridiculously excited over the prospect of the day's merrymaking as if she had been Kitty. Busy as she was, she noticed a peculiar oppression in the air, which intensified as the day went on. The sky seemed to hang but a little way above the rolling stretch of frost-bitten gra.s.s. But Kitty laughing over her new doll, Roderick startling the sullen silence with his drum, the smell of the chicken, slaughtered to make a prairie holiday, browning in the oven, drove all apprehensions from Catherine's mind. She was a common creature. Such very little things could make her happy. She sang as she worked; and what with the drumming of her boy, and the little exulting shrieks of her baby, the shack was filled with a deafening and exhilarating din.

It was a little past noon, when she became conscious that there was sweeping down on her a gray sheet of snow and ice, and not till then did she realize what those lowering clouds had signified. For one moment she stood half paralyzed. She thought of everything,--of the cattle, of the chance for being buried in this drift, of the stock of provisions, of the power of endurance of the children. While she was still thinking, the first ice-needles of the blizzard came peppering the windows. The cattle ran bellowing to the lee side of the house and crouched there, and the chickens scurried for the coop. Catherine seized such blankets and bits of carpet as she could find, and crammed them at windows and doors. Then she piled coal on the fire, and clothed the children in all they had that was warmest, their out-door garments included; and with them close about her, she sat and waited. The wind seemed to push steadily at the walls of the house. The howling became horrible. She could see that the children were crying with fright, but she could not hear them. The air was dusky; the cold, in spite of the fire, intolerable. In every crevice of the wretched structure the ice and snow made their way. It came through the roof, and began piling up in little pointed strips under the crevices. Catherine put the children all together in one bunk, covered them with all the bedclothes she had, and then stood before them defiantly, facing the west, from whence the wind was driving. Not suddenly, but by steady pressure, at length the window-sash yielded, and the next moment that whirlwind was in the house,--a maddening tumult of ice and wind, leaving no room for resistance; a killing cold, against which it was futile to fight.

Catherine threw the bedclothes over the heads of the children, and then threw herself across the bunk, gasping and choking for breath. Her body would not have yielded to the suffering yet, so strongly made and sustained was it; but her dismay stifled her. She saw in one horrified moment the frozen forms of her babies, now so pink and pleasant to the sense; and oblivion came to save her from further misery.

She was alive--just barely alive--when Gillispie and Henderson got there, three hours later, the very b.a.l.l.s of their eyes almost frozen into blindness. But for an instinct stronger than reason they would never have been able to have found their way across that trackless stretch. The children lying unconscious under their coverings were neither dead nor actually frozen, although the men putting their hands on their little hearts could not at first discover the beating. Stiff and suffering as these young fellows were, it was no easy matter to get the window back into place and re-light the fire. They had tied flasks of liquor about their waists; and this beneficent fluid they used with that sense of appreciation which only a pioneer can feel toward whiskey. It was hours before Catherine rewarded them with a gleam of consciousness. Her body had been frozen in many places. Her arms, outstretched over her children and holding the clothes down about them, were rigid. But consciousness came at length, dimly struggling up through her brain; and over her she saw her friends rubbing and rubbing those strong firm arms of hers with snow.

She half raised her head, with a horror of comprehension in her eyes, and listened. A cry answered her,--a cry of dull pain from the baby.

Henderson dropped on his knees beside her.

"They are all safe," he said. "And we will never leave you again. I have been afraid to tell you how I love you. I thought I might offend you. I thought I ought to wait--you know why. But I will never let you run the risks of this awful life alone again. You must rename the baby. From this day his name is John. And we will have the three Johns again back at the old ranch. It doesn't matter whether you love me or not, Catherine, I am going to take care of you just the same. Gillispie agrees with me."

"Damme, yes," muttered Gillispie, feeling of his hip-pocket for consolation in his old manner.

Catherine struggled to find her voice, but it would not come.

"Do not speak," whispered John. "Tell me with your eyes whether you will come as my wife or only as our sister."

Catherine told him.

"This is Thanksgiving day," said he. "And we don't know much about praying, but I guess we all have something in our hearts that does just as well."

"Damme, yes," said Gillispie, again, as he pensively c.o.c.ked and unc.o.c.ked his revolver.

A Resuscitation

AFTER being dead twenty years, he walked out into the suns.h.i.+ne.

It was as if the bones of a bleached skeleton should join themselves on some forgotten plain, and look about them for the vanished flesh.

To be dead it is not necessary to be in the grave. There are places where the worms creep about the heart instead of the body.

The penitentiary is one of these. David Culross had been in the penitentiary twenty years. Now, with that worm-eaten heart, he came out into liberty and looked about him for the habiliments with which he had formerly clothed himself,--for hope, self-respect, courage, pugnacity, and industry.

But they had vanished and left no trace, like the flesh of the dead men on the plains, and so, morally unapparelled, in the hideous skeleton of his manhood, he walked on down the street under the mid-June suns.h.i.+ne.

You can understand, can you not, how a skeleton might wish to get back into its comfortable grave? David Culross had not walked two blocks before he was seized with an almost uncontrollable desire to beg to be s.h.i.+elded once more in that safe and shameful retreat from which he had just been released. A horrible perception of the largeness of the world swept over him. s.p.a.ce and eternity could seem no larger to the usual man than earth--that snug and insignificant planet--looked to David Culross.

"If I go back," he cried, despairingly, looking up to the great building that arose above the stony hills, "they will not take me in." He was absolutely without a refuge, utterly without a destination; he did not have a hope. There was nothing he desired except the surrounding of those four narrow walls between which he had lain at night and dreamed those ever-recurring dreams,-dreams which were never prophecies or promises, but always the hackneyed history of what he had sacrificed by his crime, and relinquished by his pride.

The men who pa.s.sed him looked at him with mingled amus.e.m.e.nt and pity.