The Fighting Shepherdess Part 53

"It is turgid--dark--all is confusion--spirits are a.s.sembling--they are spirits of unrest--there is no peace--no happiness. There is horror in every distorted face--they have met--violent deaths--they want to talk--they clamor to be heard--they--"

"It's a lie!" Mullendore's whisper was shrill, aspirate. "There ain't no other world! There ain't no comin' back!"

"Clouds roll up--" she went on, "clouds of red smoke--they shut the spirits out--new ones come--dim at first--but I can't see--yet. Wait!"

The woman's stare seemed to carry her through and beyond the wagon cover into the invisible world she peopled with the dead. Her body was rigid; her face had the ossified gray look of stone; the labored jerks in which she spoke racked her body with the effort that it cost.

"Now--they're coming! The smoke rolls back a bit--I see--quite plain--Oh! Oh!" A look of horror froze on her gray face, and her voice rose to a shriek. "He says he's Mormon Joe! He cries--Confess! Confess!"

To Mullendore with his inflamed brain and nerves jangling like a network of loose wire, she seemed like a direct emissary from the place of torment, which was as real to him as the wagon in which he lay.

The half-breed had tried to convince himself by saying over and over mechanically: "There ain't no h.e.l.l--there ain't no comin' back--there ain't nothin' after this,"--but the denial was only of the lips--atavism was stronger than his will. He believed, as much as he believed that on the morrow the sun would rise, in a real and definite h.e.l.l, filled with the shrieking spirits of the d.a.m.ned. In these final hours it had required all his weakened will to hide his fears and keep his tongue between his teeth. Now, like a man clinging by his finger tips to some small crevice in a cliff, he suddenly gave up. As he relaxed his grip he whispered with the last faint remnant of his strength:

"I own up--I set the gun--I--I--"

Teeters slipped an arm about his shoulders and raised him up.

"Where did you git it, Mullendore?"

His answer was a breath.

"Toomey."

"One thing more--Where does Kate Prentice's father live? His address--quick!" Teeters shook the wasted shoulders in his haste.

The muddy blue-gray iris was divided in half by the closing upper lids.

Beneath the glaze there seemed a last malicious spark. Then his tongue clicked as it dropped to the back of his mouth, and Mullendore was dead.

CHAPTER XXIV

TOOMEY GOES INTO SOMETHING

Few in Prouty denied that there were forty-eight hours in the day that began about six o'clock on Sat.u.r.day night and lasted until the same hour Monday morning. If there had been some way of taking a mild anesthetic to have carried them through this period, many no doubt would have resorted to it, for oblivion was preferable to consciousness during a Sunday in Prouty.

It could not, strictly, be called a Day of Rest, because there was not sufficient business during the week to make any one tired enough to need it.

When the church bells tinkled, the Episcopalians bowed patronizingly to the Presbyterians, the Presbyterians condescendingly recognized the Methodists, the Methodists, by a slight inclination of the head, acknowledged the existence of the Catholics. This done, the excitement of the day was over.

The footsteps of a chance pedestrian echoed in Main Street like some one walking in a tunnel. Children flattened their noses against the panes and looked out wistfully upon a world that had no joy in it.

The gloom of financial depression hung over Prouty like a crepe veil. If Prouty spent Sunday waiting for Monday, it spent the rest of the week waiting for something to happen. Prouty's att.i.tude was one of halfhearted expectancy--like a s.h.i.+pwrecked sailor knowing himself outside the line of travel, yet unable to resist watching the horizon for succor.

The Boosters Club still went on boosting, but its schemes for self-advertis.e.m.e.nt resembled a defective pin-wheel, which, after the first whiz, lacks the motive powers to turn further. The motive power in this instance was money. Prouty wanted money with the same degree of intensity that the parched Lazarus wanted water.

Real estate owners in Prouty regarded their property without enthusiasm, for there were few residences not ornamented with a "plaster" in the form of a mortgage. Abram Pantin's boast that he never "held the sack"

was heard but seldom, for there was more than a reasonable doubt that he was able to collect the interest on his farm mortgages, to say nothing of the princ.i.p.al.

The town was at a stage when merely to eat and go on wearing clothes was cause for self-congratulation. It was conceded that a person who could exist in Prouty could live anywhere. Its citizens seemed to partake of the nature of the cactus that, grubbed up and left for dead, always manages somehow to get its roots down again.

The Prouty _Grit_ still called the attention of the world to the country's natural resources, but Mr. Butefish's editorials had a hollow ring, like the "spiel" of the sideshow barker, who talks in antic.i.p.ation of a swift kick from a dissatisfied patron.

Major Prouty, who had hoped to die in his boots, picturesquely, had pa.s.sed away quietly in his bed with acute indigestion from eating sour-dough sinkers of his own manufacture. It was cold the day he was buried, so not many went to the funeral, and the board which had been put up to mark his grave, until the town could afford a suitable monument, had blown over. A "freighter" had repaired his brake block with a portion of the marker, so no one except the grave digger was sure where the Major lay.

Jasper Toomey at this period of his career was engaged in the real estate business. About ninety per cent of Prouty's residences were listed with him. In the beginning, while taking descriptions of the properties and making a confidential note of the lowest possible sums which would be accepted, he was busy and optimistic. But, this completed, business subsided suddenly. His few inquiries for properties came from buyers who had no cash available. The breath he expended in "working up deals" which came to nothing when the critical point was reached would have floated a balloon.

Toomey had no office, but conducted his affairs in winter from the chair by the radiator in the southwest corner of the Prouty House. In summer, he moved to the northeast corner of the veranda. To borrow five dollars nowadays was a distinct achievement, and his sallow face had taken on the habitual expression of a hungry wolf waiting for strays and weaklings. Mrs. Toomey still antic.i.p.ated the day when "j.a.p would get into something."

As much worse as was Sunday than Monday, just so much worse was winter than summer in Prouty. Winter meant more coal, warmer clothes, high-priced food, and a period of hibernating until it was over. So it was in a kind of panic that Prouty suddenly realized that fall had come and another winter would soon be upon them. Thus, in a mood of desperation, the officers of the Boosters Club sent out notice of an important meeting to its members. It was urged most earnestly that each should come prepared to offer a new suggestion for the improvement of financial conditions in Prouty. The fact that the need was thus publicly admitted evidenced the urgency of the situation.

It seemed as though every plan that human ingenuity could devise had been already discussed, and shelved for the very excellent reason that there never was any capital with which to give the projects a try-out.

While the members subscribed with glad and openhanded generosity, to collect the subscriptions was another matter.

Heretofore suggestions had come sporadically; now it was believed that as the concentrated wills of powerful minds are alleged to have moved inanimate objects, somewhat in the same fas.h.i.+on concerted effort on the part of the Boosters Club might result in something tangible.

The meeting was called for Monday night, and with only twenty-four hours in which to think of something for Prouty's salvation, the heads of households taxed their brains diligently for an original idea to offer.

No such perturbation obtained in the Toomey family, however, where Mr.

and Mrs. Toomey chattered in gay excitement, the like of which they had not experienced since their memorable trip to Chicago. With his hands thrust deep in his trousers pockets, Toomey swaggered, resembling nothing so much as a pheasant strutting and drumming on a log for his mate's edification, and, not unlike the female bird of sober coloring, Mrs. Toomey looked and listened with a return of much of her old-time admiration, though the cause for Toomey's present state of exultation was, in its inception, due to her own suggestion.

"I'll show these pinheads something," Toomey boasted. "The day'll come," he levelled at his wife an impressive finger, "when they'll nudge each either and say, 'There goes Toomey's Dog!'"

Mrs. Toomey sighed happily, "It's like a story!"

"Nothing comes to you unless you go after it," Toomey declared, in the voice of a man who has succeeded and is giving the benefit of his experience to the less fortunate.

"I wish you could be there when I spring it," he chortled.

Yet the occasion for this rare exuberance in the Toomey family was merely a few courteous lines signed "John Prentiss," inside the businesslike blue-gray envelope resting conspicuously on top of the clock on the mantelpiece. They had read and re-read it, extracting from it the last ounce of encouragement possible.

Mrs. Toomey had come across John Prentiss's card in a drawer she was cleaning and the thought had come to her that therein lay a possibility which never had been tested. After all these years it might not be possible to reach him, and when he was found it might not be possible to derive any benefit from the scant acquaintance, but it was worth trying, and if there was a way, j.a.p would find it, so she had shown him the card and he had joined her in marveling at their negligence.

After due reflection, Toomey had written to Prentiss recalling the circ.u.mstances of their meeting and the fact that he had evidenced an interest in their country, and renewing his invitation for a visit. He went at some length into the details of the defunct irrigation project at Prouty, which if properly completed and managed was a sure and big winner. He had options on stock which gave him the controlling interest, he stated, and had little doubt that the remainder could be acquired easily. He urged Prentiss to come at his earliest convenience and look it over.

Toomey sent the letter to the hotel in Chicago which Prentiss had given as one of his permanent addresses and it was duly forwarded. After the lapse of a reasonable time, the answer had come from Denver. It had contained proper expressions of appreciation for the invitation, a wish to be remembered cordially to Mrs. Toomey, and concluded with the statement that his desire to see that section of the country had in no wise abated and, if possible, he would do so in the early winter, at which time he would be glad to look into the merits of the irrigation project.

Noncommittal, but friendly, the letter sent the blood racing through Toomey's veins like a stiff drink of brandy. It stimulated his imagination like strong coffee and evoked the roseate dreams of hasheesh. Even Mrs. Toomey, cautious and conservative as she was by nature and through many disappointments, could not resist the contagion of her husband's enthusiasm.

To say that Toomey looked forward with eagerness to this meeting of the Boosters Club is to express it inadequately. He counted the hours when he should be reinstated in the position which he had occupied when he first came to Prouty. Unexpressed, but none the less present, was a desire to show his teeth at those who had humiliated him by lending him money.

The Boosters Club now occupied a storeroom which it had rent free until such time as its owner should acquire a tenant. This privilege had been granted some three years previous, and there seemed no imminent danger of the club being obliged to vacate.

Behind a fly-specked window an equally fly-specked sheaf of wheat from North Dakota, and an ear of corn of gargantuan proportions from Kansas, proclaimed the Club's belief that similar results might be obtained from the local soil--when it had water. There was a sugar beet of amazing circ.u.mference that had been raised in an adjacent county, and a bottle of sand that the Club was certain contained a rare mineral, if it were possible to get an honest a.s.say on it. They exhibited also a can of pulverized gypsum, of which there was a sufficient quant.i.ty in sight in the vicinity to polish the bra.s.s tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs of the world's navies, if a "live wire" could be induced to take hold of its development. A miniature monument of rock faintly stained with copper rose in the center of the window, and a buffalo skull lent a note of historic interest.

The walls inside were decorated with the Club's slogan, "Boost for Prouty." The undertaker's chairs were still doing duty, since there was so much truth in that person's plaintive wail that "the climate was so d.a.m.ned healthy that n.o.body ever died," there was seldom other use for them.