The Fighting Shepherdess Part 65

"I believe her innocent, myself," he finally replied.

"So she grew up out there in the hills without any friends or social life," Prentiss commented, musingly.

"There was always a camptender and a sheepherder or two about," Toomey answered with slurring significance.

Prentiss brushed the ashes from his cigar.

"And Prouty had no sympathy with her in her loneliness, but considered her a legitimate target--somebody that everybody 'took a fall out of,'

you say?"

There was a quality in his voice now which made Toomey glance at the man quickly, but it was so elusive, so faint, that he could not be certain; and rea.s.sured by his impa.s.sive face he went on:

"Why shouldn't they? What would anybody waste sympathy on her kind for?"

His thin lips curled contemptuously.

Again Prentiss sat in the stillness in which not a muscle or an eyelid moved. He seemed even not to breathe until he turned with an impressive deliberateness and subjected Toomey to a scrutiny so searching and prolonged that Toomey colored in embarra.s.sment, wondering the while as to what it meant.

"I presume, Mr. Toomey," Prentiss finally inquired with a careful politeness he had not shown before, "that it would mean considerable to you in the way of commissions on the sale of stock if this project went through?"

Toomey's relief that he had not inadvertently given offense was so great that he almost told the truth as to the exact amount. Just in time he restrained himself and replied with elaborate indifference:

"I'd get something out of it for my time and work, of course, but, mostly, I'm anxious to see a friend get hold of a good thing."

This fine spirit of disinterested solicitude met with no response.

"I presume it's equally true, Mr. Toomey, that the completion of the project means considerable to the town?"

"Considerable!" with explosive vehemence. "It's got where it's a case of life or death. The coyotes'll be denning in the Security State Bank and the birds building nests in the Opera House in a year or two, if something don't turn up."

"How soon can you furnish me with the data you may have on hand?"

"About six minutes and four seconds, if I run," Toomey replied in humorous earnestness.

Prentiss's face did not relax.

"Get it and bring it to my room--at once." His voice was cold and businesslike, strongly reminiscent now of Kate's.

CHAPTER x.x.x

HER DAY

Kate stood before a teetering k.n.o.bless bureau reflecting upon the singular coincidence which should place her in the same room for her second social affair in the Prouty House as that to which she had been a.s.signed upon her first. The bureau had been new then and, to her inexperienced eyes, had looked the acme of luxurious magnificence. She recalled as vividly as though the lapse of time consisted of days, not years, the round eager face, that had looked out of the gla.s.s.

She had been only seventeen--that other girl--and every emotion that she felt was to be read in her expressive face and in her candid eyes. It was different--the face of this woman of twenty-eight who calmly regarded Kate.

She turned her head and took in the room with a sweeping glance.

It was there, in the middle of the floor, that she had torn off and flung her wreath; it was in the corner over there that she had thrown her bunting dress. On the spot where the rug with the pink child and the red-eyed dog used to be, she had stood with the tears streaming down her cheeks--tears of humiliation, of fierce outraged pride, feeling that the most colossal, crus.h.i.+ng tragedy that possibly could come into any life had fallen upon her.

It came back to the last detail, that evening of torture--the audible innuendos and the whispering behind hands, the lifted eyebrows and the exchange of mocking looks, the insolent eyes of Neifkins, and the final deliberate insult--she lived it all again as she stood before the mirror calmly arranging her hair.

And Hughie! Her hands paused in mid-air. Could she ever forget that moment of agony on the stairs when she thought he was going to fail her--that he was ashamed, and a coward! But what a thoroughbred he had been! She could better appreciate now the courage it had required.

Afterward--in the moonlight--on the way home--his contrition, his sympathy, his awkward tenderness. "I love you--I'll love you as long as I live!" Her lips parted as she listened to the boyish voice--vibrating, pa.s.sionate. He had come to her again and she had sent him away for the sake of the hour that was shortly to arrive. She had reached her goal.

More than she had dared hope for in her wildest dreams had come to her at last. She had money, power, success, a name. A choking lump rose in her throat.

It was no longer of any use to refuse to admit it to herself--she wanted Hugh. She wanted him with all her heart and soul and strength, nothing and no one else. She threw herself upon the uninviting bed, and in the hour when she should have been exultant Kate cried.

Throughout Prouty, among the socially select, the act of dressing for the function at the Prouty House was taking place. This dinner given to Prentiss by the members of the Boosters Club was the most important event from every viewpoint that had taken place since the town was incorporated. It would show the bankrupt stockholders where they were "at," since Prentiss had reserved the announcement of his decision regarding the irrigation project for this occasion. In addition, he had asked the privilege of inviting a guest, which was granted as readily as if he had requested permission to appear in his bathrobe, for they had no desire to offend a man who in their minds occupied an a.n.a.logous position with the ravens that brought food to Elijah starving in the wilderness.

Prentiss had been investigated and his rating obtained. All that Toomey had claimed for him was found to be the truth--he was an indisputable millionaire, with ample means to put through whatever he undertook. The effect of Prentiss's presence was noticeable throughout the town, and innumerable small extravagances were committed on the strength of what was going to happen "when the project went through."

But in no person was the change so marked as in Toomey, who felt that he had come into his own at last. As an old and dear friend of Prentiss's his prestige was almost restored. He fairly reeled with success, while, with no one daring to refuse him credit because of the influence he was presumed to exert, he ate tinned lobster for breakfast--to show that he could.

If Prentiss suspected that he was being made capital of, exploited and exhibited like a rare bird, there was nothing in his manner to indicate that he entertained the thought. While it was true that his first friendliness towards Toomey never came back, his impersonal, businesslike courtesy in their intercourse was beyond reproach.

A report had been current that Kate and "Toomey's millionaire" knew each other--some one in the Prouty House had seen them meet--but as she returned almost immediately to the ranch and had not been in town since, the rumor died for want of nourishment. No one but Mrs. Toomey gave it a second thought. But she gave it many thoughts; it stuck in her mind and she could not get it out.

To her, the resemblance between the two was very noticeable, and another meeting with Prentiss made her marvel that no one observed it but herself. In spite of the different spelling of the name, was there, perchance, some relations.h.i.+p? The persistent thought filled her with a vague disquietude. It was so strongly in her mind while they dressed for the affair at the Prouty House that Toomey's conversation was largely a soliloquy.

Surveying himself complacently in the gla.s.s, it pleased Mr. Toomey to be jocose.

"Say, Old Girl, how long will it take you to pack your war-bag when I get this deal pulled off? It's a safe bet that this cross roads can't see me for dust, once I get that commission in my mitt." He turned and looked at her sharply. "What's the matter now, Mrs. Kill-joy? Where's it hurting the worst?"

Mrs. Toomey continued to powder the red tip of her nose until it showed pink.

"You're about as cheerful as an open grave--takes all the heart out of me just to look at your face. Speak up, Little Sunbeam, and tell Papa what you got on your chest?"

Mrs. Toomey laid down the powder puff.

"What if there should be some slip-up, j.a.p? We're letting ourselves in for a dreadful disappointment if we count on it too much."

He shook off her hands from his shoulders with an exasperated twitch.

"You're the original Death's Head, Dell! Don't you suppose I know what I'm talking about? It'll go through," confidently. "What's made you think it won't?"

Mrs. Toomey hesitated, then timidly:

"I can't get it out of my head, j.a.p, but that he's related to Kate, and if that should happen to be so--"

"Good Lord! So you've dug that up to worry about? Look here--if he'd had any interest in her he'd have knocked me cold the first day he arrived."

"What do you mean?" Mrs. Toomey asked quickly.

"Just that. Her name happened to come up, and I didn't mince my words in telling him about her past."