XIII
The Narrow World
At the fresh newspaper reminder that his sudden bound upward from thelaboring ranks to the executive headship of the irrigation project hadmerely made him a more conspicuous target for the man-hunters, Smithscanted himself of sleep and redoubled his efforts to put the newcompany on a sound and permanent footing. In the nature of things hefelt that his own shrift must necessarily be short. Though his ownimmediate public was comparatively small, the more or less dramatic_coup_ in Timanyoni High Line had advertised him thoroughly. He wasrapidly coming to be the best-known man in Brewster, and he cherished noillusions about lost identities, or the ability to lose them, in a landwhere time and space have been wired and railroaded pretty well out ofexistence.
Moreover, Dunham's bank was a member of a protective association, andSmith knew how wide a net could be spread and drawn when any abscondingemployee was really wanted. The doubling of the reward gave notice thatDunham was vindictively in earnest, and in that event it would be only aquestion of time until some one of the hired man-hunters would hit uponthe successful clew.
It was needful that he should work while the day was his in which towork; and he did work. There was still much to be done. Williams washaving a threat of labor troubles at the dam, and Stillings hadunearthed another possible flaw in the land titles dating back to thepromotion of a certain railroad which had never gotten far beyond thepaper stage and the acquiring of some of its rights of way.
Smith flung himself masterfully at the new difficulties as they arose,and earned his meed of praise from the men for whom he overcame them.But under the surface current of the hurrying business tide a bitterundertow was beginning to set in. In every characterizing change it isinevitable that there should be some loss in the scrapping of the old tomake way for the new. Smith saw himself in two aspects. In one he stoodas a man among men, with a promise of winning honors and wealth; withthe still more ecstatic promise of being able, perhaps, to win the loveof the vivifying young woman who had once touched the spring ofsentiment in him--and was touching it again. In the other he was afugitive and an outlaw, waiting only for some spreader of the net tocome and tap him on the shoulder.
He took his first decided backward step on the night when he went into ahardware store and bought a pistol. The free, fair-fighting spirit whichhad sent him barehanded against the three claim-jumpers was gone and inits place there was a fell determination, undefined as yet, but keyingitself to the barbaric pitch. With the weapon in his pocket he couldlook back over the transforming interspaces with a steadier eye. Truly,he had come far since that night in the Lawrenceville Bank when a singlefierce gust of passion had plucked him away from all the familiarlandmarks.
And as for Corona Baldwin, there were days in which he set his jaw andtold himself that nothing, even if it were the shedding of blood, shouldstand in the way of winning her. It was his right as a man; he had donenothing to make himself the outlaw that the Lawrenceville indictmentdeclared him to be; therefore he would fight for his chance--slay forit, if need be. But there were other days when the saner thoughtprevailed and he saw the pit of selfishness into which the newbarbarisms were plunging him. The Baldwins were his friends, and theywere accepting him in the full light of the inference that he was a manunder a cloud. Could he take a further advantage of their generosity byinvolving them still more intimately in his own particular entanglement?He assured himself that he couldn't and wouldn't; that though he might,indeed, commit a murder when the pinch came, he was still man enough tostay away from Hillcrest.
He was holding this latter view grimly on an evening when he had workedhimself haggard over the draft of the city ordinance which was toauthorize the contract with the High Line Company for lights and power.It had been a day of nagging distractions. A rumor had been setafoot--by Stanton, as Smith made no doubt--hinting that the new damwould be unsafe when it should be completed; that its breaking, with thereservoir behind it, would carry death and destruction to the lowlandsand even to the city. Timid stockholders, seeing colossal damage suitsin the bare possibility, had taken the alarm, and Smith had spent thegreater part of the day in trying to calm their fears. For this cause,and some others, he was on the ragged edge when Baldwin dropped in onhis way home from the dam and protested.
"Look here, John; you're overdoing this thing world without end! It'ssix o'clock, man!--quitting-time. Another week of this grinding andyou'll be hunting a nice, quiet cot in the railroad hospital, and thenwhere'll we be? You break it off short, right now, and go home with meand get your dinner and a good night's rest. No, by Jupiter, I'm notgoing to let you off, this trip. Get your coat and hat and come along,or I'll rope you down and hog-tie you."
For once in a way, Smith found that there was no fight left in him, andhe yielded, telling himself that another acceptance of the Baldwinhospitality, more or less, could make no difference. But no sooner wasthe colonel's gray roadster headed for the bridge across the Timanyonithan the exhilarating reaction set in. In a twinkling the businesscares, and the deeper worries as well, fled away, and in their placeheart-hunger was loosed. If Corona would give him this one evening, resthim, revive him, share with him some small portion of her marvellousvitality....
He did not overrate the stimulative effect of her presence; of the merefact of propinquity. When the roadster drew up at the portico of thetransplanted Missouri plantation mansion she was waiting on the steps.It was dinner-time, and she had on an evening gown of some shimmering,leafy stuff that made her look more like a wood-nymph than he had eversupposed any mere mortal woman could look. When she stood on tiptoes forher father's kiss, Smith knew the name of his malady, however much hemay have blinked it before; knew its name, and knew that it would haveto be reckoned with, whatever fresh involvements might be lying in waitfor him behind the curtain of the days to come.
After dinner, a meal at which he ate little and was well content tosatisfy the hunger of his soul by the road of the eye, Smith went out tothe portico to smoke. The most gorgeous of mountain sunsets was paintingitself upon the sky over the western Timanyonis, but he had no eyes fornatural grandeurs, and no ears for any sound save one--the footstep hewas listening for. It came at length, and he tried to look as tired ashe had been when the colonel made him close his desk and leave theoffice; tried and apparently succeeded.
"You poor, broken-down Samson, carrying all the brazen gates of themoney-Philistines on your shoulders! You had to come to us at last,didn't you? Let me be your Delilah and fix that chair so that it will bereally comfortable." She said it only half mockingly, and he forgave thesarcasm when she arranged some of the hammock pillows in the easiest ofthe porch chairs and made him bury himself luxuriously in them.
Still holding the idea, brought over from that afternoon of the namequestioning, that she had in some way discovered his true identity,Smith was watching narrowly for danger-signals when he thanked her andsaid:
"You say it just as it is. I had to come. But you could never beanybody's Delilah, could you? She was a betrayer, if you recollect."
He made the suggestion purposely, but it was wholly ignored, and therewas no guile in the slate-gray eyes.
"You mean that you didn't want to come?"
"No; not that. I have wanted to come every time your father has askedme. But there are reasons--good reasons--why I shouldn't be here."
If she knew any of the reasons she made no sign. She was sitting in thehammock and touching one slippered toe to the flagstones for theswinging push. From Smith's point of view she had for a background thegorgeous sunset, but he could not see the more distant glories.
"We owe you much, and we are going to owe you more," she said. "Youmustn't think that we don't appreciate you at your full value.Colonel-daddy thinks you are the most wonderful somebody that everlived, and so do a lot of the others."
"And you?" he couldn't resist saying.
"I'm just plain ashamed--for the way I treated you when you were herebefore. I've been eating humble-pie ever
since."
Smith breathed freer. Nobody but a most consummate actress could havesimulated her frank sincerity. He had jumped too quickly to the smallsum-in-addition conclusion. She did _not_ know the story of theabsconding bank cashier.
"I don't know why you should feel that way," he said, eager, now, to runwhere he had before been afraid to walk.
"_I_ do. And I believe you wanted to shame me. I believe you gave upyour place at the dam and took hold with daddy more to show me what aninconsequent little idiot I was than for any other reason. Didn't you,really?"
He laughed in quiet ecstasy at this newest and most adorable of themoods.
"Honest confession is good for the soul: I did," he boasted. "Now beatthat for frankness, if you can."
"I can't," she admitted, laughing back at him. "But now you'veaccomplished your purpose, I hope you are not going to give up. Thatwould be a little hard on Colonel-daddy."
"Oh, no; I'm not going to give up--until I have to."
"Does that mean more than it says?"
"Yes, I'm afraid it does."
She was silent for the length of time that it took the flaming crimsonin the western sky to fade to salmon.
"I know I haven't earned the right to ask you any of the whys," she saidat the end of the little pause.
"Women like you--only there are not any more of them, I think--don'thave to earn things. The last time you were in the office you saidenough to let me know that you and your father and Williams--all of you,in fact--suspect that I am out here under a cloud of some sort. It istrue."
"And that is why you say you won't give up until you have to?"
"That is the reason; yes."
There was another little interval of silence and then she said: "Isuppose you couldn't tell me--or anybody--could you?"
"I can tell you enough so that you will understand why I may not bepermitted to go on and finish what I have begun in Timanyoni High Line.When I left home I thought I was a murderer."
He would not look at her to see how she was taking it, but he could nothelp hearing her little gasp.
"_Oh!_" she breathed; and then: "You say you 'thought.' Wasn't it so?"
"It happened not to be. The man didn't die. I suppose I might say that Ididn't try to kill him; but that would hardly be true. At the moment, Ididn't care. Have you ever felt that way?--you know what I mean, justutterly blind and reckless as to consequences?"
"I have a horrible temper, if that covers it."
"It's something like that," he conceded; "only, up to the moment when ithappened I hadn't known that I had any temper. Perhaps I might say thatthe provocation was big enough, though the law won't say so."
The pink flush had faded out of the high western horizon and the starswere coming out one at a time. The colonel had come up from the ranchbunk-house where the men slept, and was smoking his long-stemmedcorn-cob pipe on the lawn under the spreading cottonwoods. Peace was thekey-note of the perfect summer night, and even for the man under theshadow of the law there was a quiet breathing space.
"I don't believe you could ever kill a man in cold blood," said theyoung woman in the hammock. "I'm sure you know that, yourself, and itought to be a comfort to you."
"It might have been once, but it isn't any more."
"Why not?"
"I suppose it is because I left a good many things behind me when I ranaway--besides the man I thought was dead. In that other life I neverknew what it meant to fight for the things I wanted; perhaps it wasbecause I never wanted anything very badly, or possibly it was becausethe things I did want came too easily."
"They are not coming so easily now?"
"No; but I'm going to have them at any cost. You will know what I meanwhen I say that nothing, not even human life, seems so sacred to me asit used to."
"Have you ever talked with daddy about all these things?"
"No. You don't know men very well; they don't talk about such things toone another. The average man tells some woman, if he can be lucky enoughto find one who will listen."
"You haven't told me all of it," she said, after another hesitant pause."You have carefully left the woman out of it. Was she pretty?"
Smith buried his laugh so deep that not a flicker of it came to thesurface.
"Is that the open inference always?--that a man tries to kill anotherbecause there is a woman in it?"
"I merely asked you if she was pretty."
"There was a woman," he answered doggedly; "though she had nothing to dowith the trouble. I was going to call on her the night I--the night thething happened. I hope she isn't still waiting for me to ring thedoor-bell."
"You haven't told her where you are?"
"No; but she's not losing any sleep about that. She isn't that kind.Indeed, I'm not sure that she wouldn't turn the letter over to thesheriff, if I should write her. Let's clear this up before we go anyfurther. It was generally understood, in the home town, you know, thatwe were to be married some time, though nothing definite had ever beensaid by either of us. There wasn't any sentiment, you understand; I wasidiotic enough at the time to believe that there wasn't any such thingas sentiment. It has cost me about as much to give her up as it has costher to give me up--and that is a little less than nothing."
Again the silence came between. The colonel was knocking his pipe bowlagainst a tree trunk and an interruption was threatening. When the lowvoice came again from the hammock it was troubled.
"You are disappointing me, now. You are taking it very lightly, andapparently you neither know nor care very much how the woman may betaking it. Perhaps there wasn't any sentiment on your part."
Smith was laughing quietly. "If you could only know Verda Richlander,"he said. "Imagine the most beautiful thing you can think of, and thentake the heart out of it, and--but, hold on, I can do better than that,"and he drew out his watch and handed it to her with the back caseopened.
She took the watch and stopped the hammock swing to let the light fromthe nearest window fall upon the photograph.
"She is very beautiful; magnificently beautiful," she said, returningthe watch. And an instant later: "I don't see how you could say what youdid about the sentiment. If I were a man----"
The colonel had mounted the steps and was coming toward them. The youngwoman slipped from the hammock and stood up.
"Don't go," said Smith, feeling as if he were losing an opportunity andleaving much unsaid that ought to be said. But the answer was a quiet"good night" and she was gone.
Smith went back to town with the colonel the next morning physicallyrested, to be sure, but in a frame of mind bordering again upon thesardonic. In the cold light of the following day, after-dinnerconfidences, even with the best-beloved, have a way of showing up alltheir puerilities and inadequacies. Two things, and two alone, stood outclearly: one was that he was most unmistakably in love with CoronaBaldwin, and the other was that he had shown her the weakest side ofhimself by appealing like a callow boy to her sympathies.
Hence there was another high resolve not to go to Hillcrest again untilhe could go as a free man; a resolve which, it is perhaps needless tosay, was broken thereafter as often as the colonel asked him to go. Why,in the last resort, Smith should have finally chosen another confidantin the person of William Starbuck, the reformed cow-puncher, he scarcelyknew. But it was to Starbuck that he appealed for advice when thesentimental situation had grown fairly desperate.
"I've told you enough so that you can understand the vise-nip of it,Billy," he said to Starbuck one night when he had dragged the mine ownerup to the bath-room suite in the Hophra House, and had told him just alittle, enough to merely hint at his condition. "You see how it stacksup. I'm in a fair way to come out of this the biggest scoundrelalive--the piker who takes advantage of the innocence of a good girl.I'm not the man she thinks I am. I am standing over a volcano pit everyminute of the day. If it blows up, I'm gone, obliterated, wiped out."
"Is it aiming to blow up?" asked Starbuck sagely.
"I don't know any m
ore about that than you do. It is the kind thatusually does blow up sooner or later. I've prepared for it as well as Ican. What Colonel Baldwin and the rest of you needed was a financialmanager, and Timanyoni High Line has its fighting chance--which wasmore than Timanyoni Ditch had when I took hold. If I should drop outnow, you and Maxwell and the colonel and Kinzie could go on and make thefight; but that doesn't help out in this other matter."
Starbuck smoked in silence for a long minute or two before he said: "Isthere another woman in it, John?"
"Yes; but not in the way you mean. It never came to anything more than adecently frank friendship, though the whole town had it put up that itwas all settled and we were going to be married."
"Huh! I wonder if that's what _she'd_ say? You say it never came toanything more than a friendship: maybe that's all right from your sideof the fence. But how about the girl?"
The harassed one's smile was grimly reminiscent.
"If you knew her you wouldn't ask, Billy. She is the modern, up-to-dateyoung woman in all that the term implies. When she marries she will givelittle and ask little, outside of the ordinary amenities andconventionalities."
"That's what you say; and maybe it's what you think. But when you haveto figure a woman into it, you never can tell, John. Are you keeping intouch with this other girl?"
Smith shook his head.
"No; I shall probably never see her or hear from her again. Not that itmatters a penny's worth to either of us. And your guess was wrong if youthought that things past are having any effect on things present. CoronaBaldwin stands in a class by herself."
"She's a mighty fine little girl, John," said Starbuck slowly. "Any oneof a dozen fellows I could name would give all their old shoes to swapchances with you."
"That isn't exactly the kind of advice I'm needing," was the soberrejoinder.
"No; but it was the kind you were wanting, when you tolled me off uphere," laughed the ex-cow-puncher. "I know the symptoms. Had 'em myselffor about two years so bad that I could wake up in the middle of thenight and taste 'em. Go in and win. Maybe the great big stumbling-blockyou're worrying about wouldn't mean anything at all to an open-mindedyoung woman like Corona; most likely it wouldn't."
"If she could know the whole truth--and believe it," said Smithmusingly.
"You tell her the truth, and she'll take care of the believing part ofit, all right. You needn't lose any sleep about that."
Smith drew a long breath and removed his pipe to say: "I haven't thenerve, Billy, and that's the plain fact. I have already told her alittle of it. She knows that I----"
Starbuck broke in with a laugh. "Yes; it's a shouting pity about yournerve! You've been putting up such a blooming scary fight in thisirrigation business that we all know you haven't any nerve. If I hadyour job in that, I'd be going around here toting two guns and wonderingif I couldn't make room in the holster for another."
Smith shook his head.
"I was safe enough so long as Stanton thought I was the resident managerand promoter for a new bunch of big money in the background. But he hashad me shadowed and tracked until now I guess he is pretty wellconvinced that I actually had the audacity to play a lone hand; and abluffing hand, at that. That makes a difference, of course. Two daysafter I had climbed into the saddle here, he sent a couple of hisstrikers after me. I don't know just what their orders were, but theyseemed to want a fight--and they got it. It was in Blue Pete's doggery,up at the camp."
"Guns?" queried Starbuck.
"Theirs; not mine, because I didn't have any. I managed to get theshooting-irons away from them before we had mixed very far."
"You're just about the biggest, long-eared, stiff-backed, stubborn wildass of the wallows that was ever let loose in a half-reformedgun-country!" grumbled the ex-cow-man. "You're fixing to get yourselfall killed up, Smith. Haven't you sense enough to see that theserustlers will rub you out in two twitches of a dead lamb's tail ifthey've made up their minds that you are the High Line main guy and theonly one?"
"Of course," said the wild ass easily. "If they could lay me up for amonth or two----"
"Lay up, nothing!" retorted Starbuck. "Lay you down, about six feetunderground, is what I mean!"
"Pshaw!" exclaimed the one whose fears ran in a far different channelfrom any that could be dug by mere corporation violence. "This isAmerica, in the twentieth century. We don't kill our businesscompetitors nowadays."
"Don't we?" snorted Starbuck. "That will be all right, too. We'llsuppose, just for the sake of argument, that my respected andrespectable daddy-in-law, or whatever other silk-hatted old money-bagshappens to be paying Crawford Stanton's salary _and_ commission,wouldn't send out an order to have you killed off. Maybe Stanton,himself, wouldn't stand for it if you'd put it that barefaced. Butdaddy-in-law, and Stanton, and all the others, hire blacklegs andsharpers and gunmen and thugs. And every once in a while somebody takesa wink for a nod--and _bang!_ goes a gun."
"Well, what's the answer?" said Smith.
"Tote an arsenal, yourself, and be ready to shoot first and askquestions afterward. That's the only way you can live peaceably withsuch men as Jake Boogerfield and Lanterby and Pete Simms."
Smith got out of his chair and took a turn up and down the length of theroom. When he came back to stand before Starbuck, he said: "I did that,Billy. I've been carrying a gun for a week and more; not for these ditchpirates, but for somebody else. The other night, when I was out atHillcrest, Corona happened to see it. I'm not going to tell you what shesaid, but when I came back to town the next morning, I chucked the guninto a desk drawer. And I hope I'm going to be man enough not to wear itagain."
Starbuck dropped the subject abruptly and looked at his watch.
"You liked to have done it, pulling me off up here," he remarked. "I'mdue to be at the train to meet Mrs. Billy, and I've got just about threeminutes. So long."
Smith changed his street clothes leisurely after Starbuck had gone, andmade ready to go down to the cafe dinner, turning over in his mind,meanwhile, the problem whose solution he had tried to extract from hislate visitor. The workable answer was still as far off and asunattainable as ever when he went down-stairs and stopped at the desk totoss his room-key to the clerk.
The hotel register was lying open on the counter, and from force ofhabit he ran his eye down the list of late arrivals. At the end of thelist, in sprawling characters upon which the ink was yet fresh, he readhis sentence, and for the first time in his life knew the meaning ofpanic fear. The newest entry was:
"Josiah Richlander and daughter, Chicago."
Smith was not misled by the place-name. There was only one "JosiahRichlander" in the world for him, and he knew that the Lawrencevillemagnate, in registering from Chicago, was only following the example ofthose who, for good reasons or no reason, use the name of their lateststopping-place for a registry address.
The Real Man Page 13