V
The Trail Of Sentiment
Within the house the travellers had disposed themselves in a repressed andmelancholy circle that suggested the suspended animation of a funeralgathering. The fat lady had turned back her skirt to save her travellingdress. The stage was late, and there was no good and sufficient reason forwearing it out. A similar consideration of economy led her to flirt offflies with her second best pocket-handkerchief. Mrs. Dax presided over thegathering with awful severity. Every one truckled to her shamefully,receiving her lightest remarks as if they were to be inscribed on tabletsof bronze. Leander, his eyes bright with excitement at being received inthe family circle on an equal footing, balanced perilously on the edge ofhis chair, anticipating dismissal.
"Chugg's never ben so late as this," said Mrs. Dax, rocking herselffuriously. She strongly resembled one of those mottled chargers of thenursery whose flaunting nostrils seem forever on the point of sendingforth flame. Leander, the fat lady, and Miss Carmichael meekly murmuredassent and condemnation.
"And there ain't a sign of him," said Mrs. Dax, returning to the houseafter straining the landscape through her all-observant eye, and notdetecting him in any of the remote pin-pricks on the horizon, in whichthese plainsfolk invariably decipher a herd of antelope, an elk or two, ora horseman.
"Bet he had a woman in the stage and upset it with her," said Leander, inthe animated manner of a poor relation currying favor with a bit of news.
Mrs. Dax regarded him severely for a moment, then conspicuously addressedher next remark to the ladies. "Bet he had a woman in the stage, the oldscoundrel!"
"Wonder who she was?" said Leander, with the sparkling triumph of a poorrelation whose surmise had been accepted. But Mrs. Dax had evidentlydecided that Leander had gone far enough.
"Was you expectin' any of your lady friends by Chugg's stage that you areso frettin' anxious?" she inquired, and the poor relation collapsedmiserably.
"You've heard about Chugg's goin' on since 'Mountain Pink' jilted him?"inquired Mrs. Dax of the fat lady, as the only one of the party who mighthave kept abreast with the social chronicles of the neighborhood.
"My land, yes," responded the fat lady, proud to be regarded as sociallycognizant. "M' son says he's plumb locoed about it--didn't want me totravel by his stage. But I said he dassent upset a woman of my age--he justnacherally dassent!"
Miss Carmichael, by dint of patient inquiry, finally got the story whichwas popularly supposed to account for the misdemeanors of thestage-driver, including his present delinquency that was delaying them ontheir journey.
It appeared that Lemuel Chugg, then writhing in the coils of perverseromance, was among the last of those famous old stage-drivers whosetalents combined skill at handling the ribbons with the diplomacynecessary to treat with a masked envoy on the road. His luck in theseencounters was proverbial, and many were the hair-breadth escapes due toChugg's ready wit and quick aim; and, to quote Leander, "while he had beenshot as full of holes as a salt-shaker, there was a lot of fight in theold man yet."
Chugg had had no loves, no hates, no virtues, no genial vices after themanner of these frontiersmen. Avarice had warmed the cockles of his heart,and the fetish he prayed to was an old gray woollen stocking, stuffed sofull of twenty-dollar gold pieces that it presented the bulbous appearanceof the "before treatment" view of a chiropodist's sign. This darling ofhis old age had been waxing fat since Chugg's earliest manhood. It hadbeen his only love--till he met Mountain Pink.
Mountain Pink's husband kept a road-ranch somewhere on Chugg'sstage-route. She was of a buxom type whose red-and-white complexion hadnot yet surrendered to the winds, the biting dust, and the alkali water.Furthermore, she could "bring about a dried-apple pie" to make a manforget the cooking of his mother. Great was the havoc wrought by MountainPink's pies and complexion, but she followed the decorous precedent ofCaesar's wife, and, like her pastry, remained above suspicion.
Her husband, whose name was Jim Bosky, seemed, to the self-impanelled jurythat spent its time sitting on the case, singularly insensible to his ownadvantages. Not only did he fail to take a proper pride in her beauty, butthere were dark hints abroad that he had never tasted one of her pies.When delicately questioned on this point, at that stage of liquidrefreshment that makes these little personalities not impossible, Boskyhad grimly quoted the dearth of shoes among shoe-makers' children.
Whatever were the facts of the case, Mountain Pink got the sympathy thatmight have been expected in a section of the country where the ratio ofthe sexes is fifty to one. Chugg, eating her pies regularly once a week onhis stage-route, said nothing, but he presented her with a red plushphotograph album with oxidized silver clasps, and by this first recklessexpenditure of money in the life of Chugg, Natrona, Johnson, Converse, andSweetwater counties knew that Cupid had at last found a vulnerable spot inthe tough and weather-tanned hide of the old stage-driver.
Nor did Cupid stop here with his pranks. Having inoculated thestage-driver with the virus of romance, madness began to work in the veinsof Chugg. He presented Mountain Pink with the gray woollen stocking--notextracting a single coin--and urged her to get a divorce from the clodlikeman who had never appreciated her and marry him.
Mountain Pink coyly took the stocking so generously given for the divorceand subsequent trousseau, and Chugg continued to drive his stage with anApollo-like abandon, whistling love-songs the while.
Coincident with Mountain Pink's disappearance Dakotaward, in the interestsof freedom, went also one Bob Catlin, a mule-wrangler. Bosky, withconspicuous pessimism, hoped for the worst from the beginning, and as timewent on and nothing was heard of either of the wanderers, some of MountainPink's most loyal adherents confessed it looked "romancy." But crusty oldChugg remained true to his ideal. "She'll write when she gets good andready," and then concluded, loyally, "Maybe she can't write, nohow," andnothing could shake his faith.
When Mountain Pink and the mule-wrangler returned as bride and groom andset up housekeeping on the remainder of Chugg's stocking, and on hisstage-route, too, so that he had to drive right past the honeymoon cottageevery time he completed the circuit, they lost caste in Carbon County.Chugg never spoke of the faithlessness of Mountain Pink. His bitternessfound vent in tipping over the stage when his passengers were confined tomembers of the former Mrs. Bosky's sex, and, as Leander said, "the flaskin his innerds held more." And these were the only traces of tragedy inthe life of Lemuel Chugg, stage-driver.
Judith had continued her unquiet pacing in the blinding glare while thegroup within doors, somnolent from the heat and the incessant shrilling ofthe locusts, droningly discussed the faithlessness of Mountain Pink,dozed, and took up the thread of the romance. Each time she turned Judithwould stop and scan the yellow road, shading her eyes with her hand, andeach time she had turned away and resumed her walk. Mary, who gave thepostmistress no unstinted share of admiration for the courage with whichshe faced her difficulties, and who had been seeking an opportunity tosignify her friendship, and now that she saw the last of the gallantsdepart, inquired of Judith if she might join her.
They walked without speaking for several minutes, enjoying a sense ofcomradeship hardly in keeping with the brevity of their acquaintance; afreedom from restraint spared them the necessity of exchanging small-talk,that frequently irritating toll exacted as tribute to possible friendship.
The desert lay white and palpitating beneath the noonday glare, and fromthe outermost rim of desolation came dancing "dust-devils" whirling andgliding through the mazes of their eerie dance. "I think sometimes," saidJudith, "that they are the ghosts of those who have died of thirst in thedesert."
Mary shuddered imperceptibly. "How do you stand it with never a glimpse ofthe sea?"
"You'll love it, or hate it; the desert is too jealous for half measures.As for the sea"--Judith shrugged her fine shoulders--"from all I've heard ofit, it must be very wet."
Each felt a reticence about broaching the subject upp
ermost in herthoughts--Judith from the instinctive tendency towards secretiveness thatwas part of the heritage of her Indian blood; Mary because the subject soclosely concerned this girl for whom she felt such genuine admiration.
Judith finally brought up the matter with an abruptness that scarceconcealed her anxiety.
"You saw my brother yesterday at Mrs. Clark's eating-house; will you begood enough to tell me just what happened?"
Mary related the incident in detail, Judith cross-examining her minutelyas to the temper of the men at table towards Jim. Did she know if anycattle-men were present? Did she hear where her brother had gone?
Mary had heard nothing further after he had left the eating-house; theonly one she had talked to had been Mrs. Clark, whose sympathy had beenentirely with Jim. Judith thanked her, but in reality she knew no more nowthan she had heard from Major Atkins.
Judith now stopped in their walk and stood facing the road as it rolledover the foot-hills--a skein of yellow silk glimmering in the sun. ThenMary saw that the object spinning across it in the distance, hardly biggerthan a doll's carriage, was the long-delayed stage. She spoke to thepostmistress, but apparently she did not hear--Judith was watching thenearing stage as if it might bring some message of life and death. Shestood still, and the drooping lines of her figure straightened, everyfibre of her beauty kindled. She was like a flame, paling the sunlight.
And presently was heard the uncouth music of sixteen iron-shod hoofsbeating hard from the earth rhythmic notes which presently grew hollow andsonorous as they came rattling over the wooden bridge that spanned thecreek.
"Chugg!" exclaimed Leander, rushing to the door in a tumult. There wassomething crucial in the arrival of the delayed stage-driver. Hisdelinquencies had deflected the course of the travellers, left themstranded in a remote corner of the wilderness; but now they should againresume the thread of things; Chugg's coming was an event.
"'Tain't Chugg, by God!" said Leander, impelled to violent language by theunexpected.
"It's Peter Hamilton!" exclaimed Mrs. Dax.
"Land's sakes, the New-Yorker!" said the fat lady. Only Judith saidnothing.
Mr. Hamilton held the ribbons of that battered prairie-stage as if he hadbeen driving past the judges' bench at the Horse Show. Furthermore, hewore blue overalls, a flannel shirt, and a sombrero, which sartorialinventory, while it highly became the slim young giant, added an extracomedy touch to his role of whip. He was as dusty as a miller;close-cropped, curly head, features, and clothes were covered with a finealkali powdering; but he carried his youth as a banner streaming in theblue. And he swung from the stage with the easy flow of muscle that is thereward of those who live in the saddle and make a fine art of throwing thelariat.
They greeted him heartily, all but Judith, who did not trust herself tospeak to him before the prying eyes of Mrs. Dax, and escaped to the house.Chugg's latest excursion into oblivion had resulted in a fall from thebox. He was not badly hurt, and recuperation was largely a matter of"sleeping it off," concluded Peter Hamilton's bulletin of the condition ofthe stage-driver. So the travellers were still marooned at Dax's, and theprospect of continuing their journey was as vague as ever.
"Last I heard of you," said Mrs. Dax to Hamilton, with a sort of stone-ageplayfulness, "you was punching cows over to the Bitter Root."
"That's true, Mrs. Dax"--he gave her his most winning smile--"but I couldnot stay away from you long."
Leander grimaced and rubbed his hands in an ecstasy of delight at findinga man who had the temerity to bandy words with Mrs. Dax.
"Hum-m-m-ph!" she whinnied, with equine coquetry. "Guess it was rustlersbrought you back as much as me."
Judith, who had entered the room in time to hear Mrs. Dax's last remark,greeted him casually, but her eyes, as they met his, were full ofquestioning fear. Had he come from the Bitter Root range to hunt down herbrother? The thought was intolerable. Yet, when he had bade her good-byesome three weeks ago, he had told her that he did not expect to returnmuch before the fall "round-up." She had heard, a day or two before, thathe was again in the Wind River country, and her morning vigil beneath theglare of the desert sun had been for him.
Mrs. Dax regarded them with the mercilessness of a death-watch; sheremembered the time when Hamilton's excuses for his frequent presence atthe post-office had been more voluble than logical. But now he no longercame, and Judith, for all her deliberate flow of spirits, did not quiteconvince the watchful eyes of Leander's lady--the postmistress was a trifletoo cheerful.
"Mrs. Dax," pleaded Peter, boyishly, "I'm perishing for a cup of coffee,and I've got to get back to my outfit before dark."
"Oh, go on with you," whinnied the gorgon; but she left the room to makethe coffee.
Judith's eyes sought his. "Why don't you and Leander form a coalition forthe overthrow of the enemy?" His voice had dropped a tone lower than inhis parley with Mrs. Dax; it might have implied special devotion, or itmight have implied but the passing tribute to a beautiful woman in acountry where women were few--the generic admiration of all men for allwomen, ephemerally specialized by place and circumstance.
But Judith, harassed at every turn, heart-sick with anxiety, hadanticipated in Peter's coming, if not a solution of her troubles, at leastsome evidence of sustaining sympathy, and was in no mood for resuscitatingthe perennial pleasantries anent Leander and his masterful lady.
The shrilling of the locusts emphasized their silence. She spoke to himcasually of his change of plan, but he turned the subject, and Judith letthe matter drop. She was too simple a woman to stoop to oblique measuresfor the gaining of her own ends. If he was here to hunt down her brother,if he was here to see the Eastern woman at the Wetmore ranch--well, "lifewas life," to be taken or left. Thus spoke the fatalism that was theheritage of her Indian blood.
The thought of Miss Colebrooke at Wetmore's reminded her of a letter forPeter that had been brought that morning by one of the Wetmore cow-boys.
"I forgot--there's a letter for you." She went to the pigeon-holes on thewall that held the flotsam and jetsam of unclaimed mail, and brought him asquare, blue linen envelope--distinctly a lady's letter.
Peter took it with rather a forced air of magnanimity, as if in neglectingto present it to him sooner she drew heavily on his reserve of patience.Tearing open the envelope, he read it voraciously, read it to theexclusion of his surroundings, the world at large, and--Judith. He strodeup and down the floor two or three times, and called to Leander, who waspassing:
"Dax, I must have that gray mare of yours right away." He went in thedirection of the stable, without a second glance at the postmistress, andpresently they saw him galloping off in the opposite direction from whichhe had come. Mrs. Dax came in with a tray on which were a pot of coffeeand sundry substantial delicacies.
"Where's he gone?" she demanded, putting the tray down so hard that thecoffee slopped.
"I dunno," said Leander. "He said he'd got to have the gray mare, saddledher hisself, and rode off like hell."
Mrs. Dax looked at them all savagely for the explanation that they couldnot give. In sending her out to make coffee she felt that Peter, whom sheregarded in the light of a weakness, had taken advantage of her affectionsto dupe her in regard to his plans.
"Take them things back to the kitchen," she commanded Leander.
Mary Carmichael involuntarily glanced at Judith; the fall of the leaf wasin her cheek.
Peter Hamilton, bowed in his saddle and flogging forward inhumanely, bredrife speculation as to his destination among the group that watched himfrom the Daxes' front door. Mrs. Dax, who entertained so profound arespect for her own omniscience that she disdained to arrive at aconclusion by a logical process of deduction, was "plumb certain that hehad gone after 'rustlers!'" Leander, who had held no opinions since hismarriage except that first and all-comprehensive tenet of his creed--thathis wife was a person to be loved, honored, and obeyed instantly--agreedwith his lady by a process of reflex action. The fat lady, who had acommonplace f
or every occasion, didn't "know what we were all coming to."Miss Carmichael, who was beginning to find her capacity for amazementoverstrained, alone accepted this last incident with apathy. Mr. Hamiltonmight have gone in swift pursuit of cattle thieves or he might be ridingthe mare to death for pure whimsy. Only Judith Rodney, who said nothing,felt that he was spurring across the wilderness at breakneck speed to seea girl at Wetmore's. But her lack of comment caused no ripple of surprisein the flow of loose-lipped speculation that served, for the time being,to inject a casual interest into the talk of these folk, bored to theverge of demoralization by long waiting for Chugg.
Judith preferred to confirm her apprehensions regarding Hamilton's ride,alone. She knew--had not all her woman's intuitions risen in clamorouswarning--and yet she hoped, hoped despairingly, even though the dreadalternative to the girl at the Wetmore ranch threatened lynch law for herbrother. Her very gait changed as she withdrew from the group about thedoor, covertly gaining her vantage-ground inch by inch. The heels of herriding-boots made no sound as she stole across the kitchen floor, toeingin like an Indian tracking an enemy through the forest. The small windowat the back of the kitchen commanded a view of the road in all itssprawling circumlocution. Seen from this prospect, it had no more designthan the idle scrawlings of a child on a bit of paper; but the choice ofroads to Good and Evil was not fraught with more momentous consequencesthan was each prong of that fork towards which Hamilton was galloping.
The right arm swung towards the Wetmore ranch, where at certain timesduring the course of the year a hundred cow-punchers reported on the stockthat grazed in four States. At certain seasons, likewise, despite the factthat the ranch was well into the foot-hill country, there might be found aNew York family playing at life primeval with the co-operation ofporcelain bath-tubs, a French _chef_, and electric light.
The left fork of the road had a meaner destiny. It dipped straight intodesolation, penetrating a naked wilderness where bad men skulked till theevil they had done was forgotten in deeds that called afresh to Heaven forvengeance. It was well away on this west fork of the road that theylynched Kate Watson--"Cattle Kate"--for the crime of loyalty. It was she,intrepid and reckless, who threatened the horde of masked scoundrels whenthey came to lynch her man for the iniquity of raising a few vegetables ona strip of ground that cut into their grazing country. And when she,recognizing them, masked though they were, threatened them with thevengeance of the law, they hanged her with her man high as Haman.
Judith watched Hamilton with narrowing eyes. And now she was all Indian,the white woman in her dead. Only the Sioux watched, and, in the patient,Indian style, bided its time. "Cattle thieves," "the girl atWetmore's"--the words sang themselves in her head like an incantation."Cattle thieves" meant her brother, their recognized leader--her brother,who was dearer to her than the heart in her breast, the eye in her head,the right hand that held together the shambling, uncertain destiny of herpeople. Would he turn to the left, Justice, on a pale horse, hunting herbrother gallowsward? Would he turn towards the right, the impetuous loverspurring his steed that he might come swiftly to the woman. A pulse in herbosom rose slowly until her breath was suspended, then fell again; she wasstill watching, without an outward quiver, long after he had turned to theright--and the woman.
Judith of the Plains Page 5