The Fighting Shepherdess

by Lockhart, Caroline

  A half-inch of cigar burned to ashes between Prentiss’s finger-tips before he spoke.

  “So—the Sheep Queen is ostracized?”

  “Well—rather!” with unctuous emphasis. “My wife tried to take her up—but she couldn’t make it stick. Found it would hurt us in our business, socially, and all that.”

  Prentiss raised his cigar to his lips and looked at Toomey through slightly narrowed lids which might or might not be due to smoke as he asked:

  “Just what was her offense?”

  Toomey laughed.

  “It would be hard to say as to that. She came here under a cloud, and has been under one ever since. She has no antecedents, no blood, and even in a town like Prouty such things count. Her mother was Jezebel of the Sand Coulee, a notorious roadhouse in the southern part of the state; her father was God-knows-who—some freighter or sheepherder, most like.”

  “Interesting—quite. Go on.”

  Toomey did not note the constraint in Prentiss’s voice and proceeded with gusto:

  “She followed off a fellow called Mormon Joe, and trailed in here in overalls behind the little band of ewes that gave them their start. He took up a homestead back in the hills and they lived on about as near nothing as anybody could, and live at all—like a couple of white Indians sleeping in tents and eating out of a frying pan.

  “A chap that was visiting me one summer brought her to a dance here at the Prouty House—did it on a bet that he hadn’t sand enough. She came downstairs looking like a Christmas tree. Everybody gave her the frosty mitt and they had to leave.”

  Prentiss watched a smoke ring rise before he asked:

  “Why did they do that?”

  “So she wouldn’t make the same mistake again.”

  Toomey laughed, and added:

  “They took a ‘fall’ out of her every time they could after that. There was something about her that invited it,” he added reflectively, “the way she held her head up, as if she defied them to do their worst, and,” chuckling, “they did.”

  Prentiss thrust a forefinger inside his collar and gave it a tug as though it choked.

  “This Mormon Joe—what became of him?”

  The gleeful light went out of Toomey’s face.

  “He was killed in a shack down here.”

  “How?”

  “A trap-gun.”

  “By whom?”

  Toomey recrossed his long legs and sought a new position for his hands with the quick erratic movements of nervousness. He hesitated, then replied:

  “They suspected her.”

  “Why?”

  “She was the only one to benefit.”

  “There was no proof?”

  “No.”

  “What do you think?”

  Toomey deliberated a moment:

  “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 reassured by his impassive 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 embarrassment, 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 XXX

  HER DAY

  Kate stood before a teetering knobless 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 assigned 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 glass.

  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, crushing 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, passionate. 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 tak
en 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 analogous 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 relationship? 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 glass, 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, Jap? 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, Jap, 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.”

  “Oh, Jap! Whatever made you do that?”

  His thin lips curled.

  “Why shouldn’t I? Damn her—I hate her, somehow. The upstart—the gutter-snipe!”

  She laid her hand across his mouth.

  “You—shock me, Jap! I don’t understand why you are so—venomous toward Kate. Sometimes,” she looked at him searchingly, “I’ve wondered if you’ve injured her.”

  “What do you mean?” He breathed hard, in sudden excitement.

  She stood for a moment twisting a button on his coat—her eyes downcast. Finally:

  “Nothing—much.”

  In the office of the Prouty House, redolent of the juniper and spruce boughs which took the bareness from the walls, the guests hungrily watched the hands of the clock creep towards the fashionable hour of eight.

  “Among those present” was Mr. Clarence Teeters, circulating freely in a full dress coat and gray trousers—the latter worn over a pair of high-heeled cowboy boots and the former over a negligee shirt, beneath the cuffs of which two leather straps for strengthening the wrists peeped out. Fresh from the hands of the barber, Mr. Teeters’ hair, sleek, glossy, fragrant, and brushed straight back, gave him a marked resemblance to a muskrat that has just come up from a dive.

  With a sublimated confidence that was sickening to such citizens as had known him when he worked for wages and wore overalls, and particularly to Toomey, who took Teeters’ success upon the ranch where he himself had failed as a personal affront, Mr. Teeters flitted among the ladies, as impartial as a bee in a bed of hollyhocks, tossing off compliments with an ease which was a revelation to those who remembered the time when his brain stopped working in the presence of the opposite sex quite as effectually as though he had been hit with an axe.

  Toomey not only resented Teeters’ presence but the informality of his manner toward Prentiss, which Toomey regarded as his special prerogative. He already had had an argument with Sudds as to the advisability of including Teeters among the guests, and now during a lull his judgment was fully verified.

  Mr. Teeters with a proud glance at the gaily draped room and at the table decorated with real carnations and festoons of smilax, which were visible through the double doors opening into the dining room, inquired of Prentiss with hearty friendliness:

  “Say, feller, don’t this swell lay-out kinda take you back to Chicago or New York?”

  What further indiscretions of speech Teeters would have committed only his Maker knows, for at the moment the clerk at the desk called his name in an imperative voice. As the recipient of a telegram, Teeters had the attention of everybody in the room, and none could fail to observe his excitement as he folded the telegram and returned it to its envelope.

  “I got me a dude comin’ in on the train,” addressing Sudds. “Could you fix a place for him to eat? The train bein’ late like this, he won’t git any supper otherwise. I wasn’t expectin’ of him for a month yet.”

  With an invitation thus publicly requisitioned, as it were, there was no alternative but to assent.

  The hands of the office clock were close to eight when, as though on a signal, the hubbub of social intercourse ceased and eyes followed eyes to the top of the stairs where two white-slippered feet showed through the rungs of the balustrade and a slim hand sparkling with jewels slipped gracefully along the polished rail. Then she appeared full length, in a white dinner gown—clinging, soft, exquisite in its simplicity and the perfection of its lines. With pearls in her ears and about her throat, her hair drawn back in a simple knot, Kate looked like one of the favorites of fortune of whom the Proutyites read in the illustrated magazines and Sunday supplements. The least initiated was conscious of the perfect taste and skilful workmanship which had conspired to produce this result. Kate descended slowly, with neither undue deliberation nor haste, upon her lips the faint one-sided smile which was characteristic.

  The moment was as dramatic as if the situation had been planned for the effect, since there were few present to whose minds did not leap to the picture of that other girl who had come bounding down the stairs, grotesque of dress and as
assured and joyous in her ignorance as a frisky colt.

  In a continued silence which no one seemed to have the temerity or the presence of mind to break, the Sheep Queen turned at the foot of the stairway, and the various groups separated on a common impulse to let her pass. She went straight to Prentiss, whose greeting was a smile of adoring tenderness.

  “Am I late, father?”

  The sharp intake of breath throughout the room might have come from one pair of lungs. “Father!” The rumor was true then! Amazement came first, and then uneasiness. What effect would the relationship have upon their personal interests? Had she any feeling which would lead her to use her influence to their detriment?

  Kate and her father would have had more than their share of attention anywhere, for they had the same distinction of carriage, the same grave repose. Either one of them would have stood out in a far more brilliant assembly than that gathered in the Prouty House.

  The social training Mrs. Abram Pantin had received at church functions in Keokuk now came to her rescue. Gathering herself, she was able to chirp:

  “This is a surprise!”

  “You know my daughter, of course?” to Mrs. Sudds, whose jaw had dropped, so that she stood slightly open-mouthed, arrayed in a frock made in the fashion of the Moyen age and recently handed down from a great-uncle’s relict who had passed on. Since this confection bulged where it should have clung and clung where it should have bulged, it was the general impression that Mrs. Sudds was out in a maternity gown. Mrs. Neifkins in fourteen gores stood beside Mrs. Toomey in a hobble skirt reminiscent of her Chicago trip, while a faint odor of moth balls, cedar chips and gasolene permeated the atmosphere in the immediate vicinity of all this ancient elegance.

  “We all have met,” Kate replied, and her glance included the group. While there was no emphasis to suggest that the sentence contained any special significance, yet each of the ladies was conscious of an uncomfortable warmth, and the wish that dinner would be announced was so unanimous that their heads turned simultaneously towards the dining room; and, quite as if the concentrated thought had produced the result, the proprietor of the Prouty House conveyed the information to Sudds in a whisper from the corner of his mouth that all was in readiness.