by B. M. Bower
Kent was not in the mood to see the humor of anything in particular. Had he known anything about Pandora’s box he might have drawn a comparison very neatly while he stood scowling down at the oats box, for certainly he was likely to release trouble in plenty when he unfastened that lid. He felt of the gun swinging at his hip, just to assure himself that it was there and ready for business in case Fred wanted to shoot, and rapped with his knuckles upon the box, producing instant silence within.
“Don’t make so much noise in there,” he advised grimly, “not unless you want the whole town to know where you are, and have ’em give you the laugh. And, listen here: I ain’t apologizing for what I done, but, all the same, I’m sorry I did it. It wasn’t any use. I’d rather be shut up in an oats box all night than get let down like I was—and I’m telling you this so as to start us off even. If you want to fight about it when you come out, all right; you’re the doctor. But I’m just as sorry as you are it happened. I lay down my hand right here. I hope you shivaree Man and his wife—and shivaree ’em good. I hope you bust the town wide open.”
“Why this sudden change of heart?” came muffled from within.
“Ah—that’s my own business. Well, I don’t like you a little bit, and you know it; but I’ll tell you, just to give you a fair show. I wanted to keep Man sober, and I tried to get him and his wife out of town before that shivaree of yours was pulled off. But the lady wouldn’t have it that way. I got let right down on my face, and I’m done. Now you know just where I stand. Maybe I’m a fool for telling you, but I seem to be in the business tonight. Come on out.”
He unfastened the big iron hasp, which was showing signs of the strain put upon it, and stepped back watchfully. The thick, oaken lid was pushed up, and Fred De Garmo, rather dusty and disheveled and purple from the close atmosphere of the box and from anger as well, came up like a jack-in-the-box and glared at Kent. When he had stepped out upon the stable floor, however, he smiled rather unpleasantly.
[Illustration: He was jeered unmercifully by Fred De Garmo and his crowd]
“If you’ve told the truth,” he said maliciously, “I guess the lady has pretty near evened things up. If you haven’t—if I don’t find them both at the hotel—well—Anyway,” he added, with an ominous inflection, “there’ll be other days to settle this in!”
“Why, sure. Help yourself, Fred,” Kent retorted cheerfully, and stood where he was until Fred had gone out. Then he turned and closed the box. “Between that yellow-eyed dame and the chump that went and left this box wide open for me to tip Fred into,” he soliloquized, while he took down the lantern, and so sent the shadows dancing weirdly about him, “I’ve got a bunch of trouble mixed up, for fair. I wish the son of a gun would fight it out now, and be done with it; but no, that ain’t Fred. He’d a heap rather wait and let it draw interest!”
Over in the hotel the “yellow-eyed dame” was doing her unsophisticated best to meet the situation gracefully, and to realize certain vague and rather romantic dreams of her life out West. She meant to be very gracious, for one thing, and to win the chivalrous friendship of every man who came to participate in the rude congratulations that had been planned. Just how she meant to do this she did not know—except that the graciousness would certainly prove a very important factor.
“I’m going to remain downstairs,” she told Manley, when they reached the hotel. It was the first sentence she had spoken since he overtook her. “I’m so glad, dear,” she added diplomatically, “that you decided to stay. I want to see that funny landlady now, please, and get her to serve coffee and cake to our guests in the parlor. I wish I might have had one of my trunks brought over here; I should like to wear a pretty gown.” She glanced down at her tailored suit with true feminine dissatisfaction. “But everything was so—so confused, with your being late, and sick—is your head better, dear?”
Manley, in very few words, assured her that it was. Manley was struggling with his inner self, trying to answer one very important question, and to answer it truthfully: Could he meet “the boys,” do his part among them, and still remain sober? That seemed to be the only course open to him now, and he knew himself just well enough to doubt his own strength. But if Kent would help him—He felt an immediate necessity to find Kent.
“You’ll find Mrs. Hawley somewhere around,” he said hurriedly. “I’ve got to see Kent—”
“Oh, Manley! Don’t have anything to do with that horrid cowboy! He’s not—nice. He—he swore, when he must have known I could hear him; and he was swearing about me, Manley. Didn’t you hear him?” She stood in the doorway and clung to his arm.
“No,” lied Manley. “You must have been mistaken, sweetheart.”
“Oh, I wasn’t; I heard him quite plainly.” She must have thought it a terrible thing, for she almost whispered the last words, and she released him with much reluctance. It seemed to her that Manley was in danger of falling among low associates, and that she must protect him in spite of himself. It failed to occur to her that Manley had been exposed to that danger for three years, without any protection whatever.
She was thankful, when he came to her later in the parlor, to learn from him that he had not held any speech with Kent. That was some comfort—and she felt that she needed a little comforting, just then. Her consultation with Arline had been rather unsatisfactory. Arline had told her bluntly that “the bunch” didn’t want any coffee and cake. Whisky and cigars, said Arline, without so much as a blush, was what appealed to them fellows. If Manley handed it out liberal enough, they wouldn’t bother his bride. Very likely, Arline had assured her, she wouldn’t see one of them. That, on the whole, had been rather discouraging. How was she to show herself a gracious lady, forsooth, if no one came near her? But she kept these things jealously tucked away in the remotest corner of her own mind, and managed to look the relief she did not feel.
And, after all, the charivari, as is apt to be the case when the plans are laid so carefully, proved a very tame affair. Valeria, sitting rather dismally in the parlor with Mrs. Hawley for company, at midnight heard a banging of tin cans somewhere outside, a fitful popping of six-shooters, and an abortive attempt at a procession coming up the street. But the lines seemed to waver and then break utterly at the first saloon, where drink was to be had for the asking and Manley Fleetwood was pledged to pay, and the rattle of cans was all but drowned in the shouts of laughter and talk which came from the “office,” across the hall. For where is the pleasure or the profit in charivaring a bridal couple which stays up and waits quite openly for the clamor?
“Is it always so noisy here at night?” asked Valeria faintly when Mrs. Hawley had insisted upon her lying down upon the uncomfortable sofa.
“Well, no—unless a round-up pulls in, or there’s a dance, or it’s Christmas, or something. It’s liable to keep up till two or three o’clock, so the sooner you git used to it, the better off you’ll be. I’m going to leave you here, and go to bed—unless you want to go upstairs yourself. Only it’ll be noisier than ever up in your room, for it’s right over the office, and the way sound travels up is something fierce. Don’t you be afraid—I’ll lock this door, and if your husband wants to come in he can come through the dining room.” She looked at Valeria and hesitated before she spoke the next sentence. “And don’t you worry a bit over him, neither. My old man was in the kitchen a minute ago, when I was out there, and he says Man ain’t drinking a drop tonight. He’s keeping as straight as—”
Valeria sat up suddenly, quite scandalized. “Oh—why, of course Manley wouldn’t drink with them! Why—who ever heard of such a thing? The idea!” She stared reproachfully at her hostess.
“Oh, sure! I didn’t say such a thing was liable to happen. I just thought you might be—worrying—they’re making so much racket in there,” stammered Arline.
“Indeed, no. I’m not at all worried, thank you. And please don’t let me keep you up any longer, Mrs. Hawley. I am quite comfortable—mentally and physically, I assure you. Good
night.”
Not even Mrs. Hawley could remain after that. She went out and closed the door carefully behind her, without even finding voice enough to return Valeria’s sweetly modulated good night.
“She’s got a whole lot to learn,” she relieved her feelings somewhat by muttering as she mounted the stairs.
What it cost Manley Fleetwood to abstain absolutely and without even the compromise of “soft” drinks that night, who can say? Three years of free living in Montana had lowered his standard of morality without giving him that rugged strength of mind which makes a man master of himself first of all. He had that day lain, drunken and sleeping, when he should have been at his mental and physical best to meet the girl who would marry him. It was that very defection, perhaps, which kept him sober in the midst of his taunting fellows. Now that Valeria was actually here, and was his wife, he was possessed by the desire to make some sacrifice by which he might prove his penitence. At any cost he would spare her pain and humiliation, he told himself.
He did it, and he did it under difficulty. He was denied the moral support of Kent Burnett, for Kent was sulking over his slight, and would have nothing to say to him. He was jeered unmercifully by Fred De Garmo and his crowd. He was “baptized” by some drunken reveler, so that the stench of spilled whisky filled his nostrils and tortured him the night through. He was urged, he was bullied, he was ridiculed. His head throbbed, his eyeballs burned. But through it all he stayed among them because he feared that if he left them and went to Val, some drunken fool might follow him and shock her with his inebriety. He stayed, and he stayed sober. Val was his wife. She trusted him, and she was ignorant of his sins. If he went to her staggering and babbling incoherent foolishness, he knew it would break her heart.
When the sky was at last showing faint dawn tints and the clamor had worn itself out perforce—because even the leaders were, after all, but men, and there was a limit to their endurance—Manley entered the parlor, haggard enough, it is true, and bearing with him the stale odor of cigars long since smoked, and of the baptism of bad whisky, but also with the air of conscious rectitude which sits so comically upon a man unused to the feeling of virtue.
As is so often the case when one fights alone the good fight and manages to win, he was chagrined to find himself immediately put upon the defensive. Val, as she speedily demonstrated, declined to look upon him as a hero, or as being particularly virtuous. She considered herself rather neglected and abused. She believed that he had stayed away because he was angry with her on account of her refusal to leave town, and she thought that was rather brutal of him. Also, her head ached from tears and lack of sleep, and she hated the town, the hotel—almost she hated Manley himself.
Manley felt the rebuff of her chilling silence when he came in, and when she twitched herself loose from his embrace he came near regretting his extreme virtue. He spent ten minutes trying to explain, without telling all of the truth, and he felt his good opinion of himself slipping from him before her inexorable disfavor.
“Well, I don’t blame you for not liking the town, Val,” he said at last, rather desperately. “But you mustn’t judge the whole country by it. You’ll like the ranch, dear. You’ll feel as if you were in another world—”
“I hope so,” Val interrupted quellingly.
“We’ll drive out there just as soon as we have breakfast.” He laid his hand diffidently upon her tumbled hair. “I had to stay out there with those fellows. I didn’t want to—”
“I don’t want any breakfast,” said Val, getting up and going over to the window—it would seem to avoid his caress. “The odor of that dining room is enough to make one fast forever.” She lifted the grimy lace curtain with her finger tips and looked disconsolately out upon the street. “It’s just a dirty, squalid little hamlet. I don’t suppose the streets have been cleaned or the garbage removed from the back yards since the place was first—founded.” She laughed shortly at the idea of “founding” a wretched village like that, but she had no other word at hand.
“Arline,” she remarked, in a tone of drawling recklessness. “Arline swears. Did you know it? I suppose, of course, you do. She said something that struck me as being shockingly true. She said ‘I’m sure having a hell of a honeymoon.’” Then she bit her lips hard, because her eyelids were stinging with the tears she refused to shed in his presence.
“Oh, Val!” From the sofa Manley stared contritely at her back. She must feel terrible, he thought, to bring herself to repeat that sentence—Val, so icily pure in her thoughts and her speech.
Val was blinking her tawny eyes—like the eyes of a lion in color—at the street. Not for the world would she let him see that she wanted to cry! A figure, blurred to indistinctness, appealed in a doorway nearly opposite, stood for a moment looking up at the reddened sky, and came across the street. As the tears were beaten back she saw and recognized him, with a curl of the lip.
“Here comes your cowboy friend—from a saloon, of course.” Her voice was lazily contemptuous. “Only his presence in the street was needed to complete the picture of desolation. He has been in a fight, judging from his face. It is all bruised and skinned, and one eye is swollen—ugh! My guide, my adviser—is it possible, Manley, that you couldn’t find a nice man to meet me at the train?” She turned from the disagreeable sight of Kent and faced her husband. “Are all the men like that? And are all the women like—Arline?”
Manley looked at her dumbly from the sofa. Would Val ever come to understand the place, and the people, he was wondering.
She laughed suddenly. “I’m beginning to feel very sorry for Walt,” she said irrelevantly, pointing to the easel and the expressionless crayon portrait staring out from the gilt frame. “He has to stay in this room always. And I believe another two hours would drive me hopelessly insane.” The word caught her attention. “Hope!” she laughed ironically. “What imbecile ever thought of hope in the same breath with this place? What they really ought to do is paint that ‘Abandon-hope’ admonition across the whole front of the depot!”
Manley, because he had lifted his head too suddenly and so sent white-hot irons of pain clashing through his brain, turned sullen. “If you hate it as bad as all that,” he said, “why, there’ll be a train for the East in about two hours.”
Val stiffened perceptibly, though the petulance in her face changed to something wistful. “Do you mean—do you want me to go?” she asked very calmly.
Manley pressed his fingers hard against his temples. “You know I don’t. I want you to stay and like the country, and be happy. But—the way you have been talking makes it seem—a-ah!” He dropped his tortured head upon his hands and did not trouble to finish what he had intended to say. Nervous strain, lack of sleep, and a headache to begin with, were taking heavy toll of him. He could not argue with her; he could not do anything except wish he were dead, or that his head would stop aching.
Val took one of her unexpected changes of mood. She went up and laid her cold fingers lightly upon his temples, where she could see the blood beating savagely in the swollen veins. “What a little beast I am!” she murmured contritely. “Shall I get you some coffee, dear? Or some headache tablets, or—You know a cold cloth helped you last evening. Lie down for a little while. There’s no hurry about starting, is there? I—I don’t hate the place so awfully, Manley. I’m just cross because I couldn’t sleep for the noise. Here’s a cushion, dear. I think it’s stuffed with scrap iron, for there doesn’t seem to be anything soft about it except the invitation to ‘slumber sweetly,’ in red and green silk; but anything is better than the head of that sofa in its natural state.”
She arranged the cushion to her own liking, if not to his, and when it was done she bent down impulsively and kissed him on the cheek, blushing vividly the while.
“I won’t be nasty and cross any more,” she promised. “Now, I’m going to interview Arline. I hear dishes rattling somewhere; perhaps I can get a cup of real coffee for you.” At the door she shook her finger at
him playfully. “Don’t you dare stir off that sofa while I’m gone,” she admonished. “And, remember, we’re not going to leave town until your head stops aching—not if we stay here a week!”
She insisted upon bringing him coffee and toast upon a tray—a battered old tray, purloined for that purpose from the saloon, if she had only known it—and she informed him, with a pretty, domestic pride, that she had made the toast herself.
“Arline was going to lay slices of bread on top of the stove,” she explained. “She said she always makes toast that way, and no one could tell the difference! I never heard of such a thing—did you, Manley? But I’ve been attending a cooking school ever since you left Fern Hill. I didn’t tell you—I wanted it for a surprise. I could have done better with the toast before a wood fire—I think poor Arline was nearly distracted at the way I poked coals down from the grate; but she didn’t say anything. Isn’t it funny, to have cream in cans! I don’t suppose it ever saw a cow—do you? The coffee’s pretty bad, isn’t it? But wait until we get home! I can make lovely coffee—if you’ll get me a percolator. You will, won’t you? And I learned now to make the most delicious fruit salad, just before I left. A cousin of Mrs. Forman’s taught me how. Could you drink another cup, dear?”
Manley could not, and she deplored the poor quality, although she generously absolved Arline from blame, because there seemed so much to do in that kitchen. She refused to take any breakfast herself, telling him gayly that the odor in the kitchen was both food and drink.
Because he understood a little of her loathing for the place, Manley lied heroically about his headache, so that within an hour they were leaving town, with the two great trunks roped securely to the buckboard behind the seat, and with Val’s suitcase placed flat in the front, where she could rest her feet upon it. Val was so happy at the prospect of getting away from the town that she actually threw a kiss in the direction of Arline, standing with her frowsy head, her dough-spotted apron, and her tired face in the parlor door.