Blazed Trail Stories, and Stories of the Wild Life

by Stewart Edward White

  VII

  THE GIRL IN RED

  "It isn't _that_ I object to," protested the Easterner, leaning forwardfrom the rough log wall to give emphasis to his words, "for I believe ineveryone having his fun his own way. If you're going in for orgies, why,have 'em _good_ orgies, and be done with it. But my kick's on lettingthese innocent young girls who are just out for the fun--it's awful!"

  "It's hell!" assented the Westerner, cheerfully.

  "Now, look at that pretty creature over there----"

  The young miner followed his companion's gaze through the garishly litcrowd. Then, as though in doubt as to whether he had seen correctly, hetried it again.

  "Which do you mean?" he asked, puzzled.

  "The one in red. Now, she----"

  The Westerner snorted irrepressibly.

  "What's the matter with you?" inquired the Easterner, looking on himwith suspicious eyes.

  The other choked his laugh in the middle, and instantly assumed anexpression of intense solemnity. It was as though a candle had blown outin the wind.

  "Beg pardon. Nothing," he asserted with brevity of enunciation. "Go on."

  The girl in red was standing tiptoe on a bench under one of the biglanterns. She was holding her little palm slantwise over the chimney,and by blowing against it was trying to put out the lamp. Her face wasvery serious and flushed. Occasionally the lamp would flare up a little,and she would snatch her hand away with a pretty gesture of dismay asthe uprising flame would threaten to scorch it. A group of interestedmen surrounded and applauded her. Two on the outside stood off theproprietor of the dance-hall. The proprietor was objecting.

  "Well, then, just look at that girl, I say," the Easterner went on."She's as pretty and fresh and innocent as a mountain flower. She'shaving the time of her young life, and she just thinks it means a goodtime and nothing else. Some day she'll find out it means a lot else. Itell you, it's awful!"

  The Westerner surveyed his friend's flushed face with silent amusement.The girl finally succeeded in blowing the light out, and everybodyyelled.

  "Same old fellow you were in college, aren't you, Bert?" he said,affectionately; "succouring the distressed and borrowing other people'stroubles. What can you do?"

  "Do, do! What can any man do? Take her out of this! appeal to her betternature!"

  Bert started impulsively forward to where the girl--with assistance--waspreparing to jump from the bench. The miner caught his sleeve in alarm.

  "Hold on, don't make a row! Wait a minute!" he begged; "she isn't worthit! There, now listen," as the other sank back expectantly to his formerposition. His bantering manner returned. "You and the windmills," hebreathed, in relief. "I'll just shatter your ideals a few to pay forthat scare. You shall now hear a fact or so concerning that pretty,innocent girl--I forget your other adjective. In the first place, sheisn't in the mountain-flower business a little bit. Her name is AnneBingham, but she is more popularly known as Bismarck Anne, chieflybecause of all the camps of our beloved territory Bismarck is the onlyone she hasn't visited. Therefore, it is concluded she must have comefrom there."

  "Bismarck Anne!" repeated the Easterner, wonderingly. "She isn't theone----"

  "The very same. She's about as bad as they make 'em, and I don't believeshe misses a pay-day dance a year. She's all right, now; but you want tocome back a little later. Anne will be drunk--gloriously drunk--and veryjoyful. I will say that for her. She has all the fun there is in itwhile it lasts."

  "Whew!" whistled the Easterner, in dazed repulsion, looking withinterest on the girl's animated face.

  "Oh, what do you care!" responded the miner, carelessly. "She has herfun."

  Bismarck Anne jumped into the nearest man's arms, was kissed, bestowed aslap, and flitted away down the room. She deftly stole the accordionfrom beneath the tall look-out stool on which a musician sat and ran,evolving strange noises from the instrument, and scampering in and outamong the benches, pursued by its owner. The men all laughed heartily,and tried to trip up the pursuer. The women laughed hollow laughs, toshow they were not jealous of the sensation she was creating. Finallyshe ran into the proprietor, just turning from relighting the big lamp.The proprietor, being angry, rescued the accordion roughly; whereuponAnne pouted and cast appealing glances on her friends. The friendsresponded to a man. The proprietor set up the drinks.

  The music started up again. Miners darted here and there toward thegaudily dressed women, and, seizing them about the waist, held themclose to their sides, as a claim of proprietorship before the wholeworld. Perspiring masters of ceremonies, self-constituted and drunk,rushed back and forth, trying to put a semblance of the quadrilateralinto the various sets. Everybody shuffled feet impatiently.

  The dance began with a swirl of noise and hilarious confusion. BismarckAnne added to the hilarity. She was having a high old time; whyshouldn't she? She had had three glasses of forty-rod, and was blessedby nature with a lively disposition and an insignificant bump ofreverence. Moreover, she was healthy of body, red of blood, and recklessof consequences. Pleasure appealed to her; the stir of action, thedelight of the flow of high spirits, thrilled through every fibre of herbeing. She had no beliefs, as far as she knew. If she could have toldof them, they would have proved simple in the extreme--that life comesto those who live out their possibilities, and not to those who denythem. And Anne had many possibilities, and was living them fast. Shefelt almost physically the beat of pleasure in the atmosphere about her,and from it she reacted to a still higher pitch. She had drunk threeglasses, and her head was not strong. Her feet moved easily, and she wasvery certain of her movements. She had become just hazy enough in hermental processes to have attained that happy indifference to what islikely to happen in the immediate future, and that equally happydisregard of consequences which the virtuous never experience.Impressions reduced themselves to their lowest terms--movement andnoise. The room was full of rapidly revolving figures. The racket wasincessant, and women's laughter rose shrill above it, like wind above astorm. Anne moved amid it all as the controller of its destinies, andwherever she went seemed to her to be the one stable point in thekaleidoscopic changes. Men danced with her, but they were meaninglessmen. One begged her to dance with him, but Anne stopped to watch a youthblowing brutishly from puffed cheeks, so the man cursed and left herfor another girl. Beyond the puffing youth lights were dancing, greenand red. Anne paused and looked at them gravely.

  The people, the room, the sounds seemed to her to come and go in greatbursts. Between these bursts Anne knew nothing except that she washappy; above all else she was happy. As incidents men kissed her and shedrank; but these things were not essentially different from the lightsand the bursts of consciousness. Anne began to take everything forgranted.

  After a time Anne paused again to look gravely at strange lights. Butthis time they seemed not to be red or green, but to be of orange, inlong, fiery flashes, like ribbons thrown suddenly out and as suddenlywithdrawn. The noise stopped, and was succeeded by a buzzing. For amoment the girl's blurred vision saw clearly the room, all still, exceptfor a man huddled in one corner, and on the floor a slowly gatheringpool of red. Someone thrust her out of the door with others, and shebegan to step aimlessly, uncertainly, along the broad street.

  She felt dimly the difference between the hot air of the dance-hall andthe warm air out of doors. The great hills and the stars and thesilhouetted houses came and went in visions, just as had the people andthe noise inside the hall. The idea of walking came to her, and occupiedher mind to the exclusion of everything else, and she set about it withgreat intentness. How far she went and in what direction did not seem tomatter. When she moved she was happy; when she stopped she wasmiserable. So she wandered on in the way she knew, and yet did not know,out of the broad streets of the town, through a wide cleft in the hills,up a long grassy valley that wound slowly and mounted gradually,following the brawl of the stream, until at last she found herself in alittle fern-grown dell at the entrance of Iron Creek Pass. She pushe
dher fingers through her fallen hair, and idly over the shimmering stuffof her gown. Far above her she saw waveringly the stars. Finally theidea of sleep came to her, just as the idea of walking had come to herbefore. She sank to her knees, hesitated a moment, and then, with thesigh of a tired child, she pillowed her head on her soft round arm andclosed her eyes.

  * * * * *

  The poor-wills ceased their plaintive cries. A few smaller birds chirpeddrowsily. Back of the eastern hills the stars became a little dimmer,and the soft night breeze, which had been steadily blowing through thedarkened hours, sank quietly to sleep. The subtle magic of nature beganto sketch in the picture of day, throwing objects forward from the dullbackground, taking them bodily out of the blackness, as though creatingthem anew. Fresh life stirred through everything. The vault of heavenseemed full of it, and all the ravines and by-ways caught up itsoverflow in a grand chorus of praise to the new-whitening morning.

  The woman stirred drowsily and arose, throwing back her heavy hair fromher face. The flush of sleep still dyed her cheek a rich crimson, whichcame and went slowly in the light of the young sun, vying in depth nowwith the silk of her gown, now with the still deeper tones of a mountainred-bird which splattered into rainbow tints the waters of the brook.She caught the sound of the stream, and went to it. The red-birdretreated circumspectly, silently. She knelt at the banks and splashedthe icy water over her face and throat, another red-bird, another wildthing pulsing and palpitating with life. Then she arose to the fullheight of her splendid body and looked abroad.

  The morning swept through her like a river and left her clean. In theeye of nature and before the presence of nature's innumerable creaturesshe stood as innocent as they. She had entered into noisome places, butso had the marsh-hawk poising grandly on motionless wing there above.She had scrambled in the mire, and she was ruffled and draggled andbesmirched; so likewise had been the silent flame-bird in the thicket,but he had washed clean his plumes and was now singing the universalhymn from the nearest bush-top. The woman drew her lungs full of themorning. She stretched slowly, lazily, her muscles one by one, and stoodtaller and freer for the act. The debauch of the last night, thedebauches of other and worse nights, the acid-like corrosion of thatvulgarity which is more subtle than sin even, all these things fadedinto a past that was dead and gone and buried forever. The present alonewas important, and the present brought her, innocent, before an innocentnature. As she stood there dewy-eyed, wistful, glowing, with loosenedhair, the grasses clinging to her, and the dew, she looked like awide-eyed child-angel newly come to earth. To her the morning was greatand broad, like a dream to be dreamed and awakened from, somethingunreal and evanescent which would go. Her heart unfolded to itsinfluence, and she felt within her that tenderness for the beautifulwhich is nearest akin to holy tears.

  As she stood thus, musing, it seemed natural that a human figure shouldenter and become part of the dream. It seemed natural that it should bea man, and young; that he should be handsome and bold. It seemed naturalthat he should rein in his horse at the sight of her. So inevitable wasit all, so much in keeping with the soft sky, the brooding shadow of themountain, the squirrel noises, and the day, that she stood theremotionless, making no sign, looking up at him with parted lips, sayingnothing. He was only a fraction, a small fraction, of all the rest. Hisfine brown eyes, the curl of his long hair, the bronze of his featuresmattered no more to her than the play of the sunlight on Harney.

  Then he spurred his horse forward, and something in her seemed to snap.From the dream-present the woman was thrust roughly back into her past.The sunlight faded away before her eyes, oozing from the air in dropafter drop of golden splendour, the songs of the birds died, themurmuring of the brook became an angry brawl that accused the world ofwickedness. The morning fled. From a distance, far away, farther thanHarney, farther than the sky, the stranger's brown eyes lookedpityingly. Her sin was no longer animal. It had touched her soul.Instead of an incident it had become a condition which hemmed her in,from which she could not escape. Suddenly she saw the difference. Shedwelt in darkness; he, with his clear soul, dwelt in light. She threwherself face downward on the earth, weeping and clutching the grass inthe agony of her sin.

  Then a new sound smote the air. She sat upright and listened.

  Around the bend she heard a high-pitched voice declaiming in measuredtones.

  "'Thy kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and Thy dominion endureththroughout all generations,'" the voice chanted.

  "'The Lord upholdeth all that fall, and raiseth all that he boweddown.'"

  The speaker strode in sight. He was one of the old-fashioned itinerantpreachers occasionally seen in the Hills, filled with fanaticenthusiasm, journeying from place to place on foot, exhorting by thefear of hell fire rather than by the hope of heaven's bliss, half-crazy,half-inspired, wholly in earnest. His form was gaunt. He was clad in ashiny black coat buttoned closely, and his shoes showed dusty and hugebeneath his carefully turned-up trousers. A beaver of ancient patternwas pushed far back from his narrow forehead, and from beneath itflashed vividly his fierce hawk-eyes. Over his shoulder, suspended froma cane, was a carpet-bag. He stepped eagerly forward with an immenseexcess of nervous force that carried him rapidly on. Nothing more out ofplace could be imagined than this comical figure against the simplicityof the hills. Yet for that very reason he was the more grateful to thewoman's perturbed soul. She listened eagerly for his next words.

  He strode fiercely across the stones of the little ford, declaiming withenergy, with triumph:

  "'The eyes of all wait upon Thee, and Thou givest them their meat in dueseason.

  "'Thou openest Thine hand, and satisfieth the desire of every livingthing.

  "'The Lord is righteous in all His ways, and holy in all His works.

  "'The Lord is nigh unto all them that call upon Him, to all that call uponHim in truth.

  "'He will fulfil the desire of all that fear Him: He also will hear theircry and save them.'"

  Anne saw but two things plainly in all the world--the clear-eyedstranger like a god; this fiery old man who spoke words containingstrange, though vague, intimations of comfort. From the agony of hersoul but one thought leaped forth--to make the comfort real, to find outhow to raise herself from her sin, to become worthy of the goodnesswhich she had that morning for the first time clearly seen. She sprangforward and seized the preacher's arm. Interrupted in his ecstasy, herolled his eyes down on her but half comprehending.

  "How? How?" she gasped. "Help me! What must I do?"

  She held out her empty hands with a gesture of appeal. The old man'smind still burned with the fever of his fanatical inspiration. He hardlysaw her, and did not understand all the import of her words. He lookedat her vacantly, and caught sight of her outstretched hands.

  "'And to work with your hands as we command you,'" he quoted vaguely,then shook himself free of her detaining grasp and marched grandly on,rolling out the mighty syllables of the psalms.

  "To work with my hands; to work with my hands," the woman repeatedlooking at her outspread palms. "Yes, that is it!" she said, slowly.

  * * * * *

  Anne Bingham washed dishes at the Prairie Dog Hotel for a week. Thefirst day was one of visions; the second one of irksomeness; the thirdone of wearisome monotony. The first was as long as it takes to passfrom one shore to the other of the great dream-sea; the second was anage; the third an eternity. The first was rose-hued; the second wasdull; the third was filled with the grayness that blurs activity turnedto mechanical action.

  And on the eighth day occurred the monthly pay-day dance of the LastChance mine. All the men were drunk, all the women were drunker, butdrunkest of all was the undoubted favourite of the company, BismarckAnne. Two men standing by the door saw nothing remarkable about that--ithad happened the last week. But in that time Bismarck Anne had had herchance, she had eaten of the fruit of the Tree, and so now was in mortalsin.

  THE
END

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