A Pagan of the Hills Part 5

A somewhat amused and indulgent gleam dwelt in his eye, tinged, it is true, with a certain unveiled contempt--but it was not the disgust that might have been expected in a sober man looking on at such a loathsomeness of debauchery.

There were women present too,--coa.r.s.e and vicious creatures who lacked even the sort of tawdry finery that their sisters in western mining camps affect. There was here no shimmer of even the slaziest satin.

In dress as in character they were drab.

So was the stage set when the door opened and Alexander stepped in, dropping her pack to the floor and standing speechless for a moment or two as her amazed eyes took in the composition of the picture.

Alexander had never seen such a spectacle before, and as she looked about for someone who appeared to have authority here, her fine eyes and lips fell into an unmasked scorn.

She had not closed the door and through it, close on her heels, slipped Brent. For, a little s.p.a.ce the confusion took no account of her coming but the city man was standing directly behind her and he saw the pliancy of her att.i.tude stiffen and then across her shoulder he recognized in a rear door the tense figure of Bud Sellers.

Sellers stood looking through a lane which chance had left open and Brent thought that his posture was the electrically expectant one of a man poised for instant action. He remembered that when Bud went on a spree he was known as the "mad dog."

That same insanity which had attacked the father might now even forget that the daughter's a.s.sumption of being a man was only a pretense. He might act as though she were a man bent on avenging a mortal injury.

There was no leisure then to speculate on how Bud had gotten here--that he was here with his gaze fixed in that galvanized fashion on the girl was a sufficient cause for apprehension.

Then the eyes of the many began following the eyes of the few, until a brief lull settled down on the dissonance, and everyone was staring at the girl who stood inside the door, dressed as a man, but holding their gaze with the lodestone of her womanly beauty.

A hoa.r.s.e shout went up from the rear. "A gal in pants! Hit's ther he-woman!"

"I wants ter see ther tavern-keeper. Whar's he at?" demanded Alexander in a clear voice that went through the place like the note of a xylophone. She stood out, a picture of serene beauty drawn against an infernally evil and confused background.

Two of the wretched women came forward and bent upon her the full battery of their brazen and leering curiosity.

"Pants!" exclaimed one of them satirically.

"Ther wench hain't got no shame!" The second used an even uglier word.

But Alexander ignored that criticism.

"Whar's ther landlord at?" she repeated and a chorus of laughter ensued.

Then a bewhiskered fellow, red-eyed and dirty, to whom Jase Mallows had previously spoken, came to the front with a burlesqued attempt at a low bow.

"Don't heed these hyar fool women, sweetheart," he said. "They hain't nothin' but low-down trash nohow-- They're jealous, but thar's some right upstandin' men-folks hyar fer ye ter keep company with. I reckon fust off ye needs a leetle dram--hits's right chilly outside."

As he proffered a flask, Brent caught the glitter of his eye, and knew that this time it would not be easy to decline. The crowd was drifting forward, and through the closing lane of humanity, Bud Sellers glided rapidly to a place near its front. His hand was inside his coat now--where the holster lay.

"A leetle dram won't do ye no harm," insisted the man of the blood-shot eyes and then as he caught the quiet contempt on the girl's face, his manner changed to truculent bullying. "Folks says ye wants ter be treated ther same as a man--an' any man thet holds I hain't good enough ter drink with--thet man's my enemy."

Brent hesitated to draw his weapon lest in such a situation it should provoke a holocaust. Yet he felt that in a moment he might need it.

Then as he stood, still uncertain, he saw the giant who had until now looked on with detached emotionlessness come elbowing his way through the press, much as an elephant goes through small timber, uprooting obstacles and tossing them aside as he moves.

But Alexander had gone dead white with the pallor of outraged wrath.

Her lips had tightened and her eyes taken on a quality like the blue flame which is the hottest fire that burns.

Then suddenly she moved with a swiftness that was electric and stood, before her purpose could be guessed, with a heavy-calibered revolver outthrust into the face of the man whose pistol hand had held the whiskey bottle. The flask crashed into splinters from an abruptly relaxed grip.

"I don't drink--without hit pleasures me ter drink," said the girl with an inflexible coldness and levelness of voice, yet one no more unfalteringly firm than the hand which held the gun. "Hit won't never pleasure me ter drink with a man I wouldn't wipe my feet on. Ye hain't a man nohow--ye're jest a pole-cat."

The bearded jaw dropped in amazement, and a sense of the nearness of death intruded itself upon Lute Brown's thoughts. Still since even such a situation called for a retort he essayed one in a falter that travestied the boldness of his words.

"When a man names me thet name--I wants him ter come _towards_ me. Of course ye hain't no man though."

"I'm man enough ter take yore measure," she flung back at him, "an' I'm comin' towards ye right now. Ef yore hands ain't high when I git's thar, I aims ter kill ye."

She moved forward and the bully gave grudgingly back, but at that instant the gigantic on-looker casually laid hand upon him by one shoulder and flung him sidewise as casually as a terrier tosses a rat.

His manner was precisely that of a man who removes a chair which obstructs his path.

"Stranger," said the t.i.tanic fellow in a pleasantly drawling intonation, "I think I heered ye say ye wanted ther landlord. Ef ye'll come with me I'll find him fer ye. A decent feller wouldn't hardly relish this company nohow."

There had been in his form of address no masculine patronage proffering rescue to the beset feminine, and looking up into a face which was smiling with an engaging radiance of white teeth, Alexander nodded and said only, "I'd be right obleeged ter ye."

Through a path that opened itself in silence for them, they went out of a back door, but when they had gone, Brent saw in astonishment that Bud Sellers was crouching with defiant eyes over Lute Brown as he slowly regained his feet.

"Hev ye done hed enough?" demanded Bud in a voice of deadly calm and absolute sobriety. "Because ef ye hain't, I'm hyar ter finish hit up with ye."

"Air ye one of her beaus, too?" came the surly question and Bud answered deliberately. "She don't tolerate no sweet-heartin', but whilst I was crazed with licker I hurt her paw--an' I reckon I owes her somethin'."

When the giant had returned he went nonchalantly back to his table as though nothing had occurred, but Brent followed and joined him there.

"How did you come to be here, Halloway?" asked the city man in a guarded and incredulous voice.

The tall man looked about him and then, since the drone of voices was again gathering volume he replied: "Oh, ye're right liable ter meet up with a driftin' lumberjack anywhar's at all."

After filling a disreputable pipe with tobacco crumbs he leaned a little forward, then in lowered tones, from which every trace of mountain dialect had abruptly departed he said:

"By gad, Brent, an episode that gives a man a new sensation--a new thrill, in a world of threadbare ones--is worth a king's ranson. I've seen the beauties of Occident and Orient but until now----"

A figure drifted near enough to overhear, and rising slowly Halloway finish up:

"Wa'al, stranger, hit's mighty nigh my bed time. I reckon I'll santer up ter my room and lay down. I hopes ye git's took keer of yourself, but ef ye don't ye're right welcome ter bunk in with me."

"I'll go with you now," declared the timber buyer.

CHAPTER VI

In a squalid room above stairs, Halloway sat, coatless, with his flannel shirt open on a throat that rose from the swell of his chest as a tower rises from a hill. His hair was rumpled; his whole aspect disheveled; but when he grinned there was the flash of strong teeth as white as a hound's and as even as a professional beauty's.

"Now tell me," he demanded with prompt interest, "who is this barbaric and regal creature in whose train I find you? Do you a.s.sert any claim of copyright--or prior discovery, or is it a clear field and no favor?"

When Brent answered, it was with challenging decisiveness. "A clear field, yes--but certainly no favor for either of us. She is primitive enough to hold fast to a wholesome code. I wouldn't advise any philandering."

Halloway bent his head backward and gazed meditatively at the cloud of smoke which he sent ceiling-ward.

"So the faithful and chivalrous friend is giving me the benefit of his experience touching the stern virtue of an almost Druid life," he commented. "Yet I know these people as few outsiders do."

"Nevertheless, you _are_ an outsider, Jack. When we last sat quarreling in your rooms, your windows gave off over the rhododendron of Central Park--and the bronze horseman in the Plaza. Here the rhododendron has other uses than the decorative. She could be only a reckless adventure in your life--and in all likelihood, a fatal one."