Hidden Creek Part 14

"You're sure you're not hurt? You're sure they won't try to hurt you again?"

He shook his head. "Not they..." He stood looking at her and the mist slowly cleared, his vision of her steadied. "Shall I see you to-morrow?"

She drew back from him a little. "No," she said. "I sleep all the morning. And, afterwards, I don't see any one except a few old friends. I go riding..."

He puckered his eyelids inquiringly. Then, with a sudden reckless fling of his shoulders, he put out his hand boldly and caught her small pointed chin in his palm. He bent down his head.

She stood there quite still and white, looking straight up into his face.

The exquisite smoothness of her little cool chin photographed itself upon his memory. As he bent down closer to the grave and tender lips, he was suddenly, unaccountably frightened and ashamed. His hand dropped, sought for her small limp hand. His lips shifted from their course and went lower, just brushing her fingers.

"I beg your pardon," he said confusedly. He was painfully embarra.s.sed, stammered, "I--I wanted to thank you. Good-bye..."

She said good-bye in the smallest sweet voice he had ever heard. It followed his memory like some weary, pitiful little ghost.

CHAPTER XI

IN THE PUBLIC EYE

No sight more familiar to the corner of Main and Resident Streets than that of Sylvester Hudson's Ford car sliding up to the curb in front of his hotel at two o'clock in a summer afternoon. He would slip out from under his steering-wheel, his linen duster flapping about his long legs, and he would stalk through the rocking, meditative observers on the piazza and through the lobby past d.i.c.kie's frozen stare, upstairs to the door of Miss Arundel's "suite." There he was bidden to come in. A few minutes later they would come down together, Sheila, too, pa.s.sing d.i.c.kie wordlessly, and they would hum away from Millings leaving a veil of golden dust to smother the comments in their wake. There were days when Sheila's pony, a gift from Jim Greely, was led up earlier than the hour of Hudson's arrival, on which days Sheila, in a short skirt and a boy's shirt and a small felt Stetson, would ride away alone toward the mountain of her dreams. Sometimes Jim rode with her. It was not always possible to forbid him.

The day after Cosme Hilliard's spectacular pa.s.sage was one of Hudson's days. The pony did not appear, but Sylvester did and came down with his prize. The lobby was crowded. Sheila threaded her way amongst the medley of tourists, paused and deliberately drew near to the desk. At sight of her d.i.c.kie's whiteness dyed itself scarlet. He rose and with an apparent effort lifted his eyes to her look.

They did not smile at each other. Sheila spoke sharply, each word a little soft lash.

"I want to speak to you. Will you come to my sitting-room when I get back?"

"Yes'm," said d.i.c.kie. It was the tone of an unwincing pride. Under the desk, hidden from sight, his hand was a white-knuckled fist.

Sheila pa.s.sed on, trailed by Hudson, who was smiling not agreeably to himself. Over the smile he gave his son a cruel look. It was as though an enemy had said, "Hurts you, doesn't it?" d.i.c.kie returned the look with level eyes.

The rockers on the piazza stopped rocking, stopped talking, stopped breathing, it would seem, to watch Sylvester help Sheila into his car; not that he helped her greatly--she had an appearance of melting through his hands and getting into her place beside his by a sort of sleight of body. He made a series of angular movements, smiled at her, and started the car.

"Well, little girl," said he, "where to this afternoon?"

When Sheila rode her pony she always rode toward The Hill. But in that direction she had never allowed Sylvester to take her. She looked vaguely through the wind-shield now and said, "Anywhere--that canon, the one we came home by last week. It was so queer."

"It'll be dern dusty, I'm afraid."

"I don't care." Sheila wrapped her gray veil over her small hat which fitted close about her face. "I'm getting used to the dust. Does it ever rain around Millings? And does it ever stop blowing?"

"We don't like Millings to-day, do we?"

Sylvester was bending his head to peer through the gray mist of her veil.

She held herself stiffly beside him, showing the profile of a small Sphinx. Suddenly it turned slightly, seemed to wince back. Girlie, at the gate of Number 18 Cottonwood Avenue, had stopped to watch them pa.s.s.

Girlie did not speak. Her face looked smitten, the ripe fruit had turned bitter upon her ruddy lips. The tranquil emptiness of her beauty had filled itself stormily.

Sheila did not answer Hudson's reproachful question. She leaned back, dropped back, rather, into a tired little heap and let the country slide by--the strange, wide, broken country with its circling mesas, its somber grays and browns and dusty greens, its bare purple hills, rocks and sand and golden dirt, and now and then, in the sudden valley bottoms, swaying groves of vivid green and ribbons of emerald meadows.

The mountains shifted and opened their canons, gave a glimpse of their beckoning and forbidding fastnesses and closed them again as though by a whispered Sesame.

"What was the row last night?" asked Sylvester in his voice of cracked tenderness. "Carthy says there was a bunch of toughs. Were you scared good and plenty? I'm sorry. It don't happen often, believe _me._

"I wish you could 'a' heard Carthy talkin' about you, Sheila," went on Sylvester, his eyes, filled with uneasiness, studying her silence and her huddled smallness, hands in the pockets of her light coat, veiled face turned a little away, "Say, that would 'a' set you up all right! Talk about beacons!"

Here she flashed round on him, as though her whole body had been electrified. "Tell me all that again," she begged in a voice that he could not interpret except that there was in it a sound of tears. "Tell me again about a beacon ..."

He stammered. He was confused. But stumblingly he tried to fulfill her demand. Here was a thirst for something, and he wanted above everything in the world to satisfy it. Sheila listened to him with unsteady, parted lips. He could see them through the veil.

"You still think I am that?" she asked.

He was eager to prove it to her. "Still think? Still think? Why, girl, I don't hev to think. Don't the tillbox speak for itself? Don't Carthy handle a crowd that's growing under his eyes? Don't we sell more booze in a week now than we used to in a--" Suddenly he realized that he was on the wrong tack. It was his first break. He drew in a sharp breath and stopped, his face flushing deeply.

"Yes?" questioned Sheila, melting her syllables like slivers of ice on her tongue. "Go on."

"Er--er, don't we draw a finer lot of fellows than we ever did before?

Don't they behave more decent and orderly? Don't they get civilization just for looking at you, Miss Sheila?"

"And--and booze? Jim Greely, for instance, Mr. James Greely, of the Millings National Bank--he never used to patronize The Aura. And now he's there every night till twelve and often later, for he won't obey me any more. I wonder whether Mr. and Mrs. Greely are glad that you are getting a better type of customer! Mrs. Greely almost stopped me on the street the other day--that is, she almost got up courage to speak to me. Before now she's cut me, just as Girlie does, just as your wife does, just as d.i.c.kie does--"

"d.i.c.kie cut you?" Sylvester threw back his head and laughed uneasily, and with a strained note of alarm. "That's a good one, Miss Sheila. I kinder fancied you did the cuttin' there."

"d.i.c.kie hasn't spoken to me since he came to me that day when he heard what I was going to do and tried to talk me out of doing it."

"Yes'm. He came to me first," drawled Sylvester.

They were both silent, busy with the amazing memory of d.i.c.kie, of his disheveled fury, of his lashing eloquence. He had burst in upon his family at breakfast that April morning when Millings was humming with the news, had advanced upon his father, stood above him.

"Is it true that you are going to make a barmaid of Sheila?"

Sylvester, in an effort to get to his feet, had been held back by d.i.c.kie's thin hand that shot out at him like a sword.

"Sure it's true," Sylvester had said coolly. But he had not felt cool. He had felt shaken and confused. The boy's entire self-forgetfulness, his entire absence of fear, had made Hudson feel that he was talking to a stranger, a not inconsiderable one.

"It's true, then." d.i.c.kie had drawn a big breath. "You--you"--he seemed to swallow an epithet--"you'll let that girl go into your filthy saloon and make money for you by her--by her prettiness and her--her ignorance--"

"Say, d.i.c.kie," his father had drawled, "you goin' to run for the legislature? Such a lot of cla.s.sy words!" But anger and alarm were rising in him.

"You've fetched her away out here," went on d.i.c.kie, "and kinder got her cornered and you've talked a lot of slush to her and you've--"

Here Girlie came to the rescue.

"Well, anyway, she's a willing victim, d.i.c.kie," Girlie had said.

d.i.c.kie had flashed her one look. "Is she? I'll see about that.

Where's Sheila?"