Judith of the Plains Part 5

He tried to look at her angrily, but she smiled at him with such good-fellowship that he went off singing significantly that universal anthem of the cow-puncher the West over:

"Oh, bury me not on the lone prairie, In a narrow grave just six by three, Where the wild coyotes will howl o'er me.

Oh, bury me not on the lone prairie."

"Ain't there a love letter for me?" The young man who inquired seemed to belong to a different race from these bronzed squires of the saddle. He suggested over-crowded excursion boats on Sunday afternoons in swarming Eastern cities. He b.u.t.tonholed every one and explained his presence in the West on the score of his health, as though leaving his native asphalt were a thing that demanded apology.

"Yes," answered the postmistress, with a real motherly note, "here is one from Hugous & Co."

A roar went up at this, and the blushing tenderfoot pocketed his third bill for the most theatrical style of Mexican sombrero; it had a bra.s.s snake coiled round the crown for a hat-band, and a cow-puncher in good and regular standing would have preferred going bareheaded to wearing it.

"She seems to be pressing her suit, son; you better name the day," one of the loungers suggested.

"The blamed thing ain't worth twenty-five dollars," the young man from the East declared. A conspicuous silence followed. It seemed to irritate the owner of the hat that no one would defend it. "It ain't worth it," he repeated.

"I think you allowed you was out here for your health?" the big Texan, who had returned from the corral, inquired.

"Betcher life," swaggered the man with the hat, "N'York's good enough for me."

"But"-and the Texan smiled sweetly-"the man who sold you the hat ain't out here for his."

Judith hid her head and stamped letters. The boys were suspiciously quiet, then some one began to chant:

"The devil examined the desert well, And made up his mind 'twas too dry for h.e.l.l; He put up the prices his pockets to swell, And called it a-heal-th resort."

The postmistress waited for the last note of the chorus to die away, and read from a package she held in her hand-"'Mrs. Henry Lee, Deer Lodge, Wyoming.' Well, Henry, here's a wedding-present, I guess. And my congratulations, though you've hardly treated us well in never saying a word."

The unfortunate Henry, who hadn't even a sweetheart, and who was noted as the shyest man in the "Goose Creek Outfit," had to submit to the mock congratulations of every man in the room and promise to set up the drinks later.

"I never felt we'd keep you long, son; them golden curls seldom gets a chance to ripen singly."

"Shoshone squaw, did you say she was, Henry? They ain't much for looks, but there's a heep of wear to 'em."

"Oh, go on, now; you fellows know I ain't married." And the boy handled the package with a sort of dumb wonder, as if the superscription were indisputable evidence of a wife's existence.

"Open it, Henry; you sh.o.r.e don't harbor sentiments of curiosity regarding the post-office dealings of your lady."

"Now, old man, this here may be grounds for divorce."

"See what the other fellow's sending your wife."

Henry, badgered, jostled, the target of many a homely witticism, finally opened the package, which proved to be a sample bottle of baby food. At sight of it they howled like Apaches, and Henry was again forced to receive their congratulations. Judith, who had been an interested on-looker without joining in the merriment, now detected in the tenor of their humor a tendency towards breadth. In an instant her manner was official; rapping the table with her mailing-stamp, she announced:

"Boys, this post-office closes in ten minutes, if you want to buy any stamps."

The silence following this statement on the part of the postmistress was instantaneous. Henry took his mirth-provoking package and went his way; some of the more hilariously inclined followed him. The remainder confined themselves absolutely to business, scrawling postal-cards or reading their mail. The pounce of the official stamp on the letters, as the postmistress checked them off for the mail-bag, was the only sound in the hot stillness.

A heavily built man, older than those who had been keeping the post-office lively, now took advantage of the lull to approach Judith. He had a twinkling face, all circles and pouches, but it grew graver as he spoke to the postmistress. He was Major Atkins, formerly a famous cavalry officer, but since his retirement a cattle-man whose herds grazed to the pan-handle of Texas. As he took his mail, talking meantime of politics, of the heat, of the lack of water, in the loud voice for which he was famous, he managed, with clumsy diplomacy, to interject a word or two for her own ear alone.

"Jim's out," he conveyed to her, in a successfully m.u.f.fled tone. "He's out, and they're after him, hot. Get him out of the State, Judy-get him out, _quick_. He tried to kill Simpson at Mrs. Clark's, in town, yesterday. The little Eastern girl that's here will tell you." Then the major was gone before Judith could perfectly realize the significance of what he had told her.

She threw back her head and the pulse in her throat beat. Like a wild forest thing, at the first warning sound, she considered: Was it time for flight?-or was the warning but the crackling of a twig? Major Atkins was a cattle-man: her brother hated all cattle-men. How disinterested had been the major's warning! He had always been her friend. Mrs. Atkins had been one of the ladies at the post who had helped to send her to school to the nuns at Santa Fe. She despised herself for doubting; yet these were troublous times, and all was fair between sheep and cattle-men. Major Atkins had spoken of the Eastern girl; then that pretty, little, curly-haired creature, whom Judith had found standing in the sunshine, had seen Jim-had heard him threaten to kill. Should she ask her about it-consult her? Judith's training was not one to impel her to give her confidence to strangers, still she had liked the little Eastern girl.

These were the perplexities that beset her, sweeping her thoughts. .h.i.ther and thither, as sea-weed is swept by the wash of the waves. She strove to collect her faculties. How should she rid the house of her cavaliers? She had regularly to refuse some half-dozen of them each day that she kept post-office.

In a few minutes more the group in the post-office began to disperse under the skilful manipulation of the postmistress. To some she sold stamps with an air of "G.o.d speed you," and they were soon but dwindling specks on the horizon. To others she implied such friendly farewells that there was nothing to do but betake themselves to their saddles. Others had compromised with the saloon opposite, and their roaring mirth came in s.n.a.t.c.hes of song and shouts of laughter. She fastened up the little pile of letters that had remained uncalled for with what seemed a deliberate slowness. Each time any one entered the room she looked up-then the hope died hard in her face. Leander came in with catlike tread and removed the pigeon-holes from the table. The post-office was closed. Family life had been resumed at the Daxes'.

Judith left the room and stood in the blinding sunlight, basking in it as if she were cold. The mercury must have stood close to a hundred, and she was hatless. There was no trace of her ebullient spirits of the morning.

Her head was sunk on her breast and she held her hands with locked fingers behind her. It was hot, hot as the breaths of a thousand belching furnaces. A white, burning glare had spread itself from horizon to horizon, and the earth wrinkled and cracked beneath it. From every corner of this parched wilderness came an ominous whirring, like the last wheezing gasp of an alarm-clock before striking the hour. This menacing orchestration was nothing more or less than millions of gra.s.shoppers rasping legs and wings together in hoa.r.s.e appreciation of the heat and glare; but it had a sound that boded evil. Again and again she turned towards the yellow road as it dipped over the hills; but there was never a glimpse of a horseman from that direction.

V

The Trail Of Sentiment

Within the house the travellers had disposed themselves in a repressed and melancholy circle that suggested the suspended animation of a funeral gathering. The fat lady had turned back her skirt to save her travelling dress. The stage was late, and there was no good and sufficient reason for wearing it out. A similar consideration of economy led her to flirt off flies with her second best pocket-handkerchief. Mrs. Dax presided over the gathering with awful severity. Every one truckled to her shamefully, receiving her lightest remarks as if they were to be inscribed on tablets of bronze. Leander, his eyes bright with excitement at being received in the family circle on an equal footing, balanced perilously on the edge of his chair, antic.i.p.ating dismissal.

"Chugg's never ben so late as this," said Mrs. Dax, rocking herself furiously. She strongly resembled one of those mottled chargers of the nursery whose flaunting nostrils seem forever on the point of sending forth flame. Leander, the fat lady, and Miss Carmichael meekly murmured a.s.sent and condemnation.

"And there ain't a sign of him," said Mrs. Dax, returning to the house after straining the landscape through her all-observant eye, and not detecting him in any of the remote pin-p.r.i.c.ks on the horizon, in which these plainsfolk invariably decipher a herd of antelope, an elk or two, or a horseman.

"Bet he had a woman in the stage and upset it with her," said Leander, in the animated manner of a poor relation currying favor with a bit of news.

Mrs. Dax regarded him severely for a moment, then conspicuously addressed her next remark to the ladies. "Bet he had a woman in the stage, the old scoundrel!"

"Wonder who she was?" said Leander, with the sparkling triumph of a poor relation whose surmise had been accepted. But Mrs. Dax had evidently decided that Leander had gone far enough.

"Was you expectin' any of your lady friends by Chugg's stage that you are so frettin' anxious?" she inquired, and the poor relation collapsed miserably.

"You've heard about Chugg's goin' on since 'Mountain Pink' jilted him?"

inquired Mrs. Dax of the fat lady, as the only one of the party who might have kept abreast with the social chronicles of the neighborhood.

"My land, yes," responded the fat lady, proud to be regarded as socially cognizant. "M' son says he's plumb locoed about it-didn't want me to travel by his stage. But I said he da.s.sent upset a woman of my age-he just nacherally da.s.sent!"

Miss Carmichael, by dint of patient inquiry, finally got the story which was popularly supposed to account for the misdemeanors of the stage-driver, including his present delinquency that was delaying them on their journey.

It appeared that Lemuel Chugg, then writhing in the coils of perverse romance, was among the last of those famous old stage-drivers whose talents combined skill at handling the ribbons with the diplomacy necessary to treat with a masked envoy on the road. His luck in these encounters was proverbial, and many were the hair-breadth escapes due to Chugg's ready wit and quick aim; and, to quote Leander, "while he had been shot as full of holes as a salt-shaker, there was a lot of fight in the old man yet."

Chugg had had no loves, no hates, no virtues, no genial vices after the manner of these frontiersmen. Avarice had warmed the c.o.c.kles of his heart, and the fetish he prayed to was an old gray woollen stocking, stuffed so full of twenty-dollar gold pieces that it presented the bulbous appearance of the "before treatment" view of a chiropodist's sign. This darling of his old age had been waxing fat since Chugg's earliest manhood. It had been his only love-till he met Mountain Pink.

Mountain Pink's husband kept a road-ranch somewhere on Chugg's stage-route. She was of a buxom type whose red-and-white complexion had not yet surrendered to the winds, the biting dust, and the alkali water.

Furthermore, she could "bring about a dried-apple pie" to make a man forget the cooking of his mother. Great was the havoc wrought by Mountain Pink's pies and complexion, but she followed the decorous precedent of Caesar's wife, and, like her pastry, remained above suspicion.

Her husband, whose name was Jim Bosky, seemed, to the self-impanelled jury that spent its time sitting on the case, singularly insensible to his own advantages. Not only did he fail to take a proper pride in her beauty, but there were dark hints abroad that he had never tasted one of her pies.

When delicately questioned on this point, at that stage of liquid refreshment that makes these little personalities not impossible, Bosky had grimly quoted the dearth of shoes among shoe-makers' children.