Judith of the Plains Part 6

Whatever were the facts of the case, Mountain Pink got the sympathy that might have been expected in a section of the country where the ratio of the s.e.xes is fifty to one. Chugg, eating her pies regularly once a week on his stage-route, said nothing, but he presented her with a red plush photograph alb.u.m with oxidized silver clasps, and by this first reckless expenditure of money in the life of Chugg, Natrona, Johnson, Converse, and Sweet.w.a.ter counties knew that Cupid had at last found a vulnerable spot in the tough and weather-tanned hide of the old stage-driver.

Nor did Cupid stop here with his pranks. Having inoculated the stage-driver with the virus of romance, madness began to work in the veins of Chugg. He presented Mountain Pink with the gray woollen stocking-not extracting a single coin-and urged her to get a divorce from the clodlike man who had never appreciated her and marry him.

Mountain Pink coyly took the stocking so generously given for the divorce and subsequent trousseau, and Chugg continued to drive his stage with an Apollo-like abandon, whistling love-songs the while.

Coincident with Mountain Pink's disappearance Dakotaward, in the interests of freedom, went also one Bob Catlin, a mule-wrangler. Bosky, with conspicuous pessimism, hoped for the worst from the beginning, and as time went on and nothing was heard of either of the wanderers, some of Mountain Pink's most loyal adherents confessed it looked "romancy." But crusty old Chugg remained true to his ideal. "She'll write when she gets good and ready," and then concluded, loyally, "Maybe she can't write, nohow," and nothing could shake his faith.

When Mountain Pink and the mule-wrangler returned as bride and groom and set up housekeeping on the remainder of Chugg's stocking, and on his stage-route, too, so that he had to drive right past the honeymoon cottage every time he completed the circuit, they lost caste in Carbon County.

Chugg never spoke of the faithlessness of Mountain Pink. His bitterness found vent in tipping over the stage when his pa.s.sengers were confined to members of the former Mrs. Bosky's s.e.x, and, as Leander said, "the flask in his innerds held more." And these were the only traces of tragedy in the life of Lemuel Chugg, stage-driver.

Judith had continued her unquiet pacing in the blinding glare while the group within doors, somnolent from the heat and the incessant shrilling of the locusts, droningly discussed the faithlessness of Mountain Pink, dozed, and took up the thread of the romance. Each time she turned Judith would stop and scan the yellow road, shading her eyes with her hand, and each time she had turned away and resumed her walk. Mary, who gave the postmistress no unstinted share of admiration for the courage with which she faced her difficulties, and who had been seeking an opportunity to signify her friendship, and now that she saw the last of the gallants depart, inquired of Judith if she might join her.

They walked without speaking for several minutes, enjoying a sense of comradeship hardly in keeping with the brevity of their acquaintance; a freedom from restraint spared them the necessity of exchanging small-talk, that frequently irritating toll exacted as tribute to possible friendship.

The desert lay white and palpitating beneath the noonday glare, and from the outermost rim of desolation came dancing "dust-devils" whirling and gliding through the mazes of their eerie dance. "I think sometimes," said Judith, "that they are the ghosts of those who have died of thirst in the desert."

Mary shuddered imperceptibly. "How do you stand it with never a glimpse of the sea?"

"You'll love it, or hate it; the desert is too jealous for half measures.

As for the sea"-Judith shrugged her fine shoulders-"from all I've heard of it, it must be very wet."

Each felt a reticence about broaching the subject uppermost in her thoughts-Judith from the instinctive tendency towards secretiveness that was part of the heritage of her Indian blood; Mary because the subject so closely concerned this girl for whom she felt such genuine admiration.

Judith finally brought up the matter with an abruptness that scarce concealed her anxiety.

"You saw my brother yesterday at Mrs. Clark's eating-house; will you be good enough to tell me just what happened?"

Mary related the incident in detail, Judith cross-examining her minutely as to the temper of the men at table towards Jim. Did she know if any cattle-men were present? Did she hear where her brother had gone?

Mary had heard nothing further after he had left the eating-house; the only one she had talked to had been Mrs. Clark, whose sympathy had been entirely with Jim. Judith thanked her, but in reality she knew no more now than she had heard from Major Atkins.

Judith now stopped in their walk and stood facing the road as it rolled over the foot-hills-a skein of yellow silk glimmering in the sun. Then Mary saw that the object spinning across it in the distance, hardly bigger than a doll's carriage, was the long-delayed stage. She spoke to the postmistress, but apparently she did not hear-Judith was watching the nearing stage as if it might bring some message of life and death. She stood still, and the drooping lines of her figure straightened, every fibre of her beauty kindled. She was like a flame, paling the sunlight.

And presently was heard the uncouth music of sixteen iron-shod hoofs beating hard from the earth rhythmic notes which presently grew hollow and sonorous as they came rattling over the wooden bridge that spanned the creek.

"Chugg!" exclaimed Leander, rushing to the door in a tumult. There was something crucial in the arrival of the delayed stage-driver. His delinquencies had deflected the course of the travellers, left them stranded in a remote corner of the wilderness; but now they should again resume the thread of things; Chugg's coming was an event.

"'Tain't Chugg, by G.o.d!" said Leander, impelled to violent language by the unexpected.

"It's Peter Hamilton!" exclaimed Mrs. Dax.

"Land's sakes, the New-Yorker!" said the fat lady. Only Judith said nothing.

Mr. Hamilton held the ribbons of that battered prairie-stage as if he had been driving past the judges' bench at the Horse Show. Furthermore, he wore blue overalls, a flannel shirt, and a sombrero, which sartorial inventory, while it highly became the slim young giant, added an extra comedy touch to his role of whip. He was as dusty as a miller; close-cropped, curly head, features, and clothes were covered with a fine alkali powdering; but he carried his youth as a banner streaming in the blue. And he swung from the stage with the easy flow of muscle that is the reward of those who live in the saddle and make a fine art of throwing the lariat.

They greeted him heartily, all but Judith, who did not trust herself to speak to him before the prying eyes of Mrs. Dax, and escaped to the house.

Chugg's latest excursion into oblivion had resulted in a fall from the box. He was not badly hurt, and recuperation was largely a matter of "sleeping it off," concluded Peter Hamilton's bulletin of the condition of the stage-driver. So the travellers were still marooned at Dax's, and the prospect of continuing their journey was as vague as ever.

"Last I heard of you," said Mrs. Dax to Hamilton, with a sort of stone-age playfulness, "you was punching cows over to the Bitter Root."

"That's true, Mrs. Dax"-he gave her his most winning smile-"but I could not stay away from you long."

Leander grimaced and rubbed his hands in an ecstasy of delight at finding a man who had the temerity to bandy words with Mrs. Dax.

"Hum-m-m-ph!" she whinnied, with equine coquetry. "Guess it was rustlers brought you back as much as me."

Judith, who had entered the room in time to hear Mrs. Dax's last remark, greeted him casually, but her eyes, as they met his, were full of questioning fear. Had he come from the Bitter Root range to hunt down her brother? The thought was intolerable. Yet, when he had bade her good-bye some three weeks ago, he had told her that he did not expect to return much before the fall "round-up." She had heard, a day or two before, that he was again in the Wind River country, and her morning vigil beneath the glare of the desert sun had been for him.

Mrs. Dax regarded them with the mercilessness of a death-watch; she remembered the time when Hamilton's excuses for his frequent presence at the post-office had been more voluble than logical. But now he no longer came, and Judith, for all her deliberate flow of spirits, did not quite convince the watchful eyes of Leander's lady-the postmistress was a trifle too cheerful.

"Mrs. Dax," pleaded Peter, boyishly, "I'm perishing for a cup of coffee, and I've got to get back to my outfit before dark."

"Oh, go on with you," whinnied the gorgon; but she left the room to make the coffee.

Judith's eyes sought his. "Why don't you and Leander form a coalition for the overthrow of the enemy?" His voice had dropped a tone lower than in his parley with Mrs. Dax; it might have implied special devotion, or it might have implied but the pa.s.sing tribute to a beautiful woman in a country where women were few-the generic admiration of all men for all women, ephemerally specialized by place and circ.u.mstance.

But Judith, hara.s.sed at every turn, heart-sick with anxiety, had antic.i.p.ated in Peter's coming, if not a solution of her troubles, at least some evidence of sustaining sympathy, and was in no mood for resuscitating the perennial pleasantries anent Leander and his masterful lady.

The shrilling of the locusts emphasized their silence. She spoke to him casually of his change of plan, but he turned the subject, and Judith let the matter drop. She was too simple a woman to stoop to oblique measures for the gaining of her own ends. If he was here to hunt down her brother, if he was here to see the Eastern woman at the Wetmore ranch-well, "life was life," to be taken or left. Thus spoke the fatalism that was the heritage of her Indian blood.

The thought of Miss Colebrooke at Wetmore's reminded her of a letter for Peter that had been brought that morning by one of the Wetmore cow-boys.

"I forgot-there's a letter for you." She went to the pigeon-holes on the wall that held the flotsam and jetsam of unclaimed mail, and brought him a square, blue linen envelope-distinctly a lady's letter.

Peter took it with rather a forced air of magnanimity, as if in neglecting to present it to him sooner she drew heavily on his reserve of patience.

Tearing open the envelope, he read it voraciously, read it to the exclusion of his surroundings, the world at large, and-Judith. He strode up and down the floor two or three times, and called to Leander, who was pa.s.sing:

"Dax, I must have that gray mare of yours right away." He went in the direction of the stable, without a second glance at the postmistress, and presently they saw him galloping off in the opposite direction from which he had come. Mrs. Dax came in with a tray on which were a pot of coffee and sundry substantial delicacies.

"Where's he gone?" she demanded, putting the tray down so hard that the coffee slopped.

"I dunno," said Leander. "He said he'd got to have the gray mare, saddled her hisself, and rode off like h.e.l.l."

Mrs. Dax looked at them all savagely for the explanation that they could not give. In sending her out to make coffee she felt that Peter, whom she regarded in the light of a weakness, had taken advantage of her affections to dupe her in regard to his plans.

"Take them things back to the kitchen," she commanded Leander.

Mary Carmichael involuntarily glanced at Judith; the fall of the leaf was in her cheek.

Peter Hamilton, bowed in his saddle and flogging forward inhumanely, bred rife speculation as to his destination among the group that watched him from the Daxes' front door. Mrs. Dax, who entertained so profound a respect for her own omniscience that she disdained to arrive at a conclusion by a logical process of deduction, was "plumb certain that he had gone after 'rustlers!'" Leander, who had held no opinions since his marriage except that first and all-comprehensive tenet of his creed-that his wife was a person to be loved, honored, and obeyed instantly-agreed with his lady by a process of reflex action. The fat lady, who had a commonplace for every occasion, didn't "know what we were all coming to."

Miss Carmichael, who was beginning to find her capacity for amazement overstrained, alone accepted this last incident with apathy. Mr. Hamilton might have gone in swift pursuit of cattle thieves or he might be riding the mare to death for pure whimsy. Only Judith Rodney, who said nothing, felt that he was spurring across the wilderness at breakneck speed to see a girl at Wetmore's. But her lack of comment caused no ripple of surprise in the flow of loose-lipped speculation that served, for the time being, to inject a casual interest into the talk of these folk, bored to the verge of demoralization by long waiting for Chugg.

Judith preferred to confirm her apprehensions regarding Hamilton's ride, alone. She knew-had not all her woman's intuitions risen in clamorous warning-and yet she hoped, hoped despairingly, even though the dread alternative to the girl at the Wetmore ranch threatened lynch law for her brother. Her very gait changed as she withdrew from the group about the door, covertly gaining her vantage-ground inch by inch. The heels of her riding-boots made no sound as she stole across the kitchen floor, toeing in like an Indian tracking an enemy through the forest. The small window at the back of the kitchen commanded a view of the road in all its sprawling circ.u.mlocution. Seen from this prospect, it had no more design than the idle scrawlings of a child on a bit of paper; but the choice of roads to Good and Evil was not fraught with more momentous consequences than was each p.r.o.ng of that fork towards which Hamilton was galloping.

The right arm swung towards the Wetmore ranch, where at certain times during the course of the year a hundred cow-punchers reported on the stock that grazed in four States. At certain seasons, likewise, despite the fact that the ranch was well into the foot-hill country, there might be found a New York family playing at life primeval with the co-operation of porcelain bath-tubs, a French _chef_, and electric light.

The left fork of the road had a meaner destiny. It dipped straight into desolation, penetrating a naked wilderness where bad men skulked till the evil they had done was forgotten in deeds that called afresh to Heaven for vengeance. It was well away on this west fork of the road that they lynched Kate Watson-"Cattle Kate"-for the crime of loyalty. It was she, intrepid and reckless, who threatened the horde of masked scoundrels when they came to lynch her man for the iniquity of raising a few vegetables on a strip of ground that cut into their grazing country. And when she, recognizing them, masked though they were, threatened them with the vengeance of the law, they hanged her with her man high as Haman.