Peak and Prairie Part 24

"Full Leitmann Orchestra can engage for Springtown, evening of 19th. Terms, five thousand dollars, expenses included. Answer before 13th. Buffalo, N. Y.

(Signed) "H. LEITMANN."

And now Lewis Peckham came out a full-fledged speculator. He sold out of four mines and bought into six; he changed his ventures three times in twenty-four hours, each time on a slight rise. He haunted the stockbroker's offices, watching out for "pointers"; he b.u.t.ton-holed every third man on the street; he drank in every hint that was dropped in his hearing. On Tuesday afternoon he "cleaned up" his capital and found himself in possession of three thousand five hundred dollars.

"Peckham's going it hard," men said at the club. "He must be awfully bitten."

All day Wednesday he could not muster courage to put his money into anything, though stocks were booming on every hand. And yet on Wednesday, as on Monday and on Tuesday, he did his office work and superintended that of his subordinates methodically and exactly. The substratum of character which the long-headed Hillerton had built upon, held firm.

On Wednesday evening Peckham stood, wild-eyed and haggard, in the light of Estabrook's drug-store and scanned the faces of the foot-pa.s.sengers.

Early in the evening Elliot Chittenden came along with a grip-sack in his hand, just down from Lame Gulch. Peckham fell upon him like a footpad, whispering hoa.r.s.ely:

"For G.o.d's sake give me a pointer."

"Jove!" said Chittenden, afterward, "I thought it was a hold-up, sure as trumps."

At the moment, however, he maintained his composure and only said:

"The smelter returns from the Boa Constrictor are down to-day. Two hundred and seventeen dollars to the ton. I've got all the stuff I can carry, so I don't mind letting you in. The papers will have it to-morrow, though they're doing their best to keep it back."

Into the Boa Constrictor Peckham plunged the next morning, for all he was worth. His money brought him ten thousand shares. The morning papers did not have it, and all that day the Boa Constrictor lay as torpid as any other snake in cold weather. Peckham's face had taken on the tense, wild look of the gambler. He left the office half a dozen times during the day to look at the stock-boards. He had a hundred minds about taking his money out and putting it into something else. But nothing else promised anything definite, and he held on.

The evening papers gave the smelter returns, precisely as Chittenden had stated them. Now would the public "catch on" quick enough, or would they take ten days to do what they might as well come to on the spot?

At nine o'clock the next morning, Peckham was on the street lying in wait for an early broker. It was not until half-past nine that they began to arrive.

"Any bids for Boa Constrictor?" Peckham inquired of Macdugal, the first-comer.

"They were bidding forty cents at the club last night, with no takers."

"Let me know if you get fifty cents bid."

"How much do you offer?"

"Ten thousand shares."

"Oh! see here, Peckham! I wouldn't sell out at such a price. The thing's sure to go to a dollar inside of thirty days."

"I don't care a _hang_ where it goes in thirty days. I want the money to-day."

"Whew! Do you know anything better to put it into?"

"I know something _a million times better_!" cried Peckham, in a voice sharp with excitement.

"The fellow's clean daft," Macdugal remarked to his partner, a few minutes later.

"I should say so!" was the reply. "Queer, too, how suddenly it takes 'em. A week ago I should have said that was the coolest head of the lot.

He didn't seem to care a chuck for the whole business. Wonder if he's gone off his base since Hillerton was laid up. Hope he isn't in for a swindle. He'd be just game for a sharper to-day."

At noon Peckham sold his ten thousand shares of B. C. for five thousand dollars. He could have got six thousand the next morning, but then, as he reflected, what good would it have done him? His first act after depositing the check received for his stock, was to send the following telegram:

"Leitmann Orchestra engaged for Springtown, May 19th. Five thousand dollars deposited in First National Bank. Particulars by letter.

(Signed) "LEWIS PECKHAM."

It is not a usual thing for an impecunious young man to invest five thousand dollars in a single symphony concert, but there was one feature of the affair which was more unusual still; namely, the fact that the consummation of that same young man's hopes was complete. For two beatific hours on the evening of the memorable 19th of May, Lewis Peckham's cup was full. He sat among the people in the balcony, quiet and intent, taking no part in the applause, looking neither to the right nor to the left. But if he gave no outward sign, perhaps it was because his spirit was so far uplifted as to be out of touch with his body.

The money which he had expended in the gratification of what the uninitiated would call a whim, seemed to him the paltriest detail, quite unworthy of consideration. When he thought of it at all it was to recall the story of the gaunt customer who paid so handsomely for his whisky, and to note the confirmation of his theory, that "if you only want anything bad enough no price is too high to pay for it."

And in still another particular Lewis Peckham's experience was unique.

He never gambled again. He had a feeling that he had got all he was ent.i.tled to from the fickle G.o.ddess. When pressed to try his luck once more he would only say, with his old, indifferent shrug: "No, thanks.

I've had my fling and now I've got through."

X.

A ROCKY MOUNTAIN SHIPWRECK.

"Bixby's Art Emporium" was a temple of such modest exterior that visitors were conscious of no special disappointment upon finding that there was, if possible, less of "art" than of "emporium" within. A couple of show-cases filled with agate and tiger-eye articles, questionable looking "gems," and the like; a table in the centre of the shop piled high with Colorado views of every description; here and there on the walls a poor water-color or a worse oil-painting; a desultory Navajo rug on a chair: these humble objects const.i.tuted the nearest approach to "art" that the establishment could boast. The distinctive feature of the little shop was the show-case at the rear, filled with books of pressed wildflowers; these, at least, were the chief source of income in the business, and therefore Marietta spent every odd half-hour in the manufacture of them. A visitor, when he entered, was apt to suppose that the shop was empty; for the black, curly head bent over the work at the window behind the back counter was not immediately discernible. It was a fascinating head, as the most unimpressionable visitor could not fail to observe when the tall figure rose from behind the counter,--fascinating by reason of the beautiful hair, escaping in soft tendrils from the confining knot; fascinating still more by reason of the perfect grace of poise. The face was somewhat sallow and very thin; care and privation had left their marks upon it. The mouth was finely modelled, shrewd and humorous; but it was the eyes, dark, and darkly fringed as those of a wood-nymph, that dominated the face; one had a feeling that here was where the soul looked out. To hear Marietta speak, however, was something of a disenchantment; her tone was so very matter-of-fact, her words so startlingly to the point. If the soul looked out at the eyes, the lips at least had little to say of it.

The visitor, if a stranger, had an excellent opportunity of making his observations on these points, for Marietta usually remained standing, in a skeptical att.i.tude, behind the distant counter until he had shown signs of "business" intentions. She was very ready to stand up and rest her back, but she had no idea of coming forward to indulge an aimless curiosity as to the origin and price of her art treasures. An old customer, on the other hand, was treated with an easy good-fellowship so marked that only those who liked "that sort of thing" ever became old customers.

"Well, how's everything?" was the usual form of greeting, as the tall willowy figure pa.s.sed round behind the counters and came opposite the new-comer.

"Did your folks like the frame?" would come next, if the customer chanced to have had a frame sent home recently. Marietta was agent for a Denver art firm, which framed pictures at a "reasonable figure"; or rather, Jim was the agent, and Jim being Marietta's husband, and too sick a man of late to conduct his business, did not have to be reckoned with.

In spite of the fact that she was generally known as "Mrs. Jim," many people forgot that Marietta had a husband, for he was never visible now-a-days. But Marietta never forgot, never for one single instant, the wasted figure in the easy chair at the window above the shop, the pale sunken face with the shining eyes, turned always toward the stairway the instant her foot touched the lower step. The look of radiant welcome that greeted her as often as her head appeared above the opening on a level with the uneven deal floor, that look was always worth coming up for.

She did not bring her work and sit upstairs with Jim, because there was but one small window in the dingy, slant-roofed loft, that served as bed-chamber, kitchen, and parlor, and she knew he liked to sit at the window and watch the panorama of the street below. The broad, sunny Springtown thoroughfare, with its low, irregular wooden structures, likely, at any moment, to give place to ambitious business "blocks"; with its general air of incompleteness and transitoriness brought into strong relief against the near background of the Rocky Mountains, was alive with human interest. Yet, singularly enough, it was not the cowboy, mounted on his half-broken bronco that interested Jim; not the ranch wagon, piled high with farm produce, women, and children; not even the Lame Gulch "stage,"--a four-seated wagon, so crowded with rough-looking men that their legs dangled outside like fringe on a cowboy's "shaps,"--none of these sights made much impression on the sick man at his upper window. The work-a-day side of life was far too familiar to Jim to impress him as being picturesque or dramatic. What he did care for, what roused and satisfied his imagination, was what was known in his vocabulary as "style." It was to the "gilded youth" of Springtown that he looked for his entertainment. He liked the yellow fore-and-aft buckboards, he enjoyed the shining buggies, especially when their wheels were painted red; dog-carts and victorias ranked high in his esteem. He knew, to be sure, very little about horses; their most salient "points" escaped him: he gave indiscriminate approval to every well-groomed animal attached to a "stylish" vehicle, and the more the merrier! It is safe to declare that he was a distinctly happier man from that day forward on which Mr. Richard Dayton first dazzled the eyes of Springtown with his four-in-hand.

This happened early in February and the day chanced to be a warm one, so that Jim's window was open. He was sitting there, gazing abstractedly at the Peak which rose, a great snowy dome, above Tang Ling's shop across the way. Jim seldom spoke of the mountains, nor was he aware of paying any special attention to them. "I ain't much on Nature," he had always maintained; and since Marietta admitted the same lack in herself there seemed to be nothing in that to regret. Yet it is nevertheless true that Jim had his thoughts, as he sat, abstractedly gazing at those shining heights, thoughts of high and solemn things which his condition brought near to him, thoughts which he rarely said anything about. To-day, as he watched the deep blue shadows brooding upon the Peak, he was wondering in a child-like way what Heaven would be like. Suddenly the musical clink of silver chains struck his ear, and the look of abstraction vanished. He had never heard those bridle chains before. Somebody had got something new! A moment more, and, with a fine rush and jingle, and a clear blast from the horn, the four-in-hand dashed by.

"Hurrah!" Jim cried huskily, as Marietta's foot trod the stair.

"I say, Jim! You seen 'em?"

She came up panting, for the stairs were very steep and narrow.

"Seen 'em? I rather guess! Wasn't it bully? Do you reckon they'll come back this way?"

"Course they will! Don't you s'pose they like to show themselves off?

And the horn! did you hear the horn, Jim? I wonder if that's the way they sound in Switzerland!"

She came up and stood with her hand on Jim's shoulder, looking down into the street.

"And just to think of it, Jim!" she said, a moment later. "They say he's made lots of money right here in mines! If we was in mines we might have made some."