Peak and Prairie Part 26

"What did you buy?"

"H. O. P."

"What did you pay?"

"Twenty cents."

"Sold yet?"

"No."

Dayton took the little parcel she was handing him. He had come in for a lead-pencil and had bought, in addition, a stamp-box, a b.u.t.tonhook, and a plated silver photograph frame, not one of which newly acquired treasures he had the slightest use for. They were very neatly tied up, however. He wished Mrs. Jim would stick to her legitimate business which she did uncommonly well.

"I think I would sell out my 'H. O. P.' if I were you," he said.

"Isn't it going any higher?" she asked.

"Very likely; but it's a swindle."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, I mean that the management's bad, and they don't know the first thing about what they've got, any way. Honestly, Mrs. Jim, it isn't safe to hold."

Marietta's heart sank; if she sold her stock what was to become of the little house with the two windows in the sitting-room? She did not reply, and Dayton went on:

"Of course," he said; "I can't tell that the thing won't go to a dollar, but there is really no basis for it. I've sold out every share I held, and I don't regret it, though it has gone up ten points since then."

Marietta regarded him attentively. There was no mistaking his sincerity,--and he probably knew what he was talking about.

"Well," she said at last, with a profound sigh; "I guess I'll do as you say. It worked pretty well the other time."

"That's right, Mrs. Jim, and supposing you let me have your stock. I can probably get you fifty cents for it in the course of the day."

She took the certificate from a drawer close at hand, and having signed it, she gave one lingering farewell look at the green lady and her golden horn.

"I may as well write a check for the amount now," Dayton said.

"But maybe you can't get it."

"More likely to get a little over. If I do I'll bring it in."

Dayton looked into her face as he spoke, and its beauty struck him as pathetic. There were lines and shadows there which he had not noticed before.

"I wish, Mrs. Jim," he said, "that you wouldn't do anything more in mines; it's an awfully risky business at the best. There isn't one of us that knows the first thing about it."

She gave him a sceptical look; was he so entirely sincere, after all?

"Some of you know enough about it to make an awful lot of money in it,"

she answered quietly.

"That isn't knowledge," he declared; "it's luck!"

"Comes to the same thing in the end," said Marietta.

If it had not been for those pathetic lines and shadows, Dayton would have turned on his heel then and there, disgusted with what seemed to him unfeminine shrewdness. As it was, he said: "Well, then, why not let me be your broker? I'm on the street half the time, and I could attend to your business a great deal better than you could."

Marietta did not commit herself to any agreement. She put her check away, still too regretful about the dreams she had relinquished, to rejoice in the mere doubling of her money.

Late in the afternoon she was paying a visit to Jim. In spite of the brilliant sunshine that flooded the little garret, at this hour, the place seemed dingier and drearier than ever. Jim, too, she thought, was not looking quite as well as usual; his hand as she took it was hot and dry. She knelt down beside him and they looked out at the Peak, rising grand and imposing beyond the low roofs. Marietta was thinking of the gold, "just round on the other side," but Jim's thoughts had wandered farther still; or was it, after all, nearer to the sick man with the wistful light in his eyes?

"I say, Marietta," he said, "I wonder what Heaven's like."

She had never heard him speak like that, and the words went to her heart like a knife. But she answered, gently:

"I guess we don't know much about it, Jim; only that it'll be Heaven."

"I suppose when we get there, you and I, Springtown will seem very far away."

"I don't know, Jim," Marietta said, looking still out toward the Peak, but thinking no longer of the gold on the other side. "I shouldn't like any of our life together ever to seem very far away."

Just then the sound of the horn rang musically down the street and a moment later the brake went by. The horses' heads were toward home and they knew it; the harness jingled and glittered. On the brake were half-a-dozen well-dressed people laughing and talking gaily; health and prosperity seemed visibly in attendance upon that little company of fortunates. They pa.s.sed like a vision, and again the sound of the horn came ringing down the street.

Jim turned and looked at Marietta who had been almost as excited as he.

A thousand thoughts had chased themselves through her brain as the brake went by. She sighed in the energetic manner peculiar to her, and then she said: "O Jim! If you could only be like that for just one day!"

Perhaps he had had the same thought but her words dispelled it.

"Never mind, Etta," he said. "I wouldn't change with him;" and Marietta shut away the little speech in her heart to be happy over at her leisure.

The next day the invalid was not as well as usual and Mrs. Jim spent half her time running up and down stairs. Inches came in in the course of the day and offered her sixty cents for her "Horn of Plenty," and she thought with a pang how fast it was going up. The thought haunted her all day long, but she could not leave Jim to take any steps toward retrieving her opportunity, and after that first visit Inches did not come in again. She took out her big check once or twice in the course of the day and looked at it resentfully; and as she brooded upon the matter, it was borne in upon her with peculiar force that she had made a fatal blunder in exchanging her "chances" for that fixed, inexpansive sum. Had it not been cowardly in her to yield so easily? Supposing Dayton himself had lacked courage at the critical moment; where would his four-in-hand have been to-day? She was sure that no timid speculator had ever made a fortune; on the contrary, she had often heard it said that a flash of courage at the right moment was the very essence of success in speculation. She remembered the expression "essence of success."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "THEY LOOKED OUT AT THE PEAK."]

By the time evening came the fever of speculation was high in her veins, and urged on by her own brooding fancies, uncontradicted from without, unexposed to the light of day, she did an incredible thing.

As she drew forth her writing materials in order to put her new and startling resolution into execution, she paused and looked about the familiar little shop with a feeling of estrangement. There was an incongruity between the boldness of the thing she was about to do, and the hard and fast limitations of her lot, which the sight of those humble properties brought sharply home to her. The first pen she took up was stiff and scratchy; the sound of it was like a challenge to the outer world to come and pa.s.s judgment upon her. She flung the pen to one side in nervous trepidation, and then she searched until she found one that was soft and pliable, and went whispering over the paper like a fellow-conspirator.

This was what she wrote:

"DEAR MR. DAYTON,

"I want to go into the 'Horn of Plenty' again, and I can't get away to attend to it. I enclose your check, and one of my own for $400.

Please buy me what the money will bring. They say it isn't a swindle, and any way I want some. You said to come to you, and that was the same as saying you'd do it, if I asked you to. I don't care what you pay; get what you can for the money.

"Yours truly, "M. BIXBY."

Another morning found Jim so ill that they sent for the doctor. On the same day Inches came in and offered seventy-five cents for the stock.

Marietta had not told him that it was sold and she did not propose to do so. In the afternoon the price had "jumped" to ninety cents, but by that time she was too anxious about Jim to care.