The Eagle's Heart Part 35

"On the range."

"You mean cowboy?"

"Yes; we don't need directories out there. Does that book tell where everybody lives?"

"Well no, but most everybody shows up in it somewhere," replied the clerk quite soberly. It had not occurred to him that anybody could live outside a directory.

Harold got up and went to the book which he turned over slowly, looking at the names. "I don't see that this helps a man much," he said to the clerk who came in to help him. "Here is Henry Coleman lives at 2201 Exeter Street. Now how is a man going to find that street?"

"Ask a policeman," replied the clerk, much interested. "You're not used to towns?"

"Not much. I can cross a mountain range easier than I can find one of these streets."

Under the clerk's supervision Harold found the Yardwells, Thomas and James, but Mary's name did not appear. He turned to conservatories and located three or four, and having made out a slip of information set forth. The first one he found to be situated up several flights of stairs and was closed; so was the second. The third was in a brilliantly lighted building which towered high above the street. On the eighth floor in a small office a young girl with severe cast of countenance (and hair parted on one side) looked up from her writing and coldly inquired:

"Is there anything I can do for you?"

"Is there a girl named Mary Yardwell in your school?" he asked with some effort, feeling a hot flush in his cheek--a sensation new to him.

"I don't think so, I'll look," replied the girl with business civility.

She thumbed a book to see and at length replied, "No, sir, there is not."

"Much obliged."

"Not at all," replied the girl calmly, resuming her work.

Harold went down the steps to avoid the elevator. The next place was oppressive with its grandeur. A tremendous wall, cold and dark (except for a single row of lighted windows), loomed high overhead. In the center of an arched opening in this wall a white hot globe flamed, lighting into still more dazzling cleanliness a broad flight of marble steps which led by a half turn to unknown regions above. Young people were crowding into the elevator, girls in dainty costumes predominating.

They seemed wondrously flowerlike and birdlike to the plainsman, and brought back his school days at the seminary, and the time when he was at ease with young people like this. He had gone far from them now--their happy faces made him sad.

He walked up the stairway, four flights, and came to a long hall, which rustled and rippled and sparkled with flights of young girls--eager, vivid, excited, and care-free. A few men moved about like dull-coated robins surrounded by orioles and canary birds.

A bland old man with clean-shaven mouth seemed to be the proper source of information, and to him Harold stepped with his question.

The old man smiled. "Miss Yardwell? Yes--she is one of our most valued pupils. Certainly--w.i.l.l.y!" he called to a small boy who carried a livery of startling newness, "go tell Miss Yardwell a gentleman would like to see her."

"I suppose you are from her country home?" said the old gentleman, who imagined a romance in this relation of a powerful and handsome young man to Miss Yardwell.

"I am," Harold replied briefly.

"Take a seat--she will be here presently."

Harold took the offered seat with a sick, faint feeling at the pit of his stomach. The long-hoped-for event was at hand. It seemed impossible that Mary could be there--that she was about to stand before him. His mind was filled with the things he had arranged to say to her, but they were now in confused ma.s.s, circling and circling like the wrack of a boat in a river's whirlpool.

He knew her far down the hall--he recognized the poise of her head and her walk, which had always been very fine and dignified. As she approached, the radiance of her dress, her beauty, scared him. She looked at him once and then at the clerk as if to say, "Is this the man?"

Then Harold arose and said, "Well, Mary, here I am."

For an instant she looked at him, and then a light leaped into her eyes.

"Why, Harold Excell!----" she stopped abruptly as he caught her outstretched hands, and she remembered the sinister a.s.sociation of the name. "Why, why, I didn't know you. Where do you come from?" Her face was flushed, her eyes eager, searching, restless. "Come in here," she said abruptly, and before he had time to reply, she led him to a little anteroom with a cushioned wall seat, and they took seats side by side.

"It is impossible!" she said, still staring at him, her bosom pulsating with her quickened breath. "It is not you--it can't be you," she whispered, "Black Mose sitting here--with me--in Chicago. You're in danger."

"I don't feel that way."

He smiled for the first time, and his fine teeth shining from his handsome mouth led her to say:

"Your big mustaches are gone--that's the reason I didn't know you at once--I don't believe I like you so well----"

"They'll grow again," he said; "I'm in disguise." He smiled again as if in a joke.

Again the thought of who he really was flamed through her mind. "What a life you lead! How do you happen to be here? I never expected to see you in a city--you don't fit into a city."

"I'm here because you are," he replied, and the simplicity of his reply moved her deeply. "I came as soon as I got your letter," he went on.

"My letter! I've written only one letter, that was soon after your visit to Marmion."

"That's the one I mean. I got it nearly four years after you wrote it. I hope you haven't changed since that letter."

"I'm older," she said evasively. "My father died a little over a year ago."

"I know, Jack wrote me."

"Why didn't you get my letter sooner?"

"I was on the trail."

"On the trail! You are always on the trail. Oh, the wild life you lead!

I saw notices of you once or twice--always in some trouble." She looked at him smilingly but there was sadness in her smile.

"It's no fault of mine," he exclaimed. "I can't stand by and see some poor Indian or Chinaman bullied--and besides the papers always exaggerate everything I do. You mustn't condemn me till you hear my side of these sc.r.a.pes."

"I don't condemn you at all but it makes me sad," she slowly replied.

"You are wasting your life out there in the wild country--oh, isn't it strange that we should sit here? My mind is so busy with the wonder of it I can't talk straight. I had given up ever seeing you again----"

"You're not married?" he asked with startling bluntness.

She colored hotly. "No."

"Are you engaged?"

"No," she replied faintly.

"Then you're mine!" he said with a clutch upon her wrist, a masterful intensity of pa.s.sion in his eyes.

"Don't--please don't!" she said, "they will see you."

"I don't care if they do!" he exultingly said; then his face darkened.

"But perhaps you are ashamed of me?"