The Fighting Shepherdess Part 17

"It'll be close to forty below before morning," pa.s.sing out the tobacco.

"Everybody's gone to the show but me," plaintively.

"A drug clerk might as well be a dog chained up in a kennel." He stopped the phonograph and changed the needle.

The stranger sat down beside the stove and placed his feet on the nickel railing. He left the collar of his mackinaw turned up, but untied his ear-laps. They looked rather foolish, dangling. His eyes were shadowed by the visor of his cap, so that really only his nose and cheek bones were visible. He glanced at the big clock on the wall frequently, and at intervals wiped the palms of his hands on the knees of his corduroy trousers as though to remove the moisture.

The clerk was putting on "When the Springtime Comes, Gentle Annie" when the opening door let in a breath from the Arctic and a tall person wearing new overalls, a coat of fleece-lined canvas and a peak-crowned Stetson. He had a scarf wound about his neck after the fashion of sheepherders.

"h.e.l.lo, Bowers! Sober?" inquired the clerk, casually.

"Kinda. What you playin'?"

The clerk told him.

"Got a piece called 'The Yella Rose o' Texas Beats the Belles o'

Tennessee'?"

"Never heard of it."

"Got--'Whur the Silver Colorady Wends its Way'?"

The clerk replied in the negative.

"Why don't you git some good music?"

"Why aren't you at the show?"

"Too contrary, I reckon. When I'm out in the hills I'm a hankerin' to see somebody. When I git in town I want to git away from everybody. I'm goin' out to-morrow."

"Where you going?"

"Hired out to Mormon Joe this evenin'."

The stranger stirred slightly.

"I'll look around a little--I don't want nothin'," said Bowers.

"Help yourself," replied the clerk, amiably, so the sheepherder stared at the baubles of cut gla.s.s on the shelf with a pleased expression and hung over the counter where the rings, watches and bracelets glittered.

Then he examined a string of sponges carefully--sponges always interested him--they suggested picturesque scenery and adventures. He lingered over the toilet articles, sniffing the soaps and smelling at the bottles of perfume, trying those whose names he especially fancied on the end of his nose by rubbing it with the gla.s.s stopper. Then he sat down on the other side of the stove from the stranger and spelled out the queer names on the jars of drugs, speculating as to their contents and uses. He never yet had exhausted the possibilities of a drug store as a means of entertainment.

A few minutes after ten the advance guard came from the Opera House--laughing. The World's Greatest Prestidigitator had dropped the egg which he intended taking from the ear of Governor Sudds where it had broken into the ample lap of Mrs. Vernon Wentz of the White Hand Laundry. The cold, however, promptly put a quietus upon their merriment and they scuttled past, bent on getting out of it as quickly as possible.

There were two customers for cigars, and the Toomeys. Toomey bought chocolates while Mrs. Toomey held her hands to the stove and shivered.

"Come on, Dell." Toomey's glance as he took the candy included the stranger.

"How're you?" he nodded carelessly.

They were to be the last, apparently, for when their footsteps died away the street again grew silent.

The clerk planted his feet on the nickel railing and stared at the stove gloomily.

"I'd have to keep this store open till half-past 'leven if I was dyin',"

he grumbled.

"But you ain't," said Bowers, cheerfully.

Bowers smelled strongly of sheep, once the heat warmed his clothing. On the other side of the clerk the odor of smoke and bear grease emanated from the stranger. The clerk moved his chair back from the stove and advised the latter:

"Your soles is fryin'."

He seemed not to hear him, for his eyes were upon the clock creeping close to eleven, and he watched the swaying pendulum as though it fascinated him. There was no conversation, and each sat thinking his own thoughts until the stranger suddenly pulled down the side of his collar and listened. The clerk eyed him with disfavor. The squeaking of footsteps in the dry snow was heard distinctly. The stranger got up leisurely and went out with a grunt that was intended for "good evening."

"Sociable cuss," Bowers commented ironically.

"Smelt like an Injun tepee," said the clerk, sourly.

"It's a wonder to me fellers don't notice theirselves," Bowers observed.

"But they never seem to."

A weaving figure was making its way down the middle of Main Street. A thick-coated collie followed closely. The swaying figure looked like a drunken gnome in its clumsy coat and peak-crowned hat in the cold steel-blue starlight. It stopped uncertainly at the alley, then went on to the end of the block and turned the corner.

The Toomeys had lost no time in retiring after the entertainment, for the house, upon their return, was like a refrigerator. Almost instantly Toomey was slumbering tranquilly, but Mrs. Toomey had symptoms which she recognized as presaging hours of wakefulness. The unwonted excitement of being out in the evening had much to do with her restlessness, but chiefly it came from thinking of the cook stove. Of course she could see the force of j.a.p's argument as to the necessity of keeping up appearances by being seen in public places and spending money as though there was more where that came from, yet she wondered if it really deceived anybody.

And supposing Teeters foreclosed the mortgage! It seemed as though they were slipping week by week, day by day, deeper into the black depths at the bottom of which was actual beggary. Her nervousness increased as her imagination painted darker and darker pictures until she longed to scream for the relief it would have afforded her. The single hope was Mormon Joe's Kate and her promise, and that was too fantastic and farfetched to dare count on. It was not logical to suppose that a man whom j.a.p had quarreled with and insulted would come to their rescue even if he could afford to do so, which she doubted.

How still it was--the eloquent stillness of terrible cold! The town was soundless. Chickens humped in their feathers were freezing on their roosts, horses and cows tied in their stalls were suffering, and, as always, she visualized the desolate white stretches where hungry coyotes, gaunt and vigilant, padded along the ridges, and horses and cattle, turned out to shift for themselves, huddled shivering in the gulches and under the willows.

She knew from the snapping and cracking of lumber and metal about the house that it was growing colder, and she drew the covers closer. Oh, what a country to live in! Whatever was to become of them! Her teeth chattered.

She thought she heard footsteps and raised her head slightly to listen.

Faint at first, they were coming nearer. Whoever was out a night like this, she could not imagine. The person was walking in the middle of the road and his progress was uneven, stopping sometimes altogether, then going forward. Abreast the house the sound of heels grinding in the snow that was dry as powder was like the scrunching and squealing of the steel tire of a wagon in bitter weather.

They pa.s.sed, grew fainter, finally stopped altogether. Mrs. Toomey moved closer to her husband. There was comfort in the nearness of a human being.

A shot! Her heart jumped--her nerves tw.a.n.ged with the shock of it. "That hit something!" The thought was almost simultaneous. The sound was more like an explosion--deadened, m.u.f.fled somewhat--as of a charge fired into a bale of hay or cotton. For the s.p.a.ce of a dozen heartbeats she lay with her mouth open, breathless in the deathly silence of the frozen night.

A scream! It must have reached the sky. Piercing, agonized--the agony of a man screaming with his mouth wide open--screaming without restraint, in animal-like unconsciousness of what he was doing.

"j.a.p!" She clutched his arm and shook him.

The screams kept coming, blood curdling, as if they would split the throat, tear it, and horrible with suffering.

"j.a.p!" She sat up and shook his shoulder violently.

"Wha's the matter?" he asked, sleepily.

"Did you hear that shot? Listen!"