The Fighting Shepherdess Part 56

Only a few times in their married life had Mr. Pantin risen on his hind legs, speaking figuratively, and defied her. In the beginning, before he was well housebroken, he was careless in the matter of cleaning his soles on the sc.r.a.per, and had been obstinate on the question of changing his shirt on Wednesdays, holding that once a week was enough for a person not engaged in manual labor. Mrs. Pantin had won out on each issue, but it had not been an easy victory. Mr. Pantin had been docile so long now that she had expected no further trouble with him, therefore this outbreak was so unlooked for that her fit was almost genuine.

Having hurled his thunderbolt, Mr. Pantin stood above his wife regarding her imperturbably as she lay with her face buried in a sofa pillow.

Unmoved, he even felt a certain interest in the rise and fall of her shoulder blades as she sobbed. Actually, she seemed to breathe with them--"like the gills of a fish," he thought heartlessly--and wondered how long she could keep it up.

"It's no use having this tantrum, Prissy," he said inexorably.

Tantrum! The final insult. Mrs. Pantin squealed with rage and gnawed the corner of the leather pillow.

"You might as well come out of it," he admonished further. "You'll only make your eyes red and give yourself a headache."

"You're a brute, Abram Pantin, and I wish I'd never seen you!"

Mr. Pantin suppressed the reply that the wish was mutual. Instead, he picked up the leather b.u.t.ton which flew on the floor when Mrs. Pantin doubled her fist and smote the davenport.

"I doubt very much if she'd come, even if you ask her," said Pantin. It was a stroke of genius.

"Not come!" The eye which Mrs. Pantin exposed regarded Mr. Pantin scornfully. "Not come? Why, she'd be tickled to pieces."

But of that Mr. Pantin continued to have his own opinion.

Mrs. Pantin sat up and winked rapidly in her indignation.

"She's made if I take her up, and the woman isn't so stupid as not to know it, is she?"

"She may not see it from that angle," dryly. "At any rate, you'll be pleasing me greatly by asking her."

Mrs. Pantin looked at her husband fixedly:

"Why this deep interest, Abram?"

Flattered by the implied accusation, Mr. Pantin, however, resisted the temptation to make Mrs. Pantin jealous, and answered truthfully:

"I admire her greatly. She deserves recognition and will get it. If you are a wise woman you'll swallow your prejudices and be the first to admit it."

Mrs. Pantin raised both eyebrows--her own and the one she put on mornings--incredulously.

"She's the kind that would win out anywhere," he added, with conviction.

Mrs. Pantin stared at him absently, while the tears on her lashes dried to smudges. She murmured finally:

"I could have pineapple with mayonnaise dressing."

To conceal a smile, Mr. Pantin stooped for his paper.

"Or would you have lettuce with roquefort cheese dressing, Abram?"

"You know much more about such things than I do--your luncheons are always perfect, Prissy. Who do you think of inviting to meet her?"

Mrs. Pantin considered. Then her eyes sparkled with malice, "I'll begin with Mrs. Toomey."

In the office of the _Grit_, Hiram Butefish was reading the proof of his editorial that pointed out the many advantages Prouty enjoyed over its rival in the next county.

There was no more perfect spot on the footstool for the rearing of children, Mr. Butefish declared editorially. Fresh air, pure water, and a moral atmosphere--wherein it differed, he hinted, from its neighbor.

There Vice rampant and innocent Youth met on every corner, while the curse of the Demon Rum was destroying its manhood.

Mr. Butefish laid down the proof-sheet, sighed deeply, and quite unconsciously moistened his lips.

He was for Reform, certainly, but the thought would intrude that when Vice moved on to greener fields it took with it much of the zest of living. In the days when a man could get drunk as he liked and as often as he liked without fear of criticism, sure of being laid away tenderly by tolerant friends, instead of, as now,--being snaked, scuffling, to the calaboose by the constable--

The arrival of the mail with its exchanges interrupted thoughts flowing in a dangerous channel.

The soaring price of wool, featured in the headlines, caught his attention instantly, since, naturally, anything that pertained to the sheep industry was of interest to the community. Mr. Butefish used his scissors freely and opined that the next issue of the _Grit_ would be a corker. Then an idea came to him. Why not make it a sheep number exclusively? Give all the wool-growers in the vicinity a write-up.

Great! He'd do it. Mr. Butefish enumerated them on his fingers. When he came to Kate Prentice, he hesitated. Would Prouty stand for it--the eulogy he contemplated? In a small paper one had to consider local prejudices--besides, she was not a subscriber.

While Mr. Butefish debated, a spirit of rebellion rose within him. Ever since he had established the paper he had been a worm, and what had it got him? It had got him in debt to the point of bankruptcy--that's what it had got him--and he was good and sick of it! He was tired of grovelling--nauseated with catering to a public that paid in rutabagas and elk meat that was "spoilin' on 'em." He hadn't started in right--that was half the trouble. If he had dug into their pasts and blackmailed 'em, they'd be eating out of his hand, instead of pounding on the desk in front of him if he transposed their initials. He would have been a power in the country in place of having to drag his hat brim to 'em, lest they take out their advertis.e.m.e.nt of a setting of eggs or a Plymouth Rock rooster.

He'd show 'em, by gorry! He'd show 'em! Mr. Butefish jabbed his pen into the potato he used as a penwiper, instead of the ink, in his fury. He wrote with the rapidity of inspiration, and words came which he had not known were in his vocabulary as he extolled Kate and her achievements.

Emotion welled within him until his collar choked him, so he removed it, while the pen spread with the force he put into the actual writing. And when he had finished, he walked the floor reading the editorial, his voice vibrating, tingling with his own eloquence. The article snorted defiance. Mr. Butefish tacitly waved the bright flag of personal freedom in the face of Public Opinion. He bellowed his liberty, as it were, over Kate's shoulder. He strode, he swaggered--he had not known such a glorious feeling of independence since he left off plumbing. And he could go back to it if he had to! Mr. Butefish stopped in the middle of the floor and showed his teeth at an invisible audience of advertisers and subscribers.

The article came out exactly as written. Reflection did not temper Mr.

Butefish's att.i.tude with caution. The bruised worm not only had turned, but rolled clean over.

The following week, Kate rode into Prouty in ignorance of the flattering tribute which the editor had paid her. Coming at a leisurely gait down Main Street she looked as usual in pitiless scrutiny at the signs which told of the collapse of the town's prosperity. She saw without compa.s.sion the graying hair, the tired eyes of anxiety, the lines of brooding and despondency deepening in faces she remembered as carefree and hopeful, the look of resignation that comes to the weaklings who have lost their grip, the emptiness of burned-out pa.s.sion, the weary languor of repeated failure--she saw it all through the eyes of her relentless hatred.

But to-day there was a something different which, in her extreme sensitiveness, she was quick to see and feel. There was a new expression in the eyes of the pa.s.sersby with whom she exchanged glances. Eyes which for years had stared at her with impudence, indifference, or ostentatious blankness now held a sort of friendly inquiry, something conciliatory, which told her they would have spoken had they not been met by the immobile mask of imperturbability that she wore in Prouty.

"Why the chinook?" Kate asked herself ironically.

The warm wave met her everywhere and she continued to wonder, though it did not melt the ice about her heart that was of many years'

acc.u.mulation.

Kate had sold her wool, finally, through a commission house, and at an advance over the price at which she had held it when Bowers had advised her to accept the buyer's offer. She expected the draft in the three weeks' acc.u.mulation of mail for which she had come to Prouty. When the mail was handed out to her, she looked in astonishment at the amount of it. At first glance, there appeared to be only a little less than a bushel. The postmaster, who had forgotten Bowers's instructions, grinned knowingly as he pa.s.sed out photographs and sweet-scented, pink-tinted envelopes addressed to the sheepherder in feminine writing.

"So he had done it!" Kate mused as she crowded them all into the leather mail sack which bulged to the point of refusing to buckle. The letter she expected was among the rest, and, as she looked at the draft it contained, a smile that had meant not only gratification but exultation lurked at the corners of her mouth. She led her horse to the bank and tied it. Mr. Wentz came nimbly forward to the receiving teller's window as she entered, and flashed his eloquent eyes at her.

"You're quite a stranger!" he greeted her tritely, and added, "But we've been reading about you."

Kate looked her surprise.

"In the _Grit_--haven't you seen it? A great boost! Butefish really writes vurry, vurry well when he puts his mind to it."

This explained the warmer temperature, she thought sardonically, but said merely:

"I haven't seen the paper." Then changing the subject: "I've decided to increase the size of my account with you, Mr. Wentz. I'll leave this draft on open deposit, though it may be considerable time before I need it." She pa.s.sed it to him carelessly.

Since leaving the laundry, where he had been as temperamental as he liked, and taken it out on the wringer, Mr. Wentz had endeavored to train himself to conceal his feelings, and imagined he had succeeded.