The Main Chance Part 5

"He does, does he?" Snyder replied with a sneer. "He must have forgot that I had an arrangement with him by the year."

"Well, it's all off," said Saxton, rising. He began throwing open the windows and doors to let in fresh air, for the place was foul with the stale fumes of whisky and tobacco.

"Well, I guess I'll have to see Mr. Wheaton," Snyder retorted, finding that Saxton was paying no further attention to him. He collected his few belongings, watching in astonishment the violence with which Saxton was gathering up and disposing of rubbish.

"Going to clean up a little?" he asked, with his leer.

"No, I'm just exercising for fun," replied Saxton. "If you're ready, you'd better take your pony and skip."

Snyder growled his resentment and moved toward the door with a bundle under his arm and a saddle and bridle thrown over his shoulder.

"I'll be up town to see Mr. Wheaton in a day or two," he declared, as he slouched through the door.

"He seems to be more interested in Wheaton than Wheaton is in him,"

observed Saxton to himself.

Saxton spent a week at Great River. He hired a man to repair fences and put the house in order. He visited several of the large ranch owners and asked them for aid in picking out the scattered remnants of the Poindexter herd. Nearly all of them volunteered to help, with the result that he collected about one hundred cattle and sold them at Great River for cash. He expected to see or hear of Snyder in the town but the fellow had disappeared.

The fact was that Snyder had ridden over to the next station beyond Great River for his spree, that place being to his liking because it was beyond the jurisdiction of the sheriff whose headquarters were maintained at Great River,--an official who took his office seriously, and who had warned Snyder that his latest offense--getting drunk and smashing a saloon sideboard--must not be repeated. After he had been satisfactorily drunk for a week and had gambled away such of his fortune as the saloonkeeper had not acquired in direct course of commerce, Snyder came to himself sufficiently to send a telegram. Then he sat down to wait, with something of the ease of spirit with which an honest man sends forth a sight draft for collection from a town where he is a stranger, and awaits returns in the full enjoyment of the comforts of his inn.

On the third day, receiving no message from the outside world, Snyder sold his pony and took the train for Clarkson.

CHAPTER V

DEBATABLE QUESTIONS

Evelyn Porter had come home in June to take her place as mistress of her father's house. The fact that she alone of the girls belonging to families of position in the town had gone to college had set her a little apart from the others. During her four years at Smith she had evinced no unusual interest in acquiring knowledge; she was a fair student only and had been graduated without honors save those which her cla.s.s had admiringly bestowed on her. She had entered into social and athletic diversions with zest and had been much more popular with her fellow students than with the faculty. She brought home no ambition save to make her father's home as comfortable as possible. She said to herself that she would keep up her French and German, and straightway put books within reach to this end. She had looked with wonder unmixed with admiration upon the strenuous woman as she had seen her, full of ambition to remake the world in less than six days; and she dreaded the type with the dread natural in a girl of twenty-two who has a sound appet.i.te, a taste in clothes, with money to gratify it, and a liking for fresh air and sunshine.

She found it pleasant to slip back into the life of the town; and the girl friends or older women who met her on summer mornings in the shopping district of Clarkson, remarked to one another and reported to their sons and husbands, that Evelyn Porter was at home to stay, and that she was just as cordial and friendly as ever and had no airs. It pleased Evelyn to find that the clerks in the shops remembered her and called her by name; and there was something homelike and simple and characteristic in the way women that met in the shops visited with one another in these places. She caught their habit of going into Vortini's for soda water, where she found her acquaintances of all ages sitting at tables, with their little parcels huddled in their laps, discussing absentees and the weather. She found, in these encounters, that most of the people she knew were again agitated, as always at this season, because Clarkson was no cooler than in previous years; and that the women were expressing their old reluctance to leave their husbands, who could not get away for more than two weeks, if at all. Some were already preparing for Mackinac or Oconomowoc or Wequetonsing, and a few of the more adventurous for the remoter coasts of New Jersey and Ma.s.sachusetts.

The same people were discussing these same questions in the same old spirit, and, when necessary, confessing with delightful frankness their financial disabilities, in excusing their presence in town at a season when it was only an indulgence of providence that all the inhabitants did not perish from the heat.

As a child Evelyn had played in the tower of the house on the hill, and she now made a den of it. Some of her childish playthings were still hidden away in the window seat, and stirred freshly the remembrance of her mother,--her gentleness, her frailty, her interest in the world's work. She often wondered whether the four years at college had realized all that her dead mother had hoped for; but she was not morbid, and she did not brood. She found a pleasure in stealing up to the tower in the summer nights, and watching the shifting lights of the great railway yards far down the valley, but at such times she had no romantic visions. She knew that the fitful bell of the switch engine and the rumble of wheels symbolized the very practical life of this restless region in which she had been born. She cherished no delusion that she was a princess in a tower, waiting for a lover to come riding from east or west. She had always shared with her companions the young men who visited her at college. When they sometimes sent her small gifts, she had shared these also. Warrick Raridan had gone to see her several times, as an old friend, and he had on these occasions, with characteristic enterprise, made the most of the opportunity to widen his acquaintance among Evelyn's friends, to whom she frankly introduced him.

On the day following John Saxton's introduction to the house, Evelyn was busy pouring oil on rusty places in the domestic machinery, when three cards were brought up to her bearing unfamiliar names. They belonged, she imagined, to some of the newer people of the town who had come to Clarkson during her years from home.

"Mrs. Atherton?" she said inquiringly, pausing before the trio in the drawing-room.

Two of the ladies looked toward the third, with whom Evelyn shook hands.

"Miss Morris and Mrs. Wingate," murmured the lady identified as Mrs.

Atherton. They all sat down.

"It's so very nice to know that you are at home again," said Mrs.

Atherton, "although I've not had the pleasure of meeting you before. I knew your mother very well, many years ago, but I have been away for a long time and have only recently come back to Clarkson.

"It is very pleasant to be at home again," Evelyn responded.

Mrs. Atherton smiled nervously and looked pointedly at her companions, evidently expecting them to partic.i.p.ate in the conversation. The younger woman, who had been presented as Miss Morris, sat rigid in a gilt reception chair. She was of severe aspect and glared at Mrs. Atherton, who threw herself again into the breach.

"I hope you do not dislike the West?" Mrs. Atherton inquired of Evelyn.

"No, indeed! On the other hand I am very proud of it. You know I am a native here, and very loyal."

Miss Morris seized this as if it had been her cue, and declared in severe tones:

"We of the West are fortunate in living away from the artificiality of the East. There is some freedom here; the star of empire hovers here; the strength of the nation lies in the rugged but honest people of the great West, who gave Lincoln to the nation and the nation to Liberty."

There was a glitter of excitement in the woman's eyes, but she spoke in low monotonous tones. Evelyn thought for a moment that this was conscious hyperbole, but Miss Morris's aspect of unrelenting severity undeceived her. Something seemed to be expected of her, and Evelyn said:

"That is all very true, but, you know, they say down East that we are far too thoroughly persuaded of our greatness and brag too much."

"But," continued Miss Morris, "they are coming to us more and more for statesmen. Look at literature! See what our western writers are doing!

The most vital books we are now producing are written west of the Alleghanies!"

"You know Miss Morris is a writer," interrupted Mrs. Atherton. "We should say Doctor Morris," she continued, with a rising inflection on the t.i.tle,--"not an M.D. Miss Morris is a doctor of philosophy."

"Oh," said Evelyn. "What college, Doctor Morris?"

"The University of North Dakota," with emphasis on the university. "I had intended going to Heidelberg, but felt that we loyal Americans should patronize home inst.i.tutions. The choruses of Euripides may ring as grandly on our Western plains as in Athens itself," she added with finality. She enunciated with great care and seemed terribly in earnest to Evelyn, who felt an uncontrollable desire to laugh. But there was, she now imagined, something back of all this, and she waited patiently for its unfolding. The denouement was, she hoped, near at hand, for Miss Morris moved her eyegla.s.ses higher up on her nose and appeared even more formidable than before.

"I have heard that great emphasis is laid at Smith on social and political economy. You must be very anxious to make practical use of your knowledge," continued Miss Morris.

Evelyn recalled guiltily her cuts in these studies.

"Carlyle or somebody"--she was afraid to quote before a doctor of philosophy, and thought it wise to give a vague citation--"calls political economy the dismal science, and I'm afraid I have looked at it a little bit that way myself." She smiled hopefully, but Miss Morris did not relax her severity.

"Civic responsibility rests on women as strongly as on men; even more so," declared Miss Morris.

"Well, I think we ought to do what we can," a.s.sented Evelyn.

"Now, our Local Council has been doing a great deal toward improving the sanitation of Clarkson."

"Oh yes," exclaimed Mrs. Wingate from her corner.

"And we feel that every educated woman in the community should lend her aid to all the causes of the Local Council."

"Yes?" said Evelyn, rather weakly. She felt that the plot was thickening. "I really know very little of such things, but--" The "but"

was highly equivocal.

"And we are very anxious to get a representative on the School Board,"

continued Miss Morris. "The election is in November. Has it ever occurred to you how perfectly absurd it is for men to conduct our educational affairs when the schools are properly a branch of the home and should be administered, in part, at least, by women?" She punctuated her talk so that her commas cut into the air. Mrs. Wingate, the third and silent lady, approved this more or less inarticulately.

"I know there's a great deal in that," said Evelyn.

"And we, the Executive Committee of the Council, have been directed to ask you"--Mrs. Wingate and Mrs. Atherton moved nervously in their seats, but Miss Morris now spoke with more deliberation, and with pedagogic care of her p.r.o.nunciation--"to become a candidate for the School Board."