The Westerners Part 29

She picked her way across the stepping-stones and disappeared, without once looking back.

XXVI

AND HAS TO GO TO WORK

From that moment Graham ceased to be an integral factor in the girl's history. His only hold on her imagination had been his moral superiority, and it was now gone. She treated him thenceforth as an admirer whose sincerity deserves the consideration which his insistence makes difficult to give ungrudgingly. He was not discouraged or frowned on. He was forgiven promptly as a child is forgiven. But he was kept always scrupulously to his place. The girl now held the whip hand. After a little, when he became too insistent, she cut him cruelly in punishment and only deigned to smile on him again when, to sue forgiveness, he had quite abandoned his att.i.tude of fault-finding.

As for him, the girl's actions soon became hateful. He saw them all wrong, yet he felt his powerlessness to alter them in even the slightest degree. This aroused so powerful but so impotent a rage that shortly he came to react irritably against everything Molly did whether right or wrong. He instinctively arraigned himself in the opposition.

He did not want to do this, and his common sense accused him strongly of unreasonableness, but he could not help it. It was greater than he.

No matter what the plan, discussion or even conversation, his morbidly sensitive consciousness of the girl's error impelled him to object.

"Let's go over to Rockerville to-day," she would suggest.

"The horses aren't here."

"But it's no great matter to get them. Let's send the Kid."

"I don't know where the Kid is."

"Well, Frosty then."

"Frosty's busy."

"It wouldn't hurt you any to get them yourself."

"One of the saddles is broken."

"You know very well it's only a cinch ring. It can be fixed in five minutes."

"We'll---- Don't you think it is going to be pretty hot?"

"No, I don't; and if I can stand it, I should think you could."

"And----"

"Heavens and earth! It's harder than climbing trees to get you to do anything. Never mind! _I_ don't want to go to Rockerville or anywhere else if it's all that trouble!"

And then Graham would wonder at his stubborn fit. Why shouldn't they have gone to Rockerville? In five minutes he could have got the horses, fixed the saddle. And the day was beautiful. What real reason did he have? He did not know; only he felt an irresistible impulse to object. This was because he loved her, disapproved of her, and was quite powerless over her.

When he was not merely contrary, he was urging strong advice on an unwilling recipient. It was offered in either the pleading or the bl.u.s.tering spirit. If in the former, Molly merely teased him. If in the latter, she became very angry. It was always on the same subject.

The girl was wearied with it.

And yet, if it were any consolation, Jack Graham could have comforted himself with the truth that, next to Cheyenne Harry, he claimed a greater share of her thoughts than any other in camp. His offices were ungrateful, but they had a certain sincerity which prevented their being ignored; and, not forgotten, their acid-like drop of truth ate into that conscience of which she did not yet realize the existence.

Her horizon was becoming banked with thunderclouds, looming huge and black and heavy with portent. Graham, as an ideal, had stood for a higher existence. Now, however shrunken his image appeared, the ideal itself remained as something tangible in her collection of moral standards. She acknowledged to herself fiercely that she had fallen from it. She told herself that she did not care.

She was dreadfully alone. Lafond was always kind to her, but she never felt that she knew him. Graham, in spite of his frequent presence, was in reality quite estranged. The Kid and Peter and Kelly and Houston and even old Bill Martin had fallen away from her somehow. She did not know that the reason the older men were less intimate was because she was supposed to be Cheyenne Harry's mistress, and the rule of such cases is "hands off!" And then there was always the stifling formless weight at her heart which she did not understand. She was very unhappy. That with her meant that she was reckless. She threw herself pa.s.sionately into her affair with Cheyenne Harry as the one tangible human relation left to her in its entirety.

The days followed each other in a succession of pa.s.sionate exaltations and dumb despairs. Harry kissed her whenever he pleased now. She had long since got beyond mere coquetry. It meant much to her hereditary instincts so to yield, but she gave herself up to it with the abandon of a lost soul delivering itself to degrading wickedness. For in spite of her life and companions she was intrinsically pure, so pure that even Cheyenne Harry, with all his extraordinary influence, did not somehow care to go too far. He kissed her, and at the first, when the long resistance had enhanced her value, he was persuaded that he loved her--that these interviews meant to him what lovers' meetings mean--and so he responded to her pa.s.sionate devotion with what seemed to be corresponding ecstasy.

But then after a little insensibly the flood ebbed. In the old days she had amused him with her bright laughter, her gay speech, her mocking superiorities, her little coquetries of manner or mannerism.

Now she had thrown these weapons away. Her surrender was complete.

Her life had simplified to one phase, that of dewy-eyed pleading adoration. At first it pleased his masculine vanity. After a time it cloyed ever so little; Cheyenne Harry missed the "comic relief" in all these heroics. He would have liked occasionally to have climbed hills; or taken long walks; or even run a short race, say to the bend of the road; or to have had played on him a small practical joke; or experienced some other such indication that man is a laughing animal.

The girl seemed capable of enjoying nothing but slow and aimless saunterings. In the beginning he had experienced the nameless ecstasy and thrill inherent in the personal contact of the kiss. Now he missed something of those qualities. It seemed no longer strange to him to feel her body near his, to watch her wide eyes half-closed, to press his lips against hers, half-parted. It was still delightful above everything in the world, but there had been one thing better--the kiss of yesterday. In a word Cheyenne Harry's experience was beginning dimly to trace the word "satiety."

Not that either he or the girl realized it. To their thinking minds everything was as usual. But their subconsciousness appreciated it, and interpreted it according to its value. Cheyenne Harry, as has been pointed out, turned instinctively toward a desire for lighter phases in their relationship. Molly Lafond clung the more blindly to her pa.s.sion. Her only excuse to herself for her abandonment of the better ideal was the reality of that pa.s.sion. When it should go, her self-respect would vanish with it.

Harry found a certain amus.e.m.e.nt, too, in seeing Graham jumping around the outer circle like corn in a popper. Graham was usually possessed of so much innate dignity. Now his self-abandonment to the essentially undignified att.i.tude of begging for the petty favor of a quarrelless ten minutes or even a little good-humored smile tickled the other's sense of the incongruous and pleased his vanity. To an extent he was held to the girl now by his pride. A man likes to have a rival when perfectly secure himself, especially when the girl tells him what the rival says to her. This may not be honorable in her, but it is very human. So amusing was it that Harry did not get angry over the reports of Graham's repeated warnings against him.

The latter seemed unable to keep off the subject. He knew that his suspicions only strengthened the girl's obstinate opposition, but he could not help their expression for all that. Sometimes he pleaded, sometimes he threatened, sometimes he a.s.sumed the prophet's mantle and foretold all sorts of dire disasters. The girl laughed, or became angry. It would have puzzled Graham to tell which of these moods he preferred: perhaps it would have depended on which of them he was experiencing at the moment.

His saving grace was a st.u.r.dy sense of his duty to himself. He felt that sense to be sadly shaken in many ways; but he clung to his work tenaciously, perhaps a little feverishly.

"Nuthin' like a woman to make a man work," observed Bill Martin sagely, "whether she's _fur_ him, or agin' him."

"How about Billy?" inquired Old Mizzou.

Bill Martin laughed. "Billy? Oh, he's _playin'_," he replied.

XXVII

PROSPERITY

Billy did not think so, however. He posed to himself as the most industrious man in the territory. He had so much to see to that year, for throughout the mild winter that succeeded he had pushed forward with the greatest rapidity all work on the Great Snake and its sister claims. The log structures, the plans of which he had displayed to Lafond, were completed, so far as the mere erection of them went, within a fortnight. Billy gave a great deal of personal direction to this work; but after all it was simple enough, so he managed to c.h.i.n.k in a moment here and there for the completion of certain bargains which came to him. For instance, a man in Spring Creek Valley offered eight draught horses at a marvellously low figure. That made two teams.

Billy did not need two teams just then; but of course later, when the mill was up, he would need a great many more than two teams for the purpose of carting ore; and it seemed criminal to let such a bargain go. Then he found he required a man to take care of them. Some days later he came to the conclusion that it would be good economy to buy the ore wagons now instead of waiting until later, for the following ingenious reason: the horses must be fed; hay costs fifteen dollars a ton in the hills and five on the prairie; with wagons the horses could be utilized to haul their own forage from the plains at a net saving of ten dollars a ton on all consumed. So Billy placed an order for two heavy wagons, and dismissed the matter from his mind until they were delivered. During the interim he sat on top of a ladder and dabbed contentedly at a scroll-work cornice with a small red paint brush.

From that elevation he bought a whim, also a bargain. The man was anxious to sell, and it was a very good whim. To be sure one might have argued that inasmuch as whims are machines for hauling ore from depths which Billy's operations would not attain for a year at least, the purchase was a little premature; but then it is equally certain that all mines own whims, and another opportunity for getting one so cheap might never again present itself.

When the wagons came, he and the man drove fifty miles to Rapid, where they hobn.o.bbed with Tom Sweeny and looked over his establishment.

Billy bought his household goods. He also took a fancy to some large bra.s.s-bound collar hoods for the horses which he had marked with the company's initials "G. S. M. & M. Co.," also in bra.s.s. The return trip was made with difficulty on account of the low-hanging branches of trees. Then Billy spent an ecstatic week distributing things to suit him.

The work in the shafts went steadily forward. Billy was willing to offer a bonus on the contract price for a quick job, so the contractors took on extra men. They averaged almost a foot and a half a day, which is wonderfully good. The work indeed went on so well that Billy saw he would need the mill sooner than he had expected, so he resolved to begin its erection at once. He hired all the available men, but soon found that he would have to seek elsewhere for a gang adequate to such an undertaking. He imported one from Rockerville. As the winter came on, he found it expedient to start the boarding house in order, as he said, "To get those cusses up in the mornin' afore the sun sets." The move necessitated a cook and "cookee," and the weekly purchase of provisions. Since he had the men handy, he argued, there was no reason why he should not finish up the small details and odds and ends of the camp in a respectable manner, and so he made many little extraneous improvements, such as a flag pole and a rockery of pink quartz from the Custer trail. Three or four were always away from the mill, levelling up, clearing out or decorating. From Kansas City he imported some chickens with crested heads and a number of pigeons of ancient lineage.

The latter promptly flew back to Kansas City. As the novelty of them had worn off Billy took their loss philosophically. In regard to externals the camp began to wear a very prosperous air.

Copper Creek too was busy. Over forty men were hard at work on the Great Snake itself. Upward of fifty claims were in the course of development near at hand. With the completion of the mill would begin the crushing of ore; with the crushing of ore would begin the camp's commercial output; with that, provided it were satisfactory, would come more capitalists anxious to invest. It behooved the claim owner to have his exhibit of shaft and tunnel ready for the public inspection.

When you reflect that three men usually worked on a claim and that Copper Creek's entire population at that date was a little over two hundred and fifty, you can readily see that it was indeed a lively camp. Even those who were not actually engaged in prospecting operations found their time fully occupied in providing for those who were. Black Jack had an a.s.sistant now. Moroney's paper came out as often as once a fortnight and was beginning to be mentioned by the _Deadwood Miner_ as "our esteemed contemporary." Bill Martin had been seen sweeping out his own office. The dozen of women and girls who had drifted in with newcomers, scrubbed, cooked, washed and sewed in a struggle to keep even with muddy boots, miners' appet.i.tes, and the destructive demands of miners' work. Even Frosty improved his customary mooning slouch.

The men who seemed to enjoy unlimited leisure could be counted on the fingers of one hand. Cheyenne Harry laughed at it all. His one claim was known to be a mere excuse for existence, a symbolic reason for his connection with Copper Creek. Everybody knew really why he stayed. He was supposed to be independently rich, though none claimed any knowledge of how he came to be so. Then there was the gambler, the faro man, who sat on the hotel "porch" all the morning smoking endless cigarettes, his broad straight hat tipped a little sideways, his moustache brushed neatly away to show his white teeth, his fine inscrutable eyes looking cynically from his equally fine clear-cut face, speaking seldom, smiling never, imperturbable, indifferent, cat-like. And there was Durand, but he did not count. And there was Michal Lafond.

To be sure the half-breed was building a new dance hall, to which the camp entire looked with antic.i.p.atory delight, but that was a matter of four walls and a smooth floor. He needed only to give his orders.

After a perfunctory morning inspection he had the day to himself.

The work at the Great Snake interested him, as it did everybody. He occupied the morning about the works, poking into odd corners, questioning the workmen, making suggestions to Billy. He sent the horse dealer to Billy, and mentioned to the whim man that he might find a purchaser there. He often was enabled in his vaster leisure to perceive the little things that lacked and to point out their necessity to Billy, which individual was of course always duly grateful and hastened at once to remedy the defect. After a more or less lengthened visit the half-breed returned to camp. If it happened still to lack some time until dinner, he called on Moroney in the editorial rooms or exchanged sententious comments with Bill Martin, or chatted with one or the other of the visitors who happened to be in town. After dinner he disappeared until supper. The time was spent with Durand. The a.s.saying was long since finished, but the two men had grown fond of each other's companionship. It was a silent companionship for the most part. Lafond smoked interminably his short black pipe, turned upside down, watching the naturalist setting carefully the delicate wings of a b.u.t.terfly or arranging in a paper cylinder the skin of a bird, or searching, spectacled, in black volumes of Government reports.

Occasionally, when Durand looked up from his absorption, they exchanged a few swift remarks, elided, compressed, telegraphic; for they understood each other so well that the unabridged form of speech was no longer necessary. On fine days they beat the brushy creek bottoms for the _Nitra_, the rare _Papilo_ which men supposed to be extinct. And then, after the early darkness of winter fell, they would be seized by strange obsessions of loquacity. Jacques, the racc.o.o.n, a ball of fur under the faint red stove, blinked at them shrewdly, wondering what it was all about.