The Westerners Part 36

He began to unhitch the horses while Blair went to borrow an axe of Durand. The driver's intention was to splice the broken axle with a bit of green wood. In a little time, he and the old man returned together.

So Billy found them, straining away with an impromptu crowbar. When he and Jim saw each other, they agreed that they'd be tee-totally chawed up! After a time the stage moved doubtfully on toward Copper Creek.

Billy and Jim went the other way in the buckboard.

Billy explained that he was going to see Jim; and Jim explained that he had come to get Billy. Billy elaborated on the tale of his doings since their last meeting, and easily persuaded Jim, as well as himself, that he was a most wronged individual. To restore his self-respect it only needed a sympathetic listener, so that he could hear the sound of his own voice. For the moment he had doubted himself. Now he saw plainly that he had been misled by false pretences. If he had understood clearly from the beginning the picayune policy expected of him by these stingy Easterners, he would have graduated his scale of expenditures to suit it; but certainly they had implied at least that they intended to get up a good big mine. Served a man right for going in with such sharpers!

Jim merely said that he had a first-rate thing to share with Billy.

It was a pleasant sight, the bearded solemn miner, fairly glowing with pleasure over finding Billy unfortunate and therefore open to his own kind offices; the eager-faced enthusiastic promoter, elated and high-spirited because of the relief of putting quite behind him a colossal failure; because of the privilege of starting again with a clean slate; because of a hundred new and promising schemes for the future. Michal Lafond's long planning had availed little, after all.

With all his shrewdness he did not see that in the personality of Billy Knapp he was attempting to quench the essence of enthusiasm and hope and faith--inextinguishable fires. That is the American frontiersman.

At Rapid they took the train to Crooked Horn. At Crooked Horn they reclaimed the horse from Billy Powers. Then they inaugurated the boom.

At this very day, December 24th, 1899, they are still living together in the new town of Knapp City, Wyoming, wealthy and respected citizens.

And Billy recounts his Copper Creek experiences, generally with tolerance, as an example of the deceit of his fellow-creatures. They were the fruit of eighteen years of planning and waiting and working by a man who thought he could shape greater destinies than his own.

x.x.xIV

LOVE'S EYES UNBANDAGED

After the vociferating group had made Houston comfortable with the bandages and rough surgery of the frontier, it again took up the discussion of ways and means. It was a tired crowd, haggard from dissipation and want of sleep. And then, too, it was a cross crowd.

A majority were savage. Their pa.s.sions were aroused to an unreasoning pitch, as is the manner of mobs. To them it was not a question of discussion, but of destruction. They wanted to burn the Company's buildings, and they were so set on it, and so impatient of even a word of opposition, that Lafond began to be a little frightened for his new property. His attempts at dissuasion were everywhere met with rebuff.

Finally, on a sudden inspiration, he sprang to his own window ledge and signed his desire to speak.

Such men as Moroney, Kelly, Graham, and Williams, cooler heads, whose stake in the camp's fate was still heavy, succeeded in obtaining a momentary silence.

"Boys," shouted Mike, "I'll pay you myself!"

They paused in good earnest now, to see what these astounding words might signify.

"I'll pay you myself!" repeated Lafond. Then--for he was too shrewd to promise a thing of such moment without giving a plausible reason for it--he went on, "I can't afford to let this camp bust; I got too much in it. I can afford better that I spend a little to help it along. I don't know what it is that the Company intends; but I will find out; and this I promise to you, if the Company does not pay you, I will make some arrangement for the mine and I will pay you myself!"

Even Graham and Moroney were a little deceived. Both perceived dimly an ulterior motive, but on the surface the offer was generous and there could be no doubt that Lafond's word was perfectly good in such a matter. As for the men, they were more than satisfied.

"But of course," Lafond was saying, "you must not do any injury to the property."

Which went without saying, as every one could see.

Michal Lafond ate his breakfast with many long pauses. He had little appet.i.te. His plans had gone well, and yet in their outcome rested a little remnant of the indecisive that annoyed him out of all proportion. Billy had been discharged from his position as superintendent and driven from camp, yet his exit had been melodramatically brilliant and had somehow done much to leave his memory in good odor. He, Lafond, had the promise of the property; but even yet the deeds were in escrow at Rapid. It was forty-five miles to Rapid--ten hours! Much might happen in ten hours. At the thought, which Lafond instinctively paused to note was not in his usual confident manner, he started up and commanded Frosty to harness his team of bays to the buckboard. He would complete the contract before sunset. While the animals were being harnessed, he tried to smoke a pipe. It went out. He attempted to read a paper. He could not.

Finally he went out of doors and strode rapidly up and down. He felt chilled, for the air of the early morning was sharp. He thrust his arm through the open window and took down his old canvas coat from behind the door, and put it on. In spite of its protection he shivered again.

"Hurry up, hurry up, hurry up!" he growled at Frosty. He snapped the lash of his black-snake whip, making the bays dance to the hindrance of Frosty's task. His eye caught the new dance hall.

"She's been worth while, if she never does another thing," he commented to himself, and then realized that he had said it, not because he believed it, but because he wanted to keep his courage up. What was this dread of the intangible? He could not understand it. "Getting too old to sit up all night," he explained it to himself.

His thoughts went back to the night. It had left with him an impression of being unsatisfactory. Why should it? There was something about the girl, he did not recall exactly what. Oh yes, Cheyenne Harry! That affair had balked. Well, it did not much matter: that was a detail. Now that the dance hall was up, the girl could be forced to take her place. Lafond told himself that he was a little tired of finesse and delicate planning--too tired to undertake another long campaign of the kind merely for the satisfaction to be found in the process. Besides, in this case it was not necessary. He would settle the affair now, get it off his mind.

He strode over to the girl's shack and pushed open the door. She was lying flat on her face, fully dressed as in her first transport of shame, but she had now fallen into a light sleep. At the creak of the door, however, she looked up, her eyes red with crying.

"That was a h.e.l.l of a performance last night," said Lafond brutally, "and it don't go again."

He had never spoken to her so before.

She sat upright on the bed and stared at him, clasping one hand near her throat.

"That ain't what you're here for," continued Mike. "There'll be another dance Sat.u.r.day night, and you be on hand and stay on hand.

That's your job now--understand?"

A slow comprehension of his meaning crept into her eyes, and she covered them with her hands. The halfbreed stood in the doorway coiling and uncoiling the lash of his whip. He wanted some indication of how she was going to take it.

"Understand?" he repeated.

She merely shuddered.

"d.a.m.n it! can't you answer?" he cried impatiently. "What do you think I've raised you for anyway? You're none of my breed. Answer, you----," and he spat out an epithet.

She lowered her hands and looked at him again with wide-open eyes from which all expression had faded. This stony silence irritated Lafond.

"You've had your head long enough. Now you're going to show what you're made for. Understand? Great G.o.d!" he cried, "you've got a tongue, haven't you? Why don't you answer when I ask you a question?"

In one of the sudden Latin gusts of pa.s.sion, which generally he held so well in control, Lafond lashed her across the breast with his black-snake whip. Almost before the impulse had quitted his brain he regretted it, for her scream would bring out the camp, and Lafond could see the awkwardness of an explanation. It was better to break her in gradually. To his relief, she did not cry out, but merely shivered pitifully and closed her eyes.

"That's what you'll get if you don't toe the mark," threatened Lafond, only too glad to avoid a scene. He slouched out of the door, climbed into his light wagon shaking his heavy head sullenly, and drove away in the direction of Rapid.

After he had gone and the sound of his wheels had died away, the girl arose staggeringly from her bed. The bright world had crumbled. For the first time in her young existence her thoughts turned to the vague conception of a higher Being which she had built, Heaven knows how, from materials gathered, Heaven knows where.

"G.o.d, G.o.d, G.o.d!" she cried, "I thought this was a happy world where people laughed. I did not know there was so much sorrow in the world.

You did not make the world to be sorrowful, did you, G.o.d?"

She was almost blind. She knew that she must kill herself: that alone was clear. It was that or the dance hall. She was to be like Bismarck Anne. And she realized in a moment that she knew Black Mike, his iron will and his cruel heart; and she was afraid of him, deadly afraid.

She began to grope about the room. There was a dim square: that must be the window. Her hands pa.s.sed fumblingly over the table, just missing the long sewing scissors. Nothing there. Quick, quick, he might come back! She almost fell over the cloak, which had fallen to the floor, and was now entangled about her feet. There was another square of light: it must be the door. She stumbled out into a glare of merciless sunshine that filled her brain and beat on the walls of her understanding until she covered her eyes, and still stumbled on. She thought she heard men shouting. She was not sure.

From his work of sweeping out the stale saloon, Frosty had seen her.

She was a strange sight, her hair half down, her face white and drawn, her step so uncertain. Frosty was very fond of her in his stupid silent way. He yelled and ran toward her.

In this day of excitement, a cry brought a dozen heads to a dozen windows and doors. In a moment the girl was surrounded. The men were puzzled. "Plain case of bug-juice," said one, a little sorrowfully.

She felt someone trying gently to lead her somewhere, but she resisted, crying "Let me go, let me go. I want to get to the big rock."

Graham pushed his way anxiously into the group. He had not been able to bring himself to attend the dance the evening before, but he had been told the details, and up to now had felt rather relieved than otherwise at the turn affairs had taken.

"Why do you want to go to the big rock, Molly?" he asked gently.

At the sound of his voice she began to cry a little. "It is so high up there, so high," she said over and over.

"Of course it's high, Molly, very high; but don't you think you'd better wait until to-morrow?"