Judith of the Plains

"Town"

It was June, and a little past sunrise, but there was no hint of early summer freshness in the noxious air of the sleeping-car as it toiled like a snail over the infinity of prairie. From behind the green-striped curtains of the berths, now the sound of restless turning and now a long-drawn sigh signified the uneasy slumber due to stifling air and discomfort.

The only passenger stirring was a girl whose youth drooped under the unfavorable influences of foul air, fatigue, and a strained anxiety to come to the end of this fateful journey. She had been up while it was yet dark, and her hand-luggage, locked, strapped, and as pitifully new at the art of travelling as the girl herself, clustered about the hem of her blue serge skirt like chicks about a hen. The engine shrieked, but its voice sounded weak and far off in that still ocean of space; the girl tightened her grasp on the largest of the satchels and looked at the approaching porter tentatively.

[pg 002] "We're late twenty-fi'e minutes," he reassured her, with the hopeless patience of one who has lost heart in curbing travellers' enthusiasms.

She turned towards the window a pair of shoulders plainly significant of the burdensome last straw.

"Four days and nights in this train"-they were slower in those days-"and now this extra twenty-five minutes!"

Miss Carmichael's famous dimple hid itself in disgust. The demure lines of mouth and chin, that could always be relied upon for special pleading when sentence was about to be passed on the dimple by those who disapproved of dimples, drooped with disappointment. But the light-brown hair continued to curl facetiously-it was the sort of hair whose spontaneous rippling conveys to the seeing eye a sense of humor.

The train plodded across the spacious vacancy that unrolled itself farther and farther in quest of the fugitive horizon. The scrap of view that came within a closer range of vision spun past the car windows like a bit of stage mechanism, a gigantic panorama rotating to simulate a race at breakneck speed. But Miss Carmichael looked with unseeing eyes; the whirling prairie with its golden flecks of cactus bloom was but part of the universal strangeness, and the dull ache of homesickness was in it all.

"My dear! my dear!"-a head in crimpers was thrust from between the curtains of the section opposite-"I've been awake half the night. I was so afraid I wouldn't see you before you got off."

[pg 003] The head was followed, almost instinctively, by a hand travelling furtively to the crimpers that gripped the lady's brow like barnacles clinging to a keel.

Mary expressed a grieved appreciation at the loss of rest in behalf of her early departure, and conspicuously forbore to glance in the direction of the barnacles, that being a first principle as between woman and woman.

"And, oh, my dear, it gets worse and worse. I've looked at it this morning, and it's worse in Wyoming than it was in Colorado. What it 'll be before I reach California, I shudder to think."

"It's bound to improve," suggested Mary, with the easy optimism of one who was leaving it. "It couldn't be any worse than this, could it?"

The neuter pronoun, it might be well to state, signified the prairie; its melancholy personality having penetrated the very marrow of their train existence, they had come to refer to it by the monosyllable, as in certain nether circles the head of the house receives his superlative distinction in "He."

Again the locomotive shrieked, again the girl mechanically clutched the suit-case, as presenting the most difficult item in the problem of transportation, and this time the shriek was not an idle formality. The train slowed down; the uneasy sleepers behind the green-striped curtains stirred restlessly with the lessening motion of their uncouth cradle. The porter came to help her, with the chastened mien of one whose hopes of largess are small, the lady with the barnacles called after her [pg 004] redundant farewells, and a moment later Miss Carmichael was standing on the station platform looking helplessly after the train that toiled and puffed, yet seemed, in that crystalline atmosphere, still within arm's-reach. She watched it till its floating pennant of smoke was nothing but a gray feather blowing farther and farther out of sight on the flat prairie.

The town-it would be unkind to mention its name-had made merry the night before at the comprehensive invitation of a sheepman who had just disposed of his wool-clip, and who said, by way of general summons, "What's the use of temptin' the bank?" "Town," therefore, when Mary Carmichael first made its acquaintance, was still sleeping the sleep of the unjust. Those among last night's roisterers who had had to make an early start for their camps were well into the foot-hills by this time, and would remember with exhilaration the cracked tinkle of the dance-hall piano as inspiring music when the lonesomeness of the desert menaced and the young blood again clamored for its own.

"Town"-it contained in all some two dozen buildings-was very unlovely in slumber. It sprawled in the lap of the prairies, a grimy-faced urchin, with the lines of dismal sophistication writ deep. Yet where in all the "health resorts" of the East did air sweep from the clean hill-country with such revivifying power? It seemed a glad world of abiding youth. Surely "Town" was but a dreary illusion, a mirage that hung in the unmapped [pg 005] spaces of this new world that God had made and called good; an omen of the abominations that men would make when they grew blind to the beauty of God's world.

Mary Carmichael, with much the feelings of a cat in a strange garret, wandered about the sluggard town; and presently the blue-and-white sign of a telegraph office, with the mythological figure of a hastening messenger, suggested to her that a reassuring telegram was only Aunt Adelaide's due. Whereupon she began to rap on the door of the office, a scared pianissimo which naturally had little effect on the operator, who was at home and asleep some three blocks distant. But the West is the place for woman if she would be waited upon. No seven-to-one ratio of the sexes has tempered the chivalry of her sons of the saddle. A loitering something in a sombrero saw rather than heard the rapping, and, at the sight, went in quest of the dreaming operator without so much as embarrassing Miss Carmichael with an offer of his services. And presently the operator, whose official day did not begin for some two hours yet, appeared, much dishevelled from running and the cursory nature of his toilet, prepared to receive a message of life and death.

The wire to Aunt Adelaide ran:

"Practically at end of journey. Take stage to Lost Trail this morning. Am well. Don't worry about me.

"MARY."

And the telegraph operator, dimly remembering that he had heard Lost Trail was a "pizen mean [pg 006] country," and that it was tucked some two hundred miles back in the foot-hills, did not find it very hard to forgive the girl, who was "practically at end of journey," particularly as the dimple had come out of hiding, and he had never been called upon to telegraph the word "practically" before. He was a progressive man and liked to extend his experiences.

After sending the telegram, Miss Carmichael, quite herself by reason of the hill air, felt that she was getting along famously as a traveller, but that it was an expensive business, and she was glad to be "practically" at the end of her journey. And, drawing from her pocket a square envelope of heavy Irish linen, a little worn from much reading, but primarily an envelope that bespoke elegance of taste on the part of her correspondent, she read:

"LOST TRAIL, WYOMING.

"My Dear Miss Carmichael,-Pray let me assure you of my gratification that the preliminaries have been so satisfactorily arranged, and that we are to have you with us by the end of June. The children are profiting from the very anticipation of it, and it will be most refreshing to all us isolated ones to be able to welcome an Eastern girl as a member of our family.

"Although the long journey across the continent is trying, particularly to one who has not made it before, I hope you may not find it utterly fatiguing. Please remember that after leaving the train, it will be necessary to take a stage to Lost Trail. If it is possible, I shall meet you with the buckboard at one of the stage stations; otherwise, keep to the stage route, being careful to change at Dax's Ranch.

"Unfortunately, the children vary so in their accomplishments [pg 007] that I fear I can make no suggestions as to what you may need to bring with you in the way of text-books. But I think you will find them fairly well grounded.

"I had a charming letter from Mrs. Kirkland, who said the pleasantest things possible of you. I am glad the wife of our Senator was able conscientiously to commend us.

"With our most cordial good wishes for a safe journey, believe me, dear Miss Carmichael,

"Sincerely yours,

"SARAH YELLETT."

In the mean time, "Town" came yawning to breakfast. It was not so prankish as it had been the night before, when it accepted the sheepman's broad-gauge hospitality and made merry till the sun winked from behind the mountains. It made its way to the low, shedlike eating-house with a pre-breakfast solemnity bordering on sulkiness. Not a petticoat was in sight to offset the spurs and sombreros that filed into breakfast from every point in the compass, prepared to eat primitively, joke broadly, and quarrel speedily if that sensitive and often inconsistent something they called honor should be brushed however lightly.

But the eternal feminine was within, and, discovering it, the temper of "Town" was changed; it ate self-consciously, made jokes meet for the ears of ladies, and was more interested in the girl in the sailor-hat than it was in remembering old feuds or laying the foundations of new.

In its interior aspect, the eating-house conveyed no subtle invitation to eat, drink, and be merry. On the contrary, its mission seemed to be that of confounding appetite at every turn. A long, shedlike [pg 008] room it was, with walls of unpainted pine, still sweating from the axe. Festoons of scalloped paper, in conflicting shades, hung from the ceiling, a menace to the taller of the guests. On the rough walls some one, either prompted by a latent spirit of ?stheticism or with an idea of abetting the town towards merrymaking-an encouragement it hardly required-had tacked posters of shows, mainly representing the tank-and-sawmill school of drama.

Miss Carmichael sat at the extreme end of the long, oilcloth-covered table, on which a straggling army of salt and pepper shakers, catsup bottles, and divers commercial condiments seemed to pause in a discouraged march. A plague of flies was on everything, and the food was a threat to the hardiest appetite. One man summed up the steak with, "You got to work your jaw so hard to eat it that it ain't fair to the next meal."

His neighbor heaved a sigh. "This here formation, whatever it be"-and he turned the meat over for better inspection-"do shore remind me of an indestructible doll that an old maid aunt of mine giv' my sister when we was kids. That doll sort of challenged me, settin' round oncapable o' bein' destroyed, and one day I ups an' has a chaw at her. She war ondestructible, all right; 'fore that I concluded my speriments I had left a couple o' teeth in her."

"Well, I discyards the steak and draw to a pair of aces," and the first man helped himself to a couple of biscuits.

Miss Carmichael knew, by the continual scraping [pg 009] of chairs across the gritty floor, that the places at the table must be nearly all taken; and while she anticipated, with an utterly unreasonable terror, any further invasion of her seclusion at the end of the table, still she could not persuade herself to raise her eyes to detect the progress of the enemy, even in the interest of the diary she had kept so conscientiously for the past three days; which was something of a loss to the diary, as those untamed, manly faces were well worth looking at. Reckless they were in many instances, and sometimes the lines of hardship were cruelly writ across young faces that had not yet lost the down of adolescence, but there were humor and endurance and the courage that knows how to make a crony of death and get right good sport from the comradeship. Their faults were the faults of lusty, red-blooded youth, and their virtues the open-handed generosity, the ready sympathy of those uncertain tilters at life who ride or fall in the tourney of a new country.

At present, "the yearling," drinking her execrable coffee in an agony of embarrassment, weighed heavily on their minds. They would have liked to rise as a man and ask if there was anything they could do for her. But as a glance towards the end of the table seemed to increase her discomfiture tenfold, they did the kindest and for them the most difficult thing and looked in every direction but Miss Carmichael's. With a delicacy of perception that the casual observer might not have given them credit for, they had refrained from taking seats directly opposite her, or those immediately on her [pg 010] right, which, as she occupied the last seat at the table, gave her at least a small degree of seclusion.

As one after another of them came filing in, bronzed, rugged, radiating a beauty of youth and health that no sketchy exigence of apparel could obscure, some one already seated at the table would put a foot on a chair opposite him and send it spinning out into the middle of the floor as a hint to the new-comer that that was his reserved seat. And the cow-puncher, sheep-herder, prospector, or man about "Town," as the case might be, would take the hint and the chair, leaving the petticoat separated from the sombreros by a table-land of oilcloth and a range of four chairs.

But now entered a man who failed to take the hint of the spinning chair. In fact, he entered the eating-house with the air of one who has dropped in casually to look for a friend and, incidentally, to eat his breakfast. He stopped in the doorway, scanned the table with deliberation, and started to make his way towards Mary Carmichael with something of a swagger. Some one kicked a chair towards him at the head of the table. Some one else nearly upset him with one before he reached the middle, and the Texan remarked, quite audibly, as he passed:

"The damned razor-back!"

But the man made his way to the end of the table and drew out the chair opposite Miss Carmichael with a degree of assurance that precipitated the rest of the table into a pretty pother.

Suppose she should countenance his audacity? [pg 011] The fair have been known to succumb to the headlong force of a charge, when the persistence of a long siege has failed signally. What figures they would cut if she did!-and Simpson, of all men! A growing tension had crept into the atmosphere of the eating-house; knives and forks played but intermittently, and Mary, sitting at the end of the oilcloth-covered table, felt intuitively that she was the centre of the brewing storm. Oh, why hadn't she been contented to stay at home and make over her clothes and share the dwindling fortunes of her aunts, instead of coming to this savage place?

"From the look of the yearling's chin, I think he'll get all that's coming to him," whispered the man who had nearly upset him with the second chair.

"You're right, pard. If I'm any good at reading brands, she is as self-protective as the McKinley bill."

The man Simpson was not a pleasant vis-à-vis. He wore the same picturesque ruffianliness of apparel as his fellows, but the resemblance stopped there. He lacked their dusky bloom, their clearness of eye, the suppleness and easy flow of muscle that is the hall-mark of these frontiersmen. He was fat and squat and had not the rich bronzing of wind, sun, and rain. His small, black eyes twinkled from his puffy, white face, like raisins in a dough-pudding.

He was ogling Mary amiably when the woman who kept the eating-house brought him his breakfast. Mrs. Clark was a potent antidote for the prevailing spirit of romance, even in this woman-forsaken [pg 012] country. A good creature, all limp calico, Roman nose, and sharp elbows, she brought him his breakfast with an ill grace that she had not shown to the others. The men about the table gave him scant greeting, but the absence of enthusiasm didn't embarrass Simpson.

He lounged expansively on the table, regarding Miss Carmichael attentively meanwhile; then favored her with the result of his observations, "From the East, I take it." And the dumpling face screwed into a smile whose mission was pacific.

Every knife and fork in the room suspended action in anxiety to know how the "yearling" would take it. Would their chivalry, which strained at a gnat, be compelled to swallow such a conspicuous camel as the success of Simpson? With the attitude he had taken towards the girl, there had crept into the company an imperceptible change; deep-buried impulses sprang to the surface. If a scoundrel like Simpson was going to try his luck, why shouldn't they? They didn't see a pretty girl once in a blue moon. With the advent of the green-eyed monster at the board, each man unconsciously became the rival of his neighbor.

But Miss Carmichael merely continued her breakfast, and if she heard the amiable deductions of Simpson regarding her, she gave no sign. But a rebuff to him was in the nature of an appetizer, a fillip to press the acquaintance. He encroached a bit farther on the narrow limits of the table and continued, "Nice weather we're having."

Miss Carmichael gave her undivided attention to [pg 013] her coffee. The spurs and sombreros, that had not relaxed a muscle in their strained observation of the little drama, breathed reflectively. Perhaps it was just as well that they had not emulated Simpson in his brazen charge; the "yearling" was not to be surprised into talking, that was certain.

"He shore is showing hisself to be a friendly native," commented the man who had sacrificed milk-teeth investigating the indestructible doll.

"Seems to me that the system he's playing lacks a heap of science. My money's on the yearling." And the man who had "discarded the steak and drawn to the biscuits" leaned a little forward that he might better watch developments.

Simpson by this time fully realized his error, but failure before all these bantering youngsters was a contingency not to be accepted lightly. As he phrased it to himself, it was worth "another throw." "Seems kind o' lonesome not having any one to talk to while you're eatin', don't it?"

Miss Carmichael's air of perfect composure seemed a trifle out of tune with her surroundings; the nice elevation of eyebrow, the slightly questioning curl of the lip as she, for the first time apparently, became aware of the man opposite, seemed to demand a prim drawing-room rather than the atmosphere of the slouching eating-house.

"Well, really, I've hardly had a chance of finding out." And her eyes were again on her coffee-cup. And there was joy among the men at table that they had not rushed in after the manner of those who have a greater courage than the angels.

[pg 014] "No offence meant," deprecated Simpson, with an uneasy glance towards the other end of the table, where the men sat with necks craned forward in an attitude uncomfortably suggestive of hounds straining at the leash. Simpson felt rather than saw that something was afoot among the sombreros. There was a crowding together in whispered colloquy, and in a flash some half-dozen of them were on their feet as a man. Descending upon Simpson, they lifted him, chair and all, to the other end of the table, as far removed as possible from Miss Carmichael.

The man who thought Simpson's system lacked science rubbed his hands in delight. "She took the trick all right; swept his hand clean off the board!"

[pg 015]

* * *