"Fifty dollars! What a very little sum to start the milk of human
kindness flowing!"
"I told him he needn't mind--there was no rush--just when it was
convenient. He misunderstood me." She found her tongue at last and lied
glibly.
The child's foster-father stared at her as though he doubted his own
ears. Her very audacity left him speechless.
"There you are, $50 in gold!" He flung the money into her lap. "Old
hoss," he laid his hand upon the man's shoulder while his mocking laugh
again made her cheeks tingle, "you oughtn't to lie to me like that."
When he had sauntered across the street with his careless, easy stride
and disappeared inside the swinging doors of the bar-room of the
Terriberry House, Dr. Harpe said brusquely:
"Here, you gotta help me yank this leg straight but, first, I want you
to go over to the store and bust up a thin box--something for
splints--strips off a fruit case would be best if you can get 'em."
"Haven't you splints?" the man asked in surprise.
"No; I've just come; I haven't got a stock yet and there's no drug store
in this jay town. It's on the way but that doesn't help us now. We ought
to have plaster of Paris but we haven't. Hurry up--get a move on before
it swells any more."
The man did as he was bid, with a look of doubt and uncertainty upon his
face.
He returned almost immediately with strips torn from a case of fruit.
"That's good." Dr. Harpe laid them on the bunk with the bandages. She
added shortly: "She's going to howl."
"Can't you give her anything?"
"No; I can't give ether by myself. I'm not going to take a chance like
that. If she'd die on my hands it'd queer me here on the jump. 'Twon't
kill her. She'll probably faint and then it'll be easy. When the
muscles relax, hold on to her leg above her knee while I pull."
The man's face turned a ghastly hue as the child screamed and fainted
away, nor did the color return as he watched the woman's clumsy fingers,
the bungling movements which, unlettered as he was, told him of her
inexperience--bungling movements which had not even compensating
feminine gentleness.
When the child had revived and Dr. Harpe had finished, the man went
outside and leaned against the wheel.
"Are you sure it'll be straight?"
She saw her own misgivings reflected in his face, and it exasperated
her.
"What a fool question. Do you think I don't know my business?"
He did not answer, and she turned away.
"Daddy?"
"Yes, Rosie." He was at her side at once.
She lifted her clear eyes to his face.
"I don't like that woman."
"Like her!" he answered slowly. "Like her! Her heart is as black as my
hat."
To herself Dr. Harpe was saying:
"Moses! I had to start in on somebody."
It was with relief that she looked through her office window after
supper and saw that the wagon was gone from the vacant lot.
"Good riddance!" she muttered. "I wouldn't have that black-eyed devil
hanging around this town for money. He's onery enought to do me
mischief. I wonder who he was? He might be anything or anybody; a dago
duke or a hold-up--or both. Anyway, he's gone, and if I never see him
again it'll be soon enough."
She sat down in her office chair and rested her heels on the window sill
while her cigarette burned to ashes between her listless fingers. For a
time she watched the white light of the June moon grow on the line of
dimpled foothills, the myriad odors of spring were in the air and the
balmy west wind lifted the hair at her temples as it came through the
open window. She felt lonely--inexpressibly lonely. She thought of Alice
Freoff and restlessness grew. Downstairs she heard Essie Tisdale's merry
laughter and it changed the current of her thoughts.
She had learned her story now and the mystery of her identity had given
the little belle of Crowheart an added attraction. Everybody in
Crowheart knew her story for that matter; it was one of the stock tales
of the country to be repeated to interest strangers.
In the old days when Crowheart was a blacksmith shop and the stamping
ground of "Snow-shoe" Brown, whose log cabin hung on the edge of the
bench overlooking the stream like a crow's nest in a cottonwood tree,
"Snow-shoe" Brown had yelled in vain, one spring day, at a man and woman
on the seat of a covered wagon who were preparing to ford the stream at
the usual crossing. But the sullen roar of the water drowned his warning
that it was swimming depth, and, even while he ran for his horse and
uncoiled his saddle rope, the current was sweeping the wagon and the
struggling horses down stream. He followed along the bank until the
horse's feet came up and the wagon went down, while there floated from
the open end, among other things, something that looked to his
astonished eyes like a wooden cradle. He threw his rope, and threw
again, with the skill which long practice in roping mavericks had given
him; and gently, gently, with a success which seemed miraculous even to
"Snow-shoe" Brown, he had drawn the bobbing cradle gradually to shore.
Inside, a baby smiled up at him with the bluest eyes he ever had seen.
There was a picture primer tucked beneath the flannel coverlet and it
contained the single clue to her identity. "Esther Tisdale" was written
on the fly-leaf with a recent date.
"Snow-shoe" Brown said she was a maverick and unblushingly declared that
he claimed all mavericks that he had had his rope on; therefore "Esther
Tisdale" belonged to him. He left her in the care of the wife of a
cattleman who hoped thereby to purchase immunity from "Snow-shoe's"
activities, which he did, though that person rustled elsewhere with
renewed energy, since he said he had a family to keep. So she learned to
ride and shoot as straight as "Snow-shoe" himself and even as a child
gave promise of a winsome, lovely girlhood. The unique relationship
ended when her guardian died in his boots in the little cowtown over
beyond the Limestone Rim. A hard winter and the inroads of sheep "broke"
the cattleman who sold out and moved away, while Esther Tisdale shifted
for herself that she might not be a burden. She was nearly twenty now,
and, in the democratic community never had felt or been made to feel
that her position was subservient or inferior. Therefore when her work
was done and she bounded up the stairs to Dr. Harpe's door she felt sure
of a welcome.
"It's only Essie Tisdale," she said in her merry voice as she rapped and
peered into the room.
"Come in, Essie; I'm lonesome as the deuce!"
It was some time later that Mrs. Terriberry sailing through the corridor
in her dressing-sacque and petticoat, with her feet scuffling in Mr.
Terriberry's carpet-slippers, had the stone-china water-pitcher dashed
from her hand as she turned a corner.
"Why, Essie!"
"Oh, I'm sorry, Mrs. Terriberry!"
"What's the matter?" She looked wonderingly at the girl's crimson face.
"Don't ask me! but don't expect me to be friends with that woman again!"
"Have you had words--have you quarrelled with Dr. Harpe?"
"Yes--yes; we quarrelled! But don't ask me any more! I won't--I can't
tell you!" the girl replied fiercely as she rushed on and slammed the
door of her room behind her.
In her office, Dr. Harpe was sitting by the window panic-stricken, sick
with the fear of the one thing in the world of which she was most
afraid, namely, Public Opinion.
She was deaf to the night sounds of the town; to the thick,
argumentative voices beneath her window; to the scratched phonograph
squeaking an ancient air in the office of the Terriberry House; to the
banging of an erratic piano in the saloon two doors above; to the sleepy
wails of the butcher's urchin in the tar-paper shack one door below, and
to a heap of snarling dogs fighting in the deep, white dust of the
street.
She glanced through the window and saw without seeing, the
deputy-sheriff escorting an unsteady prisoner down the street followed
by a boisterous crowd. In a way she was dimly conscious that there was
something familiar in the prisoner's appearance, but the impression was
not strong enough to rouse her from her preoccupation, and she turned to
walk the floor without being cognizant of the fact that she was walking.
She suddenly threw both hands aloft.
"I've got it!" she cried exultingly. "The very thing to counteract her
story. It'll work--it always does--and I know that I can do it!"
In her relief she laughed, a queer, cackling laugh which came strangely
from the lips of a woman barely thirty. The laughter was still on her
lips when a sound reached her ears which killed it as quickly as it
came.
Addio mia bella Napoli, addio, addio!
La tua soave imagine chi mai, chi mai scordar potra!
Del ciel l'auzzurro fulgido, la placida marina,
Qual core non imebria, non bea non bea divolutta!
In tela terra el 'aura favellano d'amore;
Te sola al mio dolore conforto io sognero
Oh! addio mia bella Napoli, addio, addio!
Addio care memorie del tempo ah! che fuggi!
The voice rang out like a golden bell, vibrating, as sweetly
penetrating. The strange words fell like the notes of the meadow lark in
spring, easy, liquid, yet with the sureness of knowledge.
The incoherent argument beneath the window ceased, the piano and the
phonograph were silenced, the wailing urchin dried its tears and all the
raw little town of Crowheart seemed to hold its breath as the wonderful
tenor voice rose and fell on the soft June night.
Adieu, my own dear Napoli! Adieu to thee, Adieu to thee!
Thy wondrous pictures in the sea, will ever fill my memory!
Thy skies of deepest, brightest blue, thy placid waves so soft and clear;
With heaving sigh and bitter tear, I bid a last, a sad adieu!
Adieu the fragrant orange grove, the scented air that breathes of love
Shall charm my heart with one bright ray, in dreams, wher'er I stray;
Oh, adieu, my own dear Napoli! Adieu to thee, Adieu to thee!
Adieu each soul-felt memory, of happy days long passed away!
The old street-song of Italy, the song of its people, never held a
stranger audience in thraldom. If the song had been without words the
result would have been the same, almost, for it was the voice which
reached through liquor befuddled brains to find and stir remote and
hidden recesses in natures long since hardened to sentiment. Rough
speeches, ribald words and oaths died on the lips of those who crowded
the doorway of saloons, and they stood spell-bound by the song which was
sung as they felt dimly the angels must sing up there in that shadowy
land back of the stars in which vaguely they believed.
Only those who have lived in isolated places can understand what music
means to those who year after year are without it. Any sound that is not
an actual discord becomes music then and the least gentle listen with
pathetic eagerness. A worn phonograph screeching the popular songs of a
past decade holds the rapt attention of such. It reminds them of that
world they left long ago, a world which in the perspective of waning
years looks all song and laughter, good company, good clothes, good
food, and green things everywhere.
Therefore it is little wonder that this voice of marvellous sweetness
and power rising unexpectedly out of the moonlit night should lay an
awed hush upon the music-starved town. To some it brought a flood of
memories and lumps in aching throats while many a weather-beaten face
was lifted from mediocrity by a momentary exultation that was of the
soul.
That a human voice unaided by a visible personality could throw such a
spell upon the listeners seems rather a tax upon credulity; but the
singer himself appeared to have no misgivings. His face wore a look of
smiling, mocking confidence as he stood with one hand on his hip, the
other grasping a bar of the iron grating which covered the single window
of Crowheart's calaboose, pouring forth the golden notes with an
occasional imperious toss of his head and a flash of his black eyes
which made him look like a royal prisoner.
When the last note had died away, Dr. Harpe breathed an ejaculation.
"The Dago Duke!"
"He sings like an angel," said "Slivers," a barkeep.
"And fights like a devil," replied Dan Treu, the deputy-sheriff. "He
turned a knife in Tinhorn's shoulder."