Andy P. Symes awoke from a night of troubled dreams with the impression
still strong upon him that he was the exact centre of a typhoon in the
China Seas. He realized gradually that the house was alternately
shivering and rocking, that the shade of the slightly lowered window was
flapping furiously, that his nose and throat were raw from the tiny
particles of dust which covered the counterpane and furniture, that
pebbles were striking the window-panes like the bombardment of a gatling
gun. There was a wailing and shrieking from the wires which anchored his
kitchen flue, a rattling and banging outside which conveyed the
knowledge that the sheet-iron roof on his coal-house was loose, while a
clatter from the street told his experienced ears that some one's tin
garbage-can was passing.
He groaned. This was the day the Homeseekers' Excursion was due--coming
to view the land "where the perfumed zephyrs fanned the cheeks of men
and brothers!" Coming to breathe "the Elixir of Life," while they
inspected that portion of the desert which was "blooming like the rose!"
Even the elements were against him it seemed.
Symes shoved up the shade to see the lovely Pearline Starr, with her
head tied in a nubia, fighting her way through his front gate. She was
bearing ahead of her some garment on the end of a stick. Mr. Symes
dressed hastily that he might respond to her knock.
When Mr. Symes opened the door Miss Starr was clinging, breathless, to
a pillar of the veranda in order to keep her footing. She cast down her
eyes as she extended her offering.
"Are these yours, Mr. Symes? We found them around a sagebrush in the
backyard."
"If they were," said Mr. Symes shortly, "I'd be in bed. They look like
Tuttses."
The air was filled with flying papers, shingles, pans, and there were
times when he could not see across the street. Alva Jackson was in his
corral distributing hay among his horses from a sack instead of a
pitchfork. The Perfect Climate! Symes watched Miss Starr dig in her
heels and depart lying back horizontally on the breeze. Then he slammed
the door, but not before he saw Parrott's coal-house making its way
toward his lot. He already had a cellar-door and a chicken coop which
did not belong to him, while a "wash" he did not recognize was lodged in
his woodpile of jack-pine and ground-cedar in the backyard.
The Homeseekers' Excursion arrived at last--hours late--delayed by the
worst dust-storm in months. The committee of prominent citizens met it
where the cinder platform had been before it blew off.
The excursionists looked through the car-windows to see members of the
Cowboy Band with one arm locked around the frame-work of the water-tank
and with the other endeavoring to keep divers horns, trombones and
flutes in their mouth. No sound reached the ears of the excursionists
owing to the fact that they were on the windward side of the band and
the stirring notes of "Hot Time in the Old Town" were going the other
way.
Mr. Symes's neat speech of welcome was literally blown out of his mouth,
so he contented himself with shouting a warning to "look out for his
hat" in the ear of the first Homeseeker to venture from the car, and led
the way to the Terriberry House.
Crowheart found itself in the position of the boy at the double-ringed
circus who suffers from the knowledge that there is something he must
miss. It could not give its undivided attention to the strangers and at
the same time attend the funeral of old Edouard Dubois, which was to be
held under the auspices of the beneficiary society of which he had been
a member.
To extend the warm, western hand of fellowship to the Homeseekers and
find out where they came from, what their business was, and how much
money they had was a pleasure to which the citizens of Crowheart had
long looked forward, but also it was a pleasure and a duty to walk down
the Main street in white cotton gloves and strange habiliments,
following the new hearse. The lateness of the train had made it
impossible to do both.
They were a different type, these Homeseekers, from the first crop of
penniless adventurers who had settled Crowheart, being chiefly shrewd,
anxious-eyed farmers from the Middle West who prided themselves upon
"not owing a dollar in the world" and whose modest bank accounts
represented broiling days in the hay field and a day's work before dawn,
by lantern light, when there was ice to chop in the watering trough and
racks to be filled for the bawling cattle being wintered on shares.
A trip like this had not been undertaken lightly by these men, but
Mudge's alluring literature had stirred even their unimaginative minds,
and the more impulsive had gone so far as to dispose of farming
implements and stock that they might send for their families without
delay when the purchase of the land was consummated.
In the long journey across the plains, one man had been tacitly assigned
the position of spokesman for the excursionists. He was big, this
prosperous looking stranger who seemed so unconscious of his leadership,
as big as Andy P. Symes himself, and as muscular. He was a western type,
yet he differed noticeably from his companions in that his clothes
fitted him and his cosmopolitan speech and manner were never acquired in
Oak Grove, Iowa. His eyes were both humorous and shrewd. He compelled
attention and deference without demanding it. They explained him with
pride, the Homeseekers, to inquiring citizens of Crowheart.
"That fellow? Why he controls all kinds of money beside what he's got
himself; cattleman, banker, land, money to burn. He's representin' some
farmers from his section that want to invest if the proposition's good."
This was enough for Crowheart, and Andy P. Symes, who was attracted to
Capital by an instinct as sure as a law of Nature, flew to him and clung
like a bit of steel to a magnet.
"Murder case," explained Symes for conversational purposes as he and the
banker stood at the front window in the office of the Terriberry House
and watched a mad race between Lutz, the undertaker, and a plume which
had blown off the hearse.
"Yes?"
"Pretty raw piece of work," continued Symes, while the banker searched
in his case for a cigar. "Old sheepman shot dead in his tracks the same
day he was married to a girl young enough to be his granddaughter.
Married him for his money and there's no doubt in anybody's mind but
that she killed him for the same purpose. She may get away with it,
though, for she'll be able to put up a fight with old Dubois's coin."
"Whose?" The banker's hand stopped on its way to scratch a match on the
window-sill.
"French Canadian; signed himself 'Edouard Dubois.' Name familiar?"
The banker's face was a curious study as his mind went galloping back
through the years.
"You say he was murdered--shot?"
"Dead as a door nail." Symes was pleased to have found a topic
interesting to the stranger. "Each shot made a bull's-eye, one through
the forehead and the other in his heart. She's a good shot, this girl,
her one accomplishment."
"Does she admit it?"
Symes laughed.
"Oh, no; she tells some tale about having gone for water and hearing two
shots--just about the sort of a yarn she _would_ tell, but there was
blood on her clothing and Dubois's own gun with two empty chambers was
found where she had thrown it. They had a row probably and she beat him
to his gun or else she waited and got the drop on him."
"But have they looked for strange footprints or any clues to corroborate
her story?" persisted the banker.