the rapidly cleared table, and discoursed concerning them. Lafond lent
an attentive ear, but said little. Billy's ideas were comprehensive.
They included every adjunct of use or expediency which the prospector
remembered to have seen in any of the numerous successful camps which
had fallen under his observation. In fact, when finished, the external
Great Snake would be a composite of the desirable features of many
other camps, including the great "Homestake" itself. It was evident
that before Billy's mind's eye, the Great Snake was already as
prosperous and as well entitled to its graces of mining luxury as any
of the older enterprises. After a little appeared a man who had some
horses to sell, so Lafond took his leave and retraced his steps to
town. Near the foot of the knoll he happened across still further
evidence of Billy's wandering activity in the shape of an ivory-handled
clasp knife of five-inch blade. Mike remembered that Billy had shown
it about in the Little Nugget the evening before as another example of
the Easterners' generosity; and he remembered further the Westerner's
delighted laugh over the inscription, "William Knapp."
"Don't know myself that way," he had cried. "I clean forgets that
'Billy' does stand for 'William.'"
Lafond's first impulse was to reclimb the knoll for the purpose of
returning his find to its owner, but on second thoughts it hardly
seemed worth the trouble. He slipped it into the side pocket of his
canvas coat, where, of course, he speedily forgot all about it.
When he reached the Little Nugget, empty at this time of day, he sat
down in his chair and laughed aloud, peal on peal, wagging his head and
rubbing his eyes. Frosty, happening in, withdrew with celerity, firmly
convinced that his master had gone crazy.
"A fool for luck, a fool for luck!" cried Lafond, "Why, the idiot is
playing right into my hands!"
XXV
JACK GRAHAM SPEAKS OUT
The morning when the hunting party had so unhappily terminated on the
slope of Tom Custer, proved to be the turning point in Molly's
relations with the camp.
The Kid forgave her in two hours, but her troubled conscience would not
let her forgive herself. Therefore she was irritated with the Kid.
Therefore her old innocent joyful trips into the hills in his company
suddenly came to an end. That is good psychology; not good sense.
With the first realization of evil, slight though it was, her moral
nature began the inevitable two-sided argument. She was no longer
naive, but responsible. As a consequence her old careless, thoughtless
manner of life completely changed. In the beginning she had come full
of confidence to subdue a camp. Speedily she had discovered that it
was not worth the trouble, and that she infinitely preferred to play
out in the open with the winds and sunshine and the diverse influences
of nature. Now a subtle, quite unrealized sense of unworthiness, drove
her back to a desire for human sympathy, the personal relation. This
personal relation took the outward form of an entanglement with
Cheyenne Harry, complicated by her intellectual admiration of Graham.
From the first, Cheyenne Harry had possessed for her a certain
fascination which had distinguished him from the rest of the men by
whom she was surrounded. It had dated from the evening when he had
kissed her. At the time he had been shown his place swiftly and
decisively enough, but it was a forceful deed, such as women like, and
its impression had remained. Besides this, Molly's spirit was
independent; she respected independence in others; and he, with the
exception of Graham, was now the only man in camp who was to some
slight extent indifferent. He showed frankly enough, with the rest,
that he liked her company and her good opinion; and yet he showed, too,
that if her presence and regard were not freely offered as he demanded
them, he could wait, secure in their ultimate possession.
At first this fascination had been weak and unimportant. Now, however,
it rapidly took the ascendancy over everything else. The mere chance
that its influence had been the one first to touch the girl's moral
nature counted for much; as did, curiously enough, the fact that, in
her relations with Cheyenne Harry, Molly always felt a little guilty.
She resented her imperceptible retrogression, and the resentment took
the reckless form of a desire to go a step further. This was mainly
because she did not understand herself. She had done nothing wrong, as
she saw it; and yet They had put this heavy uneasy feeling into her
heart. Very well! If They, the mysterious unthoughtout They, were
bound to make her unhappy without her fault, she would enjoy the sweets
as well as the bitter of it!
Harry had such a way of forcing her to act against her conscience.
"But I can't do that!" she would object to some proposition of his.
"I'd like to. I think it would be great fun. But you know very well
I've promised Dave Kelly to go up with him this afternoon to look at
his claim."
"That doesn't matter," replied Harry cavalierly.
"But it _does_ matter," she persisted. "I've promised."
"Oh, shake him. Tell him some yarn. _Do_ something. It isn't every
day I get an afternoon off this way." Though why he did not, it would
be difficult to say.
"I know, but I've _promised_."
"Oh, very well," said Cheyenne Harry, with cold finality, and began to
whistle as if the question were quite disposed of. This did not suit
Molly at all.
"There isn't anything I can do, is there?" she asked after a moment.
"You know best."
"Oh, dear, I don't _want_ you to feel like that."
"Why shouldn't I feel like that?" cried Harry in sudden heat. "Here I
look forward to a whole afternoon with you, and I'm thrown down just
because of a kid. I suppose you'd rather trot around with him than
with me. All right. Go ahead."
He began to whistle again. He never said what the result would be if
she did "go ahead," and this very mysterious indifference had its
effect. Molly, genuinely distressed, knit her brows, not knowing what
to do.
"Now look here!" commanded Harry, after a minute, with great decision;
"you go find that Kid, and send him up to Kelly's claim to say you
can't come this afternoon. You can fix it to suit yourself next time
you see him," and then he would himself find the Kid and despatch him.
Molly always acquiesced, but with inward misgivings. She must now do
her best to conceal from Dave Kelly the real state of affairs; he must
not by any chance see her with Harry; he must not hear from outside
sources of her afternoon's excursion with that individual. An element
of the clandestine had crept into it. The idea oppressed her, for, in
spite of her store of spirits and her independent temper, she was not
of a combative nature when she felt herself at all in the wrong. The
necessity saddened her, brought to her that guilty feeling against
which she so sullenly rebelled. She was uneasy during all the
afternoon, and yet she was conscious of an added delicious thrill in
her relations with Harry--a thrill that first tingled pleasantly
through all her veins, then struck her heart numb with vague
culpability. In due course, she came to transfer the emotion from the
circumstances to the man. She experienced the same thrill, the same
numb culpability, at the sight of his figure approaching her on the
street.
This tendency was emphasized, perhaps, by the fact that their walks
together--projected so suddenly, undertaken with so strong a feeling of
blame on her part--consisted always of continual skirmishes as to
whether or not Cheyenne Harry should kiss her. The interest of the
argument was heightened by the fact that the girl wanted him to do so.
This he was never allowed for a moment to suspect--in fact, by all
means in her power she gave him to understand quite the contrary--but
he could not help feeling subtly the subconscious encouragement, and so
grew always the more insistent. She held him off because her instincts
had told her the act would cheapen her. Molly always obeyed her
instincts. They were strong, insistent, not to be denied. They came
to her suddenly with a great conviction of truth, which she never
dreamed of questioning. Among other things they taught her that
without love each kiss adds to the woman's regard for the man, but
takes away from his desire for her.
Cheyenne Harry used all his arts. He tried force only once, for he
found it unsatisfactory and productive of most disagreeable results.
Diplomacy and argument in themselves, as eclectics, contained much of
the joy of debate. The arguments in such cases were always deliciously
ingenuous.
"Now, what harm is there in my just putting my arm around you?" he
urged.
"There just is, that's all."
"I'll have it around you when we dance."
"That's different; there's people about then."
"It's just a question of people, then?"
"I s'pose so."
"Will you let me put my arm around you to-night in the Little Nugget?"
"Of course not."
"But there's people there," triumphantly. "Now what's the harm? It's
different with us. Of course you ought not to let anyone else, but
we're different."
They were sitting near together, and all this time the Westerner's arm
was moving inch by inch along the rock behind Molly. As he talked he
clasped her waist, gingerly, in order not to alarm. She shivered as
she became conscious of the touch, and for one instant gave herself up.
Then she sternly ordered Cheyenne Harry to take his distance. The
latter tried to temporize by opening an argument. The half-playful
struggle always ended in Molly's gaining her point, but the victory was
laughing, and so Cheyenne Harry was encouraged to reopen the attack on
new grounds.
As one of the inevitable results, the emotion which Molly experienced
in at once denying herself and combating Harry was gradually translated
into a fascinated sort of passion for him. Then, too, since naturally
the interest of these indecisive encounters increased with each, the
two came to see each other oftener and oftener, until the habit of
companionship was well established. This habit is very real. The
approach of the accustomed hour for meeting causes the heart to beat
faster, the breath to come quicker, the imagination to kindle; while
the foregoing of a single appointment is a dull loss difficult to bear
with patience. It counterfeits well many of the symptoms of love, and
for a short time is nearly as burning a passion.
Sometimes the attack would be more direct. Cheyenne Harry's stock of
sophistry would give out, as well as his stock of patience.
"Oh, come on, Molly," he would cry, "just one! I've been real good,
now haven't I? Oh, come on!"
"You've been nothing but a great big brute, Mr. Cheyenne Harry!" she
cried in a tone that implied he had not.
Harry advanced a little, holding out his hands, much as one would
approach a timid setter dog. She put one finger on her lips, and
watched him, bright-eyed. When he was near enough, she boxed his ears,
and twisted her slender young body out of reach, laughing mockingly,
and wrinkling her nose at him.
But then when they had returned to camp, and once more she found
herself alone, the delicious questions always came up; how far did he
intend to go? Did he see through such and such a stratagem? Was he
really vexed at such and such a speech, or was he merely feigning? In
what manner would he dare accost her when next they met? And so
another meeting became necessary soon--at once. They saw more and more
of each other, to the neglect of many real duties.
For a time the influence of Jack Graham did something to stem the drift
of this affair, but that lasted only until he himself fell in love with
her.
With him her first emotion had been of eager intellectual awakening;
her second, that of piqued curiosity; her third, of reactionary
dulness. As time went on she came to pass and repass through those
three phases with ever increased rapidity, until at the last their
constant reiteration might almost have relegated them to the category
of whims. She liked to be with him, because he made her aware of new
possibilities in herself. She could not understand him, because his
attitude toward her was never that of the lover. She experienced
moments of revolt, when she cried out passionately but ineffectually
against an influence which would compel her to elevations rarer than
the atmosphere of her everyday, easy-going pleasure-taking life.
Ineffectually, I say, for something always forced her back.
Not that Graham ever preached. Preaching would have presented
something tangible against which to revolt, something orthodox to be
cried down. In fact, reformation of Molly Lafond's manners of mind or
body was the farthest from Graham's thought. He merely represented to
her a state of being to which she must rise. The rise was slight, but
it was real. It meant the difference between thinking in the abstract
or in the concrete. It meant that she was compelled to feel that to
men like him, or to women like her, this animal existence, with its
finer pleasures of riding, climbing, flirting and sitting on bars,
while well enough in its way, was after all but a small and incidental
part of life. If the girl had been requested to formulate it, she
would not have been able to do so. She apprehended it more in its
result; which was to make her just a little ashamed of her everyday
manner of existence, without, however, furnishing her with a strong
enough motive to rise permanently above it. This, in turn, translated
itself into a certain impotent mental discomfort.
As long as Jack Graham preserved the personally indifferent standpoint,
the mere fact that he caused her momentary disquiet did not antagonize
Molly Lafond against him. Rather it added a certain piquancy to their
interviews. He threw out his observations on men and manners lazily,
with the true philosopher's delight in rolling a good thing under his
tongue. None of them possessed an easily fitted personal application.
And his utter indifference as to whether she talked or listened, went
or tarried, always secretly pleased her. She liked his way of looking
at her through half-closed lids, in the manner of one examining a
strange variety of tree or fern; the utter lack of enthusiasm in the
fashion of his greetings when she came, or his farewell when she
departed; his quite impersonal manner of pointing truths which might
only too easily have been given a personal application. And this was
the very reason of it, although again she might not have been able to
formulate the idea; that although his methods of thought, his mental
stand-points, his ways of life constantly accused hers of inertia,
carelessness and moral turpiture, nevertheless his personally
indifferent attitude toward her relieved them of too direct an
application. She enjoyed the advantages of a mental cold shower, with
the added satisfaction that no one saw her bedraggled locks.
But when in time the young man went the way of the rest of the camp and
began to show a more intimate interest in her, the conditions were
quite altered. We may rejoice in anathema against the sins of
humanity, in which we may acknowledge a share; we always resent being
personally blamed.
Graham indeed went the way of the rest of the camp. His progress from
indifference to love he could not have traced himself, although he
might with tolerable accuracy have indicated the landmarks--a look, a
gesture, a flash of spirit, revealing by a little more the woman whom
he finally came to idealize. That her's was a rich nature he had early
discovered. That it was not inherently a frivolous or vicious nature,
he saw only gradually, and after many days. Then his self-disguise of
philosophic indifference fell. He realized fully that he loved her,
not for what she did or said, but for herself; and with the knowledge
came an acuter consciousness that, whatever her possibilities, her
tendency was now to pervert rather than develop them. For the first
time he opened his eyes and examined her environment as well as herself.
She spent half of her day alone with Cheyenne Harry. The other half
she was restless. The evening she passed in the Little Nugget saloon,
where the men, convinced that she was now the mistress of Cheyenne
Harry, took even less pains than formerly to restrain the accustomed
freedom of their words and actions. Graham viewed her indifference to
all this, and her growing absorption by Cheyenne Harry, with some
alarm. He conceived that the state of affairs came about more because
of a dormant moral nature than because of moral perversity; and as to
this he was partly right. But he could not fail to perceive the
inevitable trend of it all, no matter what the permitting motive. He
would have been less--or more--than human, if he had let it pass
without a protest.
At first the protest took the form of action. He tried to persuade the
girl to spend the evening in other ways. While the novelty lasted,
this was all very well. He epitomized and peptonized his knowledge on
all subjects to suit her intellectual digestion. They called it their
"lesson time," and he made the mistake of taking it too seriously. He
was very much in earnest himself, so he thought she should be so. They
talked of nothing but the matter in hand. After a little, there came
an evening when she was a trifle tired. The matter in hand did not
interest her as much as it should. She leaned the back of her head
against her two clasped hands, and sighed.
"I'm stupid to-night," she confessed. "Let's talk. Tell me a story."
Graham was much in love, and so incapable of readjustments. He had
thought out carefully several new and interesting things to say.
"I thought you said you were really in earnest about this," he
reproached her. "If you are going to improve yourself, you must work;
and work cannot depend on one's mood."
All of which was very true, but Jack Graham could not see that there
inheres in truth no imperative demand for its expression.
But when another night came, her enthusiasm was less marked, for she
saw no escape. After a time she skipped an evening. Then at last she
gave it up altogether.
"I'm afraid I'm not intellectual," she confessed, smiling doubtfully.
"I told you I'd be a disappointment. It is all interesting and very
improving, but--well, I don't know--it seems to make us both cross. I
guess we'd better quit."
Jack Graham seemed to indicate by his manner that he was disappointed.
A good deal of his disapproval was because he saw that her renunciation
of these "improving" evenings meant not only the loss of the
improvement, but her exposure to worse influences; but of course Molly
Lafond did not know that. She took the young man's condemnation
entirely to herself, and consequently, when in his presence, felt just
a little inferior. She concealed the feeling with an extra assumption
of flippancy.
Because of these things, as time went on, she came to see more and more
of Cheyenne Harry and less and less of Jack Graham. The latter's mere
presence made her ashamed of her lack of earnest purpose. He, for his
part, viewed with growing uneasiness the augmenting influence of the
dashing Westerner; for he knew the man thoroughly, and believed that
his attentions meant no good. In that, at least for the present, he
did him a wrong. Cheyenne Harry merely amused himself with a new
experience--that of entering into relations of intimacy with a woman
intrinsically pure. The other sort was not far to seek, should his
fancy turn that way. But to Graham these marked attentions could mean
but one thing.
His resolve to speak openly was not carried into effect for a number of
days. Finally, quite unexpectedly, he found his chance.
Toward evening, as he was returning from a day's exploitation on his
three claims in Teepee, he came across her sitting on a fallen log near
the lower ford. The shadows of the hills were lying across the
landscape, even out on the brown prairie. A bird or so sang in the
thicket. A light wind breathed up the gulch. Altogether it was so
peaceful; and the girl sitting there idly, her hands clasped over her
knees, gazing abstractedly into the waters of the brook, was so pensive
and contemplative and sad, that Graham had to spur his resolution hard
to induce it to take the leap. But he succeeded in making himself
angry by thinking of Cheyenne Harry.
She saw him coming and shrank vaguely. She felt herself in some subtle
way, which she could not define, quite in the wrong. What wrong she
could not have told. When, however, she saw that plainly his intention
was to speak to her, she smiled at him brilliantly with no trace of
embarrassment.
They exchanged the commonplaces of such a meeting.
"Why are you so solemn?" she broke in finally. "You look as if you'd
lost your last friend."
He looked at her. "That is the way I feel."
"Oh," said she.
They fell silent. She did not like at all the gloomy fashion of his
scrutiny. It made her nervous. She felt creeping on her heart that
mysterious heaviness, the weight of something unknowable, which she had
lately been at such pains to forget. She did not like it. With an
effort, she shook it off and laughed.
"What's the matter?" she cried with forced gayety. "Didn't he sleep
well? Don't he like my looks, or the freckle on my nose, or the way I
wear my cap?"--she tossed the latter rakishly on her curls, and tilted
her head sideways.
"What is the matter?" she asked with a sudden return to gravity.
"You are the matter," he answered briefly.
"Oh dear!" she cried with petulance; "has it come to that?"
"No, it has not come to that, not what you mean. But it has come to
this: that your conduct has made every true friend of yours feel just
as I do."
She stared at him a moment, gasping.
"Heavens! you frighten me! What _have_ I done? Come over here on this
log and tell me about it."
Graham's vehement little speech had vented the more explosive portion
of his emotion. Whatever he should say now would be inspired rather by
conviction than impulse; and the lover's natural unwillingness
deliberately to antagonize his mistress made it exceedingly difficult
to continue. He hesitated.
"You _must_ tell me now," she commanded; "I insist. Now, what have I
done?"
"It isn't so much what you have done," began Graham lamely, "as what
you might do. You see you are very young, and you don't know the
world; and so you might walk right into something very wrong without
realizing in the least what you are doing, and without meaning to do
wrong at all. Everybody owes it to himself to make the best out of
himself, and you must know that you have great possibilities. But it
isn't that so much. I wish I knew how to tell you exactly. You ought
to have a mother. But if you'd only let us advise you, because we know
more about it than you----"
The girl had watched him with gleaming eyes. "That doesn't _mean
_anything," she interrupted. "What is it, now? Out with it!"
"It's Cheyenne Harry," blurted Graham desperately; "you oughtn't to go
around with him so much."
"Now we have it," said the girl with dangerous calm; "I'm not to go
around with Harry. Will you tell me why?"
"Well," replied Graham, floundering this side of the main fact; "it
isn't a healthy thing for anybody to see any one person to the
exclusion of others."
"Yourself, for instance," stabbed the girl wickedly. "Go on."
Graham flushed. "No, it isn't that," he asserted earnestly. "It isn't
for the benefit of the others that I speak, but because of the effect
on yourself. It isn't _healthy_. You are wasting time that might be
very much better employed; you get into an abnormal attitude toward
other people; you are laying stress on a _means_ to which there is no
_end_, and that is abnormal. I don't know that you understand what I
mean; it's philosophy," he concluded, smiling in an attempt to end
lightly.
"No, I do not understand in the least. All I understand is that you
object to my seeing a certain man, without giving any particular reason
for your objections."
"It isn't especially elevating for you to sit every evening in a bar
room crowded with swearing and drinking men who are not at all of your
class," suggested Graham. "The language they use ought to teach you
that."
"They are my people," cried Molly with a sudden flash of indignation,
"and they are honest and brave and true-hearted. They do not speak as
grammatically as you or I; but you have been to college, and I have
been blessed with a chance to read. And whatever language they speak,
they do not use it to talk of other people behind their backs!" She
reflected a moment. "But that isn't the question," she went on, with a
touch of her native shrewdness. "I understood you to make a request of
me."
Graham had not so understood himself, but he had a request ready,
nevertheless. "That you be a little more careful in the way you go
about with Mortimer, then," he begged.
"And why?" she asked again.
"Because--because he means to do you harm!" cried Jack Graham, driven
to the point at last.
She rose from the log. "Ah, that is what I wanted to hear!" she
returned in level tones--"the accusation. You will tell him this to
his face?"