CARIBOO MEADOWS
A tall man, sunburned, slow-speaking, met Hazel at Soda Creek, the end
of her stage journey, introducing himself as Jim Briggs.
"Pretty tiresome trip, ain't it?" he observed. "You'll have a chance
to rest decent to-night, and I got a team uh bays that'll yank yuh to
the Meadows in four hours 'n' a half. My wife'll be plumb tickled to
have yuh. They ain't much more'n half a dozen white women in ten miles
uh the Meadows. We keep a boardin'-house. Hope you'll like the
country."
That was a lengthy speech for Jim Briggs, as Hazel discovered when she
rolled out of Soda Creek behind the "team uh bays." His conversation
was decidedly monosyllabic. But he could drive, if he was no talker,
and his team could travel. The road, albeit rough in spots, a mere
track through timber and little gems of open where the yellowing grass
waved knee-high, and over hills which sloped to deep cañons lined with
pine and spruce, seemed short enough. And so by eleven o'clock Hazel
found herself at Cariboo Meadows.
"Schoolhouse's over yonder." Briggs pointed out the place--an
unnecessary guidance, for Hazel had already marked the building set off
by itself and fortified with a tall flagpole. "And here's where we
live. Kinda out uh the world, but blame good place to live."
Hazel did like the place. Her first impression was thankfulness that
her lot had been cast in such a spot. But it was largely because of
the surroundings, essentially primitive, the clean air, guiltless of
smoke taint, the aromatic odors from the forest that ranged for
unending miles on every hand. For the first time in her life, she was
beyond hearing of the clang of street cars, the roar of traffic, the
dirt and smells of a city. It seemed good. She had no regrets, no
longing to be back. There was a pain sometimes, when in spite of
herself she would fall to thinking of Jack Barrow. But that she looked
upon as a closed chapter. He had hurt her where a woman can be most
deeply wounded--in her pride and her affections--and the hurt was
dulled by the smoldering resentment that thinking of him always fanned
to a flame. Miss Hazel Weir was neither meek nor mild, even if her
environment had bred in her a repression that had become second nature.
So with the charm of the wild land fresh upon her, she took kindly to
Cariboo Meadows. The immediate, disagreeable past bade fair to become
as remote in reality as the distance made it seem. Surely no ghosts
would walk here to make people look askance at her.
Her first afternoon she spent loafing on the porch of the Briggs
domicile, within which Mrs. Briggs, a fat, good-natured person of
forty, toiled at her cooking for the "boarders," and kept a brood of
five tumultuous youngsters in order--the combined tasks leaving her
scant time to entertain her newly arrived guest. From the vantage
ground of the porch Hazel got her first glimpse of the turns life
occasionally takes when there is no policeman just around the corner.
Cariboo Meadows, as a town, was simply a double row of buildings facing
each other across a wagon road. Two stores, a blacksmith shop, a feed
stable, certain other nondescript buildings, and a few dwellings,
mostly of logs, was all. Probably not more than a total of fifty souls
made permanent residence there. But the teams of ranchers stood in the
street, and a few saddled cow ponies whose listlessness was mostly
assumed. Before one of the general stores a prospector fussed with a
string of pack horses. Directly opposite Briggs' boarding-house stood
a building labeled "Regent Hotel." Hazel could envisage it all with a
half turn of her head.
From this hotel there presently issued a young man dressed in the
ordinary costume of the country--wide hat, flannel shirt, overalls,
boots. He sat down on a box close by the hotel entrance. In a few
minutes another came forth. He walked past the first a few steps,
stopped, and said something. Hazel could not hear the words. The
first man was filling a pipe. Apparently he made no reply; at least,
he did not trouble to look up. But she saw his shoulders lift in a
shrug. Then he who had passed turned square about and spoke again,
this time lifting his voice a trifle. The young fellow sitting on the
box instantly became galvanized into action. He flung out an oath that
carried across the street and made Hazel's ears burn. At the same time
he leaped from his seat straight at the other man. Hazel saw it quite
distinctly, saw him who jumped dodge a vicious blow and close with the
other; and saw, moreover, something which amazed her. For the young
fellow swayed with his adversary a second or two, then lifted him
bodily off his feet almost to the level of his head, and slammed him
against the hotel wall with a sudden twist. She heard the thump of the
body on the logs. For an instant she thought him about to jump with
his booted feet on the prostrate form, and involuntarily she held her
breath. But he stepped back, and when the other scrambled up, he
side-stepped the first rush, and knocked the man down again with a blow
of his fist. This time he stayed down. Then other men--three or four
of them--came out of the hotel, stood uncertainly a few seconds, and
Hazel heard the young fellow say:
"Better take that fool in and bring him to. If he's still hungry for
trouble, I'll be right handy. I wonder how many more of you fellers
I'll have to lick before you'll get wise enough not to start things you
can't stop?"
They supported the unconscious man through the doorway; the young
fellow resumed his seat on the box, also his pipe filling.
"Roarin' Bill's goin' to get himself killed one uh these days."
Hazel started, but it was only Jim Briggs in the doorway beside her.
"I guess you ain't much used to seein' that sort of exhibition where
you come from, Miss Weir," Briggs' wife put in over his shoulder. "My
land, it's disgustin'--men fightin' in the street where everybody can
see 'em. Thank goodness, it don't happen very often. 'Specially when
Bill Wagstaff ain't around. You ain't shocked, are you, honey?"
"Why, I didn't have time to be shocked," Hazel laughed. "It was done
so quickly."
"If them fellers would leave Bill alone," Briggs remarked, "there
wouldn't be no fight. But he goes off like a hair-trigger gun, and
he'd scrap a dozen quick as one. I'm lookin' to see his finish one uh
these days."
"What a name!" Hazel observed, caught by the appellation Briggs had
first used. "Is that Roaring Bill over there?"
"That's him--Roarin' Bill Wagstaff," Briggs answered. "If he takes a
few drinks, you'll find out to-night how he got the name. Sings--just
like a bull moose--hear him all over town. Probably whip two or three
men before mornin'."
His spouse calling him at that moment, Briggs detailed no more
information about Roaring Bill. And Hazel sat looking across the way
with considerable interest at the specimen of a type which hitherto she
had encountered in the pages of fiction--a fighting man, what the West
called a "bad actor." She had, however, no wish for closer study of
that particular type. The men of her world had been altogether
different, and the few frontier specimens she had met at the Briggs'
dinner table had not impressed her with anything except their shyness
and manifest awkwardness in her presence. The West itself appealed to
her, its bigness, its nearness to the absolutely primeval, but not the
people she had so far met. They were not wrapped in a glamor of
romance; she was altogether too keen to idealize them. They were not
her kind, and while she granted their worth, they were more picturesque
about their own affairs than when she came in close contact with them.
Those were her first impressions. And so she looked at Roaring Bill
Wagstaff, over the way, with a quite impersonal interest.
He came into Briggs' place for supper. Mrs. Briggs was her own
waitress. Briggs himself sat beside Hazel. She heard him grunt, and
saw a mild look of surprise flit over his countenance when Roaring Bill
walked in and coolly took a seat. But not until Hazel glanced at the
newcomer did she recognize him as the man who had fought in the street.
He was looking straight at her when she did glance up, and the mingled
astonishment and frank admiration in his clear gray eyes made Hazel
drop hers quickly to her plate. Since Mr. Andrew Bush, she was
beginning to hate men who looked at her that way. And she could not
help seeing that many did so look.
Roaring Bill ate his supper in silence. No one spoke to him, and he
addressed no one except to ask that certain dishes be passed. Among
the others conversation was general. Hazel noticed that, and wondered
why--wondered if Roaring Bill was taboo. She had sensed enough of the
Western point of view to know that the West held nothing against a man
who was quick to blows--rather admired such a one, in fact. And her
conclusions were not complimentary to Mr. Bill Wagstaff. If people
avoided him in that country, he must be a very hard citizen indeed.
And Hazel no more than formulated this opinion than she was ashamed of
it, having her own recent experience in mind. Whereupon she dismissed
Bill Wagstaff from her thoughts altogether when she left the table.
Exactly three days later Hazel came into the dining-room at noon, and
there received her first lesson in the truth that this world is a very
small place, after all. A nattily dressed gentleman seated to one side
of her place at table rose with the most polite bows and extended hand.
Hazel recognized him at a glance as Mr. Howard Perkins, traveling
salesman for Harrington & Bush. She had met him several times in the
company offices. She was anything save joyful at the meeting, but
after the first unwelcome surprise she reflected that it was scarcely
strange that a link in her past life should turn up here, for she knew
that in the very nature of things a firm manufacturing agricultural
implements would have its men drumming up trade on the very edge of the
frontier.
Mr. Perkins was tolerably young, good looking, talkative, apparently
glad to meet some one from home. He joined her on the porch for a
minute when the meal was over. And he succeeded in putting Hazel
unqualifiedly at her ease so far as he was concerned. If he had heard
any Granville gossip, if he knew why she had left Granville, it
evidently cut no figure with him. As a consequence, while she was
simply polite and negatively friendly, deep in her heart Hazel felt a
pleasant reaction from the disagreeable things for which Granville
stood; and, though she nursed both resentment and distrust against men
in general, it did not seem to apply to Mr. Perkins. Anyway, he was
here to-day, and on the morrow he would be gone.
Being a healthy, normal young person, Hazel enjoyed his company without
being fully aware of the fact. So much for natural gregariousness.
Furthermore, Mr. Perkins in his business had been pretty much
everywhere on the North American continent, and he knew how to set
forth his various experiences. Most women would have found him
interesting, particularly in a community isolated as Cariboo Meadows,
where tailored clothes and starched collars seemed unknown, and every
man was his own barber--at infrequent intervals.
So Hazel found it quite natural to be chatting with him on the Briggs'
porch when her school work ended at three-thirty in the afternoon. It
transpired that Mr. Perkins, like herself, had an appreciation of the
scenic beauties, and also the picturesque phases of life as it ran in
the Cariboo country. They talked of many things, discussed life in a
city as compared with existence in the wild, and were agreed that both
had desirable features--and drawbacks. Finally Mr. Perkins proposed a
walk up on a three-hundred-foot knoll that sloped from the back door,
so to speak, of Cariboo Meadows. Hazel got her hat, and they set out.
She had climbed that hill by herself, and she knew that it commanded a
great sweep of the rolling land to the west.
They reached the top in a few minutes, and found a seat on a dead tree
trunk. Mr. Perkins was properly impressed with the outlook. But
before very long he seemed to suffer a relaxation of his interest in
the view and a corresponding increase of attention to his companion.
Hazel recognized the symptoms. At first it amused, then it irritated
her. The playful familiarity of Mr. Perkins suddenly got on her nerves.
"I think I shall go down," she said abruptly.
"Oh, I say, now, there's no hurry," Perkins responded smilingly.
But she was already rising from her seat, and Mr. Perkins, very likely
gauging his action according to his experience in other such
situations, did an utterly foolish thing. He caught her as she rose,
and laughingly tried to kiss her. Whereupon he discovered that he had
caught a tartar, for Hazel slapped him with all the force she could
muster--which was considerable, judging by the flaming red spot which
the smack of her palm left on his smooth-shaven cheek. But he did not
seem to mind that. Probably he had been slapped before, and regarded
it as part of the game. He attempted to draw her closer.
"Why, you're a regular scrapper," he smiled. "Now, I'm sure you didn't
cuff Bush that way."
Hazel jerked loose from his grip in a perfect fury, using at the same
time the weapons nature gave her according to her strength, whereby Mr.
Perkins suffered sundry small bruises, which were as nothing to the
bruises his conceit suffered. For, being free of him, Hazel stood her
ground long enough to tell him that he was a cad, a coward, an ill-bred
nincompoop, and other epithets grievous to masculine vanity. With that
she fled incontinently down the hill, furious, shamed almost to tears,
and wishing fervently that she had the muscle of a man to requite the
insult as it deserved. To cap the climax, Mrs. Briggs, who had seen
the two depart, observed her return alone, and, with a curious look,
asked jokingly:
"Did you lose the young man in the timber?"
And Hazel, being keyed to a fearful pitch, unwisely snapped back:
"I hope so."
Which caused Mrs. Briggs' gaze to follow her wonderingly as she went
hastily to her own room.
Like other mean souls of similar pattern, it suited Mr. Perkins to seek
revenge in the only way possible--by confidentially relating to divers
individuals during that evening the Granville episode in the new
teacher's career. At least, Hazel guessed he must have told the tale
of that ambiguously worded bequest and the subsequent gossip, for as
early as the next day she caught certain of Jim Briggs' boarders
looking at her with an interest they had not heretofore displayed--or,
rather, it should be said, with a _different_ sort of interest. They
were discussing her. She could not know it positively, but she felt it.
The feeling grew to certainty after Perkins' departure that day. There
was a different atmosphere. Probably, she reflected, he had thrown in
a few embellishments of his own for good measure. She felt a tigerish
impulse to choke him. But she was proud, and she carried her head in
the air, and, in effect, told Cariboo Meadows to believe as it pleased
and act as it pleased. They could do no more than cut her and cause
her to lose her school. She managed to keep up an air of cool
indifference that gave no hint of the despairing protest that surged
close to the surface. Individually and collectively, she reiterated to
herself, she despised men. Her resentment had not yet extended to the
women of Cariboo Meadows. They were mostly too busy with their work to
be much in the foreground. She did observe, or thought she observed, a
certain coolness in Mrs. Briggs' manner--a sort of suspended judgment.
In the meantime, she labored diligently at her appointed task of
drilling knowledge into the heads of a dozen youngsters. From nine
until three-thirty she had that to occupy her mind to the exclusion of
more troublesome things. When school work for the day ended, she went
to her room, or sat on the porch, or took solitary rambles in the
immediate vicinity, avoiding the male contingent as she would have
avoided contagious disease. Never, never, she vowed, would she trust
another man as far as she could throw him.
The first Saturday after the Perkins incident, Hazel went for a tramp
in the afternoon. She avoided the little hill close at hand. It left
a bad taste in her mouth to look at the spot. This was foolish, and
she realized that it was foolish, but she could not help the
feeling--the insult was still too fresh in her mind. So she skirted
its base and ranged farther afield. The few walks she had taken had
lulled all sense of uneasiness in venturing into the infolding forest.
She felt that those shadowy woods were less sinister than man. And
since she had always kept her sense of direction and come straight to
the Meadows whenever she went abroad, she had no fear or thought of
losing her way.
A mile or so distant a bare spot high on a wooded ridge struck her as a
likely place to get an unobstructed view. To reach some height and sit
in peace, staring out over far-spreading vistas, contented her. She
could put away the unpleasantness of the immediate past, discount the
possible sordidness of the future, and lose herself in dreams.
To reach her objective point, she crossed a long stretch of rolling
land, well timbered, dense in parts with thickets of berry bushes.
Midway in this she came upon a little brook, purring a monotone as it
crawled over pebbled reaches and bathed the tangled roots of trees
along its brink. By this she sat a while. Then she idled along,
coming after considerable difficulty to abruptly rising ground. Though
in the midst of timber the sun failed to penetrate, she could always
see it through the branches and so gauge her line of travel. On the
hillside it was easier, for the forest thinned out. Eventually she
gained a considerable height, and while she failed to reach the opening
seen from the Meadows, she found another that served as well. The sun
warmed it, and the sun rays were pleasant to bask in, for autumn drew
close, and there was a coolness in the shade even at noon. She could
not see the town, but she could mark the low hills behind it. At any
rate, she knew where it lay, and the way back.
So she thought. But the short afternoon fled, and, warned by the low
dip of the sun, she left her nook on the hillside to make her way home.
Though it was near sundown, she felt no particular concern. The long
northern twilight gave her ample time to cover the distance.
But once down on the rolling land, among the close-ranked trees, she
began to experience a difficulty that had not hitherto troubled her.
With the sun hanging low, she lost her absolute certainty of east and
west, north and south. The forest seemed suddenly to grow confusingly
dim and gloomier, almost menacing in its uncanny evening silence. The
birds were hushed, and the wind.
She blundered on, not admitting to herself the possibility of being
unable to find Cariboo Meadows. As best she could, and to the best of
her belief, she held in a straight line for the town. But she walked
far enough to have overrun it, and was yet upon unfamiliar ground. The
twilight deepened. The sky above showed turquoise blue between the
tall tree-tops, but the woods themselves grew blurred, dusky at a
little distance ahead. Even to a seasoned woodsman, twilight in a
timbered country that he does not know brings confusion; uncertainty
leads him far wide of his mark. Hazel, all unused to woods travel,
hurried the more, uneasy with the growing conviction that she had gone
astray.
The shadows deepened until she tripped over roots and stones, and
snagged her hair and clothing on branches she could not see in time to
fend off. As a last resort, she turned straight for the light patch
still showing in the northwest, hoping thus to cross the wagon road
that ran from Soda Creek to the Meadows--it lay west, and she had gone
northeast from town. And as she hurried, a fear began to tug at her
that she had passed the Meadows unknowingly. If she could only cross a
trail--trails always led somewhere, and she was going it blind. The
immensity of the unpeopled areas she had been looking out over for a
week appalled her.
Presently it was dark, and darkness in the woods is the darkness of the
pit itself. She found a fallen tree, and climbed on it to rest and
think. Night in gloomy places brings an eerie feeling sometimes to the
bravest--dormant sense impressions, running back to the cave age and
beyond, become active, harry the mind with subtle, unreasoning
qualms--and she was a girl, brave enough, but out of the only
environment she knew how to grapple with. All the fearsome tales of
forest beasts she had ever heard rose up to harass her. She had not
lifted up her voice while it was light because she was not the timid
soul that cries in the face of a threatened danger. Also because she
would not then admit the possibility of getting lost. And now she was
afraid to call. She huddled on the log, shuddering with the growing
chill of the night air, partly with dread of the long, black night
itself that walled her in. She had no matches to light a fire.
After what seemed an age, she fancied she saw a gleam far distant in
the timber. She watched the spot fixedly, and thought she saw the
faint reflection of a light. That heartened her. She advanced toward
it, hoping that it might be the gleam of a ranch window. Her progress
was slow. She blundered over the litter of a forest floor, tripping
over unseen obstacles. But ten minutes established beyond peradventure
the fact that it was indeed a light. Whether a house light or the
reflection of a camp fire she was not woodwise enough to tell. But a
fire must mean human beings of one sort or another, and thereby a means
to reach home.
She kept on. The wavering gleam came from behind a thicket--an open
fire, she saw at length. Beyond the fire she heard a horse sneeze.
Within a few yards of the thicket through which wavered the yellow
gleam she halted, smitten with a sudden panic. This endured but a few
seconds. All that she knew or had been told of frontier men reassured
her. She had found them to a man courteous, awkwardly considerate.
And she could not wander about all night.
She moved cautiously, however, to the edge of the thicket, to a point
where she could see the fire. A man sat humped over the glowing
embers, whereon sizzled a piece of meat. His head was bent forward, as
if he were listening. Suddenly he looked up, and she gasped--for the
firelight showed the features of Roaring Bill Wagstaff.
She was afraid of him. Why she did not know nor stop to reason. But
her fear of him was greater than her fear of the pitch-black night and
the unknown dangers of the forest. She turned to retreat. In the same
instant Roaring Bill reached to his rifle and stood up.
"Hold on there!" he said coolly. "You've had a look at me--I want a
look at you, old feller, whoever you are. Come on--show yourself."
He stepped sidewise out of the light as he spoke. Hazel started to
run. The crack of a branch under foot betrayed her, and he closed in
before she took three steps. He caught her rudely by the arm, and
yanked her bodily into the firelight.
"Well--for the--love of--Mike!"
Wagstaff drawled the exclamation out in a rising crescendo of
astonishment. Then he laid his gun down across a roll of bedding, and
stood looking at her in speechless wonder.