One Day Too Late!
I suppose there is always a time when a fellow passes quite suddenly out
of the cub-stage and feels himself a man--or, at least, a very great
desire to be one. Until that Fourth of July life had been to me a
playground, with an interruption or two to the game. When dad took such
heroic measures to instil some sense into my head, he interrupted the game
for ten days or so--and then I went back to my play, satisfied with new
toys. At least, that is the way it seemed to me. But after that night,
things were somehow different. I wanted to amount to something; I was
absolutely ashamed of my general uselessness, and I came near writing to
dad and telling him so.
The worst of it was that I didn't know just what it was I wanted to do,
except ride over to that little pinnacle just out from King's Highway, and
watch for Beryl King; that, of course, was out of the question, and
maudlin, anyway.
On the third day after, as Frosty and I were riding circle quite silently
and moodily together, we rode up into a little coulée on the southwestern
side of White Divide, and came quite unexpectedly upon a little
picnic-party camped comfortably down by the spring where we had meant to
slake our own thirst. Of course, it was the Kings' house-party; they were
the only luxuriously idle crowd in the country.
Edith and her mother greeted me with much apparent joy, but, really,
I felt sorry for Frosty; all that saved him from recognition then was the
providential near-sightedness of Mrs. Loroman. I observed that he was
careful not to come close enough to the lady to run any risk.
Aunt Lodema tilted her chin at me, and Beryl--to tell the truth,
I couldn't make up my mind about Beryl. When I first rode up to them, and
she looked at me, I fancied there was a welcome in her eyes; after that
there was anything else you like to name. I looked several times at her
to make sure, but I couldn't tell any more what she was thinking than one
can read the face of a Chinaman. (That isn't a pretty comparison, I know,
but it gives my meaning, for, of all humans, Chinks are about the hardest
to understand or read.) I was willing, however, to spend a good deal of
time studying the subject of her thoughts, and got off my horse almost as
soon as Mrs. Loroman and Edith invited me to stop and eat lunch with them.
That Weaver fellow was not present, but another man, whom they introduced
as Mr. Tenbrooke, was sitting dolefully on a rock, watching a maid
unpacking eatables. Edith told me that "Uncle Homer"--which was old man
King--and Mr. Weaver would be along presently. They had driven over to
Kenmore first, on a matter of business.
Frosty, I could see, was not going to stay, even though Edith, in a polite
little voice that made me wonder at her, invited him to do so. Edith was
not the hostess, and had really no right to do that.
I tried to get a word with Miss Beryl, found myself having a good many
words with Edith, instead, and in fifteen minutes I became as thoroughly
disgusted with unkind fate as ever I've been in my life, and suddenly
remembered that duty made further delay absolutely impossible. We rode
away, with Edith protesting prettily at what she was pleased to call my
bad manners.
For the rest of the way up that coulée Frosty and I were even more silent
and moody than we had been before. The only time we spoke was when Frosty
asked me gruffly how long those people expected to stay out here. I told
him a week, and he grunted something under his breath about female
fortune-hunters. I couldn't see what he was driving at, for I certainly
should never think of accusing Edith and her mother of being that especial
brand of abhorrence, but he was in a bitter mood, and I wouldn't argue
with him then--I had troubles of my own to think of. I was beginning to
call myself several kinds of a fool for letting a girl--however wonderful
her eyes--give me bad half-hours quite so frequently; the thing had never
happened to me before, and I had known hundreds of nice
girls--approximately. When a fellow goes through a co-ed course, and has a
dad whom the papers call financier, he gets a speaking-acquaintance with a
few girls. The trouble with me was, I never gave the whole bunch as much
thought as I was giving to Beryl King--and the more I thought about her,
the less satisfaction there was in the thinking.
I waited a day or two, and then practically ran away from my work and rode
over to that little butte. Some one was sitting on the same flat rock, and
I climbed up to the place with more haste than grace, I imagine. When
I reached the top, panting like the purr of the _Yellow Peril_--my
automobile--when it gets warmed up and going smoothly, I discovered that
it was Edith Loroman sitting placidly, with a camera on her knees, doing
things to the internal organs of the thing. I don't know much about
cameras, so I can't be more explicit.
"If it isn't Ellie, looking for all the world like the _Virginian_ just
stepped down from behind the footlights!" was her greeting. "Where in the
world have you been, that you haven't been over to see us?"
"You must know that the palace of the King is closed against the
Carletons," I, said, and I'm afraid I said it a bit crossly; I hadn't
climbed that unmerciful butte just to bandy commonplaces with Edith
Loroman, even if we were old friends. There are times when new enemies are
more diverting than the oldest of old friends.
"Well, you could come when Uncle Homer is away--which he often is," she
pouted. "Every Sunday he drives over to Kenmore and pokes around his
miners and mines, and often Terence and Beryl go with him, so you could
come--"
"No, thank you." I put on the dignity three deep there. "If I can't come
when your uncle is at home, I won't sneak in when he's gone. I--how does
it happen you are away out here by yourself?"
"Well," she explained, still doing things to the camera, "Beryl came out
here yesterday, and made a sketch of the divide; I just happened to see
her putting it away. So I made her tell me where she got that view-point,
and I wanted her to come with me, so I could get a snap shot; it _is_
pretty, from here. But she went over to the mines with Mr. Weaver, and
I had to come alone. Beryl likes to be around those dirty mines--but I
can't bear it. And, now I'm here, something's gone wrong with the thing,
so I can't wind the film. Do you know how to fix it, Ellie?"
I didn't, and I told her so, in a word. Edith pouted again--she has a
pretty mouth that looks well all tied up in a knot, and I have a slight
suspicion that she knows it--and said that a fellow who could take an
automobile all to pieces and put it together again ought to be able to fix
a kodak. That's the way some women reason, I believe--just as though cars
and kodaks are twin brothers.
Our conversation, as I remember it now, was decidedly flat and dull.
I kept thinking of Beryl being there the day before--and I never knew; of
her being off somewhere to-day with that Weaver fellow--and I knew it and
couldn't do a thing. I hardly know which was the more unpleasant to dwell
upon, but I do know that it made me mighty poor company for Edith. I sat
there on a near-by rock and lighted cigarettes, only to let them go out,
and glowered at King's Highway, off across the flat, as if it were the
mouth of the bottomless pit. I can't wonder that Edith called me a bear,
and asked me repeatedly if I had toothache, or anything.
By and by she had her kodak in working order again, and took two or three
pictures of the divide. Edith is very pretty, I believe, and looks her
best in short walking-costume. I wondered why she had not ridden out to
the butte; Beryl had, the time I met her there, I remembered. She had a
deep-chested blue roan that looked as if he could run, and I had noticed
that she wore the divided skirt, which is so popular among women who ride.
I don't, as a rule, notice much what women have on--but Beryl King's feet
are altogether too small for the least observant man to pass over. Edith's
feet were well shod, but commonplace.
"I wish you'd let me have one of those pictures when they're done,"
I told her, as amiably as I could.
She pushed back a lock of hair. "I'll send you one, if you like, when
I get home. What address do you claim, in this wilderness?"
I wrote it down for her and went my way, feeling a badly used young man,
with a strong inclination to quarrel with fate. Edith had managed, during
her well-meant efforts at entertaining me, to couple Mr. Weaver's name all
too frequently with that of her cousin. I found it very depressing--a good
many things, in fact, were depressing that day.
I went back to camp and stuck to work for the rest of that week--until
some of the boys told me that they had seen the Kings' guests scooting
across the prairie in the big touring-car of Weaver's, evidently headed
for Helena.
After that I got restless again, and every mile the round-up moved south
I took as a special grievance; it put that much greater distance between me
and King's Highway--and I had got to that unhealthy stage where every
mile wore on my nerves, and all I wanted was to moon around that little
butte. I believe I should even have taken a morbid pleasure in watching
the light in her window o' nights, if it had been at all practicable.