not seen who was running the machine behind the desk, even then. He
had, however, spoken rather loudly and had informed the man that he
was from Montana, with no effect whatever upon the clicking. He had
listened patiently to the glowing description of several "good buys,"
and had escaped with difficulty within ten minutes after hearing the
unseen typist addressed as "Fern."
At the third place he merely looked in at the door and retreated
hastily when the agent, like a spider on the watch, started forward.
When he limped into the office of his hotel at six o'clock, Andy was
ready to swear that every foot of land in California was for sale, and
that every man in San Jose was trying his best to sell it and looked
upon him, Andy Green, as a weak-minded millionaire who might be
induced to purchase. He had not visited all the places where they kept
bulletin-boards covered with yellowed placards abounding in large type
and many fat exclamation points and the word ONLY with a dollar mark
immediately after. All? He had not visited half of them, or a third!
That night he dreamed feverishly of "five-room, modern cottages with
bath," and of "ONLY $500.00 down and balance payable monthly," and of
ten-acre "ranches" and five-acre "ranches"--he who had been used to
numbering acres by the thousand and to whom the word "ranch" meant
miles of wire fencing and beyond that miles of open!
It took all the longing he felt for Mary Johnson to drive him out the
next morning and to turn his face toward those placarded places which
infested every street, but he went. He went with eyes that glared
hostility at every man who said "buy," and with chin set to stubborn
purpose. He meant to find Mary Edith Johnson, and he meant to find her
without all California knowing that he was looking for her. Not once
had he mentioned her name, or showed that he cared whether there was a
typewriter in the office or whether it was a girl, man or Chinaman who
clicked the keys; and yet he knew exactly how every girl typist had
her hair dressed, and what was the color of her eyes.
At two o'clock, Andy stopped suddenly and stared down at a crack in
the pavement, and his lips moved in muttered speech. "She's worked
three years in one of them places--and she 'thoroughly detests
falsehood in _any_ form'! Hell!" Is exactly what he was saying out
loud, on one of the busiest streets in San Jose.
A policeman glanced at him, looked again and came slowly toward him.
Andy took the hint and moved on decorously to the next bulletin-board,
but the revelation that had come to him there in the street dulled
somewhat his alertness, so that he came near committing himself to the
purchase of one of those ubiquitous "five-room, modern cottages with
bath" before he realized what he was doing and fled to the street
again, on the pretense that he had to catch the car which was just
slowing down for that crossing.
He boarded the car, though he had no idea of where it was going, and
fished in his pocket for a nickel. And just when he was reaching up
from the step where he stood clinging--reaching over the flower-piled
hat of a girl, to place the nickel in the outstretched palm of the
conductor, he heard for the first time in many weeks the name of Mary
Johnson. A girl at his elbow was asking the other: "What'n the world's
become of Mary Johnson? She wasn't to the dance last night, and it's
the first one--"
Andy held his breath.
"Oh, Mame quit her place with Kelly and Gray, two weeks ago. She's
gone to Santa Cruz and got a place for the summer. Her and Lola
Parsons went together, and--"
Andy took advantage of another crossing, and dropped off. He wanted to
find out when the next train left for Santa Cruz. It never occurred to
him that there might be two Mary Johnsons in the world, which was
fortunate, perhaps; he wasted no time in hesitation, and so, within
twenty minutes, he was hearing the wheels of a fast train go
_clickety-click, clickety-click_ over the switches in the suburbs of
San Jose, and he was asking the conductor what time the train would
reach Santa Cruz, and was getting snubbed for his anxiety.
Santa Cruz, when he did reach it, seemed, on a superficial
examination, to be almost as large as San Jose, and the real-estate
offices closer together and even more plentifully supplied with modern
cottages and bath--and the heart of him sank prophetically. For the
first time since he dropped off the street-car in San Jose, it seemed
to him that Mary Johnson was quite as far off, quite as unattainable
as she had ever been.
He walked slowly up Pacific Avenue and watched the hurrying crowds,
and wondered if chance would be kind to him; if he should meet her on
the street, perhaps. He did not want to canvass all the real-estate
offices in town. "It would take me till snow flies," he murmured
dispiritedly, forgetting that here was a place where snow never flew,
and sought a hotel where they were not "full to the eaves" as two
complacent clerks had already told him.
At supper, he made friends with a genial-voiced insurance agent--the
kind who does not insist upon insuring your life whether you want it
insured or not. The agent told Andy to call him Jack and use him good
and plenty--perhaps because something wistful and lonely in the gray
eyes of Andy appealed to him--and Andy took him at his word and was
grateful. He discovered what day of the week it was: Saturday, and
that on the next day Santa Cruz would be "wide-open" because of an
excursion from Sacramento. Jack offered to help him lose himself in
the crowd, and again Andy was grateful. For the first time since
leaving the Flying U he went to bed feeling not utterly alone and
friendless, and awoke pleasantly expectant. Friend Jack was to pilot
him down to the Casino at eleven, and he had incidentally made one
prediction which stuck closely to Andy, even in his sleep. Jack had
assured him that the whole town would be at the beach; and if the
whole town were at the beach, why then, Mary would surely be somewhere
in the crowd. And if she were in the crowd--"If she's there, I'll sure
get a line on her before night," Andy told himself, with much
assurance. "A fellow that's been in the habit of cutting any certain
brand of critter out of a big herd ought to be able to spot his girl
in a crowd"--and he hummed softly while he dressed.
The excursion train was already in town, and the esplanade was,
looking down from Beach Hill, a slow-moving river of hats, with
splotches of bright colors and with an outer fringe of men and women.
"That's a good-sized trail-herd uh humans," Andy remarked, and the
insurance agent laughed appreciatively.
"You wait till you see them milling around on the board walk," he
advised impressively. "If you happen to be looking for anybody, you'll
realize that there's some people scattered around in your vicinity. I
had a date with a girl, down here one Sunday during the season, and we
hunted each other from ten in the morning till ten at night and never
got sight of each other."
Andy gave him a sidelong, suspicious glance, but friend Jack was
evidently as innocent as he looked, and so Andy limped silently down
the hill to the Casino and wondered if fate were going to cheat him at
the last moment.
Once in the crowd, it was as Jack had told him it would be. He could
not regard the moving mass of humanity as individuals, though long
living where men are few had fixed upon him the habit. Now, although
he observed far more than did Jack, he felt somewhat at a loss; the
realization that Mary Johnson might pass him unrecognized troubled him
greatly. It did not once occur to him that he, with his gray Stetson
hat and his brown face and keen eyes and tall, straight-backed figure,
looked not at all like the thousands of men all around him, so that
many eyes turned to give him another glance when he passed. Mary
Johnson must be unobserving in the extreme if she failed to know him,
once she glimpsed him in the crowd.
Somewhere near one o'clock he lost Jack completely, and drifted
aimlessly alone. Jack had been hailed by a friend, had stopped for a
minute to talk, and several hundred men, women and children had come
between him and Andy, pushing and crowding and surging, because a band
had started playing somewhere. Andy got down the steps and out upon
the sand, and Jack was thereafter but a memory. He found the loose
sand hard walking with his lame leg, and almost as crowded as the
promenade, and as he stood for a minute looking up at the board walk
above him, it occurred to him that if he could get somewhere and stay
there long enough, every human being at the Casino would eventually
pass by him. He went up the steps again and worked his way along the
edge of the walk until he found a vacant spot on the railing and sat
grimly down upon it to wait.
Many cigarettes he smoked while he roosted there, watching until the
eyes of him ached with the eternal panorama of faces that were
strange. Many times he started eagerly because he glimpsed a fluffy,
blond pompadour with blue eyes beneath, and fancied for an instant
that it was Mary.
Then, when he was speculating upon the advisability of following the
stream of people that flowed out upon the pleasure pier, Mary passed
by so close that her skirt brushed his toes; passed him by, and he sat
there like a paralytic and let her go. And in the heart of him was a
queer, heavy throb that he did not in the least understand.
She was dressed in blue linen with heavy, white lace in patches here
and there, and she had a big, white hat tilted back from her face and
a long white plume drooping to one shoulder. Another girl was with
her, and a man--a man with dented panama hat and pink cheeks and a
white waistcoat and tan shoes; a man whom Andy suddenly hated most
unreasonably.
When they were all but lost in the crowd, Andy got down, gripped his
cane vindictively and followed. After all, the man was walking beside
the other girl, and not beside Mary--and the reflection brought much
solace. With the nodding, white feather to guide him, he followed them
down the walk, lost them for a second, saw them turn in at the
wide-open doors of the natatorium, saw them pause there, just inside.
Then a huge woman pushed before him, stood there and narrowed his
range of vision down to her own generous hat with its huge roses, and
when he had edged past her the three were gone.
Andy waited, comforted by the knowledge that they had not come out,
until the minutes passed his patience and he went in, searched the
gallery unavailingly, came out again and wandered on dispiritedly to
the pleasure pier. There, leaning over the rail, he saw her again
almost beneath him in the sand, scantily clad in a bathing suit. The
man, still more scantily clad, was trying to coax her into the water
and she was hanging back and laughing a good deal, with an occasional
squeal.
Andy leaned rather heavily upon the railing and watched her
gloweringly, incredulously. Custom has much to do with a man's (or a
woman's) idea of propriety, and one Andrew Green had for long been
unaccustomed to the sight of nice young women disporting themselves
thus in so public a place. He could not reconcile it with the girl as
he had known her in her father's cabin, and he was not at all sure
that he wanted to do so.
He was just turning gloomily away when she glanced up, saw him and
waved her hand. "Hello, Andy," she called gaily. "Come on down and
take a swim, why don't you?"
Andy, looking reproachfully into her upturned face, shook his head. "I
can't," he told her. "I'm lame yet." It was not at all what he had
meant to say, any more than this was the meeting he had dreamed about.
He resented both with inner rage.
"Oh. When did you come?" she asked casually, and was whisked away by
the man before Andy could tell her. The other girl was there also, and
the three ran gleefully down to meet a roller larger than the others
had been; met it, were washed, with much screaming and laughter, back
to shore and stood there dripping. Andy glared down upon them and
longed for the privilege of drowning the fellow.
"We're going up into the plunge," called Mary. "Come on. I'll see you,
when I come out." They scampered away, and he, calling himself many
kinds of fool, followed.
In the plunge, Andy was still more at a disadvantage, for since he was
a spectator, a huge sign informed him that he must go up stairs. He
went up with much difficulty into the gallery, found himself a seat
next the rail and searched long for Mary among the bathers below. He
would never have believed that he would fail to know her at sight, but
with fifty women, more or less, dressed exactly alike and with ugly
rubber caps pulled down to eyebrows and ears, recognition must
necessarily be slow.
While he leaned and stared, an avalanche of squeals came precipitately
down the great slide; struck the water and was transformed to gurgling
screams, and then heads came bobbing to the surface--three heads, and
one of them was Mary's. She swept the water from her eyes, looked up
and saw him, waved her hand and scrambled rather ungracefully over the
rail in her wet, clinging suit. The others followed, the man trotting
at her heels and calling something after her.
Andy, his brows pulled down over unhappy eyes, glared fixedly up at
the top of the slide. In a minute they appeared, held gesticulating
counsel, wavered and came down together, upon their stomachs. The
strange girl was in the lead, with Mary next holding to the girl's
feet. Behind her slid the man, gripping tightly the ankles of Mary.
Andy's teeth set savagely together, though he saw that others were
doing exactly the same; old women, young women, girls, men and boys
came hurtling down the big slide, singly, in couples, in three and
fours.
The spectacle began to fascinate him, so that for a minute or two he
could forget Mary and the man. There was a roar of voices, the barking
as of seals, screams, laughter and much splashing. Men and women dove
from the sides like startled frogs into a pond; they swam, floated and
stood panting along the walls; swung from the trapeze (Andy,
remembering his career with the circus, when he was "André de Gréno,"
Champion Bareback Rider of the Western Hemisphere, wished that his leg
was well so that he could show them a few things about that trapeze
business) and troubled the waters with much splashing. He could not
keep Mary always in view, but when he did get sight of her she seemed
to be having a very good time, and not to be worrying in the least
about him and his sins.
Twice Andy Green half rose from his seat, meaning to leave the plunge,
the Casino and the whole merry-making crowd; but each time he settled
back, telling himself that he hated a quitter, and that he guessed
he'd buy a few more chips and stay in the game.
It seemed a long time before Mary finally emerged in the blue linen
and the white hat, but Andy was waiting doggedly at the entrance and
took his place beside her, forcing the man to walk beside the girl
whom Mary introduced as Lola Parsons. The man's name was Roberts, but
the girls called him Freddie, and he seemed composed mostly of a
self-satisfied smile and the latest fad in male attire. Andy set
himself to the task of "cutting Mary out of the main herd" so that he
might talk with her. Thus it happened that, failing a secluded spot in
the immediate neighborhood of the Casino, which buzzed like a
disturbed hive of gigantic bees, Mary presently found herself on a car
that was clanging its signal of departure, and there was no sign of
Freddie and Lola Parsons.
"We lost 'em, back there," Andy told her calmly when she inquired.
"And as to where we're going, I don't know; as far as this
lightning-wagon will take us."
"This car goes clear out to the Cliffs," Mary said discouragingly.
"All right. We're going out to the cliffs, then," Andy smiled blandly
down upon the nodding, white feather in her hat.
"But I promised Lola and Freddie--"
"Oh, that's all right. I'll take the blame. Were yuh surprised to see
me here?"
"Why should I be? Everybody comes to Santa Cruz, sooner or later."
"I came sooner," said Andy, trying to meet her eye. He wanted to bring
the conversation to themselves, so that he might explain and justify
himself, and win forgiveness for his sins.
While they walked along the cliffs he tried, and going home he had not
given up the attempt. But afterward, when he could sit down quietly
and think, he was forced to admit that he had not succeeded very well.
It seemed to him that, while Mary still liked him and was quite ready
to be friends, she had forgotten just why she had so suddenly left
Montana. She was sorry he had broken his leg, but in the same breath,
almost, she told him of such a narrow escape that Freddie had last
week, when an auto nearly ran him down. Andy regretted keenly that it
had not.
He had mentioned Irish and Jack Bates, meaning to refute the tales
they had told of him, and she had asked about the black lamb and the
white, and then had told him that he must go out to the whistling buoy
and see the real whale they had anchored out there, and related with
much detail how Freddie had taken her and Lola out, and how the water
was so rough she got seasick, and a wave splashed over and ruined
Freddie's new summer suit, that spotted dreadfully; it wasn't, she
remarked, a durable color. She hoped Andy would stay a month or two,
though the "season" was about over. She knew he would just love the
plunge and the surf-bathing, and there was going to be a boomers'
barbacue up at the Big Trees in two weeks--and it would seem like home
to him, seeing a cow roasted whole! She did love Montana, and she
hoped he brought his chaps and spurs along, for she had told Lola so
much about him, and she wanted Lola to see him in his Wild West
clothes.
All this should have pleased Andy very much. She had not grown cold,
and her eyes were quite as teasing and her smiles as luring as before.
She did not even lay personal claim to Freddie, that he should be
jealous. When she spoke of Freddie, his name was linked with Lola
Parsons, and Andy could not glean that she had ever gone anywhere
alone with him. She had seemed anxious that he should enjoy his
vacation to the limit, and had mentioned three or four places that he
must surely see, and informed him three times that she was "off" at
five every evening, and could show him around.
They had dined together at a café, and had gone back to the Casino for
the band concert, and they had not been interrupted by meeting Lola
Parsons and Freddie, and she had given him a very cordial good-night
when they parted on the steps of her boarding house at eleven.
So there was absolutely no reason for the mood Andy was in when he
accepted his key from the hotel clerk and went up to his room. For a
man who has traveled more than a thousand miles in search of the girl
he had dreamed of o'nights, and who had found her and had been
properly welcomed, he was distinctly gloomy. He sat down by the open
window and smoked four cigarettes, said "Damn Freddy!" three times and
with added emphasis each time, though he knew very well that Freddie
had nothing to do with it, and then went to bed.
In the morning he felt better, and went out by himself to the cliffs
where they had been before, and sat down on a hummock covered with
short grass, and watched the great unrest of the ocean, and wondered
where the Flying U wagons would be camping, that night. Somehow, the
wide reach of water reminded him of the prairie; the rolling billows
were like many, many cattle milling restlessly in a vast herd and
tossing white heads and horns upward. Below him, the pounding surf was
to him the bellowing of a thirsty herd corralled.
"This is sure all right," he approved, rousing a little. "It's almost
as good as sitting up on a pinnacle and looking out over the range. If
I had a good hoss, and my riding outfit, and could get out there and
go to work cutting-out them white-caps and hazing 'em up here on a
run, it wouldn't be so poor. By gracious, this is worth the trip, all
right." It never occurred to Andy that there was anything strange in
the remark, or that he sat there because it dulled the heavy ache that
had been his since yesterday--the ache of finding what he had sought,
and finding with it disillusionment.
Till hunger drove him away he stayed, and his dreams were of the wide
land he had left. When he again walked down Pacific Avenue the hall
clock struck four, and after he had eaten he looked up at it and saw
that it lacked but fifteen minutes of five.
"I'm supposed to meet her when she quits work," he remembered, "and
Lola and Freddie will go to the plunge with us." He stopped and stared
in at the window of a curio store. "Say, that's a dandy Navajo
blanket," he murmured. "It would be out-uh-sight for a saddle
blanket." He started on, hesitated and went back. "I've got time
enough to get it," he explained to himself. He went in, bought the
blanket and two Mexican _serapes_ that caught his fancy, tucked the
bundle under his arm and started down the street toward the office
where Mary worked. It was just two minutes _to five_.
He got almost to the door--so near that his toe struck against a
corner of the belabelled bulletin board--when a sudden revulsion swept
his desires back like a huge wave. He stood a second irresolutely and
then turned back. "Aw--hell! What's the use?" he muttered.
The clock was just on the last stroke of five when he went up to the
clerk in his hotel. "Say, when does the next train pull out?--I don't
give a darn in what direction," he wanted to know. When the clerk told
him seven-thirty, he grinned and became undignifiedly loquacious.
"I want to show yuh a couple of dandy _serapes_ I just glommed, down
street," he said, and rolled the bundle open upon the desk. "Ain't
they a couple uh beauts? I got 'em for two uh my friends; they done me
a big favor, a month or two ago, and I wanted to kinda square the
deal. That's why I got 'em just alike. Yes, you bet they're peaches;
yuh can't get 'em like this in Montana. The boys'll sure appreciate
'em." He retied the bundle, took his room-key from the hand of the
smiling clerk and started up the stairway, humming a tune under his
breath as he went.
At the first turn he stopped and looked back. "Send the bell-hop up to
wake me at seven," he called down to the clerk. "I'm going to take a
much-needed nap--and it'll be all your life's worth to let me miss
that train!"
* * * * *
LORDS OF THE POTS AND PANS
The camp of the Flying U, snuggled just within the wide-flung arms of
an unnamed coulee with a pebbly-bottomed creek running across its
front, looked picturesque and peaceful--from a distance.
Disenchantment lay in wait for him who strayed close enough to hear
the wrangling in the cook-tent, however, or who followed Slim to where
he slumped bulkily down into the shade of a willow fifty yards or so
from camp--a willow where Pink, Weary, Andy Green and Irish were lying
sprawled and smoking comfortably.
Slim grunted and moved away from a grass-hidden rock that was gouging
him in the back. "By golly, things is getting pretty raw around this
camp," he growled, by way of lifting the safety-valve of his anger.
"I'd like to know when that darned grub-spoiler bought into the
outfit, anyhow. He's been trying to run it to suit himself all
spring--and if he keeps on, by golly, he'll be firing the wagon-boss
and giving all the orders himself!"
It would seem that sympathy should be offered him; as if the pause he
made plainly hinted that it was expected. Andy Green rolled over and
sent him a friendly glance just to hearten him a bit.
"We were listening to the noise of battle," he observed, "and we were
going over, in a minute, to carry off the dead. You had a kinda
animated discussion over something, didn't yuh?" Andy was on his good
behavior, as he had been for a month. His treatment of his fellows
lately was little short of angelic. His tone soothed Slim to the point
where he could voice his woe.