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SALLY OF MISSOURI
by
R. E. YOUNG
[Illustration]
New York: McClure, Phillips & Co.: Mcmiii
Copyright, 1903, by
McClure, Phillips & Co.
Published, October, 1903
_Dedicated to Florence Wickliffe_
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. STEERING OF NEW YORK, 3
II. PINEY OF THE WOODS, 23
III. THE PROMISED LAND, 36
IV. FOR THE BENEFIT OF CARINGTON, 62
V. BOOM TIME IN THE TOWN THAT JACK BUILT, 73
VI. FATHER AND DAUGHTER, 95
VII. THE GARDEN OF DREAMS, 109
VIII. WHEN A GIRL FINDS HERSELF, 119
IX. GOOD-BYE! 137
X. WHO'S GOT THE TIGMORES? 153
XI. TALL THINGS, 170
XII. THE COLOSSUS OF CANAAN, 194
XIII. MISS SALLY MADEIRA'S SWEETHEART, 203
XIV. WHEN THE MEAL GAVE OUT, 222
XV. A MISTAKE SOMEWHERE, 242
XVI. MADEIRA'S PEACE, 251
XVII. JUST A BOY, 258
XVIII. A PRETTY PRECARIOUSNESS, 268
XIX. WHEN DREAMS COME TRUE, 274
SALLY OF MISSOURI
PRINCIPAL CHARACTERS IN THE STORY
Steering, of New York
Old Bernique, of French St. Louis
Piney, of the Woods
Crittenton Madeira, of Canaan
Sally, of Missouri
_There are also some kind-hearted people:_
_Farmers, Housewives, Store-keepers, Miners, etc._
_Chapter One_
STEERING OF NEW YORK
"Hoo-ee-ow-ohme!"
It was half a sob, half a laugh, and, half sobbing, half laughing, the
young man stopped his horse on the crest of the Tigmore Hills, in the
Ozark Uplift, raised in his stirrups, and looked the country through and
through, as though he must see into its very heart. In the brilliant
mid-afternoon light the Southwest unrolled below him and around him in a
ragged bigness and an unconquered loneliness. As far as eye could reach
tumbled the knobs, the flats, the waste weedy places, the gullies, the
rock-pitted sweeps of table-land and the timbered hills of the Uplift.
The buffalo grass trembled across the lowlands in long, shaking billows
that had all the effect of scared flight. From the base of the Tigmores
a line of river bottom stretched westward, and beyond the bottom curved
a pale, quiet river. In the distance wraiths of blue smoke falteringly
bespoke the presence of people and cabins; on a cleared hill an object
that might be horse or dog or man was silhouetted, small and vague; and
in the farthest west the hoister of a deserted zinc mine cut up against
the sky a little lonely way. The near and dominant things were
constantly those tremulous, fleeing billows of grass, the straight
strong trees, the sullen rocks, the silent, shivering water.
"_Hoo-ee-ow!_"
It was too vast, too urgent. Waiting, ready, it lay there aggressively,
like a challenge. As the young man faced it, it claimed him, forcing
back his past life, his old habits, his old haunts, into the realm of
myth and moonshine. His old habits! His old haunts! They hung aloof in
his consciousness, shadow pictures, colourless and remote.... That
zestful young life at New Haven, the swift years of it, the fine last
day of it, Yale honours upon him, his enthusiasms cutting away into the
future, his big shoulders squared, his face set toward great things, the
righting of wrongs, grand reforms, the careers of nations.... A bachelor
hotel; a club whose windows looked out on the avenue; an office where
Carington and he had pretended to work down on Nassau Street;
drawing-rooms where Carington and he had pretended to be in love, on
various streets; the whole gay, meaningless panorama of his life as a
homeless, unplaced New York sojourner, who had considered that he had
too much money to be anything seriously and too little money to do
anything effectively.... Then another picture, jerking, mazy, a study in
kinematics--"Crazy Monday" on the Street, Carington and he swept along
in that day's whirlwind of speculation.... A blank in the panorama while
he got used to things and thought things out.... Then a wintry twilight
at the club, Carington and he by the window, talking it over, looking
out upon the drifted light of the city, loving the city, in the way of
New Yorkers. Then Carington's voice saying, "Bruce? Bruce, m' son? Why
don't you try Missouri?" Saying it with that in his voice to indicate
that there was nothing else left to try. Then the long thoughtful talk,
Carington and he still by the window, while he showed Carington how
little chance he had even in Missouri; then Carington's strong-hearted
insistence that, in view of the agitation over the ore discoveries at
Joplin, he go on "out there" and prospect; and then Carington's
foolishly irrelevant heel-piece, "Miss Gossamer sails for Europe
Saturday!" and the sudden appeal of the notion to go "out there," its
sharp striking-in.... Carington and he taking counsel with some of the
other fellows in his rooms later on, all the deep voices roaring at
once, all the boys insulting him at once, belittling his cigars, saying
sharp things about his pictures, that being their way of showing him
that they were badly broken up over his leaving them; all their eyes
shining interest in him and hope for him and even envy of him, as the
young man who was "going out West," while the great soft fluff of smoke
in the room made the past a dream and the present an illusion and the
future a phantasm.... Then the long journey overland, the little impetus
toward the new life flickering drearily, while he gripped up his heart
for any fate, growing quieter and quieter, but more and more determined
to take Missouri as she came.... Then Missouri herself, the stop at St.
Louis, the dip into the State southwestward, toward the lead and zinc
country and his own debatable land; good-bye to the railroad; by team,
in company with other prospectors, through the sang hills, up and down
stony ridges, along vast cattle ranges.... And now here, quite alone,
twenty miles from the railroad, Missouri on all sides of him,
close-timbered, rock-ribbed, gulch-broken, mortally lonely, billowing
around him, over him, possessing him.
That sense of being possessed by Missouri, committed to her, had grown
upon him intolerably all day. All day he had been fighting it and
resenting it. At various points along the rocky ridge road he had come
upon hill cabins and hill people, and, facing them, his fight and his
resentment had been momentarily vicious.
"Gudday, stranger!" the people had called from the porches of the hill
cabins, "Hikin' over the Ridge?"
"Yes, friend," Steering had called back, and had then projected his
unfailing, anxious question: "Can you tell me how far it is to
Poetical?"
At that the people from the porches had got up and come across the baked
weeds of the cabin yard. Assembled at the stile-block in front of him,
the people invariably lined up as a long, gaunt farmer, a thin,
flat-chested woman, a troop of dusty children, and a yellow dog.
"Yass, I cand tell you. It's six sights and a right smart chanst f'm
here to Poetical, stranger," the long, gaunt farmer had invariably
drawled, with more accommodation than information.
"Six sights--six sights and a right what _what_?"
"W'y," the Missourian had explained forbearingly, blinking toward the
sun, and waving his loosely jointed arms westward, "it's
this-a-way--you'll git sight of Poetical f'm six hills, an' whend you
git to the bottom of the sixt' hill they's a right smart chanst you
won't be to Poetical evum yit awhile. You cand see far in this air. It's
some mild f'm here to Poetical, an' sharp ridin' at that."
Each time that Steering had heard that, little varied in phraseology,
save for the number of "sights," according to his progress, he had felt
so dismal and looked so dismal that, each time, the native before him
had added quickly, "Better git off an' spin' the night with us. Aint got
much, but what we got's yourn."
Each time the house beyond the stile-block had looked miserably
uninviting,--a plough on the front porch, harness on the porch posts;
all around the house the yard litter of cheap farm life, a broken-down
harrow, broken-backed furniture, straw, corn-shucks, ghosts of past
winters and past summers on the farm, that had shuffled out there and
died there; each time the cleared patches beyond the house had looked
lean; each time the native had been sallow and toil-worn; but each time
that welcome word had been a finely perfect thing, good to hear.
Steering had noticed that in declining each invitation he had suddenly
stopped short in his inner fight and resentment and assumed his best
manner, as though his finest and highest courtesy had responded
instinctively to something in kind.
Idling on for a more expansive moment at each cabin door, the
conversation had usually shaped itself like this:
"Two has already rid over the Ridge to-day--Old Bernique and the
tramp-boy. Old Bernique he's on the trail ag'in. The tramp-boy he's kim
along so far with Old Bernique." In saying this, or something very like
it, the hill farmer who spoke had always seemed to want it definitely
understood that the neighbourhood had its excitements, and seemed to
argue that if the stranger knew anything he must know Old Bernique and
the tramp-boy. Proceeding leisurely and reflectively, as though he had
decided in his own mind how to classify the stranger, the farmer had
generally added, "Lots of prospectors ride by nowadays. They head in to
the relroad f'm here,--you know you aint a-goin' to ketch the relroad at
Poetical?"
"Yes, I know, but when I left my friends at Bessietown yesterday I was
hoping I could make it all the way across country to Canaan before
to-night."
"Oh, you goin' on to Canaan?"
"Yes, going on to Canaan." Each time the words had echoed through
Steering's head with an old-time promise in a mocking refrain, "Going on
to Canaan! Going on to Canaan!"
Immediately the hill tribe had eyed him with renewed interest. "Going on
to Canaan!" the farmer at their head had repeated, an impressive esteem
in his treatment of the word Canaan. "Gre't taown, Canaan! You strike
the relroad tha' all righty. Dog-oned ef th'aint abaout ev'thing tha'.
Got the cote-haouse an' all, the relroad an' all--Miss Sally Madeira,
Mist' Crit Madeira's daughter, _she_ lives tha'."
It had gone like that every time. Not once in the last twenty miles had
Steering exchanged a word with man or woman without this sort of
reference to Canaan and, collaterally, to Miss Sally Madeira. Miss
Sally, he had perceived early, excited in the hill-farm people a species
of awe, as though she were on a par with the circus, thaumaturgic,
almost too good to be true.
"The court house, the railroad and Miss Sally!" he had finally learned
to murmur, in order to meet the demands of the situation.
"Yass, oh yass." The farmer had given his head a dogged twist, and
looked as though he were cognisant of the fact that in certain essential
particulars Canaan did not have to yield an inch of her title to
equality with the biggest and best anywhere. "Yass, saouthwest
Mizzourah's hard to beat in spots; th'aint no State in the Union quite
like her. She's different," he had said, rocking on his heels, his chest
lifting.
"I think you must be right about that," Steering had answered, every
time with profounder emphasis.
Off here alone on the ridge road now, Missouri's unspeakable difference
was coming over him in great submerging waves. Though he tried bravely
to face the State and have it out with her, he couldn't do it.
"Missouri," he said at last to himself, and to her confidentially, "I'd
like to cry. I'd give five hundred plunkerinos if I might be allowed to
cry." Then he flicked his riding-crop over his leg in a devilishly
nonchalant way, and rode straight forward.
The road went on interminably, its dust-white line, with the rocky ridge
through the middle, dipping and rising and getting nowhere. The horse
grew nervous and shied repeatedly from sheer loneliness. The road
entered a wood. Deep in its leafy fastness wild steers heard the beat of
the horse's hoofs, laid back their ears and galloped into safer depths,
bellowing with alarm. Steering gave up, as helplessly homesick as a
baby, his head dropped forward on his chest in a settled melancholy,
from which he did not rouse until he had cleared the timber; and then
only because he saw a horseman down the ridge road ahead of him. What
instantly attracted Steering's attention was the man's back. It was a
small but proud back. It had none of the hill stoop. It was erect,
sinewy, soldierly. Steering was so lonely that he would have welcomed
companionship with a chipmunk. The chance of companionship with a man
who had an interesting back grew luminous. He urged his horse forward
eagerly, almost hysterically glad of his opportunity.
"Good-afternoon," he called, having recourse to his well-tried form of
greeting. "Can you tell me how far it is to Poetical?"
The man addressed half turned, disclosing a thin and delicate face to
Steering. Then he reined his horse in gently. "Good-evening, sair. Is it
that you inquire to Poetical? It is a vair' long five miles f'm here,
sair."
Steering rode up beside the man, more and more pleased, regarding and
analysing. The man's hickory shirt, his warped boots, his blue jean
trousers, his heavy buskins were mean and earth-stained, but inherent in
the quality of his low, musical voice and courteous manner was an
intangible suggestion of something different, some bigger and happier
past, to which, go where he would and clothe himself as he might, voice
and manner had remained true.
"I wonder," said Steering, almost sighing, "if you will mind a little of
my company. The road is terribly lonely, sir. The country is terribly
lonely in fact."
"Yes, sair, a tr-r-ue word that. It is lonely. But sair, what will you
of this particulaire portion? It is vair' yong in the Tigmores. It
cannot be populate' in a day, a year. You, sair, come from the East,
hein? Sair, relativement, effort against effort, they have not done as
much in the East in feefty years as we have done in the Southwest in
twenty,--believe that, sair." It was that same feeling for the State,
that quick, leaping passion of nativity that Steering had thus far found
in every Missourian with whom he had come in contact.
"You are a Missourian, I see," said Steering, to keep his companion
talking along the line of this enlivening enthusiasm.
"Indeed, sair, yes. From that Saint Louis--Francois Placide DeLassus
Bernique, at your service."
"Thank you. My name is Steering, from New York, if you please, but very
deeply interested in Missouri just now, sir."
From that on they made easy progress into acquaintance. Bernique proved
talkative, full of anecdotes about Missouri's past, and full of belief
in her future. In his rich loquacity he roamed the history of the State
painstakingly for the edification of Steering, as one who stood at
Missouri's gates, inquiring of her true inwardness. He told Missouri's
history back to Spain and France, forward to unspeakable splendour. He
was intelligent, naive, unusual. Steering, responsive to the attraction
that was by and by to hold them strongly together, listened delightedly.
"Yessair,"--through Bernique's speech ran a reminiscence of his native
tongue, faint, sweet, fleeting, like the thought of home,--"yessair, it
is I know the fashion in the eastern States to considaire all the West
as vair' yong countree, and it is tr-r-ue, sair, that you, par example,
have come upon the most yong part of thees gr-r-eat State of Missouri,
but it is to be remembaire that this Missouri is not all rocks and wood,
uncultivate', standing toward the future, but that her story date back
to a remoter period and a fuller and finer civilisation, in that day
when France and Spain held sway over the province of Louisiana, than
does the story of many of the eastern States who hold this countree new,
raw, uncivilise'. I myself,"--continued the speaker, spreading out one
slender hand with an exquisite grace,--"have gr-r-own up in this State
of Missouri, at that St. Louis, with the most profound convincement,
aftaire much travel and observation, that for elegance we have in that
city the most to it belong people in the United States of America,
yessair!"
"Ah, well," admitted Steering, borne along rapidly on the vehement
current of Bernique's ardour, "with your sort of spirit in the people of
Missouri, whatever she was and whatever she is can be but a mighty
promise of what she will become----"
"Ah, there you have it, the note!" interrupted Francois Placide DeLassus
Bernique eagerly, "What she will become! That is the gr-r-and thought,
sair. I who say it have preserve' my belief in what she will become
through the discouragement ter-r-ible. I who speak have prospec' this
land from end to end. I know her largesse. Believe me, sair, the
tr-r-easures that were sought by the Castilian knights of old through
all thees parts are indeed to be found here,--not the white silvaire of
Castilian dreams, but iron! Coppaire! Lead! Zinc!"
"I suppose," ventured Steering, "that it would be foolish to hope for
deposits in this part of the State similar to the deposits about Joplin,
and all through the thirty-mile stretch?"
"Pouf!" Old Bernique made one of his pretty gestures, but said nothing.
"You have," went on Steering, "you have to the west here the Canaan
Tigmores, Mr. Bernique?"
"Eh? Yessair, the Canaan Tigmores," repeated old Bernique, looking out
over the ridges of hills and the flats listlessly; so listlessly that,
by one of those flashes of intuitive perception that light us far along
waiting paths, Steering knew suddenly that he had to deal with a man
whose experience had somehow crossed the Canaan Tigmores.--"And also,
Mistaire Steering, we have to the far south the Boston Range, in
Arkansas, and far to the west the Kiamichi, in the Territoree."
"Yes, but about these Canaan Tigmores, Mr. Bernique," insisted Steering,
not at all deflected by Bernique's effort, "what about your Canaan
Tigmores, Mr. Bernique?" Steering's experience with the French
Missourian had been too fragmentary for anything but conjecture to come
of it, and his own plans were too immature and too heavily conditioned
for him to project them directly, but he had a feeling that he should
want to know Bernique better some fine day, and he was moved to get some
sort of grip upon the old man's interest while the chance lasted. "The
Canaan Tigmores are not as far away as the Boston Mountains, Mr.
Bernique. Much nearer than the Kiamichi. What's your idea about the
Canaan Tigmores--in relation to zinc, Mr. Bernique?"
"Pouf!" The old man made airy rings of smoke from the cigar with which
Steering had furnished him. He would not talk about the Canaan Tigmores
at all. "You will see Mr. Crittenton Madeira in Canaan about all that,"
he said. "And now, sir, I have the regret to leave you. Our roads part
at the sign-post yonder. I ride east."
"Well, tell you what I wish!" cried Steering, with the pertinacity that
was a part of him. "I am on my way to Mr. Crittenton Madeira now, and I
wish you would come to me in Canaan some soon day and let me tell you
the result of my business with him." Time was limited, for the horses
were close to the cross-roads sign-post. "The Canaan Tigmores won't
always belong to old Bruce Grierson, Mr. Bernique!" It was a random
shot, but it told against Bernique's glumness.
"Pouf! The bat-fool! The blind mole!"
"The Canaan Tigmores are entailed, Mr. Bernique! The next owner may have
eyes!"
"God grant!" growled Old Bernique.
"Grey eyes, eh, Mr. Bernique?" Steering flashed his own eyes smilingly
at the French Missourian. The horses were at the sign-post.
"Eh, what?" cried Old Bernique, "is it that----?"
"We shall meet again, Mr. Bernique?"
"I ride east for many a day, I think," said Bernique dubiously.
"But you come back to Canaan?"
"Ah, God in Heaven, yes!" cried the old man then, with a sudden fierce
impetuosity, "I ride east, ride west, ride the wide world ovaire, but
always I come back,--come back to Canaan." He stopped abruptly, as
though afraid of himself, and faced Steering for a silent moment.
Up to the silence, cleaving it gently, musically, there came
unexpectedly the notes of a rollicking song:
"_The taters grow an' grow, they grow!_"
On the instant old Bernique's face relaxed pleasantly. He half grunted,
half laughed. "The potato song!" he cried, his eyes gay, his mouth
twitching. "Mistaire Steering, if you will ride on a little way you will
have fine company. That is the tramp-boy yondaire. He is in the woods
above the gulch there. He will have emerge' to the road presently. The
yong scamp is musical, sair!"
"Aye, hear that!" cried Steering appreciatively, "gloriously musical!"
Out of the great green timber mounted the tenor notes, piercingly sweet,
pure, true, like a bird-call:
"_A tater's good 'ith 'lasses._"
Bernique's horse was growing restless. The old man rode a little nearer
Steering and regarded him searchingly. "Good-bye, sair," he said then,
"it shall be what you say. I shall come back to you in Canaan."
"Good-bye, Mr. Bernique. I'm glad to have you decide that way." Steering
clung to his notion that he and Bernique were to know each other better.
They shook hands under the cross-roads sign-post with understanding.
The rain was coming on fast. All the east lay grey behind Steering, all
the west grey before him as he moved away from the cross-roads. But out
of the west rolled the melody of the carolling boy, the voice of one
singing in the wilderness, young and undismayed.
Under the cross-roads sign-post old Bernique sat his horse motionless
for a time, looking after Steering. From Steering his eyes roamed afar
toward the Canaan Tigmores. A little shiver caught him. "The man that
was expect'," he mused, "the man that was expect'!" Then he, too, rode
away.
_Chapter Two_
PINEY OF THE WOODS
Where the ridge road dropped down close to the pale river at a dip in
the hills, Steering overtook the tramp-boy, hallooed to him, and watched
him, as he turned his pony about and sat waitingly. He was a youth of
sixteen or seventeen, and from under the peak of his felt hat, slouched
and old, peered out a slim young gypsy face, crowned by a thick mop of
black hair that tumbled about wide temples. Motionless there, the
tremble of his song still on his lips and the gladness of youth and
health on his face, the tramp-boy made Steering think of the rosy young
shepherd Adonis, he was so glowing, so fine and fresh.
"I have been right after you all the way from the cross-roads,"
explained Steering, by way of a beginning, riding up to the lad's side,
"I have just parted from a friend of yours,--Mr. Bernique,--so you see
we are almost friends ourselves."
"A'most." The boy smiled, showing white teeth. He seemed to like Bruce's
method of dealing with him. "Wuz Unc' Bernique cross because I didn't go
rat back like I said I'd do?" he queried slily.
"No, I think not. And for my part, I am glad you didn't, for I am hoping
that if you are going toward Poetical you won't mind my company. You
see, it's pretty dog-on lonely." A very little of the ridge road
sufficed to make Bruce sick for comradeship, and his voice showed it.
The boy turned an impressionable, sympathetic face.
"Come rat along," he said. He looked at Bruce a moment questioningly
before adding, "Reckin's haow you aint usen to the quiet yit. Taint so
lonely, the woods an' the hills whend you know um." He twisted his head
like a bird and looked out across the extensive sweep of the land and
the long slow curve of the river, a deep inspiration swelling his chest.
"Simlike they up an' talk to you, the woods an' the hills an' the quiet,
whend you know um," he said.
All on the instant Steering knew that, as in the case of Old Bernique,
here again was character. "Character" seemed distinctly the richest and
the pleasantest thing in Missouri. He rode in a little closer to his
companion, drawn to him irresistibly, recognising in him the sweet,
untutored poetry of a wildwood nature, whose young timidity was
trembling and steadying into the placating, magnetic assurance of a boy,
fresh-hearted as a berry. Steering had encountered the same sort of
poetry in other unspoiled boys, splendid child-men whom he had known in
other walks of life, and he had a quick affection for it. It was always
as though on its crystal clearness a man might see the white sails of
his own youth set back toward him.
"Yes," he answered, "I think you are right about that. They do talk, the
hills and the woods and the quiet,--only a fellow grows dull, gets his
ears full of electric gongs and push-bells, and forgets to listen."
The boy looked up with quick-witted question. "Y'aint f'm this part of
the kentry, air you?" he asked.
"No. I am from--well, from Bessietown last. Where are you from?"
The boy laughed and glanced gaily at his briar-torn clothes. "F'm the
woods," he said.
"My name is Bruce Steering."
"Mine's Piney."
They fell then to talking of many things, as they rode toward Poetical,
but inevitably they spoke chiefly of the great State of Missouri. On the
subject of Missouri the boy talked, as old Bernique had talked, with
expansive naivete. In his roamings he had ridden the State up and down,
and had found much to love in it. "You'll like her, too, all righty," he
told Bruce confidently, "whend you git broke to her." On one of youth's
candid impulses to speak up for the life on the inside, the cherished
desire, the gallant ideal, the buoyant fancy, he made a supple, sudden
divergence in the conversation. "D'you know," he said, "they aint _no_
place whur I'd drur be than Mizzourah ceppen only one."
"Where's that?" asked Bruce, and to his immense astonishment the boy
answered quickly:
"Italy."
"Why, how does that happen, Piney? Ever been there?"
"Nope. Hearn Unc' Bernique tell abaout it, thass all. It 'ud suit me,
though. I know that." His eyes grew dreamy and he seemed to be looking
far beyond Missouri. One could almost see the fine, illusory spell of
the far Latin land upon him, the spiritual bond, the pull of temperament
that made the hill boy at one with Italy, blest of poetry. "I d'n know
huccome I want to go so bad," he went on with a deep breath, "wouldn'
turn araoun' th'ee times on my heels to go anywhur else, but I shoo do
want to go to Italy."
"Were your people Italians, Piney?"
"Nope. Kim f'm S'loois. But still, I got that feelin' abaout Italy.
Simlike I'd be--oh, sorta at home tha'. Had that same feelin' ev' since
Unc' Bernique begand to tell me abaout Italy. I'm a-goin' tha', tew,
some day, all righty," he concluded at last, waking up from his little
dream slowly. "Goin' to be long over to Poetical, Mist' Steerin'?" he
diverged again, with his lively mental agility.
"No, son. From Poetical I am going on to"--Bruce stopped to gather
strength to project the word with the large and cadenced inflection he
had enjoyed in the hill farm people,--"going on to Canaan!"
"Gre't gosh!" said the boy, and something in the way he said it made
Bruce look at him quickly. Piney's brows were lifted and his lips were
pulled back. He seemed to try to be as much impressed as Bruce expected
him to be. To Steering this sort of comradeship was growing golden.
"Well, now," he said, playing with the little joy of being understood,
"haven't they the court-house at Canaan? And the railroad? And haven't
they Miss Betsy,--or Miss--Miss----"
"Sally."
"Ah, yes, Sally! Know Sally, son?"
"Ev'body in the Tigmores knows her."
"I am beginning to want to know Sally myself." Bruce let his eyes go
drowsing toward the pale river up which the slow rain was beating, and
talked foolishness idly: "Red-cheeked Sally! Freckled Sally! Roly-poly
Sally! What's a Missouri girl like anyway, Piney?"
"Wy, people think she's purty," protested the boy with a quick palpitant
shyness, "an' most people l----," he stopped trying to talk, laughing
brusquely and flushing with a very young man's self-consciousness.
"All of which goes to prove me an ass," cried Bruce, "for talking about
a lady whom I have never seen." Looking repentantly at Piney, he felt a
sudden ache for him. He was not very familiar with conditions in Canaan,
but it occurred to him suddenly that even in Canaan there might be
social gradations, and that the tramp-boy, rare little chap though he
seemed to be, was probably miles away from the daughter of the promoter,
Mr. Crittenton Madeira. "I retract, Piney," he added gravely.
"Aw!--not as I keer whut you say abaout her,--or whut anybody says."
Piney slashed at some brilliant sumach by the wayside and his mobile
lips jerked and quivered.
"I should have supposed that she was older--well, than you," said Bruce,
trying to set himself right.
"May be in what she knows,--aint in what she feels,--not as I keer----"
The boy was so deliciously new to his own emotions that they flashed
away beyond his control, minute by minute. His eyes looked misty, with
a little spark of high light cutting bravely through. He would not
finish his sentence. "Did Unc' Bernique say whend he's comin' back to
Canaan?" he asked moodily.
"No, he didn't, though I urged him to. That's a fine old man, Piney."
Piney's eyes softened beautifully. "Takes mighty good keer of me," he
said.
"Is he kin to you?"
"I d'n know abaout that. He's took my side always. Y'see, I aint got no
people an' I just ride araoun'. Y'see,"--Piney quivered with boyish
fire,--"I just _got_ to ride araoun'. I cayn't stay on no farm an' in no
haouse. Kills me. I got to git to the woods an' the hills. An' Unc'
Bernique he stands by me, an' keeps me in his shack whend they's any
trouble abaout it. Y'see, some people think I oughter--oughter work!"
Piney laughed from the gay, melodious depths of his vagabond heart and
Bruce laughed with him. "An' Unc' Bernique has he'ped me abaout that,"
explained the tramp-boy. He let his dancing eyes dart off to the west
where the hills were shouldering into a thickening drift of grey. "Hi,
look yonder!" he cried. "We got to cut and run to git to Poetical
before that rain."
So they cut and ran, the boy setting the pace and singing lustily, with
that high melody of voice, as of temperament, of his, as they dashed
down the road in the first cool scattering pelt of the rain. "Want to go
to the _ho_tel, don't you?" he called over his shoulder, and Bruce
called yes. It was grey, rainy twilight now, and through the gloom five
or six houses sprawled out across the little plateau toward which the
road twisted. Some geese flew up under the feet of the horses, squawking
wildly, some "razor-back" hogs grunted from the dust-wallows, some
cow-bells tinkled, some small yellow spheres of light shone through
windows.
"How far from Poetical, Piney?" shouted Steering.
"'Baout a foot," answered Piney. He made his lightning-like pony go more
slowly so that Bruce's horse might come alongside, and he shook his
head, his ready sympathy again on his face. "Say, it's goin' to be
kinder tough on you to stay here to-night, aint it? This is ev' spittin'
bit there is tew Poetical. Here's the _ho_tel."
They drew rein before a rickety two-story frame building and Bruce
lifted his shoulders shudderingly. A man came out on the hotel porch,
said "Howdy," and waited.
"Say,"--Piney in a lower tone, voiced a notion that evidently drifted in
to him on the high tide of his sympathy,--"why don't you ride over to
Mist' Crit Madeira's? Taint so far. I'll show you the way. They cand
take care of you over tha'. They'd be glad to have you. You cand caount
on that. It's that-a-way in Mizzourah." The boy's conscientious
earnestness was sweet. He was in good spirits again and he whisked one
roughly-booted foot out of its stirrup and laid it across his
saddle-horn, while he regarded Bruce. "You cand git ter see Miss Sally
ef you do that," he added, pursing up his lips, a subtle sense of humour
on his face. "You cand see what Mizzourah girls are like."
"Now come, Piney, you know I've been thinking everything beautiful about
Miss Sally since I found out--something----"
"Aw! Tisn't no such thing. She jes likes to hear me sing. _You're
crazy!_" The tramp-boy's young voice had its fashion of breaking and
shrilling into a high soprano, like a girl's, for emphasis; he was as
red as a beet, and he put his foot back in the stirrup, thrust out his
under jaw and looked at the stirrup as though he had to determine how
much wood had gone into its making. Again Bruce was conscious of a
little ache for the boy. "But you go on over tha'," insisted Piney.
"No! Thank you for trying to look out for me, son, but I shouldn't like
to do that. Oh, I can stand this all right," cried Bruce, with a flare
of big bravery and, turning to face the hotel, was seized by his
loneliness so violently that he shuddered again. "Here Piney!" he cried
on a sudden inspiration, "why won't you come in and stay with me? Huh?
How would that suit you? We can talk and smoke."
"Naw," Piney extended his hand and shook his head, as though to push the
hotel out of the range of possibilities for him, "I couldn't. Much
oblige'. But I cayn't sleep in haouses. Got to git back to the shack in
the woods. Wisht you'd go on over to Madeira's."
"No. I'll buck it out here alone," lamented Bruce. He hated to lose
Piney and take up the gloomy, rainy evening alone on this little, high,
remote place in the Missouri hills.
"See you again some day, then," Piney promised in final farewell. "I'm
up an' daown the Ridge rat frequent, I'll run 'crosst you."
"Well now, I should hope so," cried Bruce cordially. "Don't you ever
come to Canaan?"
"Nope. Hate a taown! But me an' Unc' Bernique will strike you sometime,
somewheres along the trail. S'long!"
"So long, Piney, so long!"
The boy turned his pony to the hills. The man on the porch came on out
to take charge of Bruce and Bruce's horse. Black night settled down.
Through the darkness cut the sound of the squawking geese, the tinkling
cow-bells, the grunting hogs. Lonely, lonely Missouri! Bruce went
inside, to sit in a little room upstairs, with his chin in his hand, his
eyes staring through the window, his thoughts roaming after Carington,
the office on Nassau Street, a girl who was a dainty fluff of lace and
silk. In his ears rang the sound of Carington's voice: "Why don't you
try Missouri,--Miss Gossamer sails,--Why don't you try Missouri,--Miss
Gossamer sails--" a faint, recedent measure, and intermingling with it
the sound of a boy's voice singing gaily on the misty hills:
"_A tater's good 'ith 'lasses._"
Steering leaned far out of the window, eager for the lad's music. It was
so sweet.
_Chapter Three_
THE PROMISED LAND
From the remotest beginning of things for the Southwest, Canaan had been
a "gre't taown." From the beginning she had been the county seat, and
from the beginning there had poured through her one long street, with
its two or three short tributaries, the whole volume of business of
Tigmore County; the strawberries, the chickens, the ginseng. Almost from
the beginning, too, she had had the newspaper and the hotel and some
talk about a bank. Canaanites held their heads high. So high that when
it began to be rumoured that the railroad was showing a disposition to
curve down toward Tigmore County, the Canaanites, unable to see past
their noses, appointed a committee to go up to Jefferson City to protest
to the Legislature against the proposed innovation. The committee
contended to the Legislature that the railroad would cut off trade by
starting up rival towns. It also contended that ox-teams had been used
for many years and were reliable, rain or shine, whereas in wet weather
the railroad tracks would get slick and be impracticable. Moreover, and
moreunder, there was no danger of an ox-team blowin' up and bustin' and
killin' somebody.
The railroad was melted to acquiescence by the appeal, and went its way
some ten miles west of Canaan. Towns sprang into being along the line of
the serpent's coil. Canaan said all right, but wait till the spring
rains come. The rains came, the trains went by over the slick tracks
gracefully. Canaan said all right, but wait till something busts. Time
passed, nothing busted. The County was careening westward. There was no
stopping it. Canaan kept her head high, but her heart grew as cold as
ice. Then the paper up at the new railroad station of Shaleville crudely
referred to Canaan as "that benighted hamlet." It was too much. When
Crittenton Madeira reached Canaan from St. Louis, the first thing that
he proposed for the city of his adoption was the Canaan Short Line, and,
coming at the opportune moment, the consummation of that proposition
placed Madeira at the head of Canaan's municipal life for the rest of
his days. In a very short time after he came to Canaan, Canaan not only
had a railroad, but her own railroad. Reassured, bland, she caught step
with progress, by and by saw that she was progress, and settled back
into her old superiority. Her trade prospered anew, the cotton came to
her depot, she got accustomed to the noise of her two trains daily, and
had lived through many contented years when the twentieth of September
of 1899 opened up like a rose, fair, fragrance-laden, warm, around her.
Out on the face of the day there was nothing to suggest change or
crisis, nothing to be afraid of, nothing to be hopeful for, a day like
yesterday, like to-morrow, a golden link in a golden monotony. At Court
House Square, a few farm-teams, strapping mules and big Studebakers,
stood at the hitching rail. A few people came and went up and down and
across the Square. Occasionally a mean-natured man said "huh-y!" to a
cow or "soo-y!" to a hog in the middle of Main Street. Some coatless
clerks, with great elbow-deep sleeve protectors on their arms and large
lumps of cravats at their throats, lounged in store doors. The most
conspicuous, as the most institutional, feature of the landscape was the
group idling on boxes in front of the old Grange store--just as they had
idled on boxes before the war. They were the same men, it was the same
store, and it was not inconceivable that they were the same boxes. As
the men idled they spat, somewhat to the menace of the passers-by,
though in defence of this avocation it may be argued that any truly
agile person, by watching carefully and seizing opportunity
unhesitatingly, could get by undefiled. Sometimes a vehicle rolled into
the street toward the Square, and when this happened it was amusement to
the men to say whose vehicle without looking up--jack-knives,
watch-fobs, and other valuables occasionally changing hands on an erring
guess between the slow, solemn trot of Mr. Azariah's Pringle's Bess and
the duck-like waddling of Mrs. Molly Jenkins' Tom, or between the
swinging canter of Miss Sally Madeira's Kentucky blacks and the running
walk of the small-hoofed Texas ponies from We-all Prairie. Once a great
waggon, piled high with cotton, creaked by; once a burnt-skinned boy,
hard as a nut, shrieking with an irrepressible sense of being alive,
loped past on a mustang. Once a small, old man, in mean clothes and with
a fine bearing, crossed the Square, cracking his whip nervously, his
spur clicking on his boot as he walked. Once a large florid man and a
tall girl came down the street and entered the door of a two-story brick
building next the Grange. The man had an expansive, blustering way. The
girl looked as though she were accustomed to admire the man and to
badger him; her face was turned up to his adoringly, while her
fun-hunting eyes, just sheathed under her lids, gleamed gaily. The
building had a plate-glass window across the front of it, and on the
window, in gold letters bordered in black, two legends were flung to the
public:
BANK OF CANAAN
CRITTENTON MADEIRA
When the man and the girl had gone into the Bank of Canaan, the group at
the Grange stopped gambling on the incoming teams and talked less
drowsily.
"Looks like that girl gets purdier and purdier."
"Mighty pleasant ways she keeps. Never gone back on her raisin'. Never
got too good for Mizzourah."
"As far as I go, I like her ways better'n her pappy's ways."
"Crit _is_ a little toploftical."
"They mighty fond of each other, though. Seems like she's not in a hurry
to marry and leave her pappy."
"Wall naow, I shouldn't be s'prised ef Miss Sally never did git married,
talkin' abaout marryin'. 'Twould not s'prise me a-tall, 'twouldn't." Mr.
Quin Beasley was talking. Mr. Beasley was the keeper of the Grange store
and admittedly a man of fine conversational powers. His jaws worked on
and he seemed able to get nutriment out of his ruminations long after a
cow would have gone back to grass hungrily. "Aint sayin' I never am
s'prised, becuz am, but do say that that wouldn't s'prise me, an' no
more would it." Mr. Beasley brought his jaws in from their loose
meanderings just as the clatter of a horse's hoofs became audible down
the side street that, a little way along, became the road to Poetical.
"Name the comer, Beasley. Up to the sugar-tree about now. Name-er,
name-er!" The challenger took from his pocket a huge horn knife, covered
it with his hand and shook it in the face of Mr. Beasley, who
responsively got his hand into his pocket and drew forth a knife, which
he held covered after the manner of his opponent.
"Unsight, unseen," said Mr. Beasley. "It's Price Mason's pony."
The challenger chuckled deprecatingly over the carelessness of judgment
evinced: "Price Mason's pony comes down with a hippety-hop," he remarked
pityingly--"lemme listen--it's--no, taint, aint favorin' his right front
foot--it's--wy!" the challenger suddenly twisted his head to one side
and held it there like a lean-crawed chicken deciding where to peck.
Simultaneously the other men glanced down the side street where it came
into the Square, and when someone said, or whistled, "Wy, who the
h-e-double-l _is_ it?" everybody was waiting for an answer.
They had not long to wait. The horseman in question galloped straight
toward the group and drew rein in front of them only a few minutes
later. He was a big fellow, broad and lithe of shoulder and chest, and
young and alert of face.
"Gentlemen," he called from his horse's back, "I want to find Mr.
Crittenton Madeira. Ah!" he laughed, a deep, rich note, as he saw the
gold and black sign, "gentlemen, I have found Mr. Madeira!" He leaped
from his horse and began to tether him to a staple, set in the pavement
in front of the Grange.
"Yes," replied a member of the Grange group, all of whom rose sociably,
"Crit and Miss Sally,"--the young man laughed again, softly, as though
he could not help it,--"Crit and Miss Sally jes went into the bank; I
don't reckin they've come out again."
"Miss Sally's come out again," interposed another Granger, "because I
seen her."
"It's the father that I want to see," said the horseman, with smiling
emphasis, "not the daughter, not Miss Sally." He passed through the bank
door, still smiling, and the Grange group looked at each other, rife
with speculation on the instant.
"Hadn't-a said not, I'd-a said it wuz Miss Sally he wanted to see.
Looks to me like he might be one of her beaux. Wears sumpin the same
clothes."
"Looked like a Yank to me."
"Uh-huh, betchew he lets his biscuits cool before he butters 'em."
"Haven't heard Crit say he was looking for a stranger."
"Reckon if you keep up with Crit's business, my friend, you'll have to
walk faster."
While the Grangers were wondering, supposing, reckoning, the man who
probably let his biscuits cool before he buttered them entered the Bank
of Canaan.
When the cage for the clerical force had been put into the Bank of
Canaan, there was not a great deal of the bank left, so the man stopped
where he thought he was least apt to be scraped, in the little space in
front of the Force's window. The Force put his pen behind his ear, and,
without waiting for inquiry or request, called off to the rear of the
room.
"Mist' Madeira! He's here! Can he come on in? If you'll go right down
there"--went on the Force,--"to that door in front of you, you can go
through it."
The thing seemed feasible, as the door was half open, so the visitor
attempted it. As he reached the door, however, his way was temporarily
blocked by a big red-faced man who held out both hands to him and took
possession of him with violent cordiality.
"God bless my soul! Howdy, howdy, howdy!" cried the big man. "Been
looking for you for a week. Only last night I told Sally that I wasn't
going to look for you any longer. Just eternally gave you up. How in the
Sam Hill have you taken so long to get here? Come on in and have a
seat."
As he talked, the Missourian led his guest inside a small private
office, handed him to a chair and stood up before him, big, colossal,
dominating the younger man, or at least meaning to.
"I am very rapidly concluding that you are Mr. Madeira, and that you
know that I am Steering," smiled the visitor, sinking into a chair
adaptably, though he realised that, for two men who had never seen each
other before, the meeting had been unusual. He also realised that, off
somewhere in the sphere of imponderable influences, the effect when his
hand clasped the big man's hand had been exactly that of the clashing of
two swords.
"Oh, God love you, there's no black magic about my knowing you for
Steering--only stranger that's been expected in Canaan for six weeks!"
cried Madeira, "and as for your guessing that I'm Madeira, you don't
deserve a bit of credit for it. My sign's out." His manner conveyed that
his sign was quite as much his personality as the black and gold letters
on the window. "Yes, I'm Madeira, and you are Steering, and we both
might as well own up to it. And now what's kept you so long on the road?
How'd you manage to put in a whole week between here and Springfield?"
Madeira seated himself in a swivel chair in front of his desk and eyed
his visitor with that aggressive geniality, that tremendous sense of
himself, warm and vivid in his face and manner. And, as in the moment
when he had faced Missouri from the top of the Tigmore Hills, Steering
had a feeling that he was being claimed, absorbed.
"Why, the explanation is of the simplest. At the very last minute,
there at Springfield, too late to get a word of advice out to you, I
fell in with some fellows who were going to ride across country toward
the Canaan Tigmores, and I joined them. They gave out at Bessietown, but
I've come every foot of the way over the Ridge on horseback, and alone
at that. I wanted to see Missouri, get acquainted with the home of my
ancestors, at close range, as it were."
Madeira chuckled. "God bless you, you certainly went in at the back door
to do it," he said. Madeira's God-bless-you's and God-love-you's were
valuable crutches to his conversation. With them and his bluster he
seemed able to cover a great deal of ground.
"And then I didn't hurry," went on Steering, "because I thought, from
what you wrote me, that it would, without doubt, be some weeks before
that amiable relative of mine could be dragged around to any real
attention to our projects."