the middle of May, and the anticipation of that concert was more
inspiring to him than all the gold mines in Colorado. As the time drew
near, a consuming thirst took possession of him, and not a gambler of
them all was the prey to a more feverish impatience than he. He
tormented himself with thoughts of every possible disaster which might
come to thwart him at the last minute. Visions of a railroad accident
which should result in the wholesale destruction of the entire
orchestra, haunted his mind. Another great fire might wipe Chicago out
of existence. The one thing which his imagination failed to conceive,
was the possibility that he, Lewis Peckham, might be deterred from
hearing the concert when once it should take place. In the interim he
made repeated calculations of the number of hours that must be lived
through before May 16th. Hillerton came across a half sheet of paper
covered with such calculations, and was somewhat puzzled by the
prominence of the figure 24. An odd price to pay for a mining stock. He
was afraid it was the "Adeline Maria," a notorious swindle. Well,
Peckham might as well get his lesson at the hands of the faithless
Adeline Maria as by any other means. He was bound to come to grief
sooner or later, but that was no business of Hillerton's.
On May 7th, Hillerton came down with pleurisy and Peckham suddenly found
himself at the head of affairs. Hillerton had no partner; no one but
Peckham could take his place. And in Peckham's moral constitution was a
substratum of unshakable fidelity upon which the astute Hillerton had
built. Cursing his own unimpeachable sense of duty, Peckham could see
but one straw of hope to clutch at. It might be a light case.
He went directly to the doctor's office, and with a feverish anxiety
apparent in his voice and bearing, he asked how long Hillerton was
likely to be laid up.
"Curious," thought the doctor during that carefully calculated pause
which your experienced practitioner so well knows the value of. "Curious
how fond folks get of James Hillerton. The fellow looks as though his
own brother were at death's door."
"I think there is nothing serious to apprehend," he answered soothingly.
"Hillerton has a good constitution. I've no doubt he will be about again
by the end of the month."
Peckham went white to the lips.
"I suppose that's the best you can promise," he said.
"Yes, but I can promise that safely."
The confidential clerk went back to the office filled with a profound
loathing of life.
"If liquor wasn't so nasty, I'd take to drink," he said to himself as he
sat down at Hillerton's desk and set to work.
The next day was Sunday, and Peckham was at something of a loss what to
do with it. He hated the sight of his room. The odor of the straw
matting and the pattern of the wallpaper were inextricably associated
with those anticipations which he had been rudely cheated out of. To
escape such associations he took an electric car to the Bluffs, those
rock-bound islands in the prairie sea which lie a couple of miles to the
east of the town. There was only one other passenger besides himself, a
man with a gun, who softly whistled a popular air, very much out of
tune. Peckham came perilously near kicking the offender, but, happily,
the fellow got off just in time, and went strolling across the open with
the gun over his shoulder. Once he stooped to pick a flower which he
stuck in his buttonhole. Queer, thought Peckham, that a man should go
picking flowers and whistling out of tune! There were the mountains,
too. Some people made a great deal of them--great, stupid masses of dumb
earth! He remembered he had thought them fine himself the other day when
there were shadows on them. But to-day! How the sun glared on their ugly
reddish sides! And what was it that had gone wrong anyhow? He could not
seem to remember, and on the whole he did not wish to.
Now Lewis Peckham was neither losing his mind, nor had he been drowning
his sorrows in the conventional dram. The simple fact of the matter was
that he had not slept fifteen minutes consecutively all night long, and
his brain was not likely to clear up until he had given it a chance to
recuperate. By the time he had left the car and climbed the castellated
side of Pine Bluff he was still miserably unhappy, but he had altogether
lost track of the cause of his unhappiness. He strayed aimlessly along
the grassy top of the Bluff, away from the road, and down a slight
incline, into a sheltered hollow. At the foot of a strange,
salmon-colored column of rock was a little group of budding scrub-oaks.
Peckham crawled in among them, and in about thirty seconds he was fast
asleep. There he lay for hours. A blue jay, chattering in a pine-tree
near at hand, made no impression upon his sleep-deadened ear; a pair of
ground squirrels scuttled in and out among the scrub-oaks, peering shyly
at the motionless intruder, and squeaked faintly to one another, with
vivacious action of nose and tail. They were, perhaps, discussing the
availability of a certain inviting coat-pocket for purposes of domestic
architecture. An occasional rumble of wheels on the road, a dozen rods
away, startled the birds and squirrels, but Peckham slept tranquilly on,
and dreamed that the Leitmann Orchestra was playing in the Springtown
Opera House, and that he, by reason of his being an early Christian
martyr, was forced to roast at the stake just out of hearing of the
music.
[Illustration: PINE BLUFF.]
It was well on in the afternoon when he came to himself, to find his
boots scorched almost to a crisp in the sun which had been pouring upon
them. He pulled himself out from among the scrub-oaks, and got his feet
out of the sun. Then he looked at his watch; and after that he looked at
the view.
The view was well worth looking at in the mellow afternoon light.
Peckham gazed across the shimmering gold of the plain, to the mountains,
which stood hushed into a palpitating blue; the Peak alone, white and
ethereal, floating above the foot hills in the sun. Peckham was
impressed in spite of himself. It made him think of a weird, mystical
strain of music that had sometimes haunted his brain and yet which he
had never been able to seize and capture. As he gazed on the soaring,
mystical Peak, he remembered his dream, and slowly, but very surely, he
perceived that a purpose was forming in his mind, almost without the
connivance of his will. He got upon his feet and laughed aloud. A sudden
youthful intoxication of delight welled up within him and rang forth in
that laugh. Life, for the first time in three years, seemed to him like
a glorious thing; an irresistible, a soul-stirring purpose had taken
possession of him, and he knew that no obstacle could stand against it.
He started for the town almost on a run, scorning the prosaic cars which
harbored passengers who whistled out of tune. He struck directly across
the intercepting plain, and though he soon had to slacken his pace, his
winged thoughts went on before him, and he took no note of the distance.
That evening Peckham sent off a telegram of one hundred and eleven words
to Heinrich Leitmann, of the Leitmann Orchestra, and Monday afternoon
the following answer came:
"Full Leitmann Orchestra can engage for Springtown, evening of
19th. Terms, five thousand dollars, expenses included. Answer
before 13th. Buffalo, N. Y.
(Signed) "H. LEITMANN."
And now Lewis Peckham came out a full-fledged speculator. He sold out of
four mines and bought into six; he changed his ventures three times in
twenty-four hours, each time on a slight rise. He haunted the
stockbroker's offices, watching out for "pointers"; he button-holed
every third man on the street; he drank in every hint that was dropped
in his hearing. On Tuesday afternoon he "cleaned up" his capital and
found himself in possession of three thousand five hundred dollars.
"Peckham's going it hard," men said at the club. "He must be awfully
bitten."
All day Wednesday he could not muster courage to put his money into
anything, though stocks were booming on every hand. And yet on
Wednesday, as on Monday and on Tuesday, he did his office work and
superintended that of his subordinates methodically and exactly. The
substratum of character which the long-headed Hillerton had built upon,
held firm.
On Wednesday evening Peckham stood, wild-eyed and haggard, in the light
of Estabrook's drug-store and scanned the faces of the foot-passengers.
Early in the evening Elliot Chittenden came along with a grip-sack in
his hand, just down from Lame Gulch. Peckham fell upon him like a
footpad, whispering hoarsely:
"For God's sake give me a pointer."
"Jove!" said Chittenden, afterward, "I thought it was a hold-up, sure as
trumps."
At the moment, however, he maintained his composure and only said:
"The smelter returns from the Boa Constrictor are down to-day. Two
hundred and seventeen dollars to the ton. I've got all the stuff I can
carry, so I don't mind letting you in. The papers will have it
to-morrow, though they're doing their best to keep it back."
Into the Boa Constrictor Peckham plunged the next morning, for all he
was worth. His money brought him ten thousand shares. The morning papers
did not have it, and all that day the Boa Constrictor lay as torpid as
any other snake in cold weather. Peckham's face had taken on the tense,
wild look of the gambler. He left the office half a dozen times during
the day to look at the stock-boards. He had a hundred minds about taking
his money out and putting it into something else. But nothing else
promised anything definite, and he held on.
The evening papers gave the smelter returns, precisely as Chittenden had
stated them. Now would the public "catch on" quick enough, or would they
take ten days to do what they might as well come to on the spot?
At nine o'clock the next morning, Peckham was on the street lying in
wait for an early broker. It was not until half-past nine that they
began to arrive.
"Any bids for Boa Constrictor?" Peckham inquired of Macdugal, the
first-comer.
"They were bidding forty cents at the club last night, with no takers."
"Let me know if you get fifty cents bid."
"How much do you offer?"
"Ten thousand shares."
"Oh! see here, Peckham! I wouldn't sell out at such a price. The thing's
sure to go to a dollar inside of thirty days."
"I don't care a _hang_ where it goes in thirty days. I want the money
to-day."
"Whew! Do you know anything better to put it into?"
"I know something _a million times better_!" cried Peckham, in a voice
sharp with excitement.
"The fellow's clean daft," Macdugal remarked to his partner, a few
minutes later.
"I should say so!" was the reply. "Queer, too, how suddenly it takes
'em. A week ago I should have said that was the coolest head of the lot.
He didn't seem to care a chuck for the whole business. Wonder if he's
gone off his base since Hillerton was laid up. Hope he isn't in for a
swindle. He'd be just game for a sharper to-day."
At noon Peckham sold his ten thousand shares of B. C. for five thousand
dollars. He could have got six thousand the next morning, but then, as
he reflected, what good would it have done him? His first act after
depositing the check received for his stock, was to send the following
telegram:
"Leitmann Orchestra engaged for Springtown, May 19th. Five thousand
dollars deposited in First National Bank. Particulars by letter.
(Signed) "LEWIS PECKHAM."
It is not a usual thing for an impecunious young man to invest five
thousand dollars in a single symphony concert, but there was one feature
of the affair which was more unusual still; namely, the fact that the
consummation of that same young man's hopes was complete. For two
beatific hours on the evening of the memorable 19th of May, Lewis
Peckham's cup was full. He sat among the people in the balcony, quiet
and intent, taking no part in the applause, looking neither to the right
nor to the left. But if he gave no outward sign, perhaps it was because
his spirit was so far uplifted as to be out of touch with his body.
The money which he had expended in the gratification of what the
uninitiated would call a whim, seemed to him the paltriest detail, quite
unworthy of consideration. When he thought of it at all it was to recall
the story of the gaunt customer who paid so handsomely for his whisky,
and to note the confirmation of his theory, that "if you only want
anything bad enough no price is too high to pay for it."
And in still another particular Lewis Peckham's experience was unique.
He never gambled again. He had a feeling that he had got all he was
entitled to from the fickle goddess. When pressed to try his luck once
more he would only say, with his old, indifferent shrug: "No, thanks.
I've had my fling and now I've got through."
X.
A ROCKY MOUNTAIN SHIPWRECK.
"Bixby's Art Emporium" was a temple of such modest exterior that
visitors were conscious of no special disappointment upon finding that
there was, if possible, less of "art" than of "emporium" within. A
couple of show-cases filled with agate and tiger-eye articles,
questionable looking "gems," and the like; a table in the centre of the
shop piled high with Colorado views of every description; here and there
on the walls a poor water-color or a worse oil-painting; a desultory
Navajo rug on a chair: these humble objects constituted the nearest
approach to "art" that the establishment could boast. The distinctive
feature of the little shop was the show-case at the rear, filled with
books of pressed wildflowers; these, at least, were the chief source of
income in the business, and therefore Marietta spent every odd
half-hour in the manufacture of them. A visitor, when he entered, was
apt to suppose that the shop was empty; for the black, curly head bent
over the work at the window behind the back counter was not immediately
discernible. It was a fascinating head, as the most unimpressionable
visitor could not fail to observe when the tall figure rose from behind
the counter,--fascinating by reason of the beautiful hair, escaping in
soft tendrils from the confining knot; fascinating still more by reason
of the perfect grace of poise. The face was somewhat sallow and very
thin; care and privation had left their marks upon it. The mouth was
finely modelled, shrewd and humorous; but it was the eyes, dark, and
darkly fringed as those of a wood-nymph, that dominated the face; one
had a feeling that here was where the soul looked out. To hear Marietta
speak, however, was something of a disenchantment; her tone was so very
matter-of-fact, her words so startlingly to the point. If the soul
looked out at the eyes, the lips at least had little to say of it.
The visitor, if a stranger, had an excellent opportunity of making his
observations on these points, for Marietta usually remained standing,
in a skeptical attitude, behind the distant counter until he had shown
signs of "business" intentions. She was very ready to stand up and rest
her back, but she had no idea of coming forward to indulge an aimless
curiosity as to the origin and price of her art treasures. An old
customer, on the other hand, was treated with an easy good-fellowship so
marked that only those who liked "that sort of thing" ever became old
customers.
"Well, how's everything?" was the usual form of greeting, as the tall
willowy figure passed round behind the counters and came opposite the
new-comer.
"Did your folks like the frame?" would come next, if the customer
chanced to have had a frame sent home recently. Marietta was agent for a
Denver art firm, which framed pictures at a "reasonable figure"; or
rather, Jim was the agent, and Jim being Marietta's husband, and too
sick a man of late to conduct his business, did not have to be reckoned
with.
In spite of the fact that she was generally known as "Mrs. Jim," many
people forgot that Marietta had a husband, for he was never visible
now-a-days. But Marietta never forgot, never for one single instant, the
wasted figure in the easy chair at the window above the shop, the pale
sunken face with the shining eyes, turned always toward the stairway the
instant her foot touched the lower step. The look of radiant welcome
that greeted her as often as her head appeared above the opening on a
level with the uneven deal floor, that look was always worth coming up
for.
She did not bring her work and sit upstairs with Jim, because there was
but one small window in the dingy, slant-roofed loft, that served as
bed-chamber, kitchen, and parlor, and she knew he liked to sit at the
window and watch the panorama of the street below. The broad, sunny
Springtown thoroughfare, with its low, irregular wooden structures,
likely, at any moment, to give place to ambitious business "blocks";
with its general air of incompleteness and transitoriness brought into
strong relief against the near background of the Rocky Mountains, was
alive with human interest. Yet, singularly enough, it was not the
cowboy, mounted on his half-broken bronco that interested Jim; not the
ranch wagon, piled high with farm produce, women, and children; not even
the Lame Gulch "stage,"--a four-seated wagon, so crowded with
rough-looking men that their legs dangled outside like fringe on a
cowboy's "shaps,"--none of these sights made much impression on the sick
man at his upper window. The work-a-day side of life was far too
familiar to Jim to impress him as being picturesque or dramatic. What he
did care for, what roused and satisfied his imagination, was what was
known in his vocabulary as "style." It was to the "gilded youth" of
Springtown that he looked for his entertainment. He liked the yellow
fore-and-aft buckboards, he enjoyed the shining buggies, especially
when their wheels were painted red; dog-carts and victorias ranked high
in his esteem. He knew, to be sure, very little about horses; their most
salient "points" escaped him: he gave indiscriminate approval to every
well-groomed animal attached to a "stylish" vehicle, and the more the
merrier! It is safe to declare that he was a distinctly happier man from
that day forward on which Mr. Richard Dayton first dazzled the eyes of
Springtown with his four-in-hand.
This happened early in February and the day chanced to be a warm one, so
that Jim's window was open. He was sitting there, gazing abstractedly at
the Peak which rose, a great snowy dome, above Tang Ling's shop across
the way. Jim seldom spoke of the mountains, nor was he aware of paying
any special attention to them. "I ain't much on Nature," he had always
maintained; and since Marietta admitted the same lack in herself there
seemed to be nothing in that to regret. Yet it is nevertheless true that
Jim had his thoughts, as he sat, abstractedly gazing at those shining
heights, thoughts of high and solemn things which his condition brought
near to him, thoughts which he rarely said anything about. To-day, as he
watched the deep blue shadows brooding upon the Peak, he was wondering
in a child-like way what Heaven would be like. Suddenly the musical
clink of silver chains struck his ear, and the look of abstraction
vanished. He had never heard those bridle chains before. Somebody had
got something new! A moment more, and, with a fine rush and jingle, and
a clear blast from the horn, the four-in-hand dashed by.
"Hurrah!" Jim cried huskily, as Marietta's foot trod the stair.
"I say, Jim! You seen 'em?"
She came up panting, for the stairs were very steep and narrow.
"Seen 'em? I rather guess! Wasn't it bully? Do you reckon they'll come
back this way?"
"Course they will! Don't you s'pose they like to show themselves off?
And the horn! did you hear the horn, Jim? I wonder if that's the way
they sound in Switzerland!"
She came up and stood with her hand on Jim's shoulder, looking down into
the street.
"And just to think of it, Jim!" she said, a moment later. "They say he's
made lots of money right here in mines! If we was in mines we might have
made some."
"More likely to lose it," Jim answered. He was not of the stuff that
speculators are made of.
The shop-bell rang, and Marietta hurried downstairs, to spend ten
minutes in selling a ten-cent Easter card; while Jim sat on, forgetting
his burden of weakness and pain, and all his far-away dreams, in
anticipation of the returning four-in-hand.
In Marietta, too, the jingle of the four-in-hand had struck a new
key-note; her thoughts had taken a new turn. If Mr. Dayton had made
money in mines why should not she and Jim do the same? They needed it
far more than he did. To him it only meant driving four horses instead
of one; to them it might mean driving one horse once in a while. It
might even mean giving up the tiresome, profitless shop, and going to
live in a snug little house of their own, where there should be a porch
for Jim in pleasant weather and, for cold days, a sitting-room with two
windows instead of one where she could work at her flower-books, while
they planned what they should do when Jim got well. She sat over her
pressed flowers, which she handled with much skill, while she revolved
these thoughts in her mind. She was busy with her columbines, a large
folio of which lay on a table near by. At her left hand was a pile of
square cards with scalloped edges, upon which the columbines were to be
affixed; at her right was a small glass window-pane smeared with what
she called "stickum." As she deftly lifted the flowers, one by one,
without ever breaking a fragile petal, she laid each first upon the
"stickum"-covered square of glass and then upon the Bristol-board. She
was skilful in always placing the flower precisely where it was to
remain upon the page, so that the white surface was kept unstained. Then
she further secured each brittle stem with a tiny strip of paper pasted
across the end. She lifted a card and surveyed her work critically,
thinking the while, not of the wonderful golden and purple flower,
holding its beautiful head with as stately a grace as if it were still
swaying upon its stem, but of the great "mining-boom" that was upon the
town, and of the chances of a fortune.
Half-an-hour had passed since the shop-bell had last tinkled, and
Marietta was beginning to think of making Jim a flying call, when she
heard his cane rapturously banging the floor above. This was the signal
for her to look out into the street, which she promptly did, and,
behold! the four-in-hand had stopped before the door, a groom was
standing at the leaders' heads, and the master of this splendid equipage
was just coming in, his figure looming large and imposing in the
doorway.
"Good morning, Mrs. Jim," he called before he was well inside the shop.
"I want one of your ten-dollar flower-books."
Quite unmoved by the lavishness of her customer, Marietta rose in her
stately way, and drew forth several specimens of her most expensive
flower-book. Dayton examined them with an attempt to be discriminating,
remarking that the book was for some California friends of his wife who
were inclined to be "snifty" about Colorado flowers.
"That's the best of the lot," Marietta volunteered, singling out one
which her customer had overlooked.
"So it is," he replied; "do it up for me, please."
This Marietta proceeded to do in a very leisurely manner. She was making
up her mind to a bold step.
"Say, Mr. Dayton," she queried, as she took the last fold in the
wrapping paper; "what's the best mine to go into?"
"The best mine? Oh, I wouldn't touch one of them if I were you!"
"Yes, you would, if you were me! So you might as well tell me a good one
or I might make a mistake."
She held her head with the air of a princess, while the look of a
wood-nymph still dwelt in her shadowy eyes, but words and tone meant
"business."
"How much money have you got to lose?"
"Oh, fifty or a hundred dollars," she said carelessly.
Dayton strolled to the door and back again before he answered. He was
annoyed with Mrs. Jim for placing him in such a position, but he did not
see his way out of it. The next man she asked might be a sharper. His
ideas of woman's "sphere" were almost mediaeval, but somehow they did not
seem to fit Mrs. Jim's case.
"Well," he said at last with evident reluctance; "the 'Horn of Plenty'
doesn't seem to be any worse than the others, and it may be a grain
better. But it's all a gamble, just like roulette or faro, and I should
think you had better keep out of it altogether."