THE WOMAN UNAFRAID
They were to have another opportunity to puzzle over the character of
The Lily before a week passed, when, wishing to make out a new bill of
supplies, they went down to the camp. The night was fragrant with the
spring of the mountains, summer elsewhere--down in the levels where
other occupations than mining held rule. The camp had the same dead
level of squalor in appearance, the same twisting, wriggling, reckless
life in its streets.
"Fine new lot of stuff in," the trader said, pushing his goods in a
brisk way. "Never been a finer lot of stuff brought into any camp than
I've got here now. Canned tomatoes, canned corn, canned beans, canned
meat, canned tripe, canned salmon. That's a pretty big layout, eh? And
I reckon there never was no better dried prunes and dried apricots
ever thrown across a mule's back than I got. Why, they taste as if
you was eatin' 'em right off the bushes! And Mexican beans! Hey, look
at these! Talk about beans and sowbelly, how would these do?"
He plunged his grimy hand into a sack, and lifted a handful of beans
aloft to let them sift through his fingers, clattering, on those
below. The partners agreed that he had everything in the world that
any one could crave in the way of delicacies, and gave him their
orders; then, that hour's task completed, sauntered out into the
street.
Dick started toward the trail leading homeward, but Bill checked him,
with a slow: "Hold on a minute."
The younger man turned back, and waited for him to speak.
"I'd kind of like to go down to the High Light for a while," the big
man said awkwardly. "We ought to go round there and see Mrs. Meredith,
and patronize her as far as a few soda pops, and such go, hadn't we?
Seein' as how she's been right good to us."
Dick, nothing loath to a visit to The Lily, assented, although the
High Light, with its camp garishness, was an old and familiar sight to
any one who had passed seven years in outlying mining regions.
The proprietress was not in sight when they entered, but the
bartenders greeted them in a more friendly way, and the Chinese, who
seemed forever cleaning glasses, grinned them a welcome. They nodded
to those they recognized, and walked back to the little railing.
"Lookin' for Lily?" the man with the bangs asked, trying to show his
friendliness. "She ain't here now, but she'll be here soon. She's
about due. Go on up and grab a box for yourselves. The house owes you
fellers a drink, it seems to me. Can I send you up a bottle of Pumbry?
The fizzy stuff's none too good for you, I guess."
He appeared disappointed when Dick told him to send up two lemonades,
and turned back to lean across the bar and hail some new arrival. The
partners went up and seated themselves in one of the cardboard stalls
dignified by the name of boxes, and, leaning over the railing in front
between the gilt-embroidered, red-denim curtains, looked down on the
dancers. Two or three of their own men were there, grimly waltzing
with girls who tried to appear cheerful and joyous.
Shrill laughter echoed now and then, and when the music changed a man
with a voice like a megaphone shouted: "Gents! Git pardners for the
square sets!" and the scene shifted into one of more regular pattern,
where different individuals were more conspicuous. Some of the more
hilarious cavorted, and tried clumsy shuffles on the corners when the
raucous-voiced man howled: "Bala-a-ance all!" and others merely jigged
up and down with stiff jerks and muscle-bound limbs, gravely, and with
a desperate, earnest endeavor to enjoy themselves.
A glowering, pockmarked man, evidently seeking some one with no good
intent, pulled open the curtains at the back of the box, and stared at
them in half-drunken gravity; then discovering his mistake, with a
clumsy "Beg pardon, gents," let the draperies drop, and passed on down
the row.
Across from them, in the opposite box, some man from the placers, with
his face tanned to a copper color, was hilariously surrounding himself
with all the girls he could induce to become his guests, holding a box
party of his own. He was leaning over the rail and bellowing so loudly
that his voice could be heard above the din: "Hey, down there! You,
Tim! Bring me up a bottle of the bubbly water--two bottles--five--no,
send up a case. Whoop-ee! Pay on seventeen! This is where little Hank
Jones celebrates! Come on up, girls. Here's where no men is wanted.
It's me all by my little lonely!"
Some one threw a garland of paper flowers round his neck, which he
esteemed as a high honor, and shook it out over the floor below, where
all the dancers were becoming confused in an endeavor simultaneously
to watch his antics, and keep their places in the dance.
"The most disgusting object in the world is a man who drinks!" came a
cold voice behind them, and they turned to see The Lily standing back
of them, and frowning at the scene across.
Bill turned to greet her, holding out his hand, and his broad
shoulders shut out the view of Bacchanalia.
"The bartender says you drink nothing stronger than lemonade," she
said, looking up at the giant, "and I am glad to hear it. It is a
pleasure to meet men like you once in a while. It keeps one from
losing faith in all."
She sat down in one of the chairs--a trifle wearily, Dick thought, and
he noticed that there were lines under the eyebrows, melancholy,
pensive, that he had not observed before in the few times they had met
her. As on the occasion of their meeting at the mine, she appeared to
sense his thoughts, and turned toward him as if to defend herself.
"You are asking yourself and me the question, why, if I dislike
liquor, and gambling, and all this, I am owner of the High Light?" she
said, reverting to her old-time hardness. "Well, it's because I want
money. Does that answer you?"
"I didn't ask you a question," he retorted.
"No, but it's just like it always is with you! You looked one. I'm not
sure that I like you; you look so devilish clean-minded. You always
accuse me, without saying anything so that I can have a chance to
answer back. It isn't fair. I don't like to be made uncomfortable. I
am what I am, and can't help it."
She turned her frowning eyes on Bill, and they softened. She relented,
and for the first time in the evening her rare laugh sounded softly
from between her white, even teeth.
"You see," she said, addressing him, "I can't help being angry with
Mr. Townsend. I think I'm a little afraid of him. I'm a coward in some
ways. You're different. You just smile kindly at me, as if you were
older than Methuselah, and had all the wisdom of Solomon or Socrates,
and were inclined to be tolerant when you couldn't agree."
"Go on," Bill said. "You're doin' all the talkin'."
"I have a right to exercise at least one womanly prerogative, once in
a while," she laughed. And then: "But I am talking more than usual.
Tell me about the mine and the men? How goes it?"
They had but little to tell her, yet she seemed to find it interesting,
and her eyes had the absent look of one who listens and sees distant
scenes under discussion to the exclusion of all immediate surroundings.
"Have you met Bully Presby yet?" she asked.
They smiled, and told her they had.
"He is a wonderful man," she said admiringly. "He makes his way over
everything and everybody. He is ruthless in going after what he wants.
He fears nothing above or below. I honestly believe that if the arch
demon were to block him on the trail, Bully Presby would take a chance
and try to throw him over a cliff. I don't suppose he ever had a vice
or a human emotion. I believe I'd like him better if he had a little
of both."
Dick laughed outright, and stared at her with renewed interest. He
admitted to himself that she was one of the most fascinating women he
had ever met, and wondered what vicissitude could have brought such a
woman, who used classical illustrations, fluent, cultivated speech,
and who was strong grace exemplified, to such a position. She seemed
master of her surroundings, and yet not of them, looking down with a
hard and lofty scorn on the very men from whom she made her living. He
began to believe what was commonly said of her, that her virtue,
physical and ethical, was unassailable.
There was a crash and a loud guffaw of laughter. They pulled the
curtains farther apart, and looked across at the man who was
celebrating. He had dropped a bottle of wine to the floor below, and
was beseeching some one to bring it up to him.
Bill leaned farther out of the box to look, and suddenly the drummer
saw him, pointed in his direction with a drumstick, and spoke to a
girl leaning near by. She, too, looked up, and then clapped her
hands.
"There he is!" she called in her high treble voice. "Up there in
number five! The man that carried Pearl out and got burned himself."
Some man near her climbed to the little stage and pointed, took off
his hat, and shouted: "A tiger for that man! Now! All together!
Whooee! Whooee! Whooee! Ow!"
In the wild yell that every one joined, Bill was abashed. He shrank
back into the box, flushed and embarrassed, while Dick laughed
outright, with boyish enjoyment at his confusion, and The Lily watched
him with a soft look in her eyes, and then stared down at the floor
below.
Suddenly her figure seemed to stiffen, and the look on her face
altered to one of cold anger. She peered farther over as if to assure
herself of something, and Dick, following her eyes, saw they were
fixed on a man who stood leaning against one of the pillars near the
entrance to the dance floor. He alone, apparently, was taking no part
in the demonstration in Bill's honor, but glowered sullenly toward the
box. It took no long reasoning for Dick to know why. The man was the
one who had been the watchman at the mine when they arrived.
The band struck up again, and another dance began, the enthusiasts
forgetting Bill as quickly as they had saluted him; but the
ex-watchman continued to lean against the post, a picture of
sullenness, and in the box The Lily stood with knitted brows, as if
trying to recollect him.
"Well," she said at last, "I must go now. Come and see me whenever
you can, both of you. I like you."
They arose and followed her out of the box, and down the flimsy
stairs that led to the floor below. She paused on the bottom step, and
clutched the casing with both hands, then tried to get a closer
look at the ex-watchman, who had turned away until but a small part
of his face was exposed. She walked onward, still looking angrily
preoccupied, to the end of the bar, and the partners were on the
point of bidding her good-night, when she abruptly started, seemed to
tense herself, and exclaimed: "Now I know him!"
The partners wondered when she made a swift clutch under the end of
the bar and slipped something into the bosom of her jacket. She took
five or six determined steps toward the ex-watchman and tapped him on
the shoulder.
He whirled sharply as if his mind had guilty fears, and faced her
defiantly.
Those immediately around, suspecting something unusual, stopped to
watch them, and listened.
"So you are here in Goldpan, are you, Wolff?" she demanded, with a
cold sneer in her voice.
He gave her a fierce, defiant stare, and brazenly growled: "You're
off. My name's not Wolff. My name's Brown."
"You lie!" she flared back, with a hard anger in her voice. "Your name
is Gus Wolff! You get out of this place, and don't you ever come in
again! If you do, I'll have you thrown out like a dog."
He glowered at the crowd that was forming around him, as crowds
invariably form in any controversy, and then started toward the door,
but he made a grave mistake. He called back a vile epithet as he
went.
"Stop!" she commanded him, with an imperious, compelling tone.
He half-turned, and then shrugged his shoulders, and made as if to
move on.
"Stop, I said!"
He turned again to face a pistol which she had snatched from her
jacket, and now the partners, amazed, understood what that swift
motion had meant. He halted irresolutely.
"You used a name toward me that I permit no man to use," she said
fiercely. "So I shall explain to these men of Goldpan who you are, Gus
Wolff! You were in Butte five years ago. You induced a poor, silly
little fool named Rose Trevor to leave the dance hall where she
worked, and go with you. You were one of those who believe that women
are made to be brutalized. But good as most of them are, and bad as
some of them are, there is none, living or dead, that you are or were
fit to consort with. You murdered her. Don't you dare to deny it! They
found her dead outside of your cabin. They arrested you, and tried
you, and should have hanged you, but they couldn't get the proof of
what everybody believed, that you--you brute--had killed, then thrown
her over the rocks to claim that she had fallen there in the
darkness."
She paused as if the tempest of her words had left her breathless, and
men glared at him savagely. It seemed as if every one had crowded
forward to hear her denunciation.
"Bah!" she added scornfully. "The jury was made up of fools, and men
knew it. The sheriff himself told you so when he slipped you out of
the jail where he had protected you, and let you loose across the
border in the night. Didn't he? And he told you that if ever you came
back to Butte, he would not turn a hand to keep you from the clutches
of the mob; didn't he? And now you are plain 'Mister Brown,' working
somewhere back up in the hills, are you? Well, Mr. Brown, you keep
away from the High Light. Get out!"
Some one made a restless motion, and declared the man should be
hanged, even now, but The Lily turned her angry eyes on the speaker,
and silenced him.
"Not if I can help it, or any of my friends can," she said coolly.
"There'll be no mobbing anybody around here. I've said enough. Let him
alone, but remember what kind of a blackguard he is. That's all!"
She turned back and tossed the pistol behind the bar, and the crowd,
as if her words and the advice of the more contained element
prevailed, resumed its play. She looked up, and saw the partners
waiting to bid her good-night, and suddenly bit her lip, as if ashamed
that they had seen her fury unmasked.
"We're going now," Bill said, reaching out his hand. She did not take
it, but looked around the room with unreadable eyes.
"I'll walk with you to the beginning of your trail," she said. "I'm
sick of this," and led the way out into the night.
For half the length of the long street, she strode between them,
wordless, and then suddenly halted and held her arms apart
appealingly.
"What must you think of me?" she said, with a note of grief in her
voice. "Oh, you two don't know it all! You don't know what it takes to
make a woman, who tries to be decent, rebellious at everything under
the skies. What brutes there are walking the earth! Sometimes, lately,
I begin to doubt if there is a God!"
"And that," exclaimed the quiet, steadfast young voice at her side,
"is unworthy of you and your intelligence."
She halted again, as if thinking.
"And I," said the giant, in his deep, musical tones, "know there's
one. It takes more than men to make me believe there ain't. I know it
when I look at them!" He waved his hands at the starlit mountains
surrounding them, and towering in serenity high up to the cloudless
spaces.
"I'd be mighty ashamed to doubt when I can see them," he said, "and if
they went away, I'd still believe it; because if I didn't, I couldn't
see no use in livin' any more. It's havin' Him lean down and whisper
to you once in a while, in the night, when everything seems to be
goin' wrong, 'Old boy, you did well,' that keeps it all worth while
and makes a feller stiffen his back and go ahead, with his conscience
clean and not carin' a cuss what anybody says or thinks, so longs as
he knows that the Lord knows he did the right thing."
She faltered for a moment, and Dick, staring through the darkness at
her, could not decide whether it was because the woman in her was
melting after the storm of anger, or whether she was merely weighing
his partner's words. As abruptly as had been any of her actions in all
the time they had known her, she turned and walked away from them, her
soft "Good-night" wafting itself back with a note of profound sadness
and misery.
"I've decided what she is," Bill said, as they paused for a last look
at the lights of the camp. "She's all woman, and a mighty good one, at
that!"