LITERARY MATERIAL
Connie wanted to see something out of the ordinary. What was the use
of coming to the wild and woolly if one never saw anything wilder than
a movie of New York society life, or woollier than miles of properly
garbed motorists driving under the guidance of blue-coated policemen as
safely and sanely as could be done in Chicago.
It was Julia who came to the rescue. She discovered, on a neighbor's
porch, and with admirable socialistic tendencies appropriated, a
glaring poster, with slim-legged horses balancing themselves in the
air, not at all inconveniencing their sunburned riders in varicolored
silk shirts.
"Look at the horses jump over the moon," she exulted, kissing a scarlet
shirt in rapture.
Upon investigation it turned out to be an irresistible advertisement of
the annual Frontier Days, at Fort Morgan. Carol explained the pictures
to Julia, while Connie looked over her shoulder.
"Do they do all it says?" she asked.
Carol did not know. She had never attended any Frontier Days, but she
imagined they were even more wonderful than the quite impossible
poster. Carol's early determination to adore the Westland had become
fixed habit at last. It was capable of any miracles, to her.
"How far is it up there?" pursued Connie, for Connie had a very
inartistic way of sticking to her subject.
"I do not know. About a hundred miles, I believe."
"A nice drive for the Harmer," said Connie thoughtfully. "How are the
roads?"
"I do not know, but I think all the roads are good in Colorado.
Certainly no road is impassable for a Harmer Six with you at the wheel."
"I have a notion to drive up and see them," said Connie. "Literary
material, you know."
"I want to see the horsies fly, too," cried Julia quickly.
Carol thought it might do David good, and David was sure Carol needed a
vacation. They would think it over.
Connie immediately went down-town and returned with a road guide, and
her arm full of literature about frontier days in general. Then it was
practically settled. A little distance of a hundred miles, a splendid
car, a driver like Connie! It was nothing. And Carol was so excited
getting ready for their first outing in the years of David's illness,
that she forgot his medicine three times in succession, and David
maliciously refused to remind her.
They all talked at once, and agreed that it was very silly and
dangerous and unwise, but insisted it was the most alluring, appealing
madness in the world. David, for over three years limited to the
orderly, methodical, unstimulating confines of a screened porch, felt
quite the old-time throbbing of his pulse and quickening of his blood.
Even the doctor waxed enthusiastic. He looked into David's tired face
and said:
"I think it will do him good. It can not do him harm."
In the excitement of getting ready for something unusual, he developed
an unnatural strength and simply could not be kept in bed at all. He
slept soundly, ate heartily, and looked forward to the trip in the car
so anxiously that to the girls it was really pitiful.
Then came a glorious day in September when the Harmer Six stood early
at their door, the lunch basket, and suit-cases were carefully
arranged, and they were off,--off in the beautiful Harmer,--off to the
country,--to the mountains and canyons,--to climb one of the sunny
slopes that had beckoned to them so enticingly. Almost they held their
breath at first, afraid the first creak of the car would waken them
from the unbelievable dream.
Always as they climbed a long hill, Carol reminded them that they were
climbing a sunny slope that would lead to a city of gold at the top, a
city where everything was happy and bright, and there was no sickness,
no sorrow, no want. And looking ahead to the spires of a little
village, nestling cloudy and blue on the plains, she vowed it was a
golden city, and they leaned forward to catch the first sparkle of the
diamond-studded streets. And when they reached the city itself,
little, ugly, sordid,--a city of gold, perhaps, to those who had made a
fortune there, but not by any means a golden city of dreams to the
Arcady travelers,--Carol shook herself and said it was a mistake, she
meant the next one.
Rooms had been engaged in advance at the Bijou, on the ground floor,
for the sake of David's softened muscles, and they reached the town
ahead of the regular Frontier Day crowds, allowing themselves plenty of
time to get rested and to see the whole thing start.
Julia frolicked on the wide velvety lawn with all the dogs and cats and
children that could be drawn from the surrounding neighborhood. David
sat on the porch in a big chair, enjoying the soft breezes sweeping
down over the plains, looking through half closed lids out upon the
quiet shaded street. Carol crouched excitedly in another chair beside
him, squeezing his hand to call attention to every sunburned
picturesque son of the plains that galloped down that way. But Connie,
with the lustful eyes of a fortune-hunter walked up and down the
corridors, peering here and peeking there, listening avidly to every
unaccustomed word that was spoken,--getting material.
Quickly the hotels were filled to capacity, and overflowed to cots in
the hall, rugs on the porches, and piles of straw in the stables. The
street so quietly peaceful on Sunday, by Wednesday was a throbbing
thoroughfare, with autos, wagons and horses whirling by in clouds of
dust The main street, a block away, was a noisy, active, flourishing,
carnival city, with fortune-tellers, two-headed dogs, snake-charmers,
minstrels and all the other street-fair habitues in full possession. A
dance platform was erected on a prominent corner, and bands were
brought in from all the neighboring towns on the plains.
Connie was convinced she could get enough material to last a lifetime.
No detective was hotter on the scent of a trail than she. Never two
cowboys met in a secluded corner in the lobby to divide their hardly
earned coins, but Connie sauntered slowly by, catching every word,
noting the size of every coin that changed possession. No gaily garbed
horseman could signal to a girl of his admiration, but Connie caught
the motion first, and was taking mental notes for future coinage. They
were not people to her, just material. She loved them, she reveled in
them, she dreamed of them, just as a collector of curios gloats over
the treasures he amasses. She classified them in a literary note-book
for her own use, and kept them on file for instant reference.
When they went to the fair-grounds, early, in order to secure a
comfortable seat for David where he should not miss one twist of a
rider's supple body, they were as delighted as children truanting from
school. It was the most exhilarating thing in the world,--this clever
little trick on the sleeping porch and the white cot, on egg-nogs and
beef juice and buttermilk. No wonder their faces tingled with
excitement and their eyes sparkled with delight.
Connie was surprised that the girls were pretty, really pretty, with
pink and white skin and polished finger nails, those girls in the silk
blouses and khaki shirts, those girls with the wide sombrero and the
iron muscles, who rode the bucking horses, and raced around the track,
and did a thousand other appalling things that pink-skinned,
shiny-nailed girls were not wont to do back home. They stayed at the
Bijou, a whole crowd of them, and Connie never let them out of her
sight until they closed their bedroom doors for the night. They talked
in brief broken sentences, rather curtly, but their voices were quiet
and low, and they weren't half as slangy as cowgirls, by every literary
precedent, ought to be. They were not like Connie, of course, tall and
slim, with the fine exalted face, with soft pink palms and soft round
arms. And their striking saddle costumes were not half as curious to
Fort Morgan as Connie's lacy waists, and her tailored skirts, and her
frilly little silk gowns. But they were more curious to Connie.
She tried to picture herself in a sombrero like that, with gauntlets on
her hands, and with a fringed leather skirt that reached to her knees,
and with a scarlet silk blouse and a yellow silk belt,--and even her
distinctly literary imagination could not compass such a miracle. But
she was sure if she ever could rig herself up like that, she would look
like a dream, and she really envied the cowgirls, who leaped head first
from the saddle but always landed right side up.
People of another world, well, yes. But there are ways of getting
together.
Connie talked very little that first afternoon. She watched the people
around her, and listened as they discussed the points of the horses,
the cowgirls and the jockeys with equal impartiality. She heard their
bets, their guttural grunts of disapproval with the judges' decisions,
their roars of satisfaction when the right horse won. She watched the
cowgirls, walking unconcernedly about the ring, flapping their
riding-whips against their leather boots. She watched the lithe-limbed
cowboys slouching not ungracefully around the nervous ponies, waving
their hats in greeting to their friends, calling loud jests to their
fellows in the cowboy band. How strange they were, how startlingly
human, and yet how thousand-miles removed.
Connie rebelled against it. They were folks. And so was Connie. The
thousand miles was a barrier, an injustice. In order to handle
literary material, she must get within touching distance of it. All
those notes she had collected so painstakingly were cold, inanimate.
In order to write of folks she must touch them, feel them, must know
they lived and breathed as she did. Why couldn't she get at
them,--folks, plain folks, and so was she. A slow fury rose up in her,
and she watched the great events Of the afternoon with resentful eyes.
Even when a man not entered for racing, swung over the railing into the
center field, and scrambled upon the bare back of King Devil, the wild
horse of the plains which had never yielded to man's bridling hand, and
was tossed and dragged and jerked and twisted, until it seemed there
could be no life left in him, yet who finally pulled the horse almost
by brute force into submission, while the spectators went wild, and
Julia screamed, and Carol sank breathless and white into her seat, and
David stood on the bench and yelled until Carol pulled him down,--even
then Connie could not get the feeling. She wanted to write these
people, to put them on paper, and she couldn't, because they were not
people to her, they were just "Good points."
Afterward, when they slowly made their way to the car, and drove home
to the Bijou again, Connie was still silent. She saw David comfortably
settled in the big chair on the sunny corner of the porch, with Carol
beside him and Julia romping on the lawn. Then she walked up and down
in front of the hotel. Finally she came back to the corner of the
porch.
"David," she said impetuously, "I've got to speak to one of them
myself." She waved a hand vaguely in the direction of the fair-grounds.
"One of them?" echoed David.
"Yes, one of those riders. I want to see if they can make me feel
anything. I want to find out if they are anything like other folks."
David looked up suddenly, and a smile came to his eyes. Connie turned
quickly, and there, not two feet from her, stood "One of them," the man
who had ridden King Devil. His sombrero was pushed back on his head,
and his hair clung damply to his brown forehead. His lean face was
cynical, sneering. He carried a whip and spurs in one hand, the other
rested on the bulging hip of his khaki riding trousers.
Connie stared, fascinated, into the thin, brown, sneering face.
"How do you do?" he said mockingly. "Isn't it charming weather?"
Connie still looked directly into his eyes. Somehow she felt that back
of the sneer, back of the resentment, there lay a little hurt that she
should have spoken so, classed him with fine horses and cattle, him and
his kind. Connie would make amends, a daughter of the parsonage might
not do ungracious things like that.
"I beg your pardon," she said, sweetly, unsmilingly, "I did not mean to
be rude. But the riders did fascinate me. I am spellbound. I only
wished to see if the charm would hold. I have not been in the West
before this." She held out her hand, slender, white, appealing.
[Illustration: "I beg your pardon," she said, sweetly, unsmilingly, "I
did not mean to be rude."]
The man looked at her curiously in turn, then he jerked off his
sombrero and took her hand in his. There was the contact, soft white
skin of the city, hard brown hand of the mountain plains, and human
blood is swift to leap in response to an unwonted touch.
Connie drew her hand away quickly, but his eyes still held hers.
"Let me beg your pardon instead," he said. "Of course you did not mean
it the way it sounded. None of my business, anyhow."
"Come on, Prince," called a man from the road, curbing his impatient
horse. But "Prince" waved him away without turning.
This was a wonderful girl.
"I--I write stories," Connie explained hurriedly, to get away from that
searching clasp of glances. "I wanted some literary material, and I
seemed so far away from everything. I thought I needed the personal
touch, you know."
"Anything I can tell you?" he offered feverishly. "I know all about
range and ranch life. I can tell you anything you want to know."
"Really? And will you do it? You know writers have just got to get
material. It is absolutely necessary. And I am running very short of
ideas, I have been loafing."
He waited patiently. He was more than willing to tell her everything
he knew, or could make up to please her, but he had not the slightest
idea what she wanted. Whatever it was, he certainly intended to make
the effort of his life to give her.
"I am Constance Starr," said Connie, still more abashed by the
unfaltering presence of this curious creature, who, she fully realized
at last, was quite human enough for any literary purpose. "And this is
my brother-in-law, Mr. Duke, and my sister, Mrs. Duke."
"My name is Prince Ingram."
David shook hands with him cordially, with smiling eyes, and asked him
to sit down so Connie might ask her questions in comfort. They all
took chairs, and Prince waited. Connie racked her brain. Five minutes
ago there had been ten thousand things she yearned to know about this
strange existence. Now, unfairly, she could not think of one. It
seemed to her she knew all there was to know about them. They looked
into each other's eyes, men and women, as men and women do in Chicago.
They touched hands, and the blood quickened, the old Chicago style.
They talked plain English, they liked pretty clothes, they worshiped
good horses, they lived on the boundless plains. What on earth was
there to ask? Quite suddenly, Connie understood them perfectly.
But Prince realized that he was not making good. His one claim to
admission in her presence was his ability to tell her what she wanted
to know. He had got to tell her things,--but what things? My stars,
what did she want to know? How old he was, where he was born, if he
was married,--oh, by George, she didn't think he was married, did she?
"I am not married," he said abruptly. David looked around at him in
surprise, and Carol's eyes opened widely. But Connie, with what must
have been literary intuition, understood. She nodded at him and smiled
as she asked, "Have you always lived out here?"
"No." He straightened his shoulders and drew a deep breath. Here was
a starter, it would be his own fault if he could not keep talking the
rest of the night. "No, I came out from Columbus when I was eighteen.
Came for my health." He squared his shoulders again, and laughed a big
deep laugh which made Connie marvel that there should be such big deep
laughs in the world.
"My father was a doctor. He sent me out, and I got a job punching time
in the mines at Cripple Creek. I met some stock men, and one of them
offered me a job, and I came out and got in with them. Then I got hold
of a bit of land and began gathering up stock for myself. I stayed
with the Sparker outfit six years, and then my father died. I took the
money and got my start, and--why, that is all." He stopped in
astonishment. He had been sure his story would last several hours. He
had begun at the very start, his illness at eighteen, and here he was
right up to the present, and--he rubbed his knee despairingly. There
must be something else. There had to be something else. What under
the sun had he been doing all these fourteen years in the ranges?
"Don't you ever wish to go back?" Connie prompted kindly.
"Back to Columbus? I went twice to see my father. He had a private
sanatorium. My booming voice gave his nervous patients prostrations,
and father thought my clothes were not sanitary because they could not
be sterilized. Are you going to stay here for good?"
It was very risky to ask, he knew, but he had to find out.
"I am visiting my sister in Denver. We just came here for the Frontier
Days," said Connie primly.
"There is another Frontier Week at Sterling," he said eagerly. "A fine
one, better than this. It isn't far over there. You would get more
material at Sterling, I think. Can't you go on up?"
"I have been away from Chicago four weeks now," said Connie. "In
exactly two weeks I must be at my desk again."
"Chicago is not a healthy town," he said, in a voice that would have
done credit to his father, the medical man. "Very unhealthy. It is
not literary either. Out west is the place for literature. All the
great writers come west. Western stories are the big sellers. There's
Ralph Connor, and Rex Beach, and Jack London and--and--"
"But I am not a great writer," Connie interrupted modestly. "I am just
a common little filler-in in the ranks of a publishing house. I'm only
a beginner."
"That is because you stick to Chicago," he said eloquently. "You come
out here, out in the open, where things are wide and free, and you can
see a thousand miles at one stretch. You come out here, and you'll be
as great as any of 'em,--greater!"
The loud clamor of the dinner bell interrupted his impassioned outburst
and he relapsed into stricken silence.
"Well, we must go to dinner before the supply runs out," said David,
rising slowly. "Come along, Julia. We are glad to have met you, Mr.
Ingram." He held out his thin, blue-veined hand. "We'll see you
again."
Prince looked hopelessly at Connie's back, for her face was already
turned toward the dining-room. How cold and infinitely distant that
tall, straight, tailored back appeared.
"Ask him to eat with us," Connie hissed, out of one corner of her lip,
in David's direction.
David hesitated, looking at her doubtfully. Connie nudged him with
emphasis.
Well, what could David do? He might wash his hands of the whole
irregular business, and he did. Connie was a writer, she must have
material, but in his opinion Connie was too young to be literary. She
should have been older, or uglier, or married. Literature is not safe
for the young and charming. Connie nudged him again. Plainly if he
did not do as she said, she was going to do it herself.
David turned to the brown-faced, sad-eyed son of the mountain ranges,
and said:
"Come along and have dinner with us, won't you?"
Carol pursed up her lips warningly, but Prince Ingram, in his
eagerness, nearly picked David up bodily in his hurry to get the little
party settled before some one spoiled it all.
He wanted to handle Connie's chair for her, he knew just how it was
done. But suppose he pushed her clear under the table, or jerked it
entirely from under her, or did something worse than either? A girl
like Connie ought to have those things done for her. Well, he would
let it go this time. So he looked after Julia, and settled her so
comfortably, and was so assiduously attentive to her that he quite won
her heart, and before the meal was over she said he might come and live
with them and be her grandpa, if he wanted.
"Grandpa," he said facetiously. "Do I look as old as that? Can't I be
something better than a grandpa?"
"Well, only one papa's the style," said Julia doubtfully. "And you are
too big to be a baby, and--"
"Can't I be your uncle?" Then, glancing at Connie with a sudden
realization of the only possible way the uncle-ship could be
accomplished, he blushed.
"Yes, an uncle is better," said Connie imperturbably. "You must
remember, Julia dear, that men are very, very sensitive about their
ages, and you must always give them credit for youth."
"I see," said Julia. And Prince wondered how old Connie thought he
was, his hair was a little thin, not from age--always had been that
way--and he was as brown as a Zulu, but it was only sunburn. He'd
figure out a way of letting her know he was only thirty-two before the
evening was over.
"Are you going over to the street to-night?" he asked of David, but not
caring half a cent what David did.
"I am afraid I can't. I am not very good on my feet any more. I am
sorry, the girls would enjoy it."
"Carol and I might go alone," suggested Connie bravely. "Every one
does out here. We wouldn't mind it."
"I will not go to a street carnival and leave David," protested Carol.
"It would be rather interesting." Connie looked tentatively from the
window.
Prince swallowed in anguish. She ought to go, he told them; she really
needs to go. The evenings are so much fuller of literary material than
day-times. And the dancing--
"I do not dance," said Connie. "My father is a minister."
"You do not dance! Why, that's funny. I don't either. That is, not
exactly,-- Oh, once in a while just to fill in." Then the latter part
of her remark reached his inner consciousness. "A minister. By
George!"
"My husband is one, too," said Carol.
Prince looked helplessly about him. Then he said faintly, "I--I am
not. But my father wanted me to be a preacher. He sent me to
Princeton, and I stuck it out nearly ten weeks. That is why they call
me Prince, short for Princeton. I am the only real college man on the
range, they say."
"The street fair must be interesting," Connie went back to the main
idea.
"Yes indeed, the crowds, the side-shows--I mean the exhibits, and the
lotteries, and--I am sure you never saw so much literary material
crowded into two blocks in your life."
"Oh, well, I don't mind. Maybe some other night we can go." Connie
was sweetly resigned.
"I should be very glad,--if you don't mind,--I haven't anything else to
do,--and I can take good care of you."
"Oh, that is just lovely. And maybe you will give me some more
stories. Isn't that fine, David? It is so kind of you, Mr. Ingram. I
am sure I shall find lots of material."
David kicked Carol warningly beneath the table. "You must go too,
Carol. You have never seen such a thing, and it will do you good. I
am not the selfish brute you try to make me. You girls go along with
Mr. Ingram and I will put Julia to bed and wait for you on the porch."
Well, of course, Mrs. Duke was very nice, and anyhow it was better to
take them both than lose them both, and that preacher had a very set
face in spite of his pallor. So Prince recovered his equanimity and
devoted himself to enjoying the tumultuous evening on the street. He
bought candy and canes and pennants until the girls sternly refused to
carry another bit of rubbish. He bought David a crimson and gold silk
handkerchief, and an Indian bracelet for Julia, and took the girls to
ride on the merry-go-round, and was beside himself with joy.
Suppose his friends of the range did draw back as he passed, and gaze
after him in awe and envy. Suppose the more reckless ones did snicker
like fools, nudging each other, lifting their hats with exaggerated
courtesy,--he should worry. He had lived on the range for fourteen
years and had never had such a chance before. Now he had it, he would
hang on to it if it cost him every sheep he had on the mountains.
Wasn't Connie the smartest girl you ever saw, always saying funny,
bright things, and--the way she stepped along like a goddess, and the
way she smiled! Prince Ingram had forgotten that girls grew like that.
They returned to the hotel early and found David waiting on the porch
as he had promised. He was plainly tired, and Carol said he must go to
bed at once. They all rose and walked to the door, and then, very
surprisingly, Connie thought she would like to sit a while on the quiet
porch, from which every other one had gone to the carnival, and collect
her thoughts. Carol frowned, and David smiled, but what could they do?
They had said they were tired and now they must go to bed perforce.
Prince looked after her, and looked at the door that had closed behind
David and Carol, and rubbed his fingers thoughtfully under his
collar,--and followed Connie back to the porch.
"Will it bother you if I sit here a while? I won't talk if you want to
think."
"It won't bother me a bit," she assured him warmly. "It is nice of you
to keep me company. And I would rather talk than think."
So he put her chair at the proper angle where the street lamp revealed
her clear white features, and he sat as close beside her as he dared.
She did not know it, but his elbow was really on the arm of her chair
instead of his own. He almost held his breath for fear a slight move
would betray him. Wasn't she a wonderful girl? She turned sidewise in
the chair, her head resting against the high back, and smiled at him.
"Now talk," she said. "Let us get acquainted. See if you can make me
love the mountain ranges better than Chicago."
He told her of the clean sweep of the wind around his little cottage
among the pines on the side of the mountain, of the wild animals that
sometimes prowled his way, of the shouting of the boys on the range in
the dark night, the swaying of distant lanterns, the tinkle of sheep
bells. He told her of his father, of the things that he himself had
once planned to be and do. He told her of his friends: of Lily, his
pal, so-called because he used a safety razor every morning of his
life; of Whisker, the finest dog in Colorado; of Ruby, the ruddy brown
horse that would follow him miles through the mountains and always find
the master at the end of the trail. And he told her it was a lonely
life. And it was. Prince Ingram had lived here fourteen years, with
no more consciousness of being alone than the eagle perched solitary on
the mountain crags, but quite suddenly he discovered that it was
lonely, and somehow the discovery took the wonder from that free glad
life, and made him long for the city's bright lights, where there were
others,--not just cowboys, but regular men and women.
"Yes," assented Connie rather abruptly, "I suppose it would be nice to
be in a crowd of women, laughing and dancing and singing. I suppose
you do miss it."
"That was not what I meant," said Prince slowly. "I don't care for a
crowd of them. Not many. One is enough." He was appalled at his own
audacity, and despised himself for his cowardice, for why didn't he
look this white fine girl of the city in the eyes and say:
"Yes, one,--and you are it."