CROSS PURPOSES
The only thing Kate could have noticed was a slight darkening of the
room; something momentarily obscured the sunlight streaming through the
platform doorway; someone sauntered into the room itself, but Kate was
signing the letter and gave the entrance no thought. Still she could
not shake off the consciousness of somebody walking up close to the
desk where she stood and sitting down on one of the counter stools.
She refused to look up, even though she felt that eyes were on her.
A natural impulse of defiance at the uninvited scrutiny possessed her.
And being resolved she would not admit she was conscious of it, she
turned from the desk and looking straight toward the glass door
connecting with the dining-room, and behind the end of the counter, she
walked briskly past the intruding presence.
As she did so, Kate somehow felt with every step that she could not get
out of the room unchallenged. But even then she was riding to a rude
surprise for she had reached the door without incident when she heard
two words: "Slow, Kate." She had already laid her hand on the knob and
she turned it with indignation. The wretched door refused to open! It
was Belle's afternoon off and she had locked the door.
Even then a collected girl would not have surrendered to the situation.
But Kate never could be collected at just the right time. She was
usually quite collected when it made no difference whether she was
collected or not. All she now did was to look blankly around. A man
sat at the counter, a man she had never seen before. He was
deliberately lifting a broad horseman's hat from a rather round, high
forehead and disclosing a head of inoffensive-looking sandy hair, very
much sun-and-wind bleached. His smooth face, his ears and neck and
open throat, were colored by a strictly uniform pigment--tinctured by
many mountain winds into a reddish brown and burnt by many mountain
suns into a seemingly immutable bronze. The face was long with an
ample nose, a peaceful-looking mouth and unruffled gray eyes. The man
was very like and yet unlike many of the mountain men she had seen.
She remembered afterward that this was her first impression: at that
moment she was not analyzing it: "Where are you going?" he asked, as
she stood looking at him.
Her resentment at the rudeness rose. Could a prophetic spirit have
warned Kate that this was to be only the first of more than one serious
encounter with the eyes steadily regarding her, her astonishment and
indignation might have been restrained. As it was, forgetting her own
position and descending to Western brusqueness, she retorted icily: "I
can't see how that can possibly interest you."
If she hoped that a frigid tone and utterance might abash her intruding
questioner, they failed. He spoke again with surprisingly even
impertinence--quite as if she were as friendly as he. "You're wrong,"
he said. "I'm mightily interested. I want some coffee and you don't
act to me as if you meant to come back."
It was undignified and improper for her to bandy words with a heckler,
but Kate had already breathed too much of the freedom of the mountains
to resist a second retort, and said, almost without thinking--and
certainly in a very positive manner: "I am not coming back."
"Give me a cup of coffee before you go."
"There is no service here this afternoon."
"Beg your pardon. There will be one service here this afternoon. You
will serve me." His emphasis was slight, but unmistakable. She was so
fussed she turned to the door and grasped the knob the second time.
Her persecutor raised his left hand firmly. "You can't get out there,"
he said.
"Why can't I?" demanded Kate indignantly.
"Because you can't open the door." She stood mute at his assurance.
"Come," he continued, "give me some coffee, like a good girl."
What should she do? She did not speak the question, but weighed it
pretty rapidly in her mind. What manner of man had she to deal with?
If not actually threatening he was extremely domineering. While she
hesitated he regarded her calmly.
But there was one way to do as he demanded and to punish him as well.
Of the two coffee urns kept filled in readiness for the rush in serving
a trainload of passengers, only one was now heated. Kate stepped to
the urns, murmuring as if to herself: "I know nothing about these."
"I don't either," he said. From the nearer urn Kate drew a cup of
coffee; it was very cold--but she pushed it with a jug of cream and a
bowl of sugar, toward him.
"A teaspoon, please?" Kate's excitement had already heightened her
color. She looked very much alive as she added, impatiently, a spoon
to the equipment--expecting then to be able to get out of the room. It
seemed as if this ought to big easy; it was not. Her tormentor
professed to have had no dinner and wanted a sandwich. The sandwiches
were rebelliously hunted up--a plateful was supplied. If he was
surprised at the prodigality he made no comment, but at intervals some
tantalizing word from him entangled her in another exchange; and at
each encounter of wits, just enough fear tempered her resentment to
make her irresolute.
She was malicious enough to observe in silence the unobtrusive
pantomime by which the enemy tried to coax a semblance of warmth into
his cold coffee. He had begun by pouring cream into it, but the cream
refused to assimilate and only made the mixture look less inviting.
"I'm glad I met you today," he said, while she was getting her breath.
"Looks lonesome around here. Not much doing at the mines, is there?"
"Not a great deal," she answered coldly.
"How about Barb Doubleday--is he up at the mines, or here?"
He was indifferently lifting matches from the stand at his hand,
striking them and burning them patiently against the side of his cup of
coffee. Like a flash came to Kate with his question, the thought that
this disagreeable person must be the court officer. He looked up at
her now as if waiting for an answer: "Why do you ask?" she countered.
"Mostly because I'd like to hear you say something."
"Anything, I suppose," she suggested ironically.
"That's not far from it," was the reply. "Also, I want to see Barb."
"What about?" she asked, borrowing his own assurance. It was time, she
thought, for defensive strategy.
"Just a little business matter." It was long, very long afterward that
Kate learned, and fully realized, the significance of the indifferently
spoken words; when she did, she wondered that a man's manner could so
completely mask all that lay behind them.
"He isn't hiring any men," she ventured, adapting a set phrase she had
often heard Belle use.
"And in spite of my looks," he returned, "I'm not hunting a job--for a
wonder."
But now that Kate wanted to hear more he took his turn at reticence.
"Where are you from?" she asked as unconcernedly as she could.
"Medicine Bend."
"From the marshal's office?" It was foolish of her to ask. She fairly
blurted out the words. He looked at her for the first time keenly--and
just the change in his expression, undefinable but unmistakable, almost
frightened her to death.
"I was in the marshal's office yesterday," he answered, picking up a
sandwich evasively. Kate was no longer doubtful. This was the man to
serve the dreaded, summons. An instant of panic seized her.
Fortunately her persecutor was regarding his stubborn coffee as he
stirred it. Her heart, which had stopped, started with a thump. Her
thoughts cleared. Instinct, self-preservation, asserted itself. She
thought hard and fast. The first step was to temporize.
He looked up in time to see the blood sweeping back into her cheeks;
and almost spoiled the first really good breath she was drawing. In
his lean, bronzed hands he clasped his cup of coffee as if trying to
put a degree of heat into it: "What would be the extra charge for a
shot at that hot tank?" he asked, directing his glance first at the
other tank, then at Kate's burning face.
With all his confidence, he must have been surprised at the revulsion
of manner that greeted him. Kate recovered her poise--her coldness
vanished, a smile broke through her reserve and her confused regret was
promptly expressed: "Did I give you coffee out of the cold tank? How
stupid!"
"And never in my life," said her queer customer, as if continuing her
words, "did I do anything mean to you."
"Oh, yes, you did," objected Kate, coupling nervous haste with the
declaration as she tried to take the cold cup from between his hands.
The ease with which she assumed the role of a lunch-counter waitress
astonished her.
"What did I do?" he drawled, resisting her attempt to make amends.
"You said I couldn't go out that door," she answered, refusing to be
denied the cup.
"I was hoping if you stayed a few minutes, you wouldn't want to." A
moment earlier she would have been indignant. Now she reconciled
herself to necessity. She was, indeed, wildly hoping she might be able
to coax him not to serve any paper. And she had to repress an absurd
laugh at the thought as she set a fresh and steaming cup before him.
While he made ready to drink it she leaned with assured indifference
against the buffet shelf behind her. She spread her left arm and hand
innocently along its edge as she had seen waitresses do--and with her
right hand, toyed with the loose collar of her crepe blouse--chatting
the while like a perfectly good waitress with her suspect. The funny
part seemed to her that he took it all with entire seriousness, hardly
laughing; only a suspicion of a smile, playing at times around his
eyes, relieved the somberness of his lean face. His parted lips showed
regular teeth when he spoke, and gave a not unpleasant expression to
his mouth. His eyes were as inoffensive as a mountain lake.
But there remained something stubborn in his dry manner and at times
her heart misgave her as to the hope of dissuading him from his
purpose. Trying to form some idea of how to act, she studied him with
anxiety. All she could actually reach as a conclusion was that he
might be troublesome to dissuade.
Yet with every moment she was the more determined to keep him from
carrying out his mission and the more resolved to make him pay for his
Western manners. All this was running through her head while the
coffee was being sipped. Unhappily, her father was where she could not
possibly reach him with a warning until Belle should reappear on the
scene. She tendered her now tractable guest a second cup of coffee.
It was accepted; he talked on, asking many questions, which were
answered more or less to his satisfaction. Not that his inquiries were
impertinent; they were chiefly silly, Kate thought. He seemed most
intent on establishing a friendly footing with a lunch-counter
attendant.
When his third cup had been drunk and payment tendered for it, and for
five or six sandwiches, Kate decided her time to escape had arrived.
She refused to accept his money: "No," she persisted, "I will not take
a thing for your lunch. Positively not. Oh, you may leave your dollar
on the counter, if you like--it will never go into the register."
"Why not?"
"I've told you."
"Say it again."
"You were very patient over my blunder in giving you cold coffee."
"To tell you the truth," he remarked with candor, "it didn't look to me
altogether like a blunder."
"Oh, it was," she insisted shamelessly; but she did not feel at all
sure he believed her. "And I won't take your money. I want you--" her
eyes fell the least bit with her repentant words--"to have a better
impression of this counter than cold coffee would give you. We're
trying so hard to build up a business."
"Golly!" observed her calm guest. "I thought a few minutes ago you
were trying to wreck one."
"You Medicine Bend men always make fun of this valley," Kate complained.
"I don't really belong in Medicine Bend," was his return.
"Where do you belong?"
"In the Falling Wall."
"Oh! that awful place?"
"Why knock the Falling Wall?"
"I never heard any good of it. No matter anyway; you may put up your
money. And some time when I am up in your country," she added
jestingly, "you can give _me_ a cup of cold coffee."
"We'll say nothing more about the coffee," he declared in blunt
fashion. "Just you come!" He yielded so honestly to deceit that Kate
was half ashamed at imposing on him.
"Tell me," he went on, spinning his silver dollar in leisurely fashion
on the smooth counter, "how am I going to get up to the mines today
after I look around here for Barb--where can I get a horse?"
Kate reflected a moment. "I can get you _some_ kind of a horse," she
said slowly. "But it would take you forever to get there on
horseback--the trail runs around by the river. The train will get you
there first. It goes up at four o'clock."
She knew she said it all blandly, though conscious of her duplicity.
It was not exactly falsehood that she spoke--but it was meant to
mislead. The man was regarding her steadily with eyes that seemed to
Kate not in the least double-dealing.
"What am I going to do till four o'clock?" he asked, making without
discussion her subtle suggestion his own.
She lifted her eyebrows disclaimingly--even shrugged her shoulders:
"What are you going to do?" he persisted. She was ready. She looked
longingly out of the window. The sun blazed over the desert in a riot
of gold.
"It's my day off," she observed, adding just a suspicion of discontent
and uncertainty to her words. She fingered her tie, too; then dropped
her eyes; and added, "I thought I might take a ride."
He started: "Couldn't get two horses, could you?"
"Two?" echoed Kate, looking surprised.
He rose: "I'll turn up two if I have to steal 'em," he declared,
reaching for his hat.
"That would be too much trouble for one little ride," Kate said
ironically. "I'll see what I can do, first. But," she added, basely,
"if you want to be sure of catching the train, I should advise you to
stay right here. It backs down and doesn't stay but a minute--just
long enough to hook on to the empties."
Her warning had no effect. It was not meant to have any. She knew if
he got to the mines and learned that her father was at the Junction he
would return in no time to serve him. He was decently restrained now,
but he swallowed her bait, hook and all: "Where do you think you can
find horses?" he asked.
"Where I work."
"Where do you work?"
"Sometimes here and sometimes up at Mr. Doubleday's cottage. The
barn-boy gets up a horse for me any time."
He raised an unexpected difficulty: "I wouldn't feel just right, today,
riding a horse of Barb Doubleday's," he said doubtfully.
The words only confirmed her suspicions. Her fears rose but her wits
did not desert her: "Ride mine," she suggested. "I've got my own
horse, of course."
He drew a breath: "All I can say is, if you ever come over my way, I'll
show you as good a time as I know how to."
She put up her hand: "Wait till you see how you like _my_ good time."
He was quick to come back. "I'll agree right now to like anything you
offer--and I don't care a hang what it is, either."
Looking straight at him she asked a question. Its emphasis lay in her
quiet tone: "Will you stand to that?" He looked at her until she felt
his eyes were going right through her: "I've got enemies," he said
slowly, and there was now more than a touch of hardness in his voice;
"most men have. But the worst of 'em never claimed my word isn't good."
"Then," exclaimed Kate, hastening to escape the serious tone, "you tend
counter while I go and see about the horses."
"No," he objected, "that's a man's job. You tell me where to go and
_I'll_ get the horses."
Kate was most firm: "If you're going to ride with _me_," she said, "you
must do my way. Take a woman's job for a few minutes and see how you
like it."
He regarded her with the simplicity of a child, but replied like a
case-hardened cowboy: "I don't like a woman's job, of course. But I'm
ready to do any blamed thing you say."
"Do you suppose," Kate demanded with an air, "they would turn two
horses over to _you_ up at Doubleday's?"
She had put her foot in it: "I tell you," he protested, "I don't want
to ride a horse of Doubleday's. I'm up here to talk to Barb Doubleday.
And nobody can say just how it's coming out. At the ranch they swore
he was at Sleepy Cat. I rode down there and they told me he was at the
Junction, so I took the train over here. Now you tell me he's at the
mines--that's where I'll say what I've got to say. But I don't want to
take any advantage. And I don't want to impose on his property rights
so much as a single hair. That's exactly what's between us."
Kate, established in treacherous ambush, felt qualms at his stern,
clear code.
She tried to shut him off, but he was wrought up: "Barb swore to me
once he had nothing to do with it," he persisted obstinately. "All I
can say is, if a man fools me once it's his fault; if he fools me
twice, it's mine."
"What about a woman?" asked Kate, trying hard to say one thing and
think another.
He opened his eyes: "I never thought much about that. A man can't
fight a woman," he returned reflectively. "And I've yet to see one I
could fool."
"What should you do," she asked, turning her back while she
straightened her hat in the buffet mirror, "if you ever met one that
fooled you?"
"No woman would ever take the trouble."
She laughed a little: "You never can tell."
"If a woman ever fooled me, she'd have to fool herself first--so she'd
be the loser."
"What a philosopher!"
"First and last, I've been called a good many names--some full
hard--but never a philosopher before."
Kate started for the front door: "Hold on a minute," he objected,
"what's to do here while you're gone?"
"Serve coffee and sandwiches if anybody comes in. This time of day
there's never anybody comes in."
He turned on his stool: "How soon'll you be back?"
"In a few minutes."
"Get a good horse for yourself."
Kate gave him a parting shot: "Of course you think I can't ride."
It did not take her long to get up the hill. Breathless, she
encountered old Henry in the garden, asked him for the ponies and
almost ran into the house. Her father was asleep. There was no reason
to stir him up over a situation that she was resolved to handle and
felt she could handle. She got into her riding clothes in a trice, all
the time wondering whether she could hold her wild man in leash long
enough to defeat him. Had he been more like anybody she had ever met
and known, the problem would have been less confusing. But she
determined to shut her eyes and win the fight if she could, and to this
end draft every resource. So she thought, at least, as she caught up
her little revolver and, dropping it into the scabbard she had belted
about her waist, set forth.
She rode back one of her own ponies and led the other. Her enemy had
good ears for when she was half way to the eating-house he walked out
on the platform and silently surveyed her approach. Kate watched him
narrowly and drew up before him to estimate the effect. She was
disappointed, she had to confess, at his cool indifference, for she
thought her riding rig unusually pretty. It had seemingly failed to
impress her queer Westerner. His eyes were all for the horses. "Clean
ponies," he observed, taking the bridle rein from her hand as he looked
the two over.
"I forgot to ask what kind of a saddle you like," she observed
indifferently. He was scanning the horses and his eyes not being on
her she got her first real good look at her antagonist--whether he was
to be her victim she was in somewhat anxious doubt.