HONEY!
Upon their return to Thirty-Mile, two nights later, Joe's attitude of
criticism was the first thing which piqued Steve's interest. There was
something ludicrous in the former's voice as he sat and anathematized
the food which the cook-boy brought to the table, even though he
devoured hungrily all that his plate would hold. And because Joe was
so obviously primed for a sensation that evening, out of sheer
perversity Steve struggled to draw him into a discussion of a topic,
which, just as obviously, had no appeal just then.
"What I hope to do," he confided gravely to Garry, "is to finish up at
Morrison and make possible the transfer of some of those men up here.
We are working only one shift now. With two I figure we could sail
along a-fogging. How does that strike you, Joe?"
That was only one of his many attempts, but all of them, save for the
inner laughter which they afforded; were totally without result. Joe's
answers were monosyllabic--his attention wandering at best. To that
particular question he nodded his head, spiritlessly.
"This butter ain't none too fresh," he growled sourly, "and I wonder if
that cook-boy thinks we dote on ham every meal? I don't for one. It
may be all right, if a man's plumb starving to death, but it don't lend
no real elegance to a repast."
That gloomy complaint brought little more than a sparkle to Steve's
eyes, but it made Garry lean forward in his place. Throughout the meal
while the other two fenced in just such fashion he forgot his own food
to listen, delighted anticipation in every feature. And when they had
finished supper and pushed back their chairs, he stood grinning a
little, watching Joe survey that littered room which served as office
and sleeping-quarters for the chief engineer of the East Coast Company.
Fat Joe's gaze swung from wall to wall, from littered corner to
heaped-up chair. Then he shook his head in despair.
"It looks to me, Steve," he grunted, "as though you ain't never had no
real training in tidiness, have you? There don't seem to be no system
at all in the way you leave your things around. There's one boot over
in that corner; it's got a mate, I know, because I saw you take them
off last night. I wouldn't be certain otherwise. And it's the same
way with all your things. Just look at this room! A nice place to
receive callers in, now ain't it?"
That was the first lead he tendered them, but Steve, rather than
gratify him with a direct question, chose to go forward in the dark.
He leaned over and followed his usual custom when he wanted to think.
He tapped out his pipe.
"But I can always find everything," he defended, "that is, unless you
have taken the trouble to put things away. Then it's a toss-up that
something or other will never be found, until it turns up of its own
accord. It's not so bad, Joe." He, too, swung to survey the room.
"Not so bad! Just a little unsettled, that's all. Are we likely to
have any callers, do you think, who would object to this layout?"
Joe snorted, but his eyes were mournful. He knew that there was
nothing else to do but yield, a part at least.
"We ain't likely to," he murmured. "We're just naturally bound to have
'em. They're comin' in to-morrow, and I ask you again, ain't this a
pleasing prospect to greet 'em?"
For all that he seemed to be staring ruefully down the room, he was
watching for the surprise that darted across Steve's face. Momentarily
the latter had forgotten his assumed air of placidity.
"To-morrow? Who?" And then Steve laughed. "Go ahead and tell us,
Joe. I'm beat! I'll admit that I'm panting with curiosity."
Joe pulled up a chair and dropped into it. It appealed to him--this
method--whenever he had the time to spare. His pink face was still
innocent of guile.
"I don't mind the men-folks," he resumed. "That fat party, I mean, who
wears the plaid suits, nor Caleb Hunter, either. Both of them are used
to such truck as this. And I reckon it'll tickle the ladies, too. But
I can see Honey sticking his nose in the air and sniffin', supercilious
like, the first minute he gets his nose in the door. He ain't going to
approve at all, at all--not any way you look at it."
"Honey!"
Both Steve and Garry ignored the rest of Joe's explanation to gasp that
single word in concert.
"Who in the world do you mean by 'Honey'?"
"Who could I mean?" Joe demanded collectedly. "I didn't give him the
name, did I? I mean that chap Wickersham who owns the timber north of
us. Foreign, ain't he? Sure, I thought so? Well, every time I run
across that man's path my heart swells with patriotism. I guess I'm
just as glad to be born plain United States."
The first part of that statement was listened to closely enough by both
men; the last sentence or two, for all that it was heartfelt and
sincere, was lost upon them both. And Steve's mirth was even more
hysterical than was that of Garry Devereau.
"Honey!" he panted. "Now isn't that a wonder? Joe, you're too good!
You are altogether too good to be wasted on these timbered solitudes.
Men pay two dollars a seat, Joe, to hear performers work who are rank
amateurs in comparison with you."
The riverman's eyes grew belligerent.
"Funny, is it? So awful funny! Well, perhaps you think I can't read
plain print yet, never havin' enjoyed a liberal education. But take a
look for yourself."
He pulled up a pile of newspapers which had come in since their
absence, sorted out one that was creased open, and handed it to Steve.
It was an announcement of Barbara Allison's engagement to the Hon.
Archibald Wickersham--that column to which Fat Joe had folded the
sheet--a many-days-old announcement, now. But the smile did not even
stiffen upon Steve's lips. The picture which accompanied it was a poor
one, heavy-shadowed and smeared and lacking in detail, yet Barbara's
face was unmistakable. The room became quiet. In that hush Garry
realized that Joe's mistaken translation of the title had not been, as
Joe had himself suggested, due to lack of knowledge, but to a desire to
apprise his employer, delicately, of that which he believed was still
news to him. And yet, from the easy way in which he read it, word for
word, Garry was positive that all this which the New York daily
blazoned forth with its customary mixture of snobbishness and vulgarity
was no longer news to Steve. The latter's eyes lifted and dwelt long
upon Fat Joe's face.
"So that's where you got it, was it, Joe?" he asked evenly. "You make
it 'Honey,' do you? And when do they come in, Joe?"
"To-morrow night. One of the teamsters brought word this afternoon,
just before you got back. Honey is going to have a look at his trees
and things, the way I understand it. And the rest of them, I take it,
want to look us over in our wild state. Where are we going to put them
girls?"
Steve's answer was long in coming.
"Miss--Allison?" he wanted to know.
"--and her maid," Joe corrected promptly. "Her maid, Cecile. She's
comin', too, and that tall, red-headed one. I don't remember her name?"
As studiously as he had done a moment before, Garry again avoided
Steve's eyes.
"Miriam Burrell," the latter supplied the omission. "And that's fine,
isn't it? How long are they going to stay, Joe?"
But Joe had finished with trifling.
"Where are we going to put them?" he insisted doggedly.
"Why, we have a couple of shelter tents somewhere in the duffle,
haven't we? We might pitch those if----" he looked about,
ruminatively--"if you think this is too squalid."
Joe turned appealingly to Garry, only to meet eyes flaring with
deviltry.
"If you think that I'm going to give up my quarters for a troup of
curious sight-seers, you're mistaken. If that's what you turned toward
me for, don't allow yourself to dwell upon it another minute. I'm a
laboring man and I have to have decent rest at nights. . . . Do you
suppose Cecile would really mind a tent?"
And then Joe's face went red.
"Now ain't you the pair of rough jokers?" he whined. "Ain't you,
though? But what's it going to be--this room or Garry's? The way I
look at it we're elected to camp out ourselves. We're hardened sons of
the wilderness, you know. That's what they always call us in print.
But how am I going to get this place cleaned up?"
For another hour Joe argued it, and at last settled upon the
store-house building as the likeliest for sleeping quarters for the
feminine portion of the visitors.
"We have to eat in here, anyhow," he argued, "so I guess it's the best
arrangement we can hit on. Honey won't be here much to meals, either.
That'll be one nice thing about it. He'll be going north directly.
And now--now I guess I'll go out and have a look at the pantry, even if
it does make me feel sort of faint every time I think of the grub we've
got on hand. Canned beans and boiled potatoes, and ham and bacon, to
round out a banquet. Why couldn't a couple of mighty hunters like you
bring home more than one little haunch of venison? Bacon and beans!
Steve, you sure have been living mighty low-down on this job!"
He went out with a great show of haste, but returned almost
immediately, forgot the urgency of matters in general in finding Garry
idly shuffling a deck of cards. Throughout the evening Joe had
exhibited an unwillingness to meet the third man's glances directly,
but it was impossible for him to remain oblivious to the clicking of
the chips. He balanced first on one foot and then on the other for a
moment; then diffidently drew up a chair.
"Just a friendly hand or two, I suppose," he suggested, when the other
made no move to begin. "Low limit and wide open, eh?"
Garry still toyed with the cards.
"I don't suppose you've ever forgotten the first game in which we
indulged, have you, Joe?" he asked at length. Joe was not comfortable.
"Scarcely," he admitted. "Scarcely."
"Nor the--stakes?" pursued Garry.
"I--I seem to recall 'em, faintly."
Garry's peal of amusement was as rollicking as a boy's.
"So do I," he exclaimed. "And if I remember rightly you stated on that
occasion that cash was no consideration with you. Does that still hold
good?"
It was the first good look Joe had had at the other's face. The change
he found in it seemed to perplex him more than a little.
"I take it that it does." Garry did not wait for his reply. "And
now--what do you say to that same full bottle against a--a ninety-nine
year blanket restriction, with me at the wrong end of the odds?"
Joe slitted his eyes.
"When they tuck a ninety-nine year clause into a franchise they mean
it's forever, don't they?" he wanted to know.
"Forever, to all intents and purposes!" said Garry.
Joe's chest sank and rose in a long, long breath.
"It's no word to trifle with," he cautioned at last. "If you lose
it'll be a considerable drouth."
"Cut!" invited Garry, and they started to play.
That other night Garry's stack of chips had lasted far longer than they
did on this second occasion. A half hour later, when he rose to go to
bed, his ninety-nine year promise of abstinence was piled symmetrically
before Fat Joe. But his good-night was gay. For a time after his
departure Joe eyed Steve, sidewise.
"Hum-m-m," he cleared his throat. "Hum-m-m! And I was expectin' you
to turn up any hour of the last twenty-four with a request that I come
and help bring home the remains. You must be quite a silver-tongued
exhorter, aren't you, Steve?"
Stephen O'Mara was silent over the paper which Joe had handed him
earlier in the evening, and the lack of any offer on his part to go
into details did not trouble his questioner. Fat Joe sat and bobbed
his head over what would never cease to be a miracle in his eyes.
"And he'll stick this time," he vented his wonder aloud. "He's surely
going to stick!" Then he smiled widely. "And I reckon you'll have to
admit that I handled the small part that come my way with ease and
dispatch, when I tell you that he didn't catch so much as one lonesome
pair, all the time I was dealing. I'm ashamed of myself. I haven't
seen such a mean, crooked game of stud dealt since I come East!"
Garry was very quiet the next morning when he and Steve went back to
their work; before noon came his uneasiness had become very apparent to
the man whom he was assisting. But neither his silence nor his
nervousness any longer worried Steve. Instead, the latter let himself
smile over both those outward evidences of inward panic, whenever his
thoughts were on Garry at all. For the latter's diffidence as the day
aged became a flushed and warm-checked thing, until at four in the
afternoon Steve could no longer withhold the suggestion for which
wordlessly, Garry was asking.
"Joe was more than half right," he remarked, one eye to his level, "in
spite of the fact that we refused to take him seriously. We can't let
those people come in and find everything too hopelessly uncomfortable,
so perhaps you'd better run ahead now, Garry, and see what he has
accomplished. I don't want to leave this spot myself until I have some
figures upon which I know I can rely. But you might run ahead, if you
will. I'll be along later."
It was couched in the form of a request, but Garry's face flamed. He
went, albeit a bit reluctantly. And he stopped more than a few times
in his climb from the edge of the timber to the door of Steve's shack.
But once he had passed over the threshold to find that unrecognizably
trim room empty, his face grew heavy with disappointment; he was on the
point of going back outside to scan the bowl of the valley when a tall,
short-skirted figure, enveloped in a voluminous apron which Fat Joe in
a moment of mistaken zeal had once provided for the cook-boy, flashed
through the passage-way from the kitchen annex and barely missed
catapulting into his arms. Miriam Burrell, pink-faced from the heat of
the roaring wood-stove, and smudged with flour on forehead and cheek,
lifted her apron and swung it like a flag of victory.
"I've found it," she sang triumphantly. "I've found out what was the
matter! I'd just forgotten the baking-powder, that was all! Next
time----"
Then she recognized him. With outstretched hands still clutching the
edge of her apron, she stood, almond eyes widening, and scanned him
from head to foot. Even Steve, who had been with him every moment, had
noticed the hour to hour change that had been taking place in Garry's
appearance. To the girl who had not seen him for weeks, that flushed,
self-conscious man was a different Garry than she had ever known
before. Hungrily her gaze went from open shirt to caked boots, from
steady hands to clear eyes which made her own eyes shy. And then
Miriam Burrell, cool and poised Miriam, did what many another maid in a
checkered apron has done in similar situations. She lifted that stiff
gingham to hide her unutterable happiness. But before he could speak
she found her voice; nor was it very steady, at that.
"I thought you were that party of idlers come back," she hesitated.
"How--how tanned you are becoming, Garry! I thought they--oh, I can't
tell you how glad I am to see you so--so well. I'm making biscuits for
supper--that is, I've just been practising until now. It seemed as
though I'd forgotten something that was necessary to the recipe,
because they were flatter after they were cooked than when I put them
in the oven. And most marvelously heavy, too! But it was just the
baking-powder, that was all. Do you--do you think you'd care to help?"
[Illustration: "Oh, I can't tell you how glad I am to see you--so
well."]
Steve was very late in returning to camp that night. Throughout the
rest of the afternoon he set himself a pace, knee-deep in slushy mud,
which Garry could not have maintained. But when he paused there in the
dark where he always stopped for a moment and a tumult of voices swept
down to meet him, he forgot his fatigue. He had lifted his battered
hat from his head, striving to distinguish a single note in all that
treble of girlish laughter when, framed suddenly against the background
of light within, he saw a slender silhouette take up its station in the
doorframe. Barbara was still peering out across the darkness when he
came up to her.
"We've been waiting dinner for you for almost an hour," she rebuked
him, in place of what might have been a commonplace greeting. "We've
been waiting in the face of Mr. Morgan's insistence that it was
practically useless. He has been telling us that when a man here in
the hills fails to turn up for a meal you never bother to look for him;
you know that the worst has happened."
Over her head the first eyes that Steve encountered that evening were
those of Archibald Wickersham. While shaking hands with the girl, he
bowed in grave welcome to the tall figure in leather puttees and
whipcord riding-breeches, and Wickersham, from the far side of the
room, bowed back in equal gravity. Then Caleb Hunter grasped Steve's
elbow and spun him around toward the light and peered at him
accusingly. Barbara had not noticed until then how tired Steve looked.
"Before the others get to talking," said Caleb, "before the tide grows
too strong for my weak voice, young man, I want to deliver a message.
Miss Sarah wants it explicitly understood that unless you stop in to
say hello on your next trip down, she herself will take the trail up
here. And lest that ultimatum sound too little threatening, I might
add that when Miss Sarah takes the trail she never travels with less
than six trunks."
Caleb clung so tightly to his arm that it brought a tinge of color to
Steve's cheeks. It was minutes before he could get away to change his
wet clothes, and in that minute or two he could not help but contrast,
grimly, his own mud-spattered attire with that of Archie Wickersham.
The tired blue circles beneath his eyes wore even more noticeable when
he returned, to be ushered with much ceremony by Fat Joe to the head of
the table.
It was an utterly irresponsible gathering that leaned over the red
tablecloth that night--an oddly assorted group which, from the very
first, Joe realized was not at all to Wickersham's liking. Dexter
Allison himself, fairly radiating good-will, sat at the foot of the
table, with his son-in-law-to-be on one side and Barbara's little maid,
Cecile, on the other. And between Cecile and Barbara, who sat opposite
Garry and Miriam, Fat Joe leaned both elbows upon the table edge and
monopolized the conversation. The seating arrangement was Joe's; it
was his party. And the absolute inattention to detail, the large
indifference to veracity which his discourse disclosed before that
noisy supper was over, grew to be an astonishing thing. His nights of
fancy left Steve aghast in more than one instance; they even forced a
stiff smile to Wickersham's lips, and that is saying much for Joe's
success as an entertainer, for in the bearing of those two men toward
each other there had been evident from the first a chill antipathy
which amounted, actually, to armed truce. And the color in Miriam's
cheeks, whenever his gaze strayed to that side of the table, helped
Steve to forget, temporarily, much that he found not pleasant to recall
at all.
For Miriam's tongue was no less irresponsible than was Joe's. Her mood
was so mercurial that she drew, time and again, the eyes of all at the
table. She chattered with an abandon that scandalized Barbara; broke
in and interrupted every argument with hoydenish trivialities, in one
breath, to appeal to Garry the next for refutation. And Garry, the
light-tongued and quick-witted, sat almost dumb of lip before her happy
garrulity. But his eyes never left her; they spoke his thought aloud.
The quick lift and droop of her eyelids, the brilliancy of her lips,
made Miriam's face a living thing of happiness--made Barbara's silence
seem even more profound. For the latter's withdrawal from the
hilarity, dominated half the time by her father's booming bass, was
nearly as complete as was that of Wickersham himself.
Just once, shortly before they withdrew for the night, Steve caught a
gleam of mischief in the dark eyes she turned toward him. She rose the
next moment and started slowly around the room, poking demurely into
corners and closetted nooks. Every eye was following her when she
finally found the thing for which she was searching. She drew a red
felt, yellow-mottoed cushion from beneath the deer-hide covering a
chair, and held it up so that all might read. "What Is Home Without a
Father?" it ran, and when the joy that stormed through the room made it
sure that the exhibition needed no interpreter, Fat Joe turned and hid
his face. Miriam rose languidly and joined the other girl in an
examination of his handiwork. Smooth face tinted by the firelight,
copper hair almost dishevelled in its disarray, she was an exquisitely
lovely thing. In her alto voice she expressed her opinion.
"It's an entirely new stitch to me, Bobs," she averred. "I don't think
I have ever before seen just this method employed." And she turned to
Stephen O'Mara. "Do you suppose, Mr. O'Mara," she asked, "that I might
learn it from the one who did this work for you? It's rather"--and her
head tilted to one side--"it's rather a pretty thing!"
Again they succumbed to mirth, and then Joe rose, bristling, and went
forward much as a gamecock might step out to do battle. He took the
cushion from the hands of the girls, who no longer had strength enough
even to hold it.
"If you are aiming to do any sewing around this camp," he stated, "you
can start in sewing on buttons. This kind of work is entirely too
nerve-wearing for amateurs."
He carried the cushion across the room and placed it, not where it had
been hidden by the deer-hide, but in colorful prominence against the
back of the chair. Long after he had crossed with Steve and Garry to
their tents he continued to explode with soft chuckles.
"I never did say," he defended himself, "that that sentiment was
strictly appropriate. I always stated that it was the best I could.
And as for my technique--well, either of you guys try it some time!
You just take a needleful of that yellow worsted and start tracking
across a couple of yards of red and pathless desert, and see where you
come out. I know, because I've done it. I'm a pioneer. But if I ever
tackle another job like that it's going to be a crazy-quilt!"
And Joe considered, in spite of the din which answered him, that his
challenge was ample.