The hot weather had come suddenly, at least a month earlier than usual,
and New York lay baking under a scorching sun when Miss Hetty Torrance sat
in the coolest corner of the Grand Central Depot she could find. It was by
her own wish she had spent the afternoon in the city unattended, for Miss
Torrance was a self-reliant young woman; but it was fate and the
irregularity of the little gold watch, which had been her dead mother's
gift, that brought her to the depot at least a quarter of an hour too
soon. But she was not wholly sorry, for she had desired more solitude and
time for reflection than she found in the noisy city, where a visit to an
eminent modiste had occupied most of her leisure. There was, she had
reasons for surmising, a decision of some moment to be made that night,
and as yet she was no nearer arriving at it than she had been when the
little note then in her pocket had been handed her.
Still, it was not the note she took out when she found a seat apart from
the hurrying crowd, but a letter from her father, Torrance, the
Cattle-Baron, of Cedar Range. It was terse and to the point, as usual, and
a little smile crept into the girl's face as she read.
"Your letter to hand, and so long as you have a good time don't worry
about the bills. You'll find another five hundred dollars at the bank when
you want them. Thank God, I can give my daughter what her mother should
have had. Two years since I've seen my little girl, and now it seems that
somebody else is wanting her! Well, we were made men and women, and if you
had been meant to live alone dabbling in music you wouldn't have been
given your mother's face. Now, I don't often express myself this way, but
I've had a letter from Captain Jackson Cheyne, U. S. Cavalry, which reads
as straight as I've found the man to be. Nothing wrong with that family,
and they've dollars to spare; but if you like the man I can put down two
for every one of his. Well, I might write a good deal, but you're too much
like your father to be taken in. You want dollars and station, and I can
see you get them, but in a contract of this kind the man is everything.
Make quite sure you're getting the right one."
There was a little more to the same purpose, and when she slipped the
letter into her pocket Hetty Torrance smiled.
"The dear old man!" she said. "It is very like him; but whether Jake is
the right one or not is just what I can't decide."
Then she sat still, looking straight in front of her, a very attractive
picture, as some of the hurrying men who turned to glance at her seemed to
find, in her long light dress. Her face, which showed a delicate oval
under the big white hat, was a trifle paler than is usual with most
Englishwomen of her age, and the figure the thin fabric clung about less
decided in outline. Still, the faint warmth in her cheeks emphasized the
clear pallor of her skin, and there was a depth of brightness in the dark
eyes that would have atoned for a good deal more than there was in her
case necessity for. Her supple slenderness also became Hetty Torrance
well, and there was a suggestion of nervous energy in her very pose. In
addition to all this, she was a rich man's daughter, who had been well
taught in the cities, and had since enjoyed all that wealth and refinement
could offer her. It had also been a cause of mild astonishment to the
friends she had spent the past year with, that with these advantages, she
had remained Miss Torrance. They had been somewhat proud of their guest,
and opportunities had not been wanting had she desired to change her
status.
While she sat there musing, pale-faced citizens hurried past, great
locomotives crawled to and fro, and long trains of cars, white with the
dust of five hundred leagues, rolled in. Swelling in deeper cadence, the
roar of the city came faintly through the din; but, responsive to the
throb of life as she usually was, Hetty Torrance heard nothing of it then,
for she was back in fancy on the grey-white prairie two thousand miles
away. It was a desolate land of parched grass and bitter lakes with
beaches dusty with alkali, but a rich one to the few who held dominion
over it, and she had received the homage of a princess there. Then she
heard a voice that was quite in keeping with the spirit of the scene, and
was scarcely astonished to see that a man was smiling down on her.
He was dressed in city garments, and they became him; but the hand he held
out was lean, and hard, and brown, and, for he stood bareheaded, a paler
streak showed where the wide hat had shielded a face that had been
darkened by stinging alkali dust from the prairie sun. It was a quietly
forceful face, with steady eyes, which had a little sparkle of pleasure in
them, and were clear and brown, while something in the man's sinewy pose
suggested that he would have been at home in the saddle. Indeed, it was in
the saddle that Hetty Torrance remembered him most vividly, hurling his
half-tamed broncho straight at a gully down which the nondescript pack
streamed, while the scarcely seen shape of a coyote blurred by the dust,
streaked the prairie in front of them.
"Hetty!" he said.
"Larry!" said the girl. "Why, whatever are you doing here?"
Then both laughed a little, perhaps to conceal the faint constraint that
was upon them, for a meeting between former comrades has its difficulties
when one is a man and the other a woman, and the bond between them has not
been defined.
"I came in on business a day or two ago," said the man. "Ran round to
check some packages. I'm going back again to-morrow."
"Well," said the girl, "I was in the city, and came here to meet Flo
Schuyler and her sister. They'll be in at four."
The man looked at his watch. "That gives us 'most fifteen minutes, but
it's not going to be enough. We'll lose none of it. What about the
singing?"
Hetty Torrance flushed a trifle. "Larry," she said, "you are quite sure
you don't know?"
The man appeared embarrassed, and there was a trace of gravity in his
smile. "Your father told me a little; but I haven't seen him so often of
late. Any way, I would sooner you told me."
"Then," said the girl, with the faintest of quivers in her voice, "the
folks who understand good music don't care to hear me."
There was incredulity, which pleased his companion, in the man's face, but
his voice vaguely suggested contentment.
"That is just what they can't do," he said decisively. "You sing most
divinely."
"There is a good deal you and the boys at Cedar don't know, Larry. Any
way, lots of people sing better than I do, but I should be angry with you
if I thought you were pleased."
The man smiled gravely. "That would hurt. I'm sorry for you, Hetty; but
again I'm glad. Now there's nothing to keep you in the city, you'll come
back to us. You belong to the prairie, and it's a better place than
this."
He spoke at an opportune moment. Since her cherished ambition had failed
her, Hetty Torrance had grown a trifle tired of the city and the round of
pleasure that must be entered into strenuously, and there were times when,
looking back in reverie, she saw the great silent prairie roll back under
the red sunrise into the east, and fade, vast, solemn, and restful, a cool
land of shadow, when the first pale stars came out. Then she longed for
the jingle of the bridles and the drumming of the hoofs, and felt once
more the rush of the gallop stir her blood. But this was what she would
not show, and her eyes twinkled a trifle maliciously.
"Well, I don't quite know," she said. "There is always one thing left to
most of us."
She saw the man wince ever so slightly, and was pleased at it; but he was,
as she had once told him in the old days, grit all through, and he smiled
a little.
"Of course!" he said. "Still, the trouble is that there are very few of us
good enough for you. But you will come back for a little?"
Miss Torrance would not commit herself. "How are they getting along at the
Range?"
"Doesn't your father write you?"
"Yes," said the girl, colouring a trifle. "I had a letter from him a few
days ago, but he seldom mentioned what he was doing, and I want you to
tell me about him."
The man appeared thoughtful. "Well," he said, "it's quite three months
since I spoke to him. He was stirring round as brisk as ever, and is
rolling the dollars in this year."
"But you used to be always at the Range."
The man nodded, but the slight constraint that was upon him did not escape
the girl. "Still, I don't go there so often now. The Range is lonesome
when you are away."
Miss Torrance accepted the speech as one made by a comrade, and perhaps
was wrong, but a tramp of feet attracted her attention then, and she
looked away from her companion. Driven by the railroad officials, and led
by an interpreter, a band of Teutons some five or six hundred strong filed
into the station. Stalwart and stolid, tow-haired, with the stamp of
acquiescent patience in their homely faces, they came on with the swing,
but none of the usual spirit, of drilled men. They asked no questions, but
went where they were led, and the foulness of the close-packed steerage
seemed to cling about them. For a time the depot rang to the rhythmic
tramp of feet, and when, at a sign from the interpreter, it stopped, two
bewildered children, frowsy and unwashed, in greasy homespun, sat down and
gazed at Miss Torrance with mild blue eyes. She signed to a boy who was
passing with a basket slung before him, and made a little impatient
gesture when the man slipped his hand into his pocket.
"No," she said; "you'll make me vexed with you. Tell him to give them all
he has. They'll be a long while in the cars."
She handed the boy a silver coin, and while the children sat still,
undemonstratively astonished, with the golden fruit about them, the man
passed him a bill.
"Now get some more oranges, and begin right at the top of the line," he
said. "If that doesn't see you through, come back to me for another
bill."
Hetty Torrance's eyes softened. "Larry," she said, "that was dreadfully
good of you. Where are they all going to?"
"Chicago, Nebraska, Minnesota, Montana," said the man. "There are the cars
coming in. Just out of Castle Garden, and it's because of the city
improvements disorganizing traffic they're bringing them this way. They're
the advance guard, you see, and there are more of them coming."
The tramp of feet commenced again, but this time it was a horde of diverse
nationality, Englishmen, Irishmen, Poles, and Finns, but all with the
stamp of toil, and many with that of scarcity upon them. Bedraggled,
unkempt, dejected, eager with the cunning that comes of adversity, they
flowed in, and Hetty Torrance's face grew pitiful as she watched them.
"Do they come every week like this and, even in our big country, have we
got room for all of them?" she said.
There was a curious gleam in the man's brown eyes. "Oh, yes," he said.
"It's the biggest and greatest country this old world has ever seen, and
the Lord made it as a home for the poor--the folks they've no food or use
for back yonder; and, while there are short-sighted fools who would close
the door, we take them in, outcast and hopeless, and put new heart in
them. In a few short years we make them men and useful citizens, the equal
of any on this earth--Americans!"
Hetty Torrance nodded, and there was pride but no amusement in her smile;
for she had a quick enthusiasm, and the reticence of Insular Britain has
no great place in that country.
"Still," she said; "all these people coming in must make a difference."
The man's face grew grave. "Yes," he said; "there will have to be a
change, and it is coming. We are only outwardly democratic just now, and
don't seem to know that men are worth more than millionaires. We have let
them get their grip on our industries, and too much of our land, until
what would feed a thousand buys canvas-backs, and wines from Europe for
one. Isn't what we raise in California good enough for Americans?"
Miss Torrance's eyes twinkled. "Some of it isn't very nice, and they don't
live on canvas-backs," she said. "Still, it seems to me that other men
have talked like that quite a thousand years ago; and, while I don't know
anyone better at breaking a broncho or cutting out a steer, straightening
these affairs out is too big a contract for you."
The man laughed pleasantly. "That's all right, but I can do a little in
the place I belong to, and the change is beginning there. Is it good for
this country that one man should get rich feeding his cattle on leagues of
prairie where a hundred families could make a living growing wheat?"
"Now," said the girl drily, "I know why you and my father haven't got on.
Your opinions wouldn't please him, Larry."
"No," said the man, with a trace of embarrassment, "I don't think they
would; and that's just why we've got to convince him and the others that
what we want to do is for the good of the country."
Hetty Torrance laughed. "It's going to be hard. No man wants to believe
anything is good when he sees it will take quite a pile of dollars out of
his pocket."
The man said nothing, and Hetty fancied he was not desirous of following
up the topic, while as they sat silent a big locomotive backed another
great train of emigrant cars in. Then the tramp of feet commenced again,
and once more a frowsy host of outcasts from the overcrowded lands poured
into the depot. Wagons piled with baggage had preceded them, but many
dragged their pitiful belongings along with them, and the murmur of their
alien voices rang through the bustle of the station. Hetty Torrance was
not unduly fanciful, but those footsteps caused her, as she afterwards
remembered, a vague concern. She believed, as her father did, that America
was made for the Americans; but it was evident that in a few more years
every unit of those incoming legions would be a citizen of the Republic,
with rights equal to those enjoyed by Torrance of Cedar Range. She had
seen that as yet the constitution gave no man more than he could by his
own hand obtain; but it seemed not unlikely that some, at least, of those
dejected, unkempt men had struck for the rights of humanity that were
denied them in the older lands with dynamite and rifle.
Then, as the first long train of grimy cars rolled out close packed with
their frowsy human freight, a train of another kind came in, and two young
women in light dresses swung themselves down from the platform of a car
that was sumptuous with polished woods and gilding. Miss Torrance rose as
she saw them, and touched her companion.
"Come along, Larry, and I'll show you two of the nicest girls you ever
met," she said.
The man laughed. "They would have been nicer if they hadn't come quite so
soon," he said.
He followed his companion and was duly presented to Miss Flora and Miss
Caroline Schuyler. "Larry Grant of Fremont Ranch," said Miss Torrance.
"Larry is a great friend of mine."
The Misses Schuyler were pretty. Carolina, the younger, pale, blue-eyed,
fair-haired and vivacious; her sister equally blonde, but a trifle
quieter. Although they were gracious to him, Grant fancied that one
flashed a questioning glance at the other when there was a halt in the
conversation. Then, as if by tacit agreement, they left him alone a moment
with their companion, and Hetty Torrance smiled as she held out her hand.
"I can't keep them waiting, but you'll come and see me," she said.
"I am going home to-morrow," said the man. "When are you coming, Hetty?"
The girl smiled curiously, and there was a trace of wistfulness in her
eyes. "I don't quite know. Just now I fancy I may not come at all, but you
will not forget me, Larry."
The man looked at her very gravely, and Hetty Torrance appeared to find
something disconcerting in his gaze, for she turned her head away.
"No," he said, and there was a little tremor in his voice, "I don't think
I shall forget you. Well, if ever you grow tired of the cities you will
remember the lonely folks who are longing to have you home again back
there on the prairie."
Hetty Torrance felt her fingers quiver under his grasp, but the next
moment he had turned away, and her companions noticed there was a faint
pink tinge in her cheeks when she rejoined them. But being wise young
women, they restrained their natural inquisitiveness, and asked no
questions then.
In the meanwhile Grant, who watched them until the last glimpse of their
light dresses was lost in the crowd, stood beside the second emigrant
train vacantly glancing at the aliens who thronged about it. His bronzed
face was a trifle weary, and his lips were set, but at last he
straightened his shoulders with a little resolute movement and turned
away.
"I have my work," he said, "and it's going to be quite enough for me."