HARKNESS AND THE SEER
Harkness and Clayton had come to Denver; Clayton to “hold up the
hands” of Justin, guessing what he would be called on to encounter,
and Harkness to see the “sights” in this time of political turmoil.
The cowboys were virtually in a state of revolt. It was not possible
that it could be otherwise. When Harkness, enraged and resentful, led
them in that rebellion against Ben Davison, ranch discipline was
destroyed and he lost control of them himself. Not that he now cared.
The impulse which led him to strike Ben to the earth by the ranch
house door had guided him since. He knew that the restraining hand of
Fogg, who had present interests to serve, alone checked the wrath of
Philip Davison. He, and all the other cowboys, must go, as soon as
this thing was settled. Nothing else was possible, when such a man as
Philip Davison was to be dealt with.
Harkness met Justin on the street in front of the hotel and made
straight for him. It was not a bee-line, for Harkness was comfortably
intoxicated. He had the cowboy failing. Though he never touched liquor
while on the ranch and duty demanded sobriety, he could not resist the
temptation to drink with a friend or an acquaintance when he was in
the city. He greeted Justin with hilarious familiarity, and the scent
of the liquor mingling with the scent of cinnamon drops Justin found
almost overpowering.
“Shake!” he cried, reeling as he took Justin’s hand. “Justin, I’m yer
friend! Don’t you never fergit it, I’m yer friend! And there ain’t no
strings on you! Understand—there ain’t—no—strings—on—you! We
fellers elected you 'cause we like you, and 'cause we couldn’t vote
for Ben Davison. ‘To hell with Ben Davison,’ says I to the boys,—‘to
hell with him; he took my wife’s horse and left her and Helen to burn
to death in that fire! I’ll see him damned 'fore—'fore I’ll vote fer
him!’ And so I would, Justin; an’ we—we (hic) voted f’r—fer you,
see! We voted fer you. Davison’s goin’ to d’scharge me an’ I know it,
but let him. I don’t haf to be cowboy, I don’t. Let him d’scharge
(hic) and damn to him! Let him d’scharge. But you go right ahead an’
do as you want to. You’re honest, an’ you’re all right, an’ we’re
backin’ you.”
When Fogg appeared—he had not yet abandoned hope of Justin—Harkness
swayed up to him pugnaciously. He had never liked Fogg, and he liked
him less now. Fogg’s oiliness sickened the cowboy stomach.
“Fogg,” he blustered, “Justin’s my friend, see! And there ain’t no
strings on him. He’s honest, an’ we’re backin’ him. You want to hear
my sentiments? ‘To hell with Ben Davison!’ Them’s my sentiments, an’ I
ain’t 'shamed of ’em. Davison’s goin’ to d’scharge me an’ I know it.
Le’m d’scharge. Who keers f’r d’scharge? I don’t haf to be cowboy, I
don’t. But you treat Justin right. You’ve got to treat (hic) treat him
right, fer he’s my friend, see!”
Fogg protested that he had never contemplated treating Justin in any
other way, and that Justin was his good friend as well as Harkness’s.
Wandering about Denver that day, “staring like a locoed steer,” as he
afterward expressed it, Harkness came to a stand in front of a doorway
and looked at a man who had emerged therefrom. The man was William
Sanders, but he passed on without observing Harkness.
“What’s he doin’ up here?” Harkness queried, as he watched the
familiar figure disappear in the crowd.
Sanders had gone, and to get an answer to his question Harkness stared
at the doorway, and the building, a somewhat imposing edifice of
brick, situated on one of the principal streets. It was given over to
offices of various kinds, he judged; but what fixed his eye was a sign
with a painted index-hand pointing to it.
“Madame Manton, Seer, Fortune teller, Palmist, and Clairvoyant.
Fortune telling and astrology. The past and the future revealed. Lost
articles found, dreams interpreted, lovers re-united.”
There was a statement below this, in much smaller letters, setting
forth that Madame Manton, who was a seventh daughter of a seventh
daughter and from birth gifted with miraculous second-sight, had just
returned to America after a prolonged stay in European capitals,
during which she had achieved marvellous successes and had been
consulted on important matters by the crowned heads.
Harkness did not know whether to connect the egress of William Sanders
from that doorway with this fortune teller or not, but the vagaries of
his intellectual condition impelled him to enter. Following the
direction of the pointing hand, he was soon climbing a stairway which
led to the door of this professed mistress of the black arts. Here
another sign, with even more emphatic statements, greeted him. On this
door Harkness hammered lustily.
“Come in!” said a voice.
Harkness tried the knob with fumbling fingers, then set his massive
shoulders to the panel, and was fairly precipitated into the room
where a rosy half-light glowed from a red lamp, and the sunlight,
showing through heavy red curtains, conjured queer shadows in the
corners. At the farther end of the room sat a woman. She was robed in
red, and her chair was red. A reddish veil hid her face. But the hand
she extended was small and white, and flashed the fire of diamonds.
Harkness was so taken aback that he was almost on the point of bolting
from the room. But that would have savored of a lack of courage, and
his drink-buoyed mind resented the imputation. He would not run, even
from a red fortune teller. Seeing a chair by the door he dropped into
it, stared at the woman, and not knowing what else to do took out his
red handkerchief to mop his red face. The odor of cinnamon drops
floating out from it combined with that of the whiskey and filled the
room.
“If you will be kind enough to close the door!” said the woman.
She was looking at him intently. He closed the door, and dropped back
into the chair. He crossed his legs nervously, then uncrossed them,
wiped his face again with the scented handkerchief, and finally stuck
his big hands into his big pockets to get rid of them. He was dressed
in half cowboy garb, and it began to dawn on him that he was “cutting
a pretty figure,” sitting there with that fortune teller.
“I suppose you’d like to have your fortune told?” she questioned.
“I dunno 'bout that!” he protested, his big hands burrowing deep into
his pockets. “I seen a feller come from this way, and I kinder p’inted
my toes in the same direction. Mebbe you was tellin’ his fortune?”
“No one has been here for more than an hour.”
“Then I reckon I was mistook. Do you make up these here fortunes out
of your own head, or how?”
“I tell whatever is to be told.”
“Fer coin?”
“Yes, for coin. Even a fortune teller must live. Put five dollars on
that tray beside you and I will begin.”
“If you can tag me, I’ll make it ten!”
Harkness put a crisp five dollar bill on the tray. If she had said ten
he would have placed that there. Liquor made him generous.
“You do not believe in fortunes?”
“Not any, lady. I stumbled into this game, and I’m simply playin’ it
fer the fun of it, same’s I used to go into a game of cards with Ben
Davison, when I knowed good and well he’d skin me. I’m goin’ up
ag’inst your game, lady, and payin’ before the game begins. It’s cut
out fer me to lose, but I’ll double the bet and lose it willin’ if you
can put your finger on me an’ tell me whatever about myself. I don’t
reckon you can do it.”
A low laugh of amusement came from behind the veil.
“You might as well put down the other five dollars now, to save you
the trouble of doing it later.”
Then she leaned forward and stared at him so intently that he felt
almost nervous. There was something uncanny in that rigid stare, and
in the strained tones of her voice, when she spoke after prolonged
silence. He fancied he could see her glowing eyes through the mesh of
the veil.
“Your last name begins with an H. Let me see! It is something like
Hearing. No, it can’t be that! It’s Hark—Hark—Harkening. No, that
can’t be. I can’t get it; but I didn’t promise to tell names. There
are a great many cattle where you live. Yes, and you are married.
That’s strange, for not many cowboys are married. You have a little
girl.”
She put her hand to her head, and was silent a moment.
“That’s very queer. The name of your little girl, her first name,
begins with an H.” She uttered a little inarticulate cry. “And, oh,
dear, she seems to be surrounded by fire; flames are on all sides of
her, and smoke! And she is frightened.”
Harkness started from his chair.
“She ain’t in any fire now?”
The woman dropped back with a sigh.
“No, not now,” she admitted; “that is past. I am telling you things
you know about, so that you will see that I have the power I claim.
Some one, some one on horseback, is saving her from that fire.”
“And a certain cuss is skedaddlin’ without liftin’ a finger to help
her!” said Harkness grimly. “Put that in the picture, fer I ain’t
fergittin’ it.”
The disclosures which followed astonished the intoxicated cowboy. He
could not have revealed them more clearly himself. The fortune teller
took excursions into the future too, in a way to please him; and, as
she could tell the past so well, he was glad to believe in her
glittering portrayals of delights to come.
Altogether Harkness was bewildered to the point of stupefaction. He
was sure he had never seen this woman nor she him, and her knowledge
produced in him a half-frightened sensation. Though he always
resolutely denied it to himself and to others, he was deeply
superstitious. If he began to sing as soon as he rose in the morning,
he tried to dissipate the bad luck that foretold by singing the words
backward. If he chanced to observe the new moon for the first time
over his left shoulder, he turned round in his tracks three times and
looked at it over his right. If he saw a pin on the floor with its
point toward him he picked it up, for that was a sign of good luck.
And he had such a collection of cast-off horseshoes he could have
started a shoeing shop on short notice.
Harkness was so well satisfied with the fortune teller that when she
concluded he dropped the second five dollar bill on the tray.
“You’re as welcome to it, lady, as if it was water,” he declared.
“Five dollars won’t count even a little bit when I come into the
fortune you p’inted out to me. You’re a silver-plated seer from the
front counties. You’ll find Dicky Carroll jumpin’ into this red
boodoir the first time he hits Denver. I’ll tell him about you, and
it’ll set him wild.”
Then he plunged down the stairway, fully convinced that he had
received the full worth of his money, not at all knowing that he had
imparted much more information than he had received.
When he was gone the woman leaned back in her red chair and laughed
until the tears came into her eyes. She laid aside the reddish veil,
thus revealing the features of Sibyl Dudley, and wiped away the tears
with a filmy handkerchief.
Then she began to make an estimate of the value of the information she
had received from this intoxicated cowboy, and from William Sanders.
It was considerable. She had formed many of her statements so craftily
that they were questions, and she had made these men talk about
themselves and their affairs in really garrulous fashion.
When a little time had elapsed she ventured into the street, in an
entirely different garb and veiled more heavily. Walking across the
street she hailed a cab, and was driven home, halting however at a
corner to purchase copies of the latest Denver papers. At home she
began to absorb their contents.
Sibyl Dudley’s finances were at a low ebb. Mr. Plimpton, the stock
broker, had met a reverse of fortune, and criminal proceedings being
hinted by men he had fleeced, he had gone into exile. Where he was
Sibyl did not know, and if she had known he could not have helped her,
for he had now no money. With debts thickening about her, and no new
admirer with a plethoric bank account yet appearing, she was being
driven to desperate extremities. To tide over this day of evil fortune
she had, carefully veiled that no one might know her, become Madame
Manton.
All these years she had kept Mary Jasper with her. Her attitude toward
Mary may be thought singular. Yet to Sibyl it was entirely natural.
She had plucked and worn this fair flower at first that it might add
to her attractiveness, as she would have plucked a wild rose to tuck
in her corsage on some gay evening when she desired to accentuate her
physical attractions in the eyes of men. But the utter simplicity and
guilelessness which Mary had worn through all as a protecting armor
had touched some hidden spring in this woman’s heart, so that she came
at last to cherish a brave desire to stand well in the opinion of this
pure girl and maintain firmly her position on that pinnacle of
supposed goodness and kindness where Mary had established her. Hence
her charities were continued by and by, not to create that inner
warmth of which she had spoken, but that Mary might believe her to be
charitable. And if any good angel could have done so great a thing as
to pull her from that miry clay in which her feet were set Mary Jasper
would, all unconsciously, have accomplished even that. Sibyl Dudley,
driven back upon herself, had to have some one who could love and
respect her; for in spite of all she was a woman, and love was
starving in her heart.
But she was not courageous enough to be honest; and, having read
through the papers, she sat thinking and planning how she might win
money enough to continue her present fight against adverse
circumstances. She could not confess to Mary that she was not rich,
that she was a pretender, and vile and degraded. No, she could not do
that. But to keep up her pretensions she must have money. Fortune
telling was an odious and precarious calling. She was sinking deeper
into debt. She must have money.
Putting away the papers and going to her mirror she scanned her
appearance. In spite of her strenuous fight, Time had the slow-moving
years with him, and they bit into heart and face like acid. She
brought forth her rouge and her pencils. They had long worked wonders
and her slender fingers had not lost their cunning. She was an artist
in paint though she never touched brush to canvas.
When Mary came in Sibyl was singing in a light-hearted way and
thrusting bits of cake to her canary between the bars of its gilded
cage.