A DISTINCT SHOCK
That evening when Mr. Starkweather came home, he handed Helen a sealed
letter.
"I have ascertained," the gentleman said, in his most pompous way, "that
Mr. Fenwick Grimes is in town. He has recently returned from a tour of the
West, where he has several mining interests. You will find his address on
that envelope. Give the letter to him. It will serve to introduce you."
He watched her closely while he said this, but did not appear to do so.
Helen thanked him with some warmth.
"This is very good of you, Uncle Starkweather--especially when I know you
do not approve."
"Ahem! Sleeping dogs are much better left alone. To stir a puddle is only
to agitate the mud. This old business would much better be forgotten. You
know all that there is to be known about the unfortunate affair, I am
quite sure."
"I cannot believe that, Uncle," Helen replied. "Had you seen how my dear
father worried about it when he was dying----"
Mr. Starkweather could look at her no longer--not even askance. He shook
his head and murmured some commonplace, sympathetic phrase. But it did not
seem genuine to his niece.
She knew very well that Mr. Starkweather had no real sympathy for her; nor
did he care a particle about her father's death. But she tucked the letter
into her pocket and went her way.
As she passed through the upstairs corridor Flossie was entering one of
the drawing-rooms, and she caught her cousin by the hand. Flossie had been
distinctly nicer to Helen--in private--since the latter had helped her
with the algebra problems.
"Come on in, Helen. Belle's just pouring tea. Don't you want some?" said
the youngest Starkweather girl.
It was in Helen's mind to excuse herself. Yet she was naturally too kindly
to refuse to accept an advance like this. And she, like Flossie, had no
idea that there was anybody in the drawing-room save Belle and Hortense.
In they marched--and there were three young ladies--friends of
Belle--sipping tea and eating macaroons by the log fire, for the evening
was drawing in cold.
"Goodness me!" ejaculated Belle.
"Well, I never!" gasped Hortense. "Have _you_ got to butt in, Floss?"
"We want some tea, too," said the younger girl, boldly, angered by her
sisters' manner.
"You'd better have it in the nursery," yawned Hortense. "This is no place
for kids in the bread-and-butter stage of growth."
"Oh, is that so?" cried Flossie. "Helen and I are not kids--distinctly
_not_! I hope I know my way about a bit--and as for Helen," she added,
with a wicked grin, knowing that the speech would annoy her sisters,
"Helen can shoot, and rope steers, and break ponies to saddle, and all
that. She told me so the other evening. Isn't that right, Cousin Helen?"
"Why, your cousin must be quite a wonderful girl," said Miss Van Ramsden,
one of the visitors, to Flossie. "Introduce me; won't you, Flossie?"
Belle was furious; and Hortense would have been, too, only she was too
languid to feel such an emotion. Flossie proceeded to introduce Helen to
the three visitors--all of whom chanced to be young ladies whom Belle was
striving her best to cultivate.
And before Flossie and Helen had swallowed their tea, which Belle gave
them ungraciously, Gregson announced a bevy of other girls, until quite a
dozen gaily dressed and chattering misses were gathered before the fire.
At first Helen had merely bowed to the girls to whom she was introduced.
She had meant to drink her tea quietly and excuse herself. She did not
wish now to display a rude manner before Belle's guests; but her oldest
cousin seemed determined to rouse animosity in her soul.
"Yes," she said, "Helen is paying us a little visit--a very brief one. She
is not at all used to our ways. In fact, Indian squaws and what-do-you
call-'ems--Greasers--are about all the people she sees out her way."
"Is that so?" cried Miss Van Ramsden. "It must be a perfectly charming
country. Come and sit down by me, Miss Morrell, and tell me about it."
Indeed, at the moment, there was only one vacant chair handy, and that was
beside Miss Van Ramsden. So Helen took it and immediately the young lady
began to ask questions about Montana and the life Helen had lived there.
Really, the young society woman was not offensive; the questions were
kindly meant. But Helen saw that Belle was furious and she began to take a
wicked delight in expatiating upon her home and her own outdoor
accomplishments.
When she told Miss Van Ramsden how she and her cowboy friends rode after
jack-rabbits and roped them--if they could!--and shot antelope from the
saddle, and that the boys sometimes attacked a mountain lion with nothing
but their lariats, Miss Van Ramsden burst out with:
"Why, that's perfectly grand! What fun you must have! Do hear her, girls!
Why, what we do is tame and insipid beside things that happen out there in
Montana every day."
"Oh, don't bother about her, May!" cried Belle. "Come on and let's plan
what we'll do Saturday if we go to the Nassau links."
"Listen here!" cried Miss Van Ramsden, eagerly. "Golf can wait. We can
always golf. But your cousin tells the very bulliest stories. Go on, Miss
Morrell. Tell some more."
"Do, do!" begged some of the other girls, drawing their chairs nearer.
Helen was not a little embarrassed. She would have been glad to withdraw
from the party. But then she saw the looks exchanged between Belle and
Hortense, and they fathered a wicked desire in the Western girl's heart to
give her proud cousins just what they were looking for.
She began, almost unconsciously, to stretch her legs out in a mannish
style, and drop into the drawl of the range.
"Coyote running is about as good fun as we have," she told Miss Van
Ramsden in answer to a question. "Yes, they're cowardly critters; but they
can run like a streak o' greased lightning--yes-sir-ree-bob!" Then she
began to laugh a little. "I remember once when I was a kid, that I got
fooled about coyotes."
"I'd like to know what you are now," drawled Hortense, trying to draw
attention from her cousin, who was becoming altogether too popular. "And
you should know that children are better seen than heard."
"Let's see," said Helen, quickly, "our birthdays are in the same month;
aren't they, 'Tense? I believe mother used to tell me so."
"Oh, never mind your birthdays," urged Miss Van Ramsden, while some of the
other girls smiled at the repartee. "Let's hear about your adventure with
the coyote, Miss Morrell."
"Why, ye see," said Helen, "it wasn't much. I was just a kid, as I
say--mebbe ten year old. Dad had given me a light rifle--just a
twenty-two, you know--to learn to shoot with. And Big Hen Billings----"
"Doesn't that sound just like those dear Western plays?" gasped one young
lady. "You know--'The Squaw Man of the Golden West,' or 'Missouri,'
or----"
"Hold on! You're getting your titles mixed, Lettie," cried Miss Van
Ramsden. "Do let Miss Morrell tell it."
"To give that child the center of the stage!" snapped Hortense, to Belle.
"I could shake Flossie for bringing her in here," returned the oldest
Starkweather girl, quite as angrily.
"Tell us about your friend, Big Hen Billings," drawled another visitor.
"He _does_ sound so romantic!"
Helen almost giggled. To consider the giant foreman of Sunset Ranch a
romantic type was certainly "going some." She had the wicked thought that
she would have given a large sum of money, right then and there, to have
had Big Hen announced by Gregson and ushered into the presence of this
group of city girls.
"Well," continued Helen, thus urged, "father had given me a little rifle
and Big Hen gave me a maverick----"
"What's that?" demanded Flossie.
"Well, in this case," explained Helen, "it was an orphaned calf. Sometimes
they're strays that haven't been branded. But in this case a bear had
killed the calf's mother in a _coulee_. She had tried to fight Mr. Bear,
of course, or he never would have killed her at that time of year. Bears
aren't dangerous unless they're hungry."
"My! but they look dangerous enough--at the zoo," observed Flossie.
"I tell ye," said Helen, reflectively, "that was a pretty calf. And I was
little, and I hated to hear them blat when the boys burned them----"
"Burned them! Burned little calves! How cruel! What for?"
These were some of the excited comments. And in spite of Belle and
Hortense, most of the visitors were now interested in the Western girl's
narration.
"They have to brand 'em, you see," explained Helen. "Otherwise we never
could pick our cattle out from other herds at the round-up. You see, on
the ranges--even the fenced ranges--cattle from several ranches often get
mixed up. Our brand is the Link-A. Our ranch was known, in the old days,
as the 'Link-A.' It's only late years that we got to calling it Sunset
Ranch."
"Sunset Ranch!" cried Miss Van Ramsden, quickly. "Haven't I heard
something about _that_ ranch? Isn't it one of the big, big cattle and
horse-breeding ranches?"
"Yes, ma'am," said Helen, slowly, fearing that she had unwittingly got
into a blind alley of conversation.
"And your father owns _that_ ranch?" cried Miss Van Ramsden.
"My--my father is dead," said Helen. "I am an orphan."
"Oh, dear me! I am so sorry," murmured the wealthy young lady.
But here Belle broke in, rather scornfully:
"The child means that her father worked on that ranch. She has lived there
all her life. Quite a rude place, I fawncy."
Helen's eyes snapped. "Yes. He worked there," she admitted, which was true
enough, for nobody could honestly have called Prince Morrell a sluggard.
"He was--what you call it--a cowpuncher, I believe," whispered Belle, in
an aside.
If Helen heard she made no sign, but went on with her story.
"You see, it was _such_ a pretty calf," she repeated. "It had big blue
eyes at first--calves often do. And it was all sleek and brown, and it
played so cunning. Of course, its mother being dead, I had a lot of
trouble with it at first. I brought it up by hand.
"And I tied a broad pink ribbon around its neck, with a big bow at the
back. When it slipped around under its neck Bozie would somehow get the
end of the ribbon in its mouth, and chew, and chew on it till it was
nothing but pulp."
She laughed reminiscently, and the others, watching her pretty face in the
firelight, smiled too.
"So you called it Bozie?" asked Miss Van Ramsden.
"Yes. And it followed me everywhere. If I went out to try and shoot plover
or whistlers with my little rifle, there was Bozie tagging after me. So,
you see when it came calf-branding time, I hid Bozie."
"You hid it? How?" demanded Flossie. "Seems to me a calf would be a big
thing to hide."
"I didn't hide it under my bed," laughed Helen. "No, sir! I took it out to
a far distant _coulee_ where I used to go to play--a long way from the
bunk-house--and I hitched Bozie to a stub of a tree where there was nice,
short, sweet grass for him.
"I hitched him in the morning, for the branding fires were going to be
built right after dinner. But I had to show up at dinner--sure. The whole
gang would have been out hunting me if I didn't report for meals."
"Yes. I presume you ran perfectly wild," sighed Hortense, trying to look
as though she were sorry for this half-savage little cousin from the "wild
and woolly."
"Oh, very wild indeed," drawled Helen. "And after dinner I raced back to
the _coulee_ to see that Bozie was all right. I took my rifle along so the
boys would think I'd gone hunting and wouldn't tell father.
"I'd heard coyotes barking, as I thought, all the forenoon. And when I
came to the hollow, there was Bozie running around and around his stub,
and getting all tangled up, blatting his heart out, while two big old
coyotes (or so I thought they were) circled around him.
"They ran a little way when they saw me coming. Coyotes sometimes _will_
kill calves. But I had never seen one before that wouldn't hunt the tall
pines when they saw me coming.
"Crackey, those two were big fellers! I'd seen big coyotes, but never none
like them two gray fellers. And they snarled at me when I made out to
chase 'em--me wavin' my arms and hollerin' like a Piute buck. I never had
seen coyotes like them before, and it throwed a scare into me--it sure
did!
"And Bozie was so scared that he helped to scare me. I dropped my gun and
started to untangle him. And when I got him loose he acted like all
possessed!
[Illustration: "LET'S HEAR ABOUT YOUR ADVENTURE WITH THE COYOTE,
MISS MORRELL." (Page 180.)]
"He wanted to run wild," proceeded Helen. "He yanked me over the ground at
a great rate. And all the time those two gray fellers was sneakin' up
behind me. Crackey, but I got scared!
"A calf is awful strong--'specially when it's scared. You don't know! I
had to leave go of either the rope, or the gun, and somehow," and Helen
smiled suddenly into Miss Van Ramsden's face--who understood--"somehow I
felt like I'd better hang onter the gun."
"They weren't coyotes!" exclaimed Miss Van Ramsden.
"No. They was wolves--real old, gray, timber-wolves. We hadn't been
bothered by them for years. Two of 'em, working together, would pull down
a full-grown cow, let alone a little bit of a calf and a little bit of a
gal," said Helen.
"O-o-o!" squealed the excited Flossie. "But they didn't?"
"I'm here to tell the tale," returned her cousin, laughing outright.
"Bozie broke away from me, and the wolves leaped after him--full chase. I
knelt right down----"
"And prayed!" gasped Flossie. "I should think you would!"
"I _did_ pray--yes, ma'am! I prayed that the bullet would go true. But I
knelt down to steady my aim," said Helen, chuckling again. "And I broke
the back of one of them wolves with my first shot. That was wonderful
luck--with a twenty-two rifle. The bullet's only a tiny thing.
"But I bowled Mr. Wolf over, and then I ran after the other one and the
blatting Bozie. Bozie dodged the wolf somehow and came circling back at
me, his tail flirting in the air, coming in stiff-legged jumps as a calf
does, and searching his soul for sounds to tell how scart he was!
"I'd pushed another cartridge into my gun. But when Bozie came he bowled
me over--flat on my back. Then the wolf made a leap, and I saw his
light-gray underbody right over my head as he flashed after poor Bozie.
"I jest let go with the gun! Crackey! I didn't have time to shoulder it,
and it kicked and hit me in the nose and made my nose bleed awful. I was
'all in,' too, and I thought the wolf was going to eat Bozie, and then
mebbe _me_, and I set up to bawl so't Big Hen heard me farther than he
could have heard my little rifle.
"Big Hen was always expectin' me to get inter some kind of trouble, and he
come tearin' along lookin' for me. And there I was, rolling in the grass
an' bawling, the second wolf kicking his life out with the blood pumping
from his chest, not three yards away from me, and Bozie streakin' it
acrost the hill, his tail so stiff with fright you could ha' hung yer hat
on it!"
"Isn't that perfectly grand!" cried Miss Van Ramsden, seizing Helen by the
shoulders when she had finished and kissing her on both cheeks. "And you
only ten years old?"
"But, you see," said Helen, more quietly, "we are brought up that way in
Montana. We would die a thousand deaths if we were taught to be afraid of
anything on four legs."
"It must be an exceedingly crude country," remarked Hortense, her nose
tip-tilted.
"Shocking!" agreed Belle.
"I'd like to go there," announced Flossie, suddenly. "I think it must be
fine."
"Quite right," agreed Miss Van Ramsden.
The older Starkweather girls could not go against their most influential
caller. They were only too glad to have the Van Ramsden girl come to see
them. But while the group were discussing Helen's story, the girl from
Sunset Ranch stole away and went up to her room.
She had not meant to tell about her life in the West--not in just this
way. She had tried to talk about as her cousins expected her to, when once
she got into the story; but its effect upon the visitors had not been just
what either the Starkweather girls, or Helen herself, had expected.
She saw that she was much out of the good graces of Belle and Hortense at
dinner; they hardly spoke to her. But Flossie seemed to delight in rubbing
her sisters against the grain.
"Oh, Pa," she cried, "when Helen goes home, let me go with her; will you?
I'd just love to be on a ranch for a while--I know I should! And I _do_
need a vacation."
"Nonsense, Floss!" gasped Hortense.
"You are a perfectly vulgar little thing," declared Belle. "I don't know
where you get such low tastes."
Mr. Starkweather looked at his youngest daughter in amazement. "How very
ridiculous," he said. "Ahem! You do not know what you ask, Flossie."
"Oh! I never can have anything I want," whined Miss Flossie. "And it must
be great fun out on that ranch. You ought to hear Helen tell about it,
Pa."
"Ahem! I have no interest in such things," said her father, sternly. "Nor
should you. No well conducted and well brought up girl would wish to live
among such rude surroundings."
"Very true, Pa," sighed Hortense, shrugging her shoulders.
"You are a very common little thing, with very common tastes, Floss,"
admonished her oldest sister.
Now, all this was whipping Helen over Flossie's shoulders. The latter
grinned wickedly; but Helen felt hurt. These people were determined to
consider Sunset Ranch an utterly uncivilized place, and her associates
there beneath contempt.
The following morning she set out to find the address upon the letter Mr.
Starkweather had given to her. Whether she should present this letter to
Mr. Grimes at once, Helen was not sure. It might be that she would wish to
get acquainted with him before he knew her identity. Her expectations were
very vague, at best; and yet she had hope.
She hoped that through this old-time partner of her father's she might
pick up some clue to the truth about the lost money. The firm of Grimes &
Morrell had been on the point of paying several heavy bills and notes. The
money for this purpose, as well as the working capital of the firm, had
been in two banks. Either partner could draw checks against these
accounts.
When the deposits in both banks had been withdrawn it had been done by
checks for each complete balance being presented at the teller's window of
both banks. And the tellers were quite sure that the person presenting the
checks was Prince Morrell.
In the rush of business, however, neither teller had been positive of
this. Of course, it might have been the bookkeeper, or Mr. Grimes, who had
got the money on the checks. However it might be, the money disappeared;
there was none with which to pay the creditors or to continue the business
of the firm.
Fenwick Grimes had been a sufferer; Willets Starkweather had been a
sufferer. What Allen Chesterton, the bookkeeper, had been, it was hard to
say. He had walked out of the office of the firm and had never come back.
Likewise after a few days of worry and disturbance, Prince Morrell had
done the same.
At least, the general public presumed that Mr. Morrell had run away
without leaving any clue. It looked as though the senior partner and the
bookkeeper were in league.
But public interest in the mystery had soon died out. Only the creditors
remembered. After ten years they were pleasantly reminded of the wreck of
the firm of Grimes & Morrell by the receipt of their lost money, with
interest compounded to date. The lawyer that had come on from the West to
make the settlement for Prince Morrell bound the creditors to secrecy. The
bankruptcy court had long since absolved Fenwick Grimes from
responsibility for the debts of the old firm. Neither he nor Mr.
Starkweather had to know that the partner who ran away had legally cleared
his name.
But there was something more. The suspicion against Prince Morrell had
burdened the cattle king's mind and heart when he died. And his little
daughter felt it to be her sacred duty to try, at least, to uncover that
old mystery and to prove to the world that her father had been guiltless.
Mr. Grimes lived in an old house in a rather shabby old street just off
Washington Square. Helen asked Mr. Lawdor how to find the place, and she
rode downtown upon a Fifth Avenue 'bus.
The house was a half-business, half-studio building; and Mr. Grimes's
name--graven on a small brass plate--was upon a door in the lower hall. In
fact, Mr. Grimes, and his clerk, occupied this lower floor, the gentleman
owning the building, which he was holding for a rise in real estate values
in that neighborhood.
The clerk, a sharp-looking young man with a pen behind his ear, answered
Helen's somewhat timid knock. He looked her over severely before he even
offered to admit her, asking:
"What's your business, please?"
"I came to see Mr. Grimes, sir."
"By appointment?"
"No-o, sir. But----"
"He is very busy. He seldom sees anybody save by appointment. Are--are you
acquainted with him?"
"No, sir. But my business is important."
"To you, perhaps," said the clerk, with a sneering smile. "But if it isn't
important to _him_ I shall catch it for letting you in. What is it?"
"It is business that I can tell to nobody except Mr. Grimes. Not in
detail. But I can say this much: It concerns a time when Mr. Grimes was in
business with another man--sixteen years or more ago and I have come--come
from his old partner."
"Humph!" said the clerk. "A begging interview? For, if so, take my
advice--don't try it. It would be no use. Mr. Grimes never gives anything
away. He wouldn't even bait a rat-trap with cheese-parings."
"I have not come here to beg money of Mr. Grimes," said Helen, drawing
herself up.
"Well, you can come in and wait. Perhaps he'll see you."
This had all been said very low in the public hall, the clerk holding the
door jealously shut behind him. Now he opened it slowly and let her enter
a large room, with old and dusty furniture set about it, and the clerk's
own desk far back, by another door--which latter he guarded against all
intrusion. Behind that door, of course, was the man she had come to see.
But as Helen turned to take a seat on the couch which the clerk indicated
with a gesture of his pen, she suddenly discovered that she was not the
only person waiting in the room. In a decrepit armchair by one of the
front windows, and reading the morning paper, with his wig pushed back
upon his bald brow, was the queer old gentleman with whom she had ridden
across the continent when she had come to New York.
The discovery of this acquaintance here in Mr. Grimes's office gave Helen
a distinct shock.