CHAPTER XV

FLAMES

A hot, dry day followed on the cool dawn. In his room Dickie lay across

his bed. The sun blazed in at his single long window; the big flies that

had risen from the dirty yard buzzed and bumped against the upper pane

and made aimless, endless, mazy circles above and below one another in

the stifling, odorous atmosphere. Dickie lay there like an image of

Icarus, an eternal symbol of defeated youth; one could almost see about

his slenderness the trailing, shattered wings. He had wept out the first

shock of his anger and his shame; now he lay in a despairing stupor. His

bruised face burned and ached; his chest felt tight with the aching and

burning of his heart. Any suspicion of his father's interpretation of his

presence in Sheila's room was mercifully spared him, but the knowledge

that he had been brutally jerked back from her pure and patient lips, had

been ignominiously punished before her eyes and turned out like a whipped

boy--this knowledge was a dreadful torture to his pride. Sheila, to be

sure, did not love him even a little bit; she had said so. All the

longing and the tumult of his heart during these months had made no more

impression upon her than a frantic sea makes upon the little bird at the

top of the cliff. She had, he must think, hardly been aware of it. And

it was such a terrible and frantic actuality. He had fancied that it must

have beaten forever, day by day, night by night, at her consciousness.

Can a woman live near so turbulent a thing and not even guess at its

existence? Her hand against his heart had lain so limp and dead. He

hadn't hoped, of course, that she loved him the way he loved. Probably no

one else could feel what he felt and live--so Dickie in young love's

eternal fashion believed in his own miracle; but she might have loved him

a little, a very little, in time--if she hadn't seen him beaten and

shamed and cuffed out of her presence like a dog. Now there was no hope.

No hope at all. No hope. Dickie rocked his head against his arm. He had

told Sheila that he would take care of her, but he could not even defend

himself. He had told her that he would die to save her any suffering,

but, before her, he had writhed and gasped helplessly under the weight of

another man's hand, his open hand, not even a fist.... No after act of

his could efface from Sheila's memory that picture of his ignominy. She

had seen him twisted and bent and beaten and thrown away. His father had

triumphantly returned to reassure and comfort her for the insult of a

boy's impertinence. Would Sheila defend him? Would she understand? Or

would she not be justified in contemptuous laughter at his pretensions?

Such thoughts--less like thoughts, however, than like fiery fever

fits--twisted and scorched Dickie's mind as he lay there. They burnt into

him wounds that for years throbbed slowly into scars.

At noon the heat of his room became even more intolerable than his

thoughts. His head beat with pain. He was bathed in sweat, weak and

trembling. He dragged himself up, went to his washstand, and dipped his

wincing face into the warmish, stale water. His lips felt cracked and dry

and swollen. In the wavy mirror he saw a distorted image of his face,

with its heavy eyes, scattered hair, and the darkening marks of his

father's blows, punctuated by the scarlet scratches of the emerald. He

dried his face, loosened his collar, and, gasping for air, came out into

the narrow hall.

The hotel was very still. He hurried through it, his face bent, and went

by the back way to the saloon. At this hour Sheila was asleep. Carthy

would be alone in The Aura and there would be few, if any, customers.

Dickie found the place cool and quiet and empty, shuttered from the sun,

the air stirred by electric fans. Carthy dozed in his chair behind the

bar. He gave Dickie his order, somnambulantly. Dickie took it off to a

dim corner and drank with the thirst of a wounded beast.

Three or four hours later he staggered back to his room. A thunderstorm

was rumbling and flashing down from the mountains to the north. The

window was purple-black, and a storm wind blew the dirty curtains,

straight and steady, into the room. The cool wind tasted and smelt of hot

dust. Dickie felt his dazed way to the bed and steadied himself into a

sitting posture. With infinite difficulty he rolled and lighted a

cigarette, drew at it, took it out, tried to put it again between his

lips, and fell over on his back, his arm trailing over the edge of the

bed. The lighted cigarette slipped from his fingers to the ragged strip

of matting. Dickie lay there, breathing heavily and regularly in a

drunken and exhausted sleep.

A vivid, flickering pain in his arm woke him. He thought for an instant

that he must have died and dropped straight into Hell. The wind still

blew in upon him, but it blew fire against him. Above him there was a

heavy panoply of smoke. His bedclothes were burning, his sleeve was on

fire. The boards of his floor cracked and snapped in regiments of flame.

He got up, still in a half stupor, plunged his arm into the water

pitcher, saw, with a startled oath, that the woodwork about his door was

blazing in long tongues of fire which leaped up into the rafters of the

roof. His brain began to telegraph its messages ... the hotel was on

fire. He could not imagine what had started it. He remembered Sheila.

He ran along the passage, the roar of that wind-driven fire following

him as the draft from his window through his opened door gave a sudden

impulse to the flames, and he came to Sheila's sitting-room. He

knocked, had no answer, and burst in. He saw instantly that she had

gone. Her father's picture had been taken, her little books, her

sketches, her work-basket, her small yellow vase. Things were scattered

about. As he stood staring, a billow of black smoke rolled into the

room. He went quickly through the bedroom and the bath, calling

"Sheila" in a low, uncertain voice, returned to the sitting-room to

find the air already pungent and hot. There was a paper pinned up on

the mantel. Sheila's writing marched across it. Dickie rubbed the smoke

from his eyes and read:

"I am going away from Millings. And I am not coming back. Amelia may have

the things I have left. I don't want them."

This statement was addressed to no one.

"She has gone to New York," thought Dickie. His confused mind became

possessed with the immediate purpose of following her. There was an

Eastern train in the late afternoon. Only he must have money and it

was--most of it--in his room. He dashed back. The passage was ablaze; his

room roared like the very heart of a furnace. It was no use to think of

getting in there. Well, he had something in his pocket, enough to start

him. He plunged, choking, into Sheila's sitting-room again. For some

reason this flight of hers had brought back his hope. There was to be a

beginning, a fresh start, a chance.

He went over to the chair where Sheila had sat in the comfort, of his

arms and he touched the piece of tapestry on its back. That was his

good-bye to Millings. Then he fastened his collar, smoothed his hair,

standing close before Sheila's mirror, peering and blinking through the

smoke, and buttoned his coat painstakingly. There would be a hat

downstairs. As he turned to go he saw a little brown leather book lying

on the floor below the mantel. He picked it up. Here was something he

could take to Sheila. With an impulse of tenderness he opened it. His

eyes were caught by a stanza--

"The blessed damozel leaned out

From the gold bar of Heaven;

Her eyes were deeper than the depth

Of waters stilled at even;

She had three lilies in her hand,

And the stars in her hair were seven--"

There are people, no doubt, who will not be able to believe this truthful

bit of Dickie's history. The smoke was drifting across him, the roar of

the nearing fire was in his ears, he was at a great crisis in his

affairs, his heart was hot with wounded love, and his brain hot with

whiskey and with hope. Nevertheless, he did now, under the spell of those

printed words, which did not even remotely resemble any words that he had

ever read or heard before, forget the smoke, the roar, the love, the

hope, and, standing below Sheila's mirror, he did read "The Blessed

Damozel" from end to end. And the love of those lovers, divided by all

the space between the shaken worlds, and the beauty of her tears made a

great and mystic silence of rapture about him. "O God!" Dickie said

twice as he read. He brushed away the smoke to see the last lines,--"And

wept--I heard her tears." The ecstatic pain of beauty gripped him to the

forgetfulness of all other pain or ecstasy. "O God!"

He came to with a start, shut the book, stuck it into his pocket, and,

crooking his arm over his smarting eyes, he plunged out of the room.

Millings had become aware of its disaster. Dickie, fleeing by the back

way, leaping dangers and beating through fire, knew by the distant

commotion that the Fire Brigade, of which he was a member, was gathering

its men for the glory of their name. He saw, too, that with a wind like

this to aid the fire, there wasn't a chance for The Aura, and a queer

pang of sympathy for his father stabbed him. "It will kill Pap," thought

Dickie. Save for this pang, he ran along the road toward the station with

a light, adventurous heart. He did not know that he had started the fire

himself. The stupor of his sleep had smothered out all memory of the

cigarette he had lighted and let fall. Unwittingly Dickie had killed the

beauty of his father's dream, and now, just as unwittingly, he was about

to kill the object of his father's passion. When he looked back from the

station platform, the roof of The Aura was already in a blaze.

PART TWO

THE STARS

CHAPTER I

THE HILL

Thatcher spoke to his horses, now fatherly, now masterly, now with a

professorial sarcasm: "Come on, Monkey, there's a good girl! Get out of

that, you Fox! Dern you! You call that pulling? It's my notion of layin'

off for the day." Even at its most urgent, his voice was soft, hushed by

the great loneliness of this cañon up which he slowly crept. Monkey and

Fox had been plodding, foot by foot, the creaking wagon at their heels,

since dawn. It was now ten o'clock and they were just beginning to climb.

The Hill, that looked so near to the mesa above Hudson's yard, still

stood aloof. It had towered there ahead of them as they jerked and toiled

across the interminable flat in their accompanying cloud of dust. The

great circle of the world had dwarfed them to a bitter insignificance: a

team of crickets, they seemed, driven by a gnome. The hushed tone of

Thatcher's voice made unconscious tribute to this immensity.

As they came to the opening of the cañon, the high mountain-top

disappeared; the immediate foothills closed down and shut it out. The air

grew headily light. Even under the blazing July sun, it came cool to the

lungs, cool and intensely sweet. Thousands of wild flowers perfumed it

and the sun-drawn resin of a thousand firs. All the while the rushing of

water accompanied the creaking of Thatcher's progress. Not far from the

road, down there below in a tangle of pine branches, willows, and ferns,

the frost-white stream fled toward the valley with all the seeming terror

of escape. Here the team began their tugging and their panting and their

long pauses to get breath. Thatcher would push forward the wooden handle

that moved his brake, and at the sound and the grating of the wheel the

horses would stop automatically and stand with heaving sides. The wagon

shook slightly with their breathing. At such times the stream seemed to

shout in the stillness. Below, there began to be an extraordinary view of

the golden country with its orange mesas and its dark, purple rim of

mountains. Millings was a tiny circle of square pebbles, something built

up by children in their play. The awful impersonalities of sky and earth

swept away its small human importance. Thatcher's larkspur-colored eyes

absorbed serenity. They had drawn their color and their far-sighted

clearness from such long contemplations of distant horizon lines.

Now and again, however, Thatcher would glance back and down from his high

seat at his load. It consisted, for the most part, of boxes of canned

goods, but near the front there was a sort of nest, made from bags of

Indian meal. In the middle of the nest lay another bundle of slim,

irregular outline. It was covered with a thin blanket and a piece of

sacking protected it from the sun. A large, clumsy parcel lay beside it.

Each time Thatcher looked at this portion of his load he pulled more

anxiously at his mustache. At last, when the noon sun stood straight

above the pass and he stopped to water his horses at a trough which

caught a trickle of spring water, he bent down and softly raised the

piece of sacking, suspended like a tent from one fat sack to another

above the object of his uneasiness. There, in the complete relaxation of

exhausted sleep, lay Sheila, no child more limp and innocent of aspect;

her hair damp and ringed on her smooth forehead, her lips mournful and

sweet, sedately closed, her expression at once proud and innocent and

wistful, as is the sleeping face of a little, little girl. There was that

look of a broken flower, that look of lovely death, that stops the heart

of a mother sometimes when she bends over a crib and sees damp curls in a

halo about a strange, familiar face.

Thatcher, looking at Sheila, had some of these thoughts. A teamster is

either philosopher or clown. One cannot move, day after day, all day for

a thousand days, under a changeless, changeful sky, inch by inch, across

the surface of a changeless, changeful earth and not come very near to

some of the locked doors of the temple where clowns sleep and wise men

meditate. And Thatcher was a father, one of the wise and reasonable

fathers of the West, whose seven-year-old sons are friends and helpmates

and toward whom six-year-old daughters are moved to little acts of

motherliness.

The sun blazed for a minute on Sheila's face. She opened her eyes, looked

vaguely from some immense distance at Thatcher, and then sat up.

"Oh, gracious!" said Sheila, woman and sprite and adventurer again.

"Where the dickens is my hat? Did it fall out?"

"No, ma'am," Thatcher smiled in a relieved fashion. "I put it under

the seat."

Sheila scrambled to a perch on one of the sacks and faced the surface of

half a world.

"Oh, Mr. Thatcher, isn't it too wonderful! How high are we? Is this the

other side? Oh, no, I can see Millings. Poor tiny, tiny Millings! It _is_

small, isn't it? How very small it is! What air!" She shut her eyes,

drawing in the perfumed tonic. The altitude had intoxicated her. Her

heart was beating fast, her blood tingling, her brain electrified. Every

sense seemed to be sharpened. She saw and smelt and heard with abnormal

vividness.

"The flowers are awfully bright up here, aren't they?" she said. "What's

that coral-colored bushy one?"

"Indian paint-brush."

"And that blue one? It _is_ blue! I don't believe I ever knew what

blueness meant before."

"Lupine. And over yonder's monkshead. That other's larkspur, that

poisons cattle in the spring. On the other side you'll see a whole lot

more--wild hollyhock and fireweed and columbine--well, say, I learned all

them names from a dude I drove over one summer."

"And such a sky!" said Sheila, lifting her head, "and such big pines!"

She lost herself for a minute in the azure immensity above. A vast mosque

of cloud, dome bubbles great and small, stood ahead of them, dwarfing

every human experience of height. "Mr. Thatcher, there isn't any air up

here. What is it we're trying to breathe, anyway?"

He smiled patiently, sympathetically, and handed her a tin mug of icy

water from the little trickling spring. The bruise of Hudson's kiss ached

at the cold touch of the water and a shadow fell over her excitement. She

thanked the driver gravely.

"What time is it now?" she asked.

"Past noon. Better eat your sandwich."

She took one from its wrapping pensively, but ate it with absent-minded

eagerness. Thatcher's blue eyes twinkled.

"Seems like I recollect a lady that didn't want no food to be put

in for her."

"I remember her, too," said Sheila, between bites, "but very, very

vaguely."

She stood up after a third sandwich, shook crumbs from her skirt, and

stretched her arms. "What a great sleep I've had! Since six o'clock!"

She stared down at the lower world. "I've left somebody at Millings."

"Who's that?" asked Thatcher, drawling the words a trifle as a Westerner

does when he is conscious of a double meaning.

"Me."

Thatcher laughed. "You're a real funny girl, Miss Arundel," he said.

"Yes, I left one Me when I decided to go into the saloon, and now I've

left another Me. I believe people shed their skins like snakes."

"Yes'm, I've had that notion myself. But as you get older, your skin kind

of peels off easy and gradual--you don't get them shocks when you sort of

come out all new and shiny and admirin' of yourself."

Sheila blushed faintly and looked at him. His face was serene and empty

of intention. But she felt that she had been guilty of egotism, as indeed

she had. She asked rather meekly for her hat, and having put it on like a

shadow above her fairness, she climbed up to Thatcher's side on the

driver's seat. The hat was her felt Stetson, and, for the rest, she was

clad in her riding-clothes, the boy's shirt, the short corduroy skirt,

the high-laced boots. Her youthfulness, rather than her strange beauty,

was accentuated by this dress. She had the look of a super-delicate boy,

a sort of rose-leaf fairy prince.

"Are we on the road?" asked Sheila presently.

Thatcher gave way to mirth. "Don't it seem like a road to you?"

She lurched against him, then saved herself from falling out at the other

side by a frantic clutch.

"Is it a road?" She looked down a dizzy slope of which the horse's

foothold seemed to her the most precarious part.

"Yes'm--all the road there is. We call it that. We're kind of po-lite to

these little efforts of the Government--kind of want to encourage 'em.

Congressmen kind of needs coaxin' and flat'ry. They're right ornery

critters. I heard an argyment atween a feller with a hoss and a feller

with a mule onct. The mule feller was kind of uppish about hosses; said

he didn't see the advantage of the critter. A mule now was steady and

easy fed and strong. Well, ma'am, the hoss feller got kind of hot after

some of this, so he says, 'Well, sir,' he says, 'there's this about it.

When you got a hoss, you got a hoss. You know what you got. He's goin' to

act like a hoss. But when you got a mule, why, you can't never tell. All

of a sudden one of these days, he's like as not to turn into a

Congressman.' Well, ma'am, that's the way we feel about Congressmen.--Ho,

there, Monkey! Keep up! I'll just get out an' hang on the wheel while we

make this corner. That'll keep us from turnin' over, I reckon."

Sheila sat and held on with both hands. Her eyes were wide and very

bright. She held her breath till Thatcher got in again, the corner

safely made. For the next creeping, lurching mile, Sheila found that

every muscle in her body had its use in keeping her on that seat. Then

they reached the snow and matters grew definitely worse. Here, half the

road was four feet of dirty, icy drift and half of abysmal mud. They

slipped from drift to mire with awful perils and rackings of the wagon

and painful struggles of the team. Sometimes the snow softened and let

the horses in up to their necks when Thatcher plied whip and tongue with

necessary cruelty. At last there came disaster. They were making one of

those heart-stopping turns. Sheila had got out and was adding her

mosquito weight to Thatcher's on the upper side, half-walking,

half-hanging to the wagon. The outer wheels were deep in mud, the inner

wheels hung clear. The horses strained--and slipped.

"Let go!" shouted Thatcher.

Sheila fell back into the snow, and the wagon turned quietly over and

began to slide down the slope. Thatcher sprang to his horses' heads. For

an instant it seemed that they would be dragged over the edge. Then the

wagon stopped, and Thatcher, grim and pale, unhitched his team. He swore

fluently under his breath during this entire operation. Afterwards, he

turned to the scarlet and astounded passenger and gave her one of his

shining smiles.

"Well, ma'am," he said, beginning to roll a cigarette, "what do you

think of that?"

"Whatever shall we do now?" asked Sheila. She had identified herself

utterly with this team, this load, this driver. She brushed the snow from

her skirt, climbed down from the drift to the edge of the mire by

Thatcher's elbow. The team stood with hanging heads, panting and

steaming, glad of the rest and the release.

"Well, ma'am," said Thatcher, looking down at the loyal, anxious face

with a certain tenderness, "I'm agoin' to do one of two things. I'm

agoin' to lead my team over The Hill and come back with two more horses

and a hand to help me or I'm agoin' to set here and wait for the stage."

"How long will it be before the stage comes?"

"Matter of four or five hours."

"Oh, dear! Then I can't possibly overtake my--my friend, Miss Blake!"

"No, ma'am. But you can walk on a quarter-mile; take a rest at Duff's

place top of The Hill. I can pick you up when I come by; like as not I'll

spend the night at Duff's. By the time I get my load together it'll be

along dark--Hullo!" He interrupted himself, lifting his chin. "I hear

hosses now."

They both listened. "No wagon," said Thatcher.

Five minutes later, a slouching horseman, cigarette in mouth, shaggy

chaps on long legs, spurred and booted and decorated with a red

neck-scarf came picturesquely into view. His pony dug sturdy feet into

the steep roadside, avoiding the mud of the road itself. The man led two

other horses, saddled, but empty of riders. He stopped and between him

and Thatcher took place one of the immensely tranquil, meditative, and

deliberate conversations of the Far West.

Sheila's quick, Celtic nerves tormented her. At last she broke in with an

inspiration. "Couldn't I hire one of your horses?" she asked, rising from

an overturned sack of which she had made a resting-place.

The man looked down at her with grave, considerate eyes.

"Why, yes, ma'am. I reckon you could," he said gently. "They're right

gentle ponies," he added.

"Are they yours?"

"One of 'em is. The other belongs to Kearney, dude-wrangler up the

valley. But, say, if you're goin' to Rusty you c'd leave my hoss at

Lander's and I c'd get him when I come along. I am stoppin' here to help

with the load. It would cost you nothin', lady. The hoss has got to go

over to Rusty and I'd be pleased to let you ride him. You're no weight."

"How good of you!" said Sheila. "I'll take the best care of him I know

how to take. Could I find my way? How far is it?"

"All downhill after a half-mile, lady. You c'd make Rusty afore dark.

It's a whole lot easier on hoofs than it is on wheels. You can't miss the

road on account of it bein' the only road there is. And Lander's is the

only one hotel in Rusty. You'd best stop the night there."

He evidently wanted to ask her her destination, but his courtesy

forbade.

Sheila volunteered, "I am going to Miss Blake's ranch up Hidden Creek."

A sort of flash of surprise passed across the reserved, brown, young

face. "Yes, ma'am," he said with no expression. "Well, you better leave

the rest of your trip until to-morrow."

He slipped from his horse with an effortless ripple, untied a tawny

little pony with a thick neck, a round body, and a mild, intelligent

face, and led him to Sheila who mounted from her sack. Thatcher carefully

adjusted the stirrups, a primitive process that involved the wearisome

lacing and unlacing of leather thongs. Sheila bade him a bright and

adventurous "Good-bye." thanked the unknown owner of the horse, and

started. The pony showed some unwillingness to leave his companions,

fretted and tossed his head, and made a few attempts at a right-about

face, but Sheila dug in her small spurred heels and spoke beguilingly. At

last he settled down to sober climbing. Sheila looked back and waved her

hand. The two tall, lean men were gazing after her. They took off their

hats and waved. She felt a warmth that was almost loving for their

gracefulness and gravity and kindness. Here was another breed of man than

that produced by Millings. A few minutes later she came to the top of The

Pass and looked down into Hidden Creek.

CHAPTER II

ADVENTURE

Sheila stood and drew breath. The shadow of the high peak, in the lap of

which she stood, poured itself eastward across the warm, lush, narrow

land. This was different from the hard, dull gold and alkali dust of the

Millings country: here were silvery-green miles of range, and

purple-green miles of pine forest, and lovely lighter fringes and groves

of cottonwood and aspen trees. Here and there were little dots of

ranches, visible more by their vivid oat and alfalfa fields than by their

small log cabins. Down the valley the river flickered, lifted by its

brightness above the hollow that held it, till it seemed just hung there

like a string of jewels. Beyond it the land rose slowly in noble sweeps

to the opposite ranges, two chains that sloped across each other in a

glorious confusion of heads, round and soft as velvet against the blue

sky or blunt and broken with a thundery look of extinct craters. To the

north Sheila saw a further serenity of mountains, lying low and soft on

the horizon, of another and more wistful blue. Over it all was a sort of

magical haze, soft and brilliant as though the air were a melted

sapphire. There was still blessedness such as Sheila had never felt. She

was filled with a longing to ride on and on until her spirit should pass

into the wide, tranquil, glowing spirit of the lonely land. It seemed to

her that some forgotten medicine man sat cross-legged in a hollow of the

hills, blowing, from a great peace pipe, the blue smoke of peace down and

along the hollows and the cañons and the level lengths of range. In the

mighty breast of the blower there was not even a memory of trouble, only

a noble savage serenity too deep for prayer.

She rode for a long while--no sound but her pony's hoofs--her eyes lifted

across the valley until a sudden fragrance drew her attention earthwards.

She was going through an open glade of aspens and the ground was white

with columbine, enormous flowers snowy and crisp as though freshly

starched by fairy laundresses. With a cry of delight Sheila jumped off

her horse, tied him by his reins to a tree, and began gathering flowers

with all the eager concentration of a six-year-old. And, like all the

flower-gatherers of fable from Proserpina down, she found herself the

victim of disaster. When she came back to the road with a useless,

already perishing mass of white, the pony had disappeared. Her knot had

been unfaithful. Quietly that mild-nosed, pensive-eyed, round-bodied

animal had pulled himself free and tiptoed back to join his friends.

Sheila hurried up the road toward the summit she had so recently crossed,

till the altitude forced her to stop with no breath in her body and a

pounding redness before her eyes. She stamped her feet with vexation.

She longed to cry. She remembered confusedly, but with a certain

satisfaction, some of the things Thatcher had said to his team. An entire

and sudden lenience toward the gentle art of swearing was born in her.

She threw her columbine angrily away. She had come so far on her journey

that she could never be able to get back to Thatcher nor even to Duff's

shanty before dark. And how far down still the valley lay with that

shadow widening and lengthening across it!

Her sudden loneliness descended upon her with an almost audible rush.

Dusk at this height--dusk with a keen smell of glaciers and wind-stung

pines--dusk with the world nine thousand feet below; and about her this

falling-away of mountain-side, where the trees seemed to slant and the

very flowers to be outrun by a mysterious sort of flight of rebel earth

toward space! The great and heady height was informed with a presence

which if not hostile was terrifyingly ignorant of man. There was some one

not far away, she felt, just above there behind the rocky ridge, just

back there in the confusion of purplish darkness streaked by pine-tree

columns, just below in the thicket of the stream--some one to meet whose

look meant death.

Her first instinct was to keep to the road. She walked on down toward

the valley very rapidly. But going down meant meeting darkness. She

began to be unreasonably afraid of the night. She was afflicted by an

old, old childish, immemorial dread of bears. In spite of the chill,

she was very warm, her tongue dry with rapid breathing of the thin air.

She was intolerably thirsty. The sound of water called to her in a

lisping, inhuman voice. She resisted till she was ashamed of her

cowardice, stepped furtively off the track, scrambled down a slope,

parted some branches, and found herself on a rock above a little

swirling pool. On the other side a man kneeling over the water lifted a

white and startled face.

Through the eerie green twilight up into which the pool threw a shifty

leaden brightness, the two stared at each other for a moment. Then the

man rose to his feet and smiled. Sheila noticed that he had been bathing

a bloody wrist round which he was now wrapping clumsily a handkerchief.

"Don't be frightened," he said in a rather uncertain voice; "I'm not near

so desperate as I look. Do you want a drink? Hand me down your cup if you

have one and I'll fill it for you."

"I'm not afraid now," Sheila quavered, and drew a big breath. "But I

was startled for a minute. I haven't any cup. I--I suppose, in a

way--I 'm lost."

He was peering at her now, and when she took off her hat and rubbed her

damp forehead with a weary, worried gesture, he gave a little

exclamation and swung himself across the stream by a branch, and up to

her side on the rock.

"The barmaid!" he said. "And I was coming to see you!"

Sheila laughed in the relieved surprise of recognition. "Why, you are the

cowboy--the one that fought so--so terribly. Have you been fighting

again? Your wrist is hurt. May I tie it up for you?"

He held out his arm silently and she tied the handkerchief--a large,

clean, coarse one--neatly about it. What with weariness and the shock of

her fright, her fingers were not very steady. He looked down at her

during the operation with a contented expression. It seemed that the

moment was filled for him with satisfaction to a complete forgetfulness

of past or present annoyances.

"This is a big piece of luck for me," he said. "But"--with a sudden

thundery change of countenance--"you're not going over to Hidden

Creek, are you?"

"I'm trying to go there," said Sheila; "I've been trying ever since five

o'clock this morning. But I don't seem to be getting there very fast. I

wanted to make Rusty before dark. And my pony got away from me and went

back. I know he went back because I saw the marks of his feet and he

would have gone back. Wouldn't he? Do you think I could get to Rusty on

foot to-night?"

"No, ma'am. I know you couldn't. You could make it easy on horseback,

though." He stared meditatively above her head and then said in a tone of

resignation: "I believe I better go back myself. I'll take you."

She had finished her bandage. She looked up at him. "Go back? But you

must have just started from there a few hours ago."

"Well, ma'am, I didn't come very direct. I kind of shifted round. But I

can go back straight. And I'd really rather. I think I'd better. It was

all foolishness my coming over. I can put you up back of me on my horse,

if you don't mind, and we'll get to Rusty before it's lit up. I'd rather.

You don't mind riding that way, do you? You see, if I put you up and

walked, it'd take lots more time."

"I don't mind," said Sheila, but she said it rather proudly so that

Hilliard smiled.

"Well, ma'am, we can try it, anyway. If you go back to the road, I'll get

my horse."

He seemed to have hidden his horse in a density of trees a mile from the

road. Sheila waited till she thought she must have dreamed her meeting

with him. He came back, looking a trifle sheepish.

"You see," he said, "I didn't come by the road, ma'am."

The horse was a large, bony animal with a mean eye.

"That isn't the pony you rode when you came to Millings," said Sheila.

He bent to examine his saddle-girth. "No, ma'am," he said gently. "I've

been riding quite a variety of horse-flesh lately. I'll get on first if

you don't mind and give you a hand up. You put your foot on mine. The

horse will stand."

Sheila obeyed, pressing her lips tight, for she was afraid. However, his

long, supple fingers closed over her wrist like steel and she got quickly

and easily to her perch and clung nervously to him.

"That's right. Put your arms round tight. Are you all fixed?"

"Y--yes."

"And comfortable?"

"Y--yes, I think so."

"We're off, then."

They started on a quick, steady walk down the road. Once, Cosme loosened

the six-shooter on his hip. He whistled incessantly through his teeth.

Except for this, they were both silent.

"Were you coming to Millings?" asked Sheila at last. She was of the world

where silence has a certain oppressive significance. She was getting used

to her peculiar physical position and found she did not have to cling so

desperately. But in a social sense she was embarrassed. He was quite

impersonal about the situation, which made matters easier for her. Now

and then she suppressed a frantic impulse to giggle.

"Yes, ma'am. To see you," he answered. "I never rightly thanked you." She

saw the back of his neck flush and she blushed too, remembering his

quickly diverted kiss which had left a smear of blood across her

fingers. That had happened only a few days before, but they were long

days. He too must have been well occupied. There was still a bruise on

his temple. "I--I wasn't quite right in the head after those fellows had

beat me up, and I kind of wanted to show you that I am something like a

gentleman."

"Have you been in Hidden Creek?"

"Yes, ma'am. I was thinking of prospecting around. I meant to homestead

over there. I like the country. But when it comes to settling down I get

kind of restless. And usually I get into a mix-up that changes my

intentions. So I'd about decided to go back down Arizona way and

work.--Where are you going to stay in Hidden Creek?" he asked. "Where's

your stuff?"

"Mr. Thatcher has it in his wagon. I'm going to Miss Blake's ranch. She

invited me."

"Miss Blake? You mean the lady that wears pants? You don't mean it! Well,

that's right amusing." He laughed.

Sheila stirred angrily. "I can't see why it's amusing."

He sobered at once. "Well, ma'am, maybe it isn't. No, I reckon it isn't.

How long will you stay?"

Sheila gave a big, sobbing sigh. "I don't know. If she likes me and if

I'm happy, I'll stay there always." She added with a queer, dazed

realization of the truth: "I've nowhere else to go."

"Haven't you any--folks?" he asked.

"No."

"Got tired of Millings?"

"Yes--very."

"I don't blame you! It's not much of a town. You'll like Hidden Creek.

And Miss Blake's ranch is a mighty pretty place, lonesome but wonderfully

pretty. Right on a bend of the creek, 'way up the valley, close under the

mountains. But can you stand loneliness, Miss--What _is_ your name?"

There were curious breaks in his manner of a Western cowboy, breaks that

startled Sheila like little echoes from her life abroad and in the East.

There was a quickness of voice and manner, an impatience, a hot and

nervous something, and his voice and accent suggested training. The

abrupt question, for instance, was not in the least characteristic of a

Westerner.

"My name is Sheila Arundel. I don't know yours either."

"Do you come from the East?"

"Yes. From New York." He gave an infinitesimal jerk. "But I've lived

abroad nearly all my life. I think it would be politer if you would

answer my question now."

She felt that he controlled an anxious breath. "My name is Hilliard," he

said, and he pronounced the name with a queer bitter accent as though the

taste of it was unpleasant to his tongue. "Cosme Hilliard. Don't you

think it's a--_nice_ name?"

For half a second she was silent; then she spoke with careful

unconsciousness. "Yes. Very nice and very unusual. Hilliard is an English

name, isn't it? Where did the Cosme come from?"

It was well done, so well that she felt a certain tightening of his body

relax and his voice sounded fuller. "That's Spanish. I've some Spanish

blood. Here's Buffin's ranch. We're getting down."

Sheila was remembering vividly; Sylvester had come into her compartment.

She could see the rolling Nebraskan country slipping by the window of the

train. She could see his sallow fingers folding the paper so that she

could conveniently read a paragraph. She remembered his gentle, pensive

speech. "Ain't it funny, though, those things happen in the slums and

they happen in the smart set, but they don't happen near so often to just

middling folks like you and me! Don't it sound like a Tenderloin tale,

though, South American wife and American husband and her getting jealous

and up and shooting him? Money sure makes love popular. Now, if it had

been poor folks, why, they'd have hardly missed a day's work, but just

because these Hilliards have got spondulix they'll run a paragraph about

'em in the papers for a month."--Sheila began to make comparisons: a

South American wife and an American husband, and here, this young man

with the Spanish-American name and the Spanish-Saxon physique, and a

voice that showed training and faltered over the pronouncing of the

"Hilliard" as though he expected it to be too well remembered. Had there

been some mention in the paper of a son?--a son in the West?--a son under

a cloud of some sort? But--she checked her spinning of romance--this

youth was too genuine a cowboy, the way he rode, the way he moved, held

himself, his phrases, his turn of speech! With all that wealth behind him

how had he been allowed to grow up like this? No, her notion was

unreasonable, almost impossible. Although dismissed, it hung about her

mental presentment of him, however, like a rather baleful aura, not

without fascination to a seventeen-year-old imagination. So busy was she

with her fabrications that several miles of road slipped by unnoticed.

There came a strange confusion in her thoughts. It seemed to her that she

was arguing the Hilliard case with some one. Then with a horrible start

she saw that the face of her opponent was Sylvester's and she pushed it

violently away....

"Don't you go to sleep," said Hilliard softly, laughing a little. "You

might fall off."

"I--I was asleep," Sheila confessed, in confusion at discovering that her

head had dropped against him. "How dark it's getting! We're in the

valley, aren't we?"

"Yes, ma'am, we're most there." He hesitated. "Miss Arundel, I think I'd

best let you get down just before we get to Rusty."

"Get down? Why?"

He cleared his throat, half-turning to her. In the dusky twilight, that

was now very nearly darkness, his face was troubled and ashamed, like the

face of a boy who tries to make little of a scrape. "Well, ma'am,

yesterday, the folks in Rusty kind of lost their heads. They had a bad

case of Sherlock Holmes. I bought a horse up the valley from a chap who

was all-fired anxious to sell him, and before I knew it I was playing the

title part in a man-hunt. It seems that I was riding one of a string this

chap had rustled from several of the natives. They knew the horse and

that was enough for their nervous system. They had never set eyes on me

before and they wouldn't take my word for my blameless past. They told me

to keep my story for trial when they took me over to the court. Meanwhile

they gave me a free lodging in their pen. Miss Arundel--" Hilliard

dropped his ironic tone and spoke in a low, tense voice of child-like

horror. His face stiffened and paled. "That was awful. To be locked in.

Not to be able to get fresh breath in your lungs. Not to be able to go

where you please, when you please. I can't tell you what it's like ... I

can't stand it! I can't stand a minute of it! I was in that pen six

hours. I felt I'd go loco if I was there all night. I guess I am a kind

of fool. I broke jail early in the morning and caught up the sheriff's

horse. They got a shot or two at me, hit my wrist, but I made my getaway.

This horse is not much on looks, but he sure can get over the sagebrush.

I was coming over to see you."

There was that in his voice when he said this that touched Sheila's

heart, profoundly. This restless, violent young adventurer, homeless,

foot-loose, without discipline or duty, had turned to her in his trouble

as instinctively as though she had been his mother. This, because she had

once served him. Something stirred in Sheila's heart.

"And then," Hilliard went on, "I was going to get down to Arizona. But

when I heard you were coming over into Hidden Creek, it seemed like

foolishness to cut myself off from the country by running away from

nothing. Of course there are ways to prove my identity with those

fellows. It only means putting up with a few days of pen." He gave a

sigh. "But you can understand, ma'am, that this isn't just the horse that

will give you quietest entrance into Rusty and that I'm not just one of

the First Citizens."

"But," said Sheila, "if they see you riding in with me, they certainly

won't shoot."

He laughed admiringly. "You're game!" he said. "But, Miss Arundel,

they're not likely to do any more shooting. It's not a man riding into

Rusty that they're after. It's a man riding out of Rusty. They'll know

I'm coming to give myself up."

"I'll just stay here," said Sheila firmly.

"I can't let you."

"I'm too tired to walk. I'm too sleepy. It'll be all right."

"Then I'll walk." He pulled in his horse, but at the instant stiffened in

his saddle and wheeled about on the road. A rattle of galloping hoofs

struck the ground behind them; two riders wheeled and stopped. One drew

close and held out his hand.

"Say, stranger, shake," he said. "We've been kickin' up the dust to beg

your pardon. We got the real rustler this mornin' shortly after you left.

I'm plumb disgusted and disheartened with young Tommins for losin' his

head an' shootin' off his gun. He's a dern fool, that kid, a regular

tenderfoot. Nothin' won't ever cure him short of growin' up. Come from

Chicago, anyway. One of them Eastern towns. I see he got you, too."

"Winged me," smiled Hilliard. "Well, I'm right pleased I won't have to

spend another night in your pen."

"You're entered for drinks. The sheriff stands 'em." Here he bowed to

Sheila, removing his hat.

"This lady"--Hilliard performed the introduction--"lost her horse on The

Hill. She's aiming to stop at Rusty for to-night."

The man who had spoken turned to his silent companion. "Ride ahead,

Shorty, why don't you?" he said indignantly, "and tell Mrs. Lander

there's a lady that'll want to sleep in Number Five."

The other horseman, after a swift, searching look at Sheila, said

"Sure," in a very mild, almost cooing, voice and was off. It looked to

Sheila like a runaway. But the men showed no concern.

They jogged companionably on their way. Fifteen minutes later they

crossed a bridge and pulled up before a picket fence and a gate.

They were in Rusty.

CHAPTER III

JOURNEY'S END

The social life of Rusty, already complicated by the necessity it was

under to atone for a mistake, was almost unbearably discomposed by the

arrival of a strange lady. This was no light matter, be it understood.

Hidden Creek was not a resort for ladies: and so signal an event as the

appearance of a lady, a young lady, a pretty young lady, demanded

considerable effort. But Rusty had five minutes for preparation. By the

time Hilliard rode up to Lander's gate a representative group of citizens

had gathered there. One contingent took charge of Hilliard--married men,

a little unwilling, and a few even more reluctant elders, and led him to

the bowl of reparation which was to wash away all memory of his wrongs.

The others, far the larger group, escorted Sheila up the twelve feet of

board walk to the porch of hospitality filled by the massive person of

Mrs. Lander. On that brief walk Sheila was fathered, brothered,

grandfathered, husbanded, and befriended and on the porch, all in the

person of Mrs. Lander, she was mothered, sistered, and grandmothered. Up

the stairs to Number Five she was "eased"--there is no other word to

express the process--and down again she was eased to supper, where in a

daze of fatigue she ate with surprising relish tough fried meat and

large wet potatoes, a bowl of raw canned tomatoes and a huge piece of

heavy-crusted preserved-peach pie. She also drank, with no effect upon

her drowsiness, an enormous thick cupful of strong coffee, slightly

tempered by canned milk. She sat at the foot of the long table, opposite

Mr. Lander, a fat, sly-looking man whose eyes twinkled with a look of

mysterious inner amusement, caused, probably, by astonishment at his own

respectability. He had behind him a career of unprecedented villainy, and

that he should end here at Rusty as the solid and well-considered keeper

of the roadhouse was, no doubt, a perpetual tickle to his consciousness.

Down either side of the table were silent and impressive figures busy

with their food. Courteous and quiet they were and beautifully

uninquiring, except in the matter of her supplies. The yellow lamplight

shone on brown bearded and brown clean-shaven faces, rugged and strong

and clean-cut. These bared throats and thickly thatched heads, these

faces, lighted by extraordinary, far-seeing brilliant, brooding eyes,

reminded Sheila of a master's painting of The Last Supper--so did their

coarse clothing melt into the gold-brown shadows of the room and so did

their hands and throats and faces pick themselves out in mellow lights

and darknesses.

After the meal she dragged herself upstairs to Number Five, made scant

use of nicked basin, spoutless pitcher, and rough clean towel, blew out

her little shadeless lamp, and crept in under an immense, elephantine,

grateful weight of blankets and patchwork quilts, none too fresh,

probably, though the sheet blankets were evidently newly washed. Of

muslin sheeting there was none. The pillow was flat and musty. Sheila

cuddled into it as though it had been a mother's shoulder. That instant

she was asleep. Once in the night she woke. A dream waked her. It seemed

to her that a great white flower had blossomed in the window of her room

and that in the heart of it was Dickie's face, tender and as pale as a

petal. It drew near to her and bent over her wistfully. She held out her

arms with a piteous longing to comfort his wistfulness and woke. Her face

was wet with the mystery of dream tears. The flower dwindled to a small

white moon standing high in the upper pane of one of the uncurtained

windows. The room was full of eager mountain air. She could hear a

water-wheel turning with a soft splash in the stream below. There was no

other sound. The room smelt of snowy heights and brilliant stars. She

breathed deep and, quite as though she had breathed a narcotic, slept

suddenly again. This, before any memory of Hudson burned her

consciousness.

The next morning she found that her journey had been carefully arranged.

Thatcher had come and gone. The responsibility for her further progress

had been shifted to the shoulders of a teamster, whose bearded face,

except for the immense humor and gallantry of his gray eyes, was

startlingly like one of Albrecht Dürer's apostles. Her bundle was in his

wagon, half of his front seat was cushioned for her. After breakfast she

was again escorted down the board walk to the gate. Mrs. Lander fastened

a huge bunch of sweet peas to her coat and kissed her cheek. Sheila bade

innumerable good-byes, expressed innumerable thanks. For Hilliard's

absence Rusty offered its apologies. They said that he had been much

entertained and, after the hurt he had suffered to his wrist, late sleep

was a necessity. Sheila understood. The bowl of reparation had been

emptied to its last atoning dregs. She mounted to the side of "Saint

Mark," she bowed and smiled, made promises, gave thanks again, and waved

herself out of Rusty at last. She had never felt so flattered and so

warmed at heart.

"I'm agoin'," quoth Saint Mark, "right clost to Miss Blake's. If we don't

overtake her--and that hoss of hers sure travels wonderful fast,

somethin' wonderful, yes, ma'am, by God--excuse me, lady--it's sure

surprisin' the way that skinny little hoss of hers will travel--why, I

c'n take you acrost the ford. There ain't no way of gettin' into Miss

Blake's exceptin' by the ford. And then I c'n take my team back to the

road. From the ford it's a quarter-mile walk to Miss Blake's house. You

c'n cache your bundle and she'll likely get it for you in the mornin'.

We had ought to be there by sundown. Her trail from the ford's clear

enough. I'm a-takin' this lumber to the Gover'ment bridge forty mile up.

Yes, by God--excuse _me_, lady--it's agoin' to be jest a dandy bridge

until the river takes it out next spring, by God--you'll have to excuse

me again, lady."

He seemed rather mournfully surprised by the frequent need for these

apologies. "It was my raisin', lady," he explained. "My father was a

Methody preacher. Yes'm, he sure was, by God, yes--excuse me again, lady.

He was always a-prayin'. It kinder got me into bad habits. Yes, ma'am.

Those words you learn when you're a kid they do stick in your mind. By

God, yes, they do--excuse _me_, lady. That's why I run away. I couldn't

stand so much prayin' all the time. And bein' licked when I wasn't bein'

prayed at. He sure licked me, that dern son of a--Oh, by God, lady,

you'll just hev to excuse me, please." He wiped his forehead. "I reckon I

better keep still."

Sheila struggled, then gave way to mirth. Her companion, after a doubtful

look, relaxed into his wide, bearded smile. After that matters were on an

easy footing between them and the "excuse me, lady," was, for the most

part, left to her understanding.

They drifted like a lurching vessel through the long crystal day. Never

before this journey into Hidden Creek had time meant anything to Sheila

but a series of incidents, occupations, or emotions; now first she

understood the Greek impersonation of the dancing hours. She had watched

the varying faces the day turns to those who fold their hands and still

their minds to watch its progress. She had seen the gradual heightening

of brilliance from dawn to noon, and then the fading-out from that high,

white-hot glare, through gold and rose and salmon and purple, to the ashy

lavenders of twilight and so into gray and the metallic, glittering

coldness of the mountain night. It was the purple hour when she said

good-bye to Saint Mark on the far side of a swift and perilous ford. She

was left standing in the shadow of a near-by mountain-side while he rode

away into the still golden expanse of valley beyond the leafy course of

the stream. Hidden Creek had narrowed and deepened. It ran past Sheila

now with a loud clapping and knocking at its cobbled bed and with an

over-current of noisy murmurs. The hurrying water was purple, with flecks

of lavender and gold. The trees on its banks were topped with emerald

fire where they caught the light of the sun. The trail to Miss Blake's

ranch ran along the river on the edge of a forest of pines. At this hour

they looked like a wall into which some magic permitted the wanderer to

walk interminably. Sheila was glad that she did not have to make use of

this wizard invitation. She "cached" her bundle, as Saint Mark had

advised, in a thicket near the stream and walked resolutely forward

along the trail. Not even when her pony had left her on The Hill had she

felt so desolate or so afraid.

She could not understand why she was here on her way to the ranch of this

strange woman. She felt astonished by her loneliness, by her rashness, by

the dreadful lack in her life of all the usual protections. Was youth

meant so to venture itself? This was what young men had done since the

beginning of time. She thought of Hilliard. His life must have been just

such a series of disconnected experiments. Danger was in the very pattern

of such freedom. But she was a girl, _only_ a girl as the familiar phrase

expresses it--a seventeen-year-old girl. She was reminded of a pathetic

and familiar line, "A woman naturally born to fears ..." A wholesome

reaction to pride followed and, suddenly, an amusing memory of Miss

Blake, of her corduroy trousers stuffed into boots, of her broad, strong

body, her square face with its firm lips and masterful red-brown eyes; a

very heartening memory for such a moment. Here was a woman that had

adventured without fear and had quite evidently met with no disaster.

Sheila came to a little tumbling tributary and crossed it on a log. On

the farther side the trail broadened, grew more distinct; through an

opening in tall, gray, misty cottonwoods she saw the corner of a log

house. At the same instant a dreadful tumult broke out. The sound sent

Sheila's blood in a slapping wave back upon her heart. All of her body

turned cold. She was fastened by stone feet to the ground. It was the

laughter of a mob of damned souls, an inhuman, despairing mockery of

God. It tore the quiet evening into shreds of fear. This house was a

madhouse holding revelry. No--of course, they were wolves, a pack of

wolves. Then, with a warmth of returning circulation, Sheila remembered

Miss Blake's dogs, the descendants of the wolf-dog that had littered on

the body of a dead man. Quarter-wolf, was it? These voices had no hint

of the homely barking of a watchdog, the friend of man's loneliness! But

Sheila braced her courage. Miss Blake made good use of her pack. They

pulled her sled, winters, in Hidden Creek. They must then be partly

civilized by service. If only--she smiled a desperate smile at the

uncertainty--they didn't tear her to pieces when she came out from the

shelter of the trees. There was very great courage in Sheila's short,

lonely march through the little grove of cottonwood trees. She was as

white as the mountain columbine. She walked slowly and held her head

high. She had taken up a stone for comfort.

At the end of the trees she saw a house, a three-sided, one-storied

building of logs very pleasantly set in a circle of aspen trees,

backed by taller firs, toppling over which stood a great sharp crest

of rocky ledges, nine thousand feet high, edged with the fire of

sunset. At one side of the house eight big dogs were leaping at the

ends of their chains. They were tied to trees or to small kennels at

the foot of trees. And, God be thanked! Sheila let fall her

stone--they were _all_ tied.

The door at the end of the nearest wing of the house opened and Miss

Blake stood on the threshold and held up her hands. At sight of her the

dogs stopped their howling instantly and cringed on their bellies or sat

yawning on their bushy haunches. Miss Blake's resonant, deep voice seemed

to pounce upon Sheila above the chatter of the stream which, running

about three sides of the glade, was now, at the silence of the dogs,

incessantly audible.

"Well, if it isn't the little barmaid!" cried Miss Blake, and advanced,

wiping her hand on a white apron tied absurdly over the corduroy

trousers and cowboy boots. "Well, if you aren't as welcome as the

flowers in May! So you thought you'd leave the street-lamps and come

take a look at the stars?"

They met and Sheila took the strong, square hand. She was afflicted by a

sudden dizziness.

"That's it," she faltered; "this time I thought I'd try--the stars."

With that she fell against Miss Blake and felt, just before she dropped

into blackness, that she had been saved by firm arms from falling to

the ground.

CHAPTER IV

BEASTS

The city rippled into light. It bloomed, blossom on blossom, like some

enchanted jungle under the heavy summer sky. Dickie sat on a bench in

Washington Square. He sat forward, his hands hanging between his knees,

his lips parted, and he watched the night. It seemed to him that it was

filled with the clamor of iron-throated beasts running to and fro after

their prey. The heat was a humid, solid, breathless weight--a heat

unknown to Millings. Dickie wore his threadbare blue serge suit. It felt

like a garment of lead.

There were other people on the benches--limp and sodden outlines. Dickie

had glanced at them and had glanced away. He did not want to think that

he looked like one of these--half-crushed insects,--bruised into

immobility. A bus swept round the corner and moved with a sort of

topheavy, tipsy dignity under the white arch. It was loaded with

humanity, its top black with heads. "It ain't a crowd," thought Dickie;

"it's a swarm." His eyes followed the ragged sky-line. "Why is it so

horrible?" he asked himself--"horrible and beautiful and sort of

poisonous--it plumb scares a fellow--" A diminished moon, battered and

dim like a trodden silver coin, stood up above him. By tilting his head

he could look directly at it through an opening in the dusty,

electric-brightened boughs. The stars were pin-pricks here and there in

the dense sky. The city flaunted its easy splendor triumphantly before

their pallid insignificance. Tarnished purities, forgotten ecstasies,

burned-out inspirations--so the city shouted raucously to its faded

firmament.

Dickie's fingers slid into his pocket. The moon had reminded him of his

one remaining dime. He might have bought a night's lodging with it, but

after one experience of such lodgings he preferred his present quarters.

In Dickie's mind there was no association of shame or ignominy with a

night spent under the sky. But fear and ignominy tainted and clung to

his memory of that other night. He had saved his dime deliberately,

going hungry rather than admit to himself that he was absolutely at the

end of his resources. To-morrow he would not especially need that dime.

He had a job. He would begin to draw pay. In his own phrasing he would

"buy him a square meal and rent him a room somewhere." Upon these two

prospects his brain fastened with a leech-like persistency. And yet

above anything he had faced in his life he dreaded the job and the room.

The inspiration of his flight, the impulse that had sped him out of

Millings like a fire-tipped arrow, that determination to find Sheila, to

rehabilitate himself in her esteem, to serve her, to make a fresh start,

had fallen from him like a dead flame. The arrow-flight was spent. He

had not found Sheila. He had no way of finding her. She was not at her

old address. Her father's friend, the Mr. Hazeldean that had brought

Sylvester to Marcus's studio, knew nothing of her. Mrs. Halligan, her

former landlady, knew nothing of her. Dickie, having summoned Mrs.

Halligan to her doorsill, had looked past her up the narrow, steep

staircase. "Did she live away up there?" he had asked. "Yes, sorr. And

't was a climb for the poor little crayture, but there was days when

she'd come down it like a burrd to meet her Pa." Dickie had faltered,

white and empty-hearted, before the kindly Irishwoman who remembered so

vividly Sheila's downward, winged rush of welcome. For several hours

after his visit to the studio building he had wandered aimlessly about,

then his hunger had bitten at him and he had begun to look for work. It

was not difficult to find. A small restaurant displayed a need of

waiters. Dickie applied. He had often "helped out" in that capacity, as

in most others, at The Aura. He cited his experience, referred to Mr.

Hazeldean, and was engaged. The pay seemed to him sufficient to maintain

life. So much for that! Then he went to his bench and watched the day

pant itself into the night. His loneliness was a pitiful thing; his

utter lack of hope or inspiration was a terrible thing.

But as the night went slowly by, he faced this desolation with

extraordinary fortitude. It was part of that curious detachment, that

strange gift of impersonal observation. Dickie bore no grudges against

life. His spirit had a fashion of standing away, tiptoe, on wings. It

stood so now like a presence above the miserable, half-starved body that

occupied the bench and suffered the sultriness of August and the pains of

abstinence. Dickie's wide eyes, that watched the city and found it

horrible and beautiful and frightening, were entirely empty of bitterness

and of self-pity. They had a sort of wistful patience.

There came at last a cool little wind and under its ministration Dickie

let fall his head on his arms and slept. He was blessed by a dream:

shallow water clapping over a cobbled bed, the sharp rustle of wind-edged

aspen leaves, and two stars, tender and misty, that bent close and

smiled. He woke up and stared at the city. He got up and walked about. He

was faint now and felt chilled, although the asphalt was still soft

underfoot and smelled of hot tar. As he moved listlessly along the

pavement, a girl brushed against him, looked up, and murmured to him. She

was small and slight. His heart seemed to leap away from the contact and

then to leap almost irresistibly to meet it. He turned away and went back

quickly toward the Square. It seemed to him that he was followed. He

looked over his shoulder furtively. But the girl had disappeared and

there was no one in sight but a man who walked unsteadily. Dickie

suddenly knew why he had saved that dime. The energy of a definite

purpose came to him. He remembered a swinging door back there around a

corner, but when he reached the saloon, it was closed. Dickie had a

humiliating struggle with tears. He went back to his bench and sat there,

trembling and swearing softly to himself. He had not the strength to look

farther. He was no longer the Dickie of Millings, a creature possessed of

loneliness and vacancy and wandering fancies, he was no longer Sheila's

lover, he was a prey to strong desires. In truth, thought Dickie, seeking

even now with his deprecatory smile for likenesses and words, the city

was full of beasts, silent and stealthy and fanged. That spirit, aloof,

maintained its sweet detachment. Beneath its observation Dickie fought

with a grim, unreasoning panic that was very like the fear of a man

pursued by wolves.

CHAPTER V

NEIGHBOR NEIGHBOR

Even in the shadow of after events, those first two months at Miss

Blake's ranch swam like a golden galleon through Sheila's memory. Never

had she felt such well-being of body, mind, and soul. Never had she known

such dawns and days, such dusks, such sapphire nights. Sleep came like a

highwayman to hold up an eager traveler, but came irresistibly. It caught

her up out of life as it catches up a healthy child. Never before had she

worked so heartily: out of doors in the vegetable garden; indoors in the

sunny kitchen, its windows and door open to the tonic air; never before

had she eaten so heartily. Nothing had tasted like the trout they caught

in Hidden Creek, like the juicy, sweet vegetables they picked from their

own laborious rows, like the berries they gathered in nervous

anticipation of that rival berryer, the brown bear. And Miss Blake's

casual treatment of her, half-bluff, half-mocking, her curt, good-humored

commands, her cordial bullying, were a rest to nerves more raveled than

Sheila knew from her experience in Millings. She grew rosy brown; her

hair seemed to sparkle along its crisp ripples; her little throat filled

itself out, round and firm; she walked with a spring and a swing; she

sang and whistled, no Mrs. Hudson near to scowl at her. Dish-washing was

not drudgery, cooking was a positive pleasure. Everything smelt so good.

She was always shutting her eyes to enjoy the smell of things, forgetting

to listen in order to taste thoroughly, forgetting to look in the delight

of listening to such musical silences, and forgetting even to breathe in

the rapture of sight ... Miss Blake and she put up preserves, and Sheila

had to invent jests to find some pretext for her laughter, so ridiculous

was the look of that broad square back, its hair short above the man's

flannel collar, and the apron-strings tied pertly above the very wide,

slightly worn corduroy breeches and the big boots. Sheila was always

thinking of a certain famous Puss of fairy-tale memory, and biting her

tongue to keep it from the epithet. After Hilliard gave her the black

horse and she began to explore the mountain game trails, her life seemed

as full of pleasantness as it could hold. And yet ... with just that gift

of Hilliard's, the overshadowing of her joy began. No, really before

that, with his first visit.

That was in late September when the nights were frosty and Miss Blake had

begun to cut and stack her wood for winter, and to use it for a crackling

hearth-fire after supper. They were sitting before such a fire when

Hilliard came.

Miss Blake sat man-fashion on the middle of her spine, her legs crossed,

a magazine in her hands, and on her blunt nose a pair of large,

black-rimmed spectacles. Her feet and hands and her cropped head, though

big for a woman's, looked absurdly small in comparison to the breadth of

her hips and shoulders. She was reading the "Popular Science Monthly."

This and the "Geographic" and "Current Events" were regularly taken by

her and most thoroughly digested. She read with keen intelligence; her

comments were as shrewd as a knife-edge. The chair she sat in was made

from elk-horns and looked like the throne of some Norse chieftain. Behind

her on the wall hung the stuffed head of a huge walrus, his tusks

gleaming, the gift of that exploring brother who seemed to be her only

living relative. There were other tokens of his wanderings, a polar-bear

skin, an ivory Eskimo spear. As a more homelike trophy Miss Blake had

hung an elk head which she herself had laid low, a very creditable shot,

though out of season. She had been short of meat. In the corner was a

pianola topped by piles of record-boxes. At her feet lay Berg, the dog,

snoring faintly and as cozy as a kitten.

The firelight made Miss Blake's face and hair ruddier than usual; her

eyes, when she raised them for a glance at Sheila, looked as though they

were full of red sparks which might at any instant break into flame.

Sheila was wearing one of her flimsy little black frocks, recovered from

the wrinkles of its journey, and she had decorated her square-cut neck

with some yellow flowers. On these Miss Blake's eyes rested every now

and then with a sardonic gleam.

Outside Hidden Creek told its interminable chattering tale, centuries

long, the little skinny horse cropped getting his difficult meal with

his few remaining teeth. They could hear the dogs move with a faint

rattle of chains. Sometimes there would be a distant rushing sound, a

snow-slide thousands of feet above their heads on the mountain. Above

these familiar sounds there came, at about eight o'clock that evening,

the rattle of horse's hoofs through the little stream and at the instant

broke out the hideous clamor of the dogs, a noise that never failed to

whiten Sheila's cheeks.

Miss Blake sat up straight and snatched off her spectacles. She looked at

Sheila with a hard look.

"Have you been sending out invitations, Sheila?" she asked.

"No, of course not," Sheila had flushed. She could guess whose horse's

hoofs were trotting across the little clearing.

A man's voice spoke to the dogs commandingly. Miss Blake's eyebrows came

down over her eyes. A man's step struck the porch. A man's knock rapped

sharply at the door.

"Come in!" said Miss Blake. She spoke it like a sentry's challenge.

The door opened and there stood Cosme Hilliard, hat in hand, his smiling

Latin mouth showing the big white Saxon teeth.

Sheila had not before quite realized his good looks. Now, all his lithe,

long gracefulness was painted for her against a square of purple night.

The clean white silk shirt fitted his broad shoulders, the wide rider's

belt clung to his supple waist, the leather chaps were shaped to his

Greek hips and thighs. No civilized man's costume could so have revealed

and enhanced his beautiful strength. And above the long body his face

glowed with its vivid coloring, the liquid golden eyes that moved easily

under their lids, the polished black hair sleekly brushed, the red-brown

cheeks, the bright lips, flexible and curved, of his Spanish mother.

"Who in God's name are you?" demanded Miss Blake in her deepest voice.

"This is Mr. Hilliard," Sheila came forward. "He is the man that brought

me over The Hill, Miss Blake--after I'd lost my horse, you know." There

was some urgency in Sheila's tone, a sort of prod to courtesy. Miss Blake

settled back on her spine and recrossed her legs.

"Well, come in," she said, "and shut the door. No use frosting us all, is

there?" She resumed her spectacles and her reading of the "Popular

Science Monthly."

Hilliard, still smiling, bowed to her, took Sheila's hand for an instant,

then moved easily across the room and settled on his heels at one corner

of the hearth. He had been riding, it would seem, in the thin silk shirt

and had found the night air crisp. He rolled a cigarette with the hands

that had first drawn Sheila's notice as they held his glass on the bar;

gentleman's hands, clever, sensitive, carefully kept. From his

occupation, he looked up at Miss Blake audaciously.

"You'd better make friends with me, ma'am," he said, "because we're going

to be neighbors."

"How's that?"

"I'm taking up my homestead right down here below you on Hidden Creek a

ways. About six miles below your ford."

Miss Blake's face filled with dark blood. She said nothing, put up

her magazine.

Sheila, however, exclaimed delightedly, "Taken up a homestead?"

"Yes, ma'am." He turned his floating, glowing look to her and there it

stayed almost without deviation during the rest of his visit. "I've built

me a log house--a dandy. I had a man up from Rusty to help me. I've

bought me a cow. I'm getting my furnishings ready. That's what I've been

doing these two months."

"And never rode up to call on us?" Sheila reproached him.

"No, ma'am. I'll tell you the reason for that. I wasn't sure of myself."

She opened rather puzzled and astonished eyes at this, but for an instant

his look went beyond her and remembered troubling things. "You see, Miss

Arundel, I'm not used to settling down. That's something that I've had no

practice in. I'm impatient. I get tired quickly. Damn quickly. I change

my mind. It's the worst thing in me--a sort of devil-horse always thirsty

for new things. It's touch and go with him. He runs with me. You see,

I've always given him his head." His look had come back to her face and

dwelt there speaking for him a language headier than that of his tongue.

"I thought I'd tie the dern fool down to some good tough work and test

him out. Well, ma'am, he hasn't quit on me this time. I think he won't.

I've got a ball and chain round about that cloven foot." He drew at his

cigarette, half-veiling in smoke the ardor of his look. "I'd like to show

you my house, Miss Arundel. It's fine. I worked with a builder one season

when I was a lad. I've got it peeled inside. The logs shine and I've got

a fireplace twice the size of this in my living-room"--he made graceful

gestures with the hand that held the cigarette. "Yes, ma'am, a

living-room, and a kitchen, and," with a whimsical smile, "a butler's

pantry. And, oh, a great big bedroom that gets the morning sun." He

paused an instant and flushed from chin to brow, an Anglo-Saxon flush it

was, but the bold Latin eyes did not fall. "I've made some furnishings

already. And I've sent out an order for kitchen stuff."

Here Miss Blake changed the crossing of her legs. Sheila was angry with

herself because she was consumed with the contagion of his blush. She

wished that he would not look as if he had seen the blush and was pleased

by it. She wished that his clean young strength and beauty and the ardor

of his eyes did not speak quite so eloquently.

"I bought a little black horse about so high"--he held his hand an absurd

distance from the floor and laughed--"just the size for a little girl

and--do you know who I'm going to give him to?"

Here Miss Blake got up, strode to the pianola, adjusted it, and sat down,

broad and solid and unabashed by absence of feminine draperies, upon the

stool. She played a comic song.

"I don't like your _fam_ily--"

in some such dreadful way it expressed itself--

"They do _not_ look good to me.

I don't think your _Unc_le John

Ever _had_ a collar on ..."

She played it very loud.

Hilliard stood up and came close to Sheila.

"She's mad as a March hare," he whispered, "and she doesn't like me a

little bit. Come out while I patch up Dusty, won't you, please? It's

moonlight. I'll be going." He repeated this very loud for Miss Blake's

benefit with no apparent effect upon her enjoyment of the song. She was

rocking to its rhythm.

Hilliard was overwhelmed suddenly by the appearance of her. He put his

hand to his mouth and bolted. Sheila, following, found him around the

corner of the house rocking and gasping with mirth. He looked at her

through tears.

"Puss-in-Boots," he gasped, and Sheila ran to the edge of the clearing to

be safe in a mighty self-indulgence.

There they crouched like two children till their laughter spent itself.

Hilliard was serious first.

"You're a bad, ungrateful girl," he said weakly, "to laugh at a sweet old

lady like that."

"Oh, I am!" Sheila took it almost seriously. "She's been wonderful to

me."

"I bet she works you," he said jealously.

"Oh, no. Not a bit too hard. I love it."

"Well," he admitted, "you do look pretty fine, that's a fact. Better than

you did at Hudson's. What did you quit for?"

Sheila was sober enough now. The moonlight let some of its silver,

uncaught by the twinkling aspen leaves, splash down on her face. It

seemed to flicker and quiver like the leaves. She shook her head.

He looked a trifle sullen. "Oh, you won't tell me.... Funny idea, you

being a barmaid. Hudson's notion, wasn't it?"

Sheila lifted her clear eyes. "I thought asking questions wasn't good

manners in the West."

"Damn!" he said. "Don't you make me angry! I've got a right to ask you

questions."

She put her hand up against the smooth white trunk of the tree near

which she stood. She seemed to grow a little taller.

"Oh, have you? I don't think I quite understand how you got any such

right. And you like to be questioned yourself?"

She had him there, had him rather cruelly, though he was not aware of the

weapon of her suspicion. She felt a little ashamed when she saw him

wince. He slapped his gloves against his leather chaps, looking at her

with hot, sulky eyes.

"Oh, well... I beg your pardon.... Listen--" He flung his ill-humor aside

and was sweet and cool again like the night. "Are you going to take the

little horse?"

"I don't know."

His face shadowed and fell so expressively, so utterly, that she melted.

"Oh," he stammered, half-turning from her, "I was sure. I brought him

up."

This completed the melting process. "Of course I'll take him!" she cried.

"Where is he?"

She inspected the beautiful little animal by the moonlight. She even let

Hilliard mount her on the shining glossy back and rode slowly about

clinging to his mane, ecstatic over the rippling movement under her.

"He's like a rocking-chair," said Cosme. "You can ride him all day and

not feel it." He looked about the silver meadow. "Good feed here, isn't

there? I bet he'll stay. If not, I'll get him for you."

Sheila slipped down. They left the horse to graze.

"Yes, it's first-rate feed. Do you think Miss Blake will let me

keep him?"

His answer was entirely lost by a sudden outbreak from the dogs.

"Good Lord!" said Cosme, making himself heard, "what a breed! Isn't that

awful! Why does she keep the brutes? Isn't she scared they'll eat her?"

Sheila shook her head. Presently the tumult quieted down. "They're afraid

of her," she said. "She has a dreadful whip. She likes to bully them. I

think she's rather cruel. But she does love Berg; she says he's the only

real dog in the pack."

"Was Berg the one on the bearskin inside?"

"Yes."

"He's sure a beauty. But I don't like him. He has wolf eyes. See

here--you're shivering. I've kept you out here in the cold. I'll go.

Good-night. Thank you for keeping the horse. Will you come down to see my

house? I built it"--he drawled the words--"for you"--and added after a

tingling moment--"to see, ma'am."

This experiment in words sent Sheila to the house, her hand crushed and

aching with his good-bye grasp, her heart jumping with a queer fright.

Miss Blake stood astraddle on the hearth, her hands behind her back.

"You better go to bed, Sheila," she said; "it's eleven o'clock and

to-morrow's wash-day."

Her voice was pleasant enough, but its bluffness had a new edge. Sheila

found it easy to obey. She climbed up the ladder to the little gabled

loft which was her bedroom. Halfway up she paused to assert a belated

independence of spirit. "Good-night," she said, "how do you like our

neighbor?"

Miss Blake stared up. Her lips were set tight. She made no answer. After

an instant she sauntered across the room and out of the door. The whip

with which she beat the dogs swung in her hand. A moment later a fearful

howling and yelping showed that some culprit had been chosen for condign

punishment.

Sheila set down her candle, sat on the edge of her cot, and covered her

ears with her hands. When it was over she crept into bed. She felt,

though she chided herself for the absurdity, like a naughty child who has

been forcibly reminded of the consequences of rebellion.

CHAPTER VI

A HISTORY AND A LETTER

The next morning, it seemed Miss Blake's humor had completely changed. It

showed something like an apologetic softness. She patted Sheila's

shoulder when she passed the girl at work. When Hilliard next appeared, a

morning visit this time, he was bidden to share their dinner; he was even

smiled upon.

"She's not such a bad old girl, is she?" he admitted when Sheila had been

given a half-holiday and was riding on the black horse beside Hilliard on

his Dusty across one of the mountain meadows.

"_I_ think she's a dear," said Sheila, pink with gratitude; then,

shadowing, "If only she wouldn't beat the dogs and would give up

trapping."

"Why in thunder shouldn't she trap?"

"I loathe trapping. Do you remember how you felt in the pen? It's bad

enough to shoot down splendid wild things for food, but, to trap

them!--small furry things or even big furry things like bears, why, it's

cruel! It's hideously cruel! When a woman does it--"

"Come, now, don't call _her_ a woman!"

"Yes, she is. Think of the aprons! And she is so tidy."

"That's not just a woman's virtue."

"Maybe not. I'm not sure. But I've a feeling that it was Eve who first

discovered dust."

"Very bad job if she did. Think of all the bother we've been going

through ever since."

"There!" Sheila triumphed. "To you it's just bother. You're a man. To me

it's a form of sport.... I wonder what Miss Blake's story is."

"You mean--?" He turned in his saddle to stare wonderingly at her. "You

don't know?"

"No." Sheila blushed confusedly. "I--I don't know anything about her--"

"Good Lord!" He whistled softly. "Sometimes those ventures turn out all

right." He looked dubious. "I'm glad I'm here!"

Sheila's smile slipped sweetly across her mouth and eyes. "So am I. But,"

she added after a thoughtful moment, "I don't know much about your story

either, do I?"

"I might say something about asking questions," began Cosme with

grimness, but changed his tone quickly with a light, apologetic touch on

her arm, "but--but I won't. I ran away from school when I was fourteen

and I've been knocking around the West ever since."

"What school?" asked Sheila.

He did not answer for several minutes. They had come to the end of the

meadow and were mounting a slope on a narrow trail where the ponies

seemed to nose their way among the trees. Now and then Sheila had to put

out her hand to push her knee away from a threatening trunk. Below were

the vivid paintbrush flowers and the blue mountain lupine and all about

the nymph-white aspens with leaves turning to restless gold against the

sky. The horses moved quietly with a slight creaking of saddles. There

was a feeling of stealth, of mystery--that tiptoe breathless expectation

of Pan pipes.... At last Cosme turned in his saddle, rested his hand on

the cantle, and looked at Sheila from a bent face with troubled eyes.

"It was an Eastern school," he said. "No doubt you've heard of it. It

was Groton."

The name here in these Wyoming woods brought a picture as foreign as the

artificiality of a drawing-room.

"Groton? You ran away?"

"Yes, ma'am."

Sheila's suspicions were returning forcibly. "I'll have to ask questions,

Mr. Hilliard, because it seems so strange--what you are now, and your

running away and never having been brought back to the East by--by

whoever it was that sent you to Groton."

"I want you to ask questions," he said rather wistfully. "You have

the right."

This forced her into something of a dilemma. She ignored it and waited,

looking away from him. He would not leave her this loophole, however.

"Why don't you look at me?" he demanded crossly.

She did, and smiled again.

"You have the prettiest smile I ever saw!" he cried; then went on

quickly, "I ran away because of something that happened. I'll tell you.

My mother"--he flushed and his eyes fell--"came up to see me at school

one day. My mother was very beautiful.... I was mad about her." Curiously

enough, every trace of the Western cowboy had gone out of his voice and

manner, which were an echo of the voice and manner of the Groton

schoolboy whose experience he told. "I was proud of her--you know how a

kid is. I kind of paraded her round and showed her off to the other

fellows. No other fellow had such a beautiful mother. Then, as we were

saying good-bye, a crowd of the boys all round, I did something--trod on

her foot or something, I don't quite know what--and she lifted up her

hand and slapped me across the face." He was white at the shocking

memory. "Right there before them all, when I--I was adoring her. She had

the temper of a devil, a sudden Spanish temper--the kind I have, too--and

she never made the slightest effort to hold it down. She hit me and she

laughed as though it was funny and she got into her carriage. I cut off

to my room. I wanted to kill myself. I couldn't face any one. I wanted

never to see her again. I guess I was a queer sort of kid.... I don't

know ..." He drew a big breath, dropped back to the present and his

vivid color returned. "That's why I ran away from school, Miss Arundel."

"And they never brought you back?"

He laughed. "They never found me. I had quite a lot of money and I

lost myself pretty cleverly...a boy of fourteen can, you know. It's

a very common history. Well, I suppose they didn't break their necks

over me either, after the first panic. They were busy people--my

parents--remarkably busy going to the devil.... And they were eternally

hard-up. You see, my grandfather had the money--still has it--and he's

remarkably tight. I wrote to them after six years, when I was twenty.

They wrote back; at least their lawyer did. They tried, not very

sincerely, though, I think, to coax me East again... told me they'd

double my allowance if I did--they've sent me a pittance--" He shuddered

suddenly, a violent, primitive shiver. "I'm glad I didn't go," he said.

There was a long stillness. That dreadful climax to the special

"business" of the Hilliards was relived in both their memories. But it

was something of which neither could speak. Sheila wondered if the

beautiful mother was that instant wearing the hideous prison dress. She

wished that she had read the result of the trial. She wouldn't for the

world question this pale and silent young man. The rest of their ride was

quiet and rather mournful. They rode back at sunset and Hilliard bade her

a troubled good-bye.

She wanted to say something comforting, reassuring. She watched him

helplessly from where she stood on the porch as he walked across the

clearing to his horse. Suddenly he slapped the pocket of his chaps and

turned back. "Thunder!" he cried, "I'd forgotten the mail. A fellow left

it at the ford. A paper for Miss Blake and a letter for you."

Sheila held out her hand. "A letter for me?" She took it. It was a

strange hand, small and rather unsteady. The envelope was fat, the

postmark Millings. Her flush of surprise ebbed. She knew whose letter it

was--Sylvester Hudson's. He had found her out.

She did not even notice Cosme's departure. She went up to her loft, sat

down on her cot and read.

"MY DEAR MISS SHEILA:

"I don't rightly know how to express myself in this letter because I know

what your feelings toward Pap must be like, and they are fierce. But I

have got to try to write you a letter just the same, for there are some

things that need explaining. At first, when my hotel and my Aura were

burned down [here the writing was especially shaky] and I found that you

and Dickie had both vamoosed, I thought that you had paid me out and gone

off together. You can't blame me for that thought, Miss Sheila, for I

had found him in your room at that time of night or morning and I

couldn't help but see that he was aiming to kiss you and you were waiting

for his kiss. So I was angry and I had been drinking and I kissed you

myself, taking advantage of you in a way that no gentleman would do. But

I thought you were different from the Sheila I had brought to be my

barmaid.

"Well, ma'am, for a while after the fire, I was pretty near crazy. I was

about loco. Then I was sick. When I got well again, a fellow who come

over from Hidden Creek told me you had gone over to be at a ranch there

and that you had come in alone. That sort of got me to thinking about you

more and more and studying you out, and I begun to see that I had made a

bad mistake. Whatsoever reason brought that damn fool Dickie to your room

that morning, it wasn't your doings, and the way you was waiting for his

kiss was more a mother's way. I have had some hard moments with myself,

Miss Sheila, and I have come to this that I have got to write and tell

you how I feel. And ask your forgiveness. You see you were something in

my life, different from anything that had ever been there. I don't

rightly know--I likely never will know--what you meant in my life. I

handled you in my heart like a flower. Before God, I had a religion for

you. And that was just why, when I thought you was bad, that it drove me

crazy. I wonder if you will understand this. You are awful young and

awful ignorant. And I have hurt your pride. You are terrible proud for

your years, Miss Sheila. I ache all over when I think that I hurt your

pretty mouth. I hope it is smiling now. I am moving out of Millings,--Me

and Momma and Babe. But Girlie is agoing to marry Jim. He run right back

to her like a little lost lamb the second you was gone. Likely, he'll

never touch liquor again. I haven't heard from Dickie. I guess he's gone

where the saloons are bigger and where you can get oysters with your

drinks. He always was a damn fool. I would dearly like to go over to

Hidden Creek and see you, but I feel like I'd better not. It would hurt

me if I got a turn-down from you like it will hurt me if you don't

answer this letter, which is a mighty poor attempt to tell you my bad

reasons for behaving like I did. I am not sorry I thrashed Dickie. He had

ought to be thrashed good and plenty. And he has sure paid me off by

burning down my Aura. That was a saloon in a million, Miss Sheila, and

the picture of you standing there back of my bar, looking so dainty and

sweet and fine in your black dress and your frills--well, ma'am, I'll

sure try to be thinking of that when I cash in.

"Well, Miss Sheila, I wish you good fortune in whatever you do, and I

hope that if you ever need a friend you will overlook my bad break and

remember the artist that tried to put you in his big work and--failed."

This extraordinary document was signed--"Sylvester." Sheila was left

bewildered with strange tears in her throat.

CHAPTER VII

SANCTUARY

There came to the restaurant where Dickie worked, a certain sallow and

irritable man, no longer in his early youth. He came daily for one of his

three meals: it might be lunch or dinner or even breakfast, Dickie was

always in haste to serve him. For some reason, the man's clever and

nervous personality intrigued his interest. And this, although his

customer never threw him a glance, scowled at a newspaper, barked out an

order, gulped his food, stuck a fair-sized tip under the edge of his

plate, and jerked himself away.

On a certain sluggish noon hour in August, Dickie, as far as the

kitchen door with a tray balanced on his palm, realized that he had

forgotten this man's order. He hesitated to go back. "Like as not,"

reasoned Dickie, "he didn't rightly know what the order was. He never

does look at his food. I'll fetch him a Spanish omelette and a salad

and a glass of iced tea. It's a whole lot better order than he'd have

thought of himself."

Nevertheless, it was with some trepidation that he set the omelette down

before that lined and averted countenance. Its owner was screwed into his

chair as usual, eyes, with a sharp cleft between their brows, bent on his

folded newspaper, and he put his right hand blindly on the fork. But as

it pricked the contents of the plate a savory fragrance rose and the

reader looked.

"Here, you damn fool--that's not my order," he snapped out.

Dickie tasted a homely memory--"Dickie damn fool." He stood silent a

moment looking down with one of his quaint, impersonal looks.

"Well, sir," then he said slowly, "it ain't your order, but you look a

whole lot more like a feller that would order Spanish omelette than like

a feller that would order Hamburger steak."

For the first time the man turned about, flung his arm over his

chair-back, and looked up at Dickie. In fact, he stared. His thin lips,

enclosed in an ill-tempered parenthesis of double lines, twisted

themselves slightly.

"I'll be derned!" he said. "But, look here, my man, I didn't order

Hamburger steak; I ordered chicken."

Dickie deliberately smoothed down the cowlick on his head. He wore his

look of a seven-year-old with which he was wont to face the extremity of

Sylvester's exasperation.

"I reckon I clean forgot your order, sir," he said. "I figured out that

you wouldn't be caring what was on your plate. This heat," he added,

"sure puts a blinder on a feller's memory."

The man laughed shortly. "It's all right," he said. "This'll go down."

He ate in silence. Then he glanced up again. "What are you waiting

for, anyway?"

Dickie flushed faintly. "I was sort of wishful to see how it would go

down."

"Oh, I don't mean that kind of waiting. I mean--why are you a waiter in

this--hash-hole?"

Dickie meditated. "There ain't no answer to that," he said. "I don't know

why--" He added--"Why anything. It's a sort of extry word in the

dictionary--don't mean much any way you look at it."

He gathered up the dishes. The man watched him, tilting back a little in

his chair, his eyes twinkling under brows drawn together. A moment

afterwards he left the restaurant.

It was a few nights later when Dickie saw him again--or rather when

Dickie was again seen by him. This time Dickie was not in the restaurant.

He was at a table in a small Free Library near Greenwich Avenue, and he

was copying painstakingly with one hand from a fat volume which he held

down with the other. The strong, heavily-shaded light made a circle of

brilliance about him; his fair hair shone silvery bright, his face had a

sort of seraphic pallor. The orderer of chicken, striding away from the

desk with a hastily obtained book of reference, stopped short and stared

at him; then came close and touched the thin, shiny shoulder of the blue

serge coat.

"This the way you take your pleasure?" he asked abruptly.

Dickie looked up slowly, and his consciousness seemed to travel even more

slowly back from the fairy doings of a midsummer night. Under the

observant eyes bent upon it, his face changed extraordinarily from the

face of untroubled, almost immortal childhood to the face of struggling

and reserved manhood.

"Hullo," he said with a smile of recognition. "Well--yes--not always."

"What are you reading?" The man slipped into the chair beside Dickie, put

on his glasses, and looked at the fat book. "Poetry? Hmp! What are you

copying it for?--letter to your girl?"

Dickie had all the Westerner's prejudice against questions, but he felt

drawn to this patron of the "hash-hole," so, though he drawled his answer

slightly, it was an honest answer.

"It ain't my book," he said. "That's why I'm copying it."

"Why in thunder don't you take it out, you young idiot?"

Dickie colored. "Well, sir, I don't rightly understand the workings of

this place. I come by it on the way home and I kep' a-seein' folks goin'

in with books and comin' out with books. I figured it was a kind of

exchange proposition. I've only got one book--and that ain't rightly

mine--" the man looking at him wondered why his face flamed--"so, when I

came in, I just watched and I figured you could read here if you had the

notion to take down a book and fetch it over to the table and copy from

it and return it. So I've been doin' that."

"Why didn't you go to the desk, youngster, and ask questions?"

"Where I come from"--Dickie was drawling again--"folks don't deal so much

in questions as they do here."

"Where you came from! You came from Mars! Come along to the desk and

I'll fix you up with a card and you can take an armful of poetry home

with you."

Dickie went to the desk and signed his name. The stranger signed

his--Augustus Lorrimer. The librarian stamped a bit of cardboard and

stuck it into the fat volume. She handed it to Dickie wearily.

"Thank _you_, ma'am," he said with such respectful fervor that she looked

up at him and smiled.

"Now, where's your diggings," asked Lorrimer, who had taken no hints

about asking questions, "east or west?" He was a newspaper reporter.

"Would you be carin' to walk home with me?" asked Dickie. There was a

great deal of dignity in his tone, more in his carriage.

"Yes. I'd be caring to! Lead on, Martian!" And Lorrimer felt, after

he said that, that he was a vulgarian--a long-forgotten sensation.

"In Mars," he commented to himself, "this young man was some kind of

a prince."

"What do you look over your shoulder that way for, Dick?" he asked aloud,

a few blocks on their way. "Scared the police will take away your book?"

Dickie blinked at him with a startled air. "Did I? I reckon a feller

gets into queer ways when he's alone a whole lot. I get kind of feelin'

like somebody was following me in this town--so many folks goin' to and

fro does it to me most likely."

"Yes, a fellow does get into queer ways when he's alone a whole lot,"

said Lorrimer slowly. His mind went back a dozen years to his own first

winter in New York. He looked with keenness at Dickie's face. It was a

curiously charming face, he thought, but it was tight-knit with a

harried, struggling sort of look, and this in spite of its quaint

detachment.

"Know any one in this city?"

"No, sir, not rightly. I've made acquaintance with some of the waiters.

They've asked me to join a club. But I haven't got the cash."

"What pay do you draw?"

Dickie named a sum.

"Not much, eh? But you've got your tips."

"Yes, sir. I pay my board with my pay and live on the tips."

"Must be uncertain kind of living! Where do you live, anyway?

What? Here?"

They had crossed Washington Square and were entering a tall studio

building to the south and east. Dickie climbed lightly up the stairs.

Lorrimer followed with a feeling of bewilderment. On the top landing,

dimly lighted, Dickie unlocked a door and stood aside.

"Just step in and look up," he said, "afore I light the light. You'll

see something."

Lorrimer obeyed. A swarm of golden bees glimmered before his eyes.

"Stars," said Dickie. "Down below you wouldn't hardly know you had 'em,

would you?"

Lorrimer did not answer. A moment later an asthmatic gas-jet caught its

breath and he saw a bare studio room almost vacant of furniture. There

was a bed and a screen and a few chairs, one window facing an alley wall.

The stars had vanished.

"Pretty palatial quarters for a fellow on your job," Lorrimer remarked.

"How did you happen to get here?"

"Some--people I knowed of once lived here." Dickie's voice had taken on a

certain remoteness, and even Lorrimer knew that here questions stopped.

He accepted a chair, declined "the makings," proffered a cigarette.

During these amenities his eyes flew about the room.

"Good Lord!" he ejaculated, "is all that stuff your copying?"

There was a pile of loose and scattered manuscript upon the table under

the gas-jet.

"Yes, sir," Dickie smiled. "I was plumb foolish to go to all that labor."

Lorrimer drew near to the table and coolly looked over the papers.

Dickie watched him with rather a startled air and a flush that might

have seemed one of resentment if his eyes had not worn their

impersonal, observing look.

"All poetry," muttered Lorrimer. "But some of it only a line--or a

word." He read aloud,--"'Close to the sun in lonely lands--' what's that

from, anyway?"

"A poem about an eagle by a man named Alfred Tennyson. Ain't it the way a

feller feels, though, up on the top of a rocky peak?"

"Never been on the top of a rocky peak--kind of a sky-scraper sensation,

isn't it? What's all this--'An' I have been faithful to thee, Cynara,

after my fashion'?"

Dickie's face again flamed in spite of himself. "It's a love poem. The

feller couldn't forget. He couldn't keep himself from loving that-away

because he loved so much the other way--well, sir, you better read it for

yourself. It's a mighty real sort of a poem--if you were that sort of a

feller, I mean."

"And this is 'The Ballad of Reading Gaol' And here's a sonnet, 'It was

not like your great and gracious ways'--? Coventry Patmore. Well, young

man, you've a catholic taste."

"I don't rightly belong to any church," said Dickie gravely. "My mother

is a Methodist."

Lorrimer moved; abruptly away and moved abruptly back.

"Where were you educated, Dick?"

"I was raised in Millings"--Dickie named the Western State--"I didn't

get only to grammar school. My father needed me to work in his hotel."

"Too bad!" sighed Lorrimer. "Well, I'll bid you good-night. And many

thanks. You've got a fine place here." Again he sighed. "I dare say--one

of these days--"

He was absent and irritable again. Dickie accompanied him down the three

long, narrow flights and climbed back to his loneliness. He was, however,

very much excited by his adventure, excited and disturbed. He felt

restless. He walked about and whistled to himself.

Until now he had had but one companion--the thought of Sheila. It was

extraordinary how immediate she was. During the first dreadful weeks of

his drudgery in the stifling confusions of the restaurant, when even the

memory of Sylvester's tongue-lashings faded under the acute reality of

the head waiter's sarcasms, that love of his for Sheila had fled away and

left him dull and leaden and empty of his soul. And his tiny third-story

bedroom had seemed like a coffin when he laid himself down in it and

tried to remember her. It had come to him like a mountain wind,

overwhelmingly, irresistibly, the desire to live where she lived: the

first wish he had had since he had learned that she was not to be found

by him. And the miracle had accomplished itself. Mrs. Halligan had been

instructed to get a lodger at almost any price for the long-vacant studio

room. She lowered the rent to the exact limit of Dickie's wages. She had

never bargained with so bright-eyed a hungry-looking applicant for

lodgings. And that night he lay awake under Sheila's stars. From then on

he lived always in her presence. And here in the room that had known her

he kept himself fastidious and clean. He shut out the wolf-pack of his

shrewd desires. The room was sanctuary. It was to rescue Sheila rather

than himself that Dickie fled up to the stars. So deeply, so intimately

had she become a part of him that he seemed to carry her soul in his

hands. So had the young dreamer wedded his dream. He lived with Sheila as

truly, as loyally, as though he knew that she would welcome him with one

of those downward rushes or give him Godspeed on sultry, feverish dawns

with a cool kiss. Dickie lay sometimes across his bed and drew her cheek

in trembling fancy close to his until the anguish wet his pillow with

mute tears.

Now to this dual loneliness Lorrimer had climbed, and Dickie felt, rather

gratefully, that life had reached up to the aching unrealities of his

existence. His tight and painful life had opened like the first fold of a

fan. He built upon the promise of a friendship with this questioning,

impertinent, mocking, keenly sympathetic visitor.

But a fortnight passed without Lorrimer's appearing at the restaurant

and, when at last he did come, Dickie, flying to his chair, was greeted

by a cold, unsmiling word, and a businesslike quotation from the menu.

He felt as though he had been struck. His face burned. In the West, a

fellow couldn't do that and get away with it! He tightened an impotent,

thin fist. He filled the order and kept his distance, and, absurdly

enough, gave Lorrimer's tip to another waiter and went without his own

dinner. For the first time in his life a sense of social inferiority, of

humiliation concerning the nature of his work, came to him. He felt the

pang of servitude, a pang unknown to the inhabitants of frontier towns.

When Sheila washed dishes for Mrs. Hudson she was "the young lady from

Noo York who helps round at Hudson's house." Dickie fought this shame

sturdily, but it seemed to cling, to have a sticky pervasiveness. Try as

he might he couldn't brush it off his mind. Nevertheless, it was on the

very heels of this embittering experience that life plucked him up from

his slough. One of the leveling public catastrophes came to Dickie's

aid--not that he knew he was a dumb prayer for aid. He knew only that

every day was harder to face than the last, that every night the stars up

there through Sheila's skylight seemed to glimmer more dully with less

inspiration on his fagged spirit.

The sluggish monotony of the restaurant's existence was stirred that

September night by a big neighboring fire. Waiters and guests tumbled out

to the call of fire-engines and running feet. Dickie found himself

beside Lorrimer, who caught him by the elbow.

"Keep by me, kid," he said, and there was something in his tone

that softened injury. "If you want a good look-in, I can get

through the ropes."