In northern Montana there lies a great, lonely stretch of prairie land, gashed deep where flows the Missouri. Indeed, there are many such--big, impassive, impressive in their very loneliness, in summer given over to the winds and the meadow larks and to the shadows fleeing always over the hilltops. Wild range cattle feed there and grow sleek and fat for the fall shipping of beef. At night the coyotes yap quaveringly and prowl abroad after the long-eared jack rabbits, which bounce away at their hunger-driven approach. In winter it is not good to be there; even the beasts shrink then from the bleak, level reaches, and shun the still bleaker heights.
But men will live anywhere if by so doing there is money to be gained, and so a town snuggled up against the northern rim of the bench land, where the bleakness was softened a bit by the sheltering hills, and a willow-fringed creek with wild rosebushes and chokecherries made a vivid green background for the meager huddle of little, unpainted buildings.
To the passengers on the through trains which watered at the red tank near the creek, the place looked crudely picturesque--interesting, so long as one was not compelled to live there and could retain a perfectly impersonal viewpoint. After five or ten minutes spent hi watching curiously the one little street, with the long hitching poles planted firmly and frequently down both sides--usually within a very few steps of a saloon door--and the horses nodding and stamping at the flies, and the loitering figures that appeared now and then in desultory fashion, many of them imagined that they understood the West and sympathized with it, and appreciated its bigness and its freedom from conventions.
One slim young woman had just told the thin-faced school teacher on a vacation, with whom she had formed one of those evanescent traveling acquaintances, that she already knew the West, from instinct and from Manley's letters. She loved it, she said, because Manley loved it, and because it was to be her home, and because it was so big and so free. Out here one could think and grow and really live, she declared, with enthusiasm. Manley had lived here for three years, and his letters, she told the thin-faced teacher, were an education in themselves.
The teacher had already learned that the slim young woman, with the yellow-brown hair and yellow-brown eyes to match, was going to marry Manley--she had forgotten his other name, though the young woman had mentioned it--and would live on a ranch, a cattle ranch. She smiled with somewhat wistful sympathy, and hoped the young woman would be happy; and the young woman waved her hand, with the glove only half pulled on, toward the shadow-dappled prairie and the willow-fringed creek, and the hills beyond.
“Happy!” she echoed joyously. “Could one be anything else, in such a country? And then--you don't know Manley, you see. It's horribly bad form, and undignified and all that, to prate of one's private affairs, but I just can't help bubbling over. I'm not looking for heaven, and I expect to have plenty of bumpy places in the trail--trail is anything that you travel over, out here; Manley has coached me faithfully--but I'm going to be happy. My mind is quite made up. Well, good-by--I'm so glad you happened to be on this train, and I wish I might meet you again. Isn't it a funny little depot? Oh, yes--thank you! I almost forgot that umbrella, and I might need it. Yes, I'll write to you--I should hate to drop out of your mind completely. Address me Mrs. Manley Fleetwood, Hope, Montana. Good-by--I wish--”
She trailed off down the aisle with eyes shining, in the wake of the grinning porter. She hurried down the steps, glanced hastily along the platform, up at the car window where the faded little school teacher was smiling wearily down at her, waved her hand, threw a dainty little kiss, nodded a gay farewell, smiled vaguely at the conductor, who had been respectfully pleasant to her--and then she was looking at the rear platform of the receding train mechanically, not yet quite realizing why it was that her heart went heavy so suddenly. She turned then and looked about her in a surprised, inquiring fashion. Manley, it would seem, was not at hand to welcome her. She had expected his face to be the first she looked upon in that town, but she tried not to be greatly perturbed at his absence; so many things may detain one.
At that moment a young fellow, whose clothes emphatically proclaimed him a cowboy, came diffidently up to her, tilted his hat backward an inch or so, and left it that way, thereby unconsciously giving himself an air of candor which should have been reassuring.
“Fleetwood was detained. You were expecting to--you're the lady he was expecting, aren't you?”
She had been looking questioningly at her violin box and two trunks standing on their ends farther down the platform, and she smiled vaguely without glancing at him.
“Yes. I hope he isn't sick, or--”
“I'll take you over to the hotel, and go tell him you're here,” he volunteered, somewhat curtly, and picked up her bag.
“Oh, thank you.” This time her eyes grazed his face inattentively. She followed him down the rough steps of planking and up an extremely dusty road--one could scarcely call it a street--to an uninviting building with crooked windows and a high, false front of unpainted boards.
The young fellow opened a sagging door, let her pass into a narrow hallway, and from there into a stuffy, hopelessly conventional fifth-rate parlor, handed her the bag, and departed with another tilt of the hat which placed it at a different angle. The sentence meant for farewell she did not catch, for she was staring at a wooden-faced portrait upon an easel, the portrait of a man with a drooping mustache, and porky cheeks, and dead-looking eyes.
“And I expected bearskin rugs, and antlers on the walls, and big fireplaces!” she remarked aloud, and sighed. Then she turned and pulled aside a coarse curtain of dusty, machine-made lace, and looked after her guide. He was just disappearing into a saloon across the street, and she dropped the curtain precipitately, as if she were ashamed of spying. “Oh, well--I've heard all cowboys are more or less intemperate,” she excused, again aloud.
She sat down upon an atrocious red plush chair, and wrinkled her nose spitefully at the porky-cheeked portrait. “I suppose you're the proprietor,” she accused, “or else the proprietor's son. I wish you wouldn't squint like that. If I have to stop here longer than ten minutes, I shall certainly turn you face to the wall.” Whereupon, with another grimace, she turned her back upon it and looked out of the window. Then she stood up impatiently, looked at her watch, and sat down again upon the red plush chair.
“He didn't tell me whether Manley is sick,” she said suddenly, with some resentment. “He was awfully abrupt in his manner. Oh, you--” She rose, picked up an old newspaper from the marble-topped table with uncertain legs, and spread it ungently over the portrait upon the easel. Then she went to the window and looked out again. “I feel perfectly sure that cowboy went and got drunk immediately,” she complained, drumming pettishly upon the glass. “And I don't suppose he told Manley at all.”
The cowboy was innocent of the charge, however, and he was doing his energetic best to tell Manley. He had gone straight through the saloon and into the small room behind, where a man lay sprawled upon a bed in one corner. He was asleep, and his clothes were wrinkled as if he had lain there long. His head rested upon his folded arms, and he was snoring loudly. The young fellow went up and took him roughly by the shoulder.
“Here! I thought I told you to straighten up,” he cried disgustedly. “Come alive! The train's come and gone, and your girl's waiting for you over to the hotel. D' you hear?”
“Uh-huh!” The man opened one eye, grunted, and closed it again.
The other yanked him half off the bed, and swore. This brought both eyes open, glassy with whisky and sleep. He sat wobbling upon the edge of the bed, staring stupidly.
“Can't you get anything through you?” his tormentor exclaimed. “You want your girl to find out you're drunk? You got the license in your pocket. You're supposed to get spliced this evening--and look at you!” He turned and went out to the bartender.
“Why didn't you pour that coffee into him, like I told you?” he demanded. “We've got to get him steady on his pins somehow!”
The bartender was sprawled half over the bar, apathetically reading the sporting news of a torn Sunday edition of an Eastern paper. He looked up from under his eyebrows and grunted.
“How you going to pour coffee down a man that lays flat on his belly and won't open his mouth?” he inquired, in an injured tone. “Sleep's all he needs, anyway. He'll be all right by morning.”
The other snorted dissent. “He'll be all right by dark--or he'll feel a whole lot worse,” he promised grimly. “Dig up some ice. And a good jolt of bromo, if you've got it--and a towel or two.”
The bartender wearily pushed the paper to one side, reached languidly under the bar, and laid hold of a round blue bottle. Yawning uninterestedly, he poured a double portion of the white crystals into a glass, half filled another under the faucet of the water cooler, and held them out.
“Dump that into him, then,” he advised. “It'll help some, if you get it down. What's the sweat to get him married off to-day? Won't the girl wait?”
“I never asked her. You pound up some ice and bring it in, will you?” The volunteer nurse kicked open the door into the little room and went in, hastily pouring the bromo seltzer from one glass to the other to keep it from foaming out of all bounds. His patient was still sitting upon the edge of the bed where he had left him, slumped forward with his head in his hands. He looked up stupidly, his eyes bloodshot and swollen of lid.
“'S the train come in yet?” he asked thickly. “'S you, is it, Kent?”
“The train's come, and your girl is waiting for you at the hotel. Here, throw this into you--and for God's sake, brace up! You make me tired. Drink her down quick--the foam's good for you. Here, you take the stuff in the bottom, too. Got it? Take off your coat, so I can get at you. You don't look much like getting married, and that's no josh.”
Fleetwood shook his head with drunken gravity, and groaned. “I ought to be killed. Drunk to-day!” He sagged forward again, and seemed disposed to shed tears. “She'll never forgive me; she--”
Kent jerked him to his feet peremptorily. “Aw, look here! I'm trying to sober you up. You've got to do your part--see? Here's some ice in a towel--you get it on your head. Open up your shirt, so I can bathe your chest. Don't do any good to blubber around about it. Your girl can't hear you, and Jim and I ain't sympathetic. Set down in this chair, where we can get at you.” He enforced his command with some vigor, and Fleetwood groaned again. But he shed no more tears, and he grew momentarily more lucid, as the treatment took effect.
The tears were being shed in the stuffy little hotel parlor. The young woman looked often at her watch, went into the hallway, and opened the outer door several times, meditating a search of the town, and drew back always with a timid fluttering of heart because it was all so crude and strange, and the saloons so numerous and terrifying in their very bald simplicity.
She was worried about Manley, and she wished that cowboy would come out of the saloon and bring her lover to her. She had never dreamed of being treated in this way. No one came near her--and she had secretly expected to cause something of a flutter in this little town they called Hope.
Surely, young girls from the East, come out to get married to their sweethearts, weren't so numerous that they should be ignored. If there were other people in the hotel, they did not manifest their presence, save by disquieting noises muffled by intervening partitions.
She grew thirsty, but she hesitated to explore the depths of this dreary abode, in fear of worse horrors than the parlor furniture, and all the places of refreshment which she could see from the window or the door looked terribly masculine and unmoral, and as if they did not know there existed such things as ice cream, or soda, or sherbet.
It was after an hour of this that the tears came, which is saying a good deal for her courage. It seemed to her then that Manley must be dead. What else could keep him so long away from her, after three years of impassioned longing written twice a week with punctilious regularity?
He knew that she was coming. She had telegraphed from St. Paul, and had received a joyful reply, lavishly expressed in seventeen words instead of the ten-word limit. And they were to have been married immediately upon her arrival.
That cowboy had known she was coming; he must also have known why Manley did not meet her, and she wished futilely that she had questioned him, instead of walking beside him without a word. He should have explained. He would have explained if he had not been so very anxious to get inside that saloon and get drunk.
She had always heard that cowboys were chivalrous, and brave, and fascinating in their picturesque dare-deviltry, but from the lone specimen which she had met she could not see that they possessed any of those qualities. If all cowboys were like that, she hoped that she would not be compelled to meet any of them. And why didn't Manley come?
It was then that an inner door--a door which she had wanted to open, but had lacked courage--squeaked upon its hinges, and an ill-kept bundle of hair was thrust in, topping a weather-beaten face and a scrawny little body. Two faded, inquisitive eyes looked her over, and the woman sidled in, somewhat abashed, but too curious to remain outside.
“Oh yes!” She seemed to be answering some inner question. “I didn't know you was here.” She went over and removed the newspaper from the portrait. “That breed girl of mine ain't got the least idea of how to straighten up a room,” she observed complainingly. “I guess she thinks this picture was made to hang things on. I'll have to round her up again and tell her a few things. This is my first husband. He was in politics and got beat, and so he killed himself. He couldn't stand to have folks give him the laugh.” She spoke with pride. “He was a real handsome man, don't you think? You mighta took off the paper; it didn't belong there, and he does brighten up the room. A good picture is real company, seems to me. When my old man gets on the rampage till I can't stand it no longer, I come in here and set, and look at Walt. 'T ain't every man that's got nerve to kill himself--with a shotgun. It was turrible! He took and tied a string to the trigger--”
“Oh, please!”
The landlady stopped short and stared at her. “What? Oh, I won't go into details--it was awful messy, and that's a fact. I didn't git over it for a couple of months. He coulda killed himself with a six-shooter; it's always been a mystery why he dug up that old shotgun, but he did. I always thought he wanted to show his nerve.” She sighed, and drew her fingers across her eyes. “I don't s'pose I ever will git over it,” she added complacently. “It was a turrible shock.”
“Do you know,” the girl began desperately, “if Mr. Manley Fleetwood is in town? I expected him to meet me at the train.”
“Oh! I kinda thought you was Man Fleetwood's girl. My name's Hawley. You going to be married to-night, ain't you?”
“I--I haven't seen Mr. Fleetwood yet,” hesitated the girl, and her eyes filled again with tears. “I'm afraid something may have happened to him. He--”
Mrs. Hawley glimpsed the tears, and instantly became motherly in her manner. She even went up and patted the girl on the shoulder.
“There, now, don't you worry none. Man's all right; I seen him at dinner time. He was--” She stopped short, looked keenly at the delicate face, and at the yellow-brown eyes which gazed back at her, innocent of evil, trusting, wistful. “He spoke about your coming, and said he'd want the use of the parlor this evening, for the wedding. I had an idea you was coming on the six-twenty train. Maybe he thought so, too. I never heard you come in--I was busy frying doughnuts in the kitchen--and I just happened to come in here after something. You'd oughta rapped on that door. Then I'd 'a' known you was here. I'll go and have my old man hunt him up. He must be around town somewheres. Like as not he'll meet the six-twenty, expecting you to be on it.”
She smiled reassuringly as she turned to the inner door.
“You take off your hat and jacket, and pretty soon I'll show you up to a room. I'll have to round up my old man first--and that's liable to take time.” She turned her eyes quizzically to the porky-cheeked portrait. “You jest let Walt keep you company till I get back. He was real good company when he was livin'.”
She smiled again and went out briskly, came back, and stood with her hand upon the cracked doorknob.
“I clean forgot your name,” she hinted. “Man told me, at dinner time, but I'm no good on earth at remembering names till after I've seen the person it belongs to.”
“Valeria Peyson--Val, they call me usually, at home.” The homesickness of the girl shone in her misty eyes, haunted her voice. Mrs. Hawley read it, and spoke more briskly than she would otherwise have done.
“Well, we're plumb strangers, but we ain't going to stay that way, because every time you come to town you'll have to stop here; there ain't any other place to stop. And I'm going to start right in calling you Val. We don't use no ceremony with folk's names, out here. Val's a real nice name, short and easy to say. Mine's Arline. You can call me by it if you want to. I don't let everybody--so many wants to cut it down to Leen, and I won't stand for that; I'm lean enough, without havin' it throwed up to me. We might jest as well start in the way we're likely to keep it up, and you won't feel so much like a stranger.
“I'm awful glad you're going to settle here--there ain't so awful many women in the country; we have to rake and scrape to git enough for three sets when we have a dance--and more likely we can't make out more 'n two. D' you dance? Somebody said they seen a fiddle box down to the depot, with a couple of big trunks; d' you play the fiddle?”
“A little,” Valeria smiled faintly.
“Well, that'll come in awful handy at dances. We'd have 'em real often in the winter if it wasn't such a job to git music. Well, I got too much to do to be standin' here talkin'. I have to keep right after that breed girl all the time, or she won't do nothing. I'll git my old man after your fellow right away. Jest make yourself to home, and anything you want ask for it in the kitchen.” She smiled in friendly fashion and closed the door with a little slam to make sure that it latched.
Valeria stood for a moment with her hands hanging straight at her sides, staring absently at the door. Then she glanced at Walt, staring wooden-faced from his gilt frame upon his gilt easel, and shivered. She pushed the red plush chair as far away from him as possible, sat down with her back to the picture, and immediately felt his dull, black eyes boring into her back.
“What a fool I must be!” she said aloud, glancing reluctantly over her shoulder at the portrait. She got up resolutely, placed the chair where it had stood before, and stared deliberately at Walt, as if she would prove how little she cared. But in a moment more she was crying dismally.
