CHAPTER X
THE BEACON LIGHT
Out of the Wyoming Bad Lands—orange, turquoise-green, and murky blue, of outlandish ridges, of streaked rock, of sudden, twisted cañons, a country like a dream of the far side of the moon—rode Cosme Hilliard in a choking cloud of alkali dust. He rode down Crazy Woman's Hill toward the sagebrush flat, where, in a half-circle of cloudless, snow-streaked mountains, lay the town of Millings on its rapid glacier river.
Hilliard's black hair was powdered with dust; his olive face was gray; dust lay thick in the folds of his neck-handkerchief; his pony matched the gray-white road and plodded wearily, coughing and tossing his head in misery from the nose-flies, the horse-flies, the mosquitoes, a swarm of small, tormenting presences. His rider seemed to be charmed into patience, and yet his aquiline face was not the face of a patient man. It was young in a keen, hard fashion; the mouth and eyes were those of a Spanish-American mother, golden eyes and a mouth originally beautiful, soft, and cruel, which had been tightened and straightened by a man's will and experience. It had been used so often for careless, humorous smiling that the cruelty had been almost worked out of it. Almost, not altogether. His mother's blood kept its talons on him. He was Latin and dangerous to look at, for all the big white Anglo-Saxon teeth, the slow, slack, Western American carriage, the guarded and amused expression of the golden eyes. Here was a bundle of racial contradictions, not yet welded, not yet attuned. Perhaps the one consistent, the one solvent, expression was that of alert restlessness. Cosme Hilliard was not happy, was not content, but he was eternally entertained. He was not uplifted by the hopeful illusions proper to his age, but he loved adventure. It was a bitter face, bitter and impatient and unschooled. It seemed to laugh, to expect the worst from life, and not to care greatly if the worst should come. But for such minor matters of dust and thirst and weariness, he had patience. Physically the young man was hard and well-schooled. He rode like a cowboy and carried a cowboy's rope tied to his saddle. And the rope looked as though it had been used.
Millings, that seemed so close below there through the clear, high atmosphere, was far to reach. The sun had slipped down like a thin, bright coin back of an iron rock before the traveler rode into the town. His pony shied wearily at an automobile and tried to make up his mind to buck, but a light pressure of the spur and a smiling word was enough to change his mind.
"Don't be a fool, Dusty! You know it's not worth the trouble. Remember that fifty miles you've come to-day!"
The occupants of the motor snapped a camera and hummed away. They had no prevision of being stuck halfway up Crazy Woman's Hill with no water within fifteen miles, or they wouldn't have exclaimed so gayly at the beauty and picturesqueness of the tired cowboy.
"He looks like a movie hero, doesn't he?" said a girl.
"No, ma'am," protested the Western driver, who had been a chauffeur only for a fortnight and knew considerably less about the insides of his Ford than he did about the insides of Hilliard's cow-pony. "He ain't no show. He's the real thing. Seems like you dudes got things kinder twisted. Things ain't like shows. Shows is sometimes like things."
"The real thing" certainly behaved as the real thing would. He rode straight to the nearest saloon and swung out of his saddle. He licked the dust off his lips, looked wistfully at the swinging door, and turned back to his pony.
"You first, Dusty—damn you!" and led the stumbling beast into the yard of The Aura. In an hour or more he came back. He had dined at the hotel and he had bathed. His naturally vivid coloring glowed under the street-light. He was shaved and brushed and sleek. He pushed quickly through the swinging doors of the bar and stepped into the saloon. It was truly a famous bar—The Aura—and it deserved its fame. It shone bright and cool and polished. There was a cheerful clink of glasses, a subdued, comfortable sound of talk. Men drank at the bar, and drank and played cards at the small tables. A giant in a white apron stood to serve the newcomer.
Hilliard ordered his drink, sipped it leisurely, then wandered off to a near-by table. There he stood, watching the game. Not long after, he accepted an invitation and joined the players. From then till midnight he was oblivious of everything but the magic squares of pasteboard, the shifting pile of dirty silver at his elbow, the faces—vacant, clever, or rascally—of his opponents. But at about midnight, trouble came. For some time Hilliard had been subconsciously irritated by the divided attention of a player opposite to him across the table. This man, with a long, thin face, was constantly squinting past Cosme's shoulder, squinting and leering and stretching his great full-lipped mouth into a queer half-smile. At last, abruptly, the irritation came to consciousness and Cosme threw an angry glance over his own shoulder.
Beside the giant who had served him his drink a girl stood: a thin, straight girl in black and white who held herself so still that she seemed painted there against the mirror on the wall. Her hands rested on her slight hips, the fine, pointed, ringless fingers white against the black stuff of her dress. Her neck, too, was white and her face, the pure unpowdered whiteness of childhood. Her chin was lifted, her lips laid together, her eyes, brilliant and clear, of no definite color, looked through her surroundings. She was very young, not more than seventeen. The mere presence of a girl was startling enough. Barmaids are unknown to the experience of the average cowboy. But this girl was trebly startling. For her face was rare. It was not Western, not even American. It was a fine-drawn, finished, Old-World face, with long, arched eyebrows, large lids, shadowed eyes, nostrils a little pinched, a sad and tender mouth. It was a face whose lines might have followed the pencil of Botticelli—those little hollows in the cheeks, that slight exaggeration of the pointed chin, that silky, rippling brown hair. There was no touch of artifice; it was an unpainted young face; hair brushed and knotted simply; the very carriage of the body was alien; supple, unconscious, restrained.
Cosme Hilliard's look lasted for a minute. Returning to his opponent it met an ugly grimace. He flushed and the game went on.
But the incident had roused Hilliard's antagonism. He disliked that man with the grimacing mouth. He began to watch him. An hour or two later Cosme's thin, dark hand shot across the table and gripped the fellow's wrist.
"Caught you that time, you tin-horn," he said quietly.
Instantly, almost before the speech was out, the giant in the apron had hurled himself across the room and gripped the cheat, who stood, a hand arrested on its way to his pocket, snarling helplessly. But the other players, his fellow sheep-herders, fell away from Hilliard dangerously.
"No shootin'," said the giant harshly. "No shoot-in' in The Aura. It ain't allowed."
"No callin' names either," growled the prisoner. "Me and my friends would like to settle with the youthful stranger."
"Settle with him, then, but somewheres else. No fightin' in The Aura."
There was an acquiescent murmur from the other table and the sheep-herder gave in. He exchanged a look with his friends, and Carthy, seeing them disposed to return quietly to the game, left them and took up his usual position behind the bar. The barmaid moved a little closer to his elbow. Hilliard noticed that her eyes had widened in her pale face. He made a brief, contemptuous excuse to his opponents, settled his account with them, and strolled over to the bar. From Carthy he ordered another drink. He saw the girl's eyes studying the hand he put out for his glass and he smiled a little to himself. When she looked up he was ready with his golden eyes to catch her glance. Both pairs of eyes smiled. She came a step toward him.
"I believe I've heard of you, miss," he said.
A delicate pink stained her face and throat and he wondered if she could possibly be shy.
"Some fellows I met over in the Big Horn country lately told me to look you up if I came to Millings. They said something about Hudson's Queen. It's the Hudson Hotel isn't it?—"
A puzzled, rather worried look crept into her eyes, but she avoided his question. "You were working in the Big Horn country? I hoped you were from Hidden Creek."
"I'm on my way there," he said. "I know that country well. You come from over there?"
"No." She smiled faintly. "But"—and here her breast lifted on a deep, spasmodic sigh—"some day I'm going there."
"It's not like any other country," he said, turning his glass in his supple fingers. "It's wonderful. But wild and lonesome. You wouldn't be caring for it—not for longer than a sunny day or two, I reckon."
He used the native phrases with sure familiarity, and yet in his speaking of them there was something unfamiliar. Evidently she was puzzled by him, and Cosme was not sorry that he had so roused her curiosity. He was very curious himself, so much so that he had forgotten the explosive moment of a few short minutes back.
The occupants of the second table pushed away their chairs and came over to the bar. For a while the barmaid was busy, making their change, answering their jests, bidding them good-night. It was, "Well, good-night, Miss Arundel, and thank you."
"See you next Saturday, Miss Arundel, if I'm alive—"
Hilliard drummed on the counter with his fingertips and frowned. His puzzled eyes wove a pattern of inquiry from the men to the girl and back. One of them, a ruddy-faced, town boy, lingered. He had had a drop too much of The Aura's hospitality. He rested rather top-heavily against the bar and stretched out his hand.
"Aren't you going to say me a real good-night, Miss Sheila," he besought, and a tipsy dimple cut itself into his cheek.
"Do go home, Jim," murmured the barmaid. "You've broken your promise again. It's two o'clock."
He made great ox-eyes at her, his hand still begging, its blunt fingers curled upward like a thirsty cup.
His face was emptied of everything but its desire.
It was perfectly evident that "Miss Sheila" was tormented by the look, by the eyes, by the hand, by the very presence of the boy. She pressed her lips tight, drew her fine arched brows together, and twisted her fingers.
"I'll go home," he asserted obstinately, "when you tell me a proper goo'-night—not before."
Her eyes glittered. "Shall I tell Carthy to turn you out, Jim?"
He smiled triumphantly. "Uh," said he, "your watch-dog went out. Dickie called him to answer the telephone. Now, will you tell me good-night, Sheila?"
Cosme hoped that the girl would glance at him for help, he had his long
steel muscles braced; but, after a moment's thought—"And she can think.
She's as cool as she's shy," commented the observer—she put her hand on
Jim's. He grabbed it, pressed his lips upon it.
"Goo'-night," he said, "Goo'-night. I'll go now." He swaggered out as though she had given him a rose.
The barmaid put her hand beneath her apron and rubbed it. Cosme laughed a little at the quaint action.
"Do they give you lots of trouble, Miss Arundel?" he asked her sympathetically.
She looked at him. But her attitude was not so simple and friendly as it had been. Evidently her little conflict with Jim had jarred her humor. She looked distressed, angry. Cosme felt that, unfairly enough, she lumped him with The Enemy. He wondered pitifully if she had given The Enemy its name, if her experience had given her the knowledge of such names. He had a vision of the pretty, delicate little thing standing there night after night as though divided by the bar from prowling beasts. And yet she was known over the whole wide, wild country as "Hudson's Queen." Her crystal, childlike look must be one of those extraordinary survivals, a piteous sort of accident. Cosme called himself a sentimentalist. Spurred by this reaction against his more romantic tendencies, he leaned forward. He too was going to ask the barmaid for a good-night or a greeting or a good-bye. His hand was out, when he saw her face stiffen, her lips open to an "Oh!" of warning or of fear. He wheeled and flung up his arm against a hurricane of blows.
His late opponents had decided to take advantage of Carthy's absence, and inflict chastisement prompt and merciless upon the "youthful stranger." If it had not been for that small frightened "Oh" Cosme would have been down at once.
With that moment's advantage he fought like a tiger, his golden eyes ablaze. Swift and dangerous anger was one of his gifts. He was against the wall, he was torn from it. One of his opponents staggered across the room and fell, another crumpled up against the bar. Hilliard wheeled and jabbed, plunged, was down, was up, bleeding and laughing. He was whirled this way and that, the men from whom he had struck himself free recovered themselves, closed in upon him. A blow between the eyes half stunned him, another on his mouth silenced his laughter. The room was getting blurred. He was forced back against the bar, fighting, but not effectively. The snarling laughter was not his now, but that of the cheat.
Something gave way behind him; it was as if the bar, against which he was bent backwards, had melted to him and hardened against his foes. For an instant he was free from blows and tearing hands. He saw that a door in the bar had opened and shut. There was a small pressure on his arm, a pressure which he blindly obeyed. In front of him another door opened, and closed. He heard the shooting of a bolt. He was in the dark. The small pressure, cold through the torn silk sleeve of his white shirt, continued to urge him swiftly along a passage. He was allowed to rest an instant against a wall. A light was turned on with a little click above his head. He found himself at the end of the open hallway. Before him lay the brilliant velvet night.
Hilliard pressed his hands upon his eyes trying to clear his vision. He felt sick and giddy. The little barmaid's face, all terrified and urgent eyes, danced up and down.
"Don't waste any time!" she said. "Get out of Millings! Where's your pony?"
At that he looked at her and smiled.
"I'm not leaving Millings till to-morrow," he said uncertainly with wounded lips. "Don't look like that, girl. I'm not much hurt, If I'm not mistaken, your watch-dog is back and very much on his job. I reckon that our friends will leave Millings considerably before I do."
In fact, behind them at the end of the passage there was a sort of roar.
Carthy had returned to avenge The Aura.
"You're sure you're not hurt? You're sure they won't try to hurt you again?"
He shook his head. "Not they…" He stood looking at her and the mist slowly cleared, his vision of her steadied. "Shall I see you to-morrow?"
She drew back from him a little. "No," she said. "I sleep all the morning. And, afterwards, I don't see any one except a few old friends. I go riding…"
He puckered his eyelids inquiringly. Then, with a sudden reckless fling of his shoulders, he put out his hand boldly and caught her small pointed chin in his palm. He bent down his head.
She stood there quite still and white, looking straight up into his face. The exquisite smoothness of her little cool chin photographed itself upon his memory. As he bent down closer to the grave and tender lips, he was suddenly, unaccountably frightened and ashamed. His hand dropped, sought for her small limp hand. His lips shifted from their course and went lower, just brushing her fingers.
"I beg your pardon," he said confusedly. He was painfully embarrassed, stammered, "I—I wanted to thank you. Good-bye…"
She said good-bye in the smallest sweet voice he had ever heard. It followed his memory like some weary, pitiful little ghost.
CHAPTER XI
IN THE PUBLIC EYE
No sight more familiar to the corner of Main and Resident Streets than that of Sylvester Hudson's Ford car sliding up to the curb in front of his hotel at two o'clock in a summer afternoon. He would slip out from under his steering-wheel, his linen duster flapping about his long legs, and he would stalk through the rocking, meditative observers on the piazza and through the lobby past Dickie's frozen stare, upstairs to the door of Miss Arundel's "suite." There he was bidden to come in. A few minutes later they would come down together, Sheila, too, passing Dickie wordlessly, and they would hum away from Millings leaving a veil of golden dust to smother the comments in their wake. There were days when Sheila's pony, a gift from Jim Greely, was led up earlier than the hour of Hudson's arrival, on which days Sheila, in a short skirt and a boy's shirt and a small felt Stetson, would ride away alone toward the mountain of her dreams. Sometimes Jim rode with her. It was not always possible to forbid him.
The day after Cosme Hilliard's spectacular passage was one of Hudson's days. The pony did not appear, but Sylvester did and came down with his prize. The lobby was crowded. Sheila threaded her way amongst the medley of tourists, paused and deliberately drew near to the desk. At sight of her Dickie's whiteness dyed itself scarlet. He rose and with an apparent effort lifted his eyes to her look.
They did not smile at each other. Sheila spoke sharply, each word a little soft lash.
"I want to speak to you. Will you come to my sitting-room when I get back?"
"Yes'm," said Dickie. It was the tone of an unwincing pride. Under the desk, hidden from sight, his hand was a white-knuckled fist.
Sheila passed on, trailed by Hudson, who was smiling not agreeably to himself. Over the smile he gave his son a cruel look. It was as though an enemy had said, "Hurts you, doesn't it?" Dickie returned the look with level eyes.
The rockers on the piazza stopped rocking, stopped talking, stopped breathing, it would seem, to watch Sylvester help Sheila into his car; not that he helped her greatly—she had an appearance of melting through his hands and getting into her place beside his by a sort of sleight of body. He made a series of angular movements, smiled at her, and started the car.
"Well, little girl," said he, "where to this afternoon?"
When Sheila rode her pony she always rode toward The Hill. But in that direction she had never allowed Sylvester to take her. She looked vaguely through the wind-shield now and said, "Anywhere—that cañon, the one we came home by last week. It was so queer."
"It'll be dern dusty, I'm afraid."
"I don't care." Sheila wrapped her gray veil over her small hat which fitted close about her face. "I'm getting used to the dust. Does it ever rain around Millings? And does it ever stop blowing?"
"We don't like Millings to-day, do we?"
Sylvester was bending his head to peer through the gray mist of her veil. She held herself stiffly beside him, showing the profile of a small Sphinx. Suddenly it turned slightly, seemed to wince back. Girlie, at the gate of Number 18 Cottonwood Avenue, had stopped to watch them pass. Girlie did not speak. Her face looked smitten, the ripe fruit had turned bitter upon her ruddy lips. The tranquil emptiness of her beauty had filled itself stormily.
Sheila did not answer Hudson's reproachful question. She leaned back, dropped back, rather, into a tired little heap and let the country slide by—the strange, wide, broken country with its circling mesas, its somber grays and browns and dusty greens, its bare purple hills, rocks and sand and golden dirt, and now and then, in the sudden valley bottoms, swaying groves of vivid green and ribbons of emerald meadows. The mountains shifted and opened their cañons, gave a glimpse of their beckoning and forbidding fastnesses and closed them again as though by a whispered Sesame.
"What was the row last night?" asked Sylvester in his voice of cracked tenderness. "Carthy says there was a bunch of toughs. Were you scared good and plenty? I'm sorry. It don't happen often, believe me.
"I wish you could 'a' heard Carthy talkin' about you, Sheila," went on Sylvester, his eyes, filled with uneasiness, studying her silence and her huddled smallness, hands in the pockets of her light coat, veiled face turned a little away, "Say, that would 'a' set you up all right! Talk about beacons!"
Here she flashed round on him, as though her whole body had been electrified. "Tell me all that again," she begged in a voice that he could not interpret except that there was in it a sound of tears. "Tell me again about a beacon …"
He stammered. He was confused. But stumblingly he tried to fulfill her demand. Here was a thirst for something, and he wanted above everything in the world to satisfy it. Sheila listened to him with unsteady, parted lips. He could see them through the veil.
"You still think I am that?" she asked.
He was eager to prove it to her. "Still think? Still think? Why, girl, I don't hev to think. Don't the tillbox speak for itself? Don't Carthy handle a crowd that's growing under his eyes? Don't we sell more booze in a week now than we used to in a—" Suddenly he realized that he was on the wrong tack. It was his first break. He drew in a sharp breath and stopped, his face flushing deeply.
"Yes?" questioned Sheila, melting her syllables like slivers of ice on her tongue. "Go on."
"Er—er, don't we draw a finer lot of fellows than we ever did before? Don't they behave more decent and orderly? Don't they get civilization just for looking at you, Miss Sheila?"
"And—and booze? Jim Greely, for instance, Mr. James Greely, of the Millings National Bank—he never used to patronize The Aura. And now he's there every night till twelve and often later, for he won't obey me any more. I wonder whether Mr. and Mrs. Greely are glad that you are getting a better type of customer! Mrs. Greely almost stopped me on the street the other day—that is, she almost got up courage to speak to me. Before now she's cut me, just as Girlie does, just as your wife does, just as Dickie does—"
"Dickie cut you?" Sylvester threw back his head and laughed uneasily, and with a strained note of alarm. "That's a good one, Miss Sheila. I kinder fancied you did the cuttin' there."
"Dickie hasn't spoken to me since he came to me that day when he heard what I was going to do and tried to talk me out of doing it."
"Yes'm. He came to me first," drawled Sylvester.
They were both silent, busy with the amazing memory of Dickie, of his disheveled fury, of his lashing eloquence. He had burst in upon his family at breakfast that April morning when Millings was humming with the news, had advanced upon his father, stood above him.
"Is it true that you are going to make a barmaid of Sheila?"
Sylvester, in an effort to get to his feet, had been held back by
Dickie's thin hand that shot out at him like a sword.
"Sure it's true," Sylvester had said coolly. But he had not felt cool. He had felt shaken and confused. The boy's entire self-forgetfulness, his entire absence of fear, had made Hudson feel that he was talking to a stranger, a not inconsiderable one.
"It's true, then." Dickie had drawn a big breath. "You—you"—he seemed to swallow an epithet—"you'll let that girl go into your filthy saloon and make money for you by her—by her prettiness and her—her ignorance—"
"Say, Dickie," his father had drawled, "you goin' to run for the legislature? Such a lot of classy words!" But anger and alarm were rising in him.
"You've fetched her away out here," went on Dickie, "and kinder got her cornered and you've talked a lot of slush to her and you've—"
Here Girlie came to the rescue.
"Well, anyway, she's a willing victim, Dickie," Girlie had said.
Dickie had flashed her one look. "Is she? I'll see about that.
Where's Sheila?"
And then, there was Sheila's memory. Dickie had come upon her in a confusion of boxes, her little trunk half-unpacked, its treasures scattered over the chairs and floor. Sheila had lifted to him from where she knelt a glowing and excited face. "Oh, Dickie," she had said, her relief at the escape from Mrs. Hudson pouring music into her voice, "have you heard?"
He had sat down on one of the plush chairs of "the suite" as though he felt weak. Then he had got up and had walked to and fro while she described her dream, the beauty of her chosen mission, the glory of the saloon whose high priestess she had become. And Dickie had listened with the bitter and disillusioned and tender face of a father hearing the prattle of a beloved child.
"You honest think all that, Sheila?" he had asked her patiently.
She had started again, standing now to face him and beginning to be angry at his look. This boy whom she had lifted up to be her friend!
"Say," Dickie had drawled, "Poppa's some guardian!" He had advanced upon her as though he wanted to shake her. "You gotta give it right up, Sheila," he had said sternly. "Sooner than immediately. It's not to go through. Say, girl, you don't know much about bars." He had drawn a picture for her, drawing partly upon experience, partly upon his imagination, the gift of vivid metaphor descending upon him. He used words that bit into her memory. Sheila had listened and then she had put her hands over her ears. He pulled them down. He went on. Sheila's Irish blood had boiled up into her brain. She stormed back at him.
"It's you, it's your use of The Aura that has been its only shame,
Dickie," was the last of all the things she had said.
At which, Dickie standing very still, had answered, "If you go there and stand behind the bar all night with Carthy to keep hands off, I—I swear I'll never set foot inside the place again. You ain't agoin' to be my beacon light—"
"Well, then," said Sheila, "I shall have done one good thing at least by being there."
Dickie, going out, had passed a breathless Sylvester on his way in. The two had looked at each other with a look that cut in two the tie between them, and Sheila, running to Sylvester, had burst into tears.
* * * * *
The motor hummed evenly on its way. It began, with a change of tune, to climb the graded side of one of the enormous mesas. Sheila, having lived through again that scene with Dickie, took out a small handkerchief and busied herself with it under her veil. She laughed shakily.
"Perhaps a beacon does more good by warning people away than by attracting them," she said. "Dickie has certainly kept his word. I don't believe he's touched a drop since I've been barmaid, Mr. Hudson. I should think you'd be proud of him."
Sylvester was silent while they climbed the hill. He changed gears and sounded his horn. They passed another motor on a dangerous curve. They began to drop down again.
"Some day," said Sylvester in a quiet voice, "I'll break every bone in Dickie's body." He murmured something more under his breath in too low a tone, fortunately, for Sheila's ear. From her position behind the bar, she had become used to swearing. She had heard a strange variety of language. But when Sylvester drew upon his experience and his fancy, the artist in him was at work.
"Do you suppose," asked his companion in an impersonal tone, "that it was really a hard thing for Dickie to do—to give it up, I mean?"
"By the look of him the last few months," snarled Sylvester, "I should say it had taken out of him what little real feller there ever was in."
Sheila considered this. She remembered Dickie, as he had risen behind the desk half an hour before. She did not contradict Sylvester. She had learned not to contradict him. But Dickie's face with its tight-knit look of battle stood out very clear to refute the accusation of any loss of manliness. He was still a quaint and ruffled Dickie. But he was vastly aged. From twenty to twenty-seven, he seemed to have jumped in a few weeks. A key had turned in the formerly open door of his spirit. The indeterminate lips had shut hard, the long-lashed eyes had definitely put a guard upon their dreams. He was shockingly thin and colorless, however. Sheila dwelt painfully upon the sort of devastation she had wrought. Girlie's face, and Dickie's, and Jim's. A grieving pressure squeezed her heart; she lifted her chest with an effort on a stifled breath.
"God! Sheila," said Sylvester harshly. The car wobbled a little. "Ain't you happy, girl?"
Sheila looked up at him. Her veil was wet against her cheeks.
"Last night," she said unevenly, "a man was going to kiss me on my mouth and—and he changed his mind and kissed my hand instead. He left a smear of blood on my fingers from where those—those other men had struck his lips. I don't know why it f-frightens me so to think about that. But it does."
She seemed to collapse before him into a little sobbing child.
"And every day when I wake up," she wailed, "I t-taste whiskey on my tongue and I—I smell cigarette smoke in my hair. And I d-dream about men looking at me—the way Jim looks. And I can't let myself think of Father any more. He used to hold his chin up and walk along as if he looked above every one and everything. I don't believe he'd ever seen a barmaid or a drunken man—not really seen them, Mr. Hudson."
"Then he wasn't a real artist after all," Sylvester spoke slowly and carefully. He was pale.
"He l-loved the stars," sobbed Sheila, her broken reserve had let out a flood; "he told me to keep looking at the stars."
"Well, ma'am," Sylvester spoke again, "I never knowed the stars to turn their backs on anything. Barmaids or drunks or kings—they all look about alike to the stars, I reckon. Say, Sheila, maybe you haven't got the pluck for real living. Maybe you're the kind of doll-baby girl that craves sheltering. I reckon I made a big mistake."
Sheila moved slightly as though his speech had pricked her.
"It kind of didn't occur to me," went on Sylvester, "that you'd care a whole lot about being ig-nored by Momma and Mr. and Mrs. Greely and Girlie. Say, Girlie's got to take her chance same's anybody else. Why don't you give Jim a jolt?"
Sheila at this began to laugh. She caught her breath. She laughed and cried together.
Sylvester patted her shoulder. "Poor kid! You're all in. Late hours too much for you, I reckon. Come on now—tell Pap everything. Ease off your heart. It's wonderful what crying does for the nervous system. I laid out on a prairie one night when I was about your age and just naturally bawled. You'd 'a' thought I was a baby steer, hanged if you wouldn't 'a' thought so. It's the fight scared you plumb to pieces. Carthy told me about it and how you let the good-looking kid out by the back. I seen him ride off toward Hidden Creek this morning. He was a real pretty boy too. Say, Sheila, wasn't you ever kissed?"
"No," said Sheila. "And I don't want to be." Sylvester laughed with a little low cackle of intense pleasure and amusement. "Well, you shan't be. No, you shan't. Nobody shall kiss Sheila!"
His method seemed to him successful. Sheila stopped crying and stopped laughing, dried her eyes, murmured, "I'm all right now, thank you, Mr. Hudson," and fell into an abysmal silence.
He talked smoothly, soothingly, skillfully, confident of his power to manage "gels." Once in a while he saw her teeth gleam as though she smiled. As they came back to Millings in the afterglow of a brief Western twilight, she unfastened her veil and showed a quiet, thoughtful face.
She thanked him, gave him her hand. "Don't come up, please, Mr. Hudson," she said with that cool composure of which at times she was surprisingly capable. "I shall have my dinner sent up and take a little rest before I go to work."
"You feel O.K.?" he asked her doubtfully. His brown eyes had an almost doglike wistfulness.
"Quite, thank you." Her easy, effortless smile passed across her face and in and out of her eyes.
Hudson stood beside his wheel tapping his teeth and staring after her. The rockers on the veranda stopped their rocking, stopped their talking, stopped their breathing to see Sheila pass. When she had gone, they fastened their attention upon Sylvester. He was not aware of them. He stood there a full three minutes under the glare of publicity. Then he sighed and climbed into his car.
CHAPTER XII
HUDSON'S QUEEN
The lobby, empty of its crowd when Sheila passed through it on her way up to her rooms, was filled by a wheezy, bullying voice. In front of the desk a little barrel of a man with piggish eyes was disputing his bill with Dickie. At the sound of Sheila's entrance he turned, stopped his complaint, watched her pass, and spat into a near-by receptacle. Sheila remembered that he had visited the bar early in the evening before, and had guzzled his whiskey and made some wheezy attempts at gallantry. Dickie, flushed, his hair at wild odds with composure, was going over the bill. In the midst of his calculations the man would interrupt him with a plump dirty forefinger pounced upon the paper. "Wassa meanin' of this item, f'rinstance? Highway robbery, thassa meanin' of it. My wife take breakfast in her room? I'd like to see her try it!"
Sheila went upstairs. She took off her things, washed off the dust, and changed into the black-and-white barmaid's costume, fastening the frilly apron, the cuffs, the delicate fichu with mechanical care. She put on the silk stockings and the buckled shoes and the tiny cap. Then she went into her sitting-room, chose the most dignified chair, folded her hands in her lap, and waited for Dickie. Waiting, she looked out through the window and saw the glow fade from the snowy crest of The Hill. The evening star let itself delicately down through the sweeping shadows of the earth from some mysterious fastness of invisibility. The room was dim when Dickie's knock made her turn her head.
"Come in."
He appeared, shut the door without looking at her, then came unwillingly across the carpet and stopped at about three steps from her chair, standing with one hand in his pocket. He had slicked down his hair with a wet brush and changed his suit. It was the dark-blue serge he had worn at the dance five months before. What those five months had been to Dickie, through what abasements and exaltations, furies and despairs he had traveled since he had looked up from Sheila's slippered feet with his heart turned backward like a pilot's wheel, was only faintly indicated in his face. And yet the face gave Sheila a pang. And, unsupported by anger, he was far from formidable, a mere youth. Sheila wondered at her long and sustained persecution of him. She smiled, her lips, her eyes, and her heart.
"Aren't you going to sit down, Dickie? This isn't a school examination."
"If it was," said Dickie, with an uncertain attempt at ease, "I wouldn't pass." He felt for a chair and got into it. He caught a knee in his hand and looked about him. "You've made the room awful pretty, Sheila."
She had spent some of the rather large pay she drew upon coverings of French blue for the plush furniture, upon a dainty yellow porcelain tea-set, upon little oddments of decoration. The wall-paper and carpet were inoffensive, the quietest probably in Millings, so that her efforts had met with some success. There was a lounge with cushions, there were some little volumes, a picture of her father, a bowl of pink wild roses, a vase of vivid cactus flowers. Some sketches in water-color—Marcus's most happy medium—had been tacked up. A piece of tapestry decorated the back of the chair Sheila had chosen. In the dim light it all had an air of quiet richness. It seemed a room transplanted to Millings from some finer soil.
Dickie looked at the tapestry because it was the nearest he dared come to looking at Sheila. His hands and knees shook with the terrible beating of his heart. It was not right, thought Dickie resentfully, that any feeling should take hold of a fellow and shake and terrify him so. He threw himself back suddenly and folded his arms tight across his chest.
"You wanted to see me about something?" he asked.
"Yes. I'll give you some tea first."
Dickie's lips fell apart. He said neither yea nor nay, but watched dazedly her preparations, her concoctions, her advance upon him with a yellow teacup and a wafer. He did not stand up to take it and he knew too late that this was a blunder. He tingled with shame.
Sheila went back to her chair and sipped from her own cup.
"I've been angry with you for three months now, Dickie."
"Yes'm," he said meekly.
"That's the longest I've ever been angry with any one in my life. Once I hated a teacher for two weeks, and it almost killed me. But what I felt about her was—was weakness to the way I've felt about you."
"Yes'm," again said Dickie. His tea was terribly hot and burnt his tongue, so that tears stood in his eyes.
"And I suppose you've been angry with me."
"No, ma'am."
Sheila was not particularly pleased with this gentle reply. "Why, Dickie, you know you have!"
"No, ma'am."
"Then why haven't you spoken to me? Why have you looked that way at me?"
"I don't speak to folks that don't speak to me," said Dickie, lifting the wafer as though its extreme lightness was faintly repulsive to him.
"Well," said Sheila bitterly, "you haven't been alone in your attitude.
Very few people have been speaking to me. My only loyal friends are Mr.
Hudson and Amelia Plecks and Carthy and Jim. Jim made no promises about
being my guardian, but—"
"But he is your guardian?" Dickie drawled the question slightly. His gift of faint irony and impersonal detachment flicked Sheila's temper as it had always flicked his father's.
"Jim is my friend," Sheila maintained in defiance of a still, small voice. "He has given me a pony and has taken me riding—"
"Yes'm, I've saw you—" Dickie's English was peculiarly fallible in moments of emotion. Now he seemed determined to cut Sheila's description short. "Say, Sheila, did you send for me to tell me about this lovely friendship of yours with Jim?"
Sheila set her cup down on the window-sill. She did not want to lose her temper with Dickie. She brushed a wafer crumb from her knee.
"No, Dickie, I didn't. I sent for you because, after all, though I've been so angry with you, I've known in my heart that—that—you are a loyal friend and that you tell the truth."
This admission was an effort. Sheila's pride suffered to the point of bringing a dim sound of tears into her voice….
Dickie did not speak. He too put down his tea-cup and his wafer side by side on the floor near his chair. He put his elbows on his knees and bent his head down as though he were examining his thin, locked hands.
Sheila waited for a long minute; then she said angrily, "Aren't you glad
I think that of you?"
"Yes'm." Dickie's voice was indistinct.
"You don't seem glad."
Dickie made some sort of struggle. Sheila could not quite make out its nature. "I'm glad. I'm so glad that it kind of—hurts," he said.
"Oh!" That at least was pleasant intelligence to a wounded pride.
Fortified, Sheila began the real business of the interview. "You are not an artist, Dickie," she said, "and you don't understand why your father asked me to work at The Aura nor why I wanted to work there. It was your entire inability to understand—"
"Entire inability—" whispered Dickie as though he were taking down the phrase with an intention of looking it up later.
This confused Sheila. "Your—your entire inability," she repeated rapidly, "your—your entire inability—"
"Yes'm. I've got that."
"—To understand that made me so angry that day." Sheila was glad to be rid of that obstruction. She had planned this speech rather carefully in the watches of the wakeful, feverish morning which had been her night. "You seemed to be trying to pull your father and me down to some lower spiritual level of your own."
"Lower spiritual level," repeated Dickie.
"Dickie, stop that, please!"
He looked up, startled by her sharpness. "Stop what, ma'am?"
"Saying things after me. It's insufferable."
"Insufferable—oh, I suppose it is. You're usin' so many words, Sheila. I kind of forgot there was so many words as you're makin' use of this afternoon."
"Oh, Dickie, Dickie! Can't you see how miserable I am! I am so unhappy and—and scared, and you—you are making fun of me."
At that, spoken in a changed and quavering key of helplessness, Dickie hurried to her, knelt down beside her chair, and took her hands.
"Sheila! I'll do anything!"
His presence, his boyish, quivering touch, so withheld from anything but boyishness, even the impulsive humility of his thin, kneeling body, were inexpressibly soothing, inexpressibly comforting. She did not draw away her hands. She let them cling to his.
"Dickie, will you answer me, quite truthfully and simply, without any explaining or softening, please, if I ask you a—a dreadful question?"
"Yes, dear."
"I'm not sure if it is a dreadful question, but—but I'm afraid it is."
"Don't worry. Ask me. Surely, I'll answer you the truth without any fixin's."
Her hands clung a little closer. She was silent, gathering courage. He felt her slim knees quiver.
"What do they mean, Dickie," she whispered with a wan look, "when they call me—'Hudson's Queen'?"
Dickie bent from her look as though he felt a pain. He took her hands up close to his breast. "Who told you that they called you that?" he asked breathlessly.
"That's what every one calls me—the men over in the Big Horn
country—they tell men that are coming to Millings to be sure to look up
'Hudson's Queen.' Do they mean the Hotel, Dickie? They do mean the
Hotel, don't they, Dickie?—that I am The Hudson's Queen?"
The truth sometimes presents itself like a withering flame. Dickie got up, put away her hands, walked up and down, then came back to her. He had heard the epithet and he knew its meaning. He wrestled now with his longing to keep her from such understanding, or, at least, to soften it. She had asked for the clear truth and he had promised it to her. He stood away because he could not trust himself to endure the wincing of her hands and body when she heard the truth. He hoped dimly that she might not understand it.
"They don't mean the Hotel, Sheila," he said harshly. "They mean—Father. You know now what they mean—?" In her stricken and bewildered eyes he saw that she did know. "I would like to kill them," sobbed Dickie suddenly. "I would like to kill—him. No, no, Sheila, don't you cry. Don't you. It's not worth cryin' for. It's jest ignorant folks's ignorant and stupid talk. It's not worth cryin' for." He sat down on the arm of her chair and fairly gathered her into his arms. He rocked and patted her shoulder and kissed her gently on her hair—all with that boyishness, that brotherliness, that vast restraint so that she could not even guess the strange and unimaginable pangs he suffered from his self-control.
Before Dickie's resolution was burnt away by the young inner fire, Sheila withdrew herself gently from his arms and got up from the chair. She walked over to one of the two large windows—the sunset windows she called them, in contradistinction to the one sunrise window—and stood composing herself, her hands twisted together and lifted to the top of the lower sash, her forehead rested on them.
A rattle of china, a creaking step outside the door, interrupted their tremulous silence in which who knows what mysterious currents were passing between their young minds.
"It's my dinner," said Sheila, and Dickie walked over mechanically and opened the door.
Amelia Plecks came panting into the room, set the tray down on a small table, and looked contempt at Dickie.
"There now, Miss Arundel," she said with breathless tenderness, "I've pro-cured a dandy chop for you. You said you was kind of famished for a lamb chop, and, of course, in a sheep country good mutton's real hard to come by, and this ain't properly speaking—lamb, but—! Well, say, it's just dandy meat."
She ignored Dickie as one might ignore the presence of some obnoxious insect in the reception-room of a queen. Her eyes were disgustedly fascinated by his presence, but in her conversation she would not admit this preoccupation of disgust.
"I'll be going," said Dickie.
Amelia nodded as one who applauds the becoming move of an inferior.
"Here's a note for you, Miss Arundel," she said, coming over to Sheila's post at the window, where she was trying to hide the traces of her tears. "Well, say, who's been botherin' you?" Amelia's voice went down a long, threatening octave to a sinister bass note, at the voicing of which she turned to look at Dickie.
"Good-night, Sheila," he said diffidently; and Sheila coming quickly toward him, put out her hand. The note Amelia had handed her fell. Dickie and Amelia both bent to pick it up.
"No, you don't," said Amelia, snatching it and accusing him, by her tone, of inexpressibly base intentions. "Say, Miss Arundel," in a whisper of thrilled confidence, "Mister Jim! Uh?"
"Thank you, Dickie," murmured Sheila, half-embarrassed, half-amused by her adoring follower's innuendoes. "Thank you for everything. I shall have to think what I can do … Good-night."
Dickie, his eyes forcibly held away from Jim's note, murmured, "Good-night, ma'am," and went out, closing the door with exaggerated gentleness. The quietness of his departure seemed to spare Sheila's sensitiveness.
"Ain't he a worm, though!" exclaimed Amelia, sparing nobody's sensitiveness.
"He's nothing of the sort," Sheila protested indignantly. "He is a dear!"
Amelia opened her prominent eyes and pursed her lips. A reassuring light dawned on her bewilderment. "Oh, say, dearie, I wasn't speakin' of your Mister Jim. I was makin' reference to Dickie."
Sheila thrust the note into her pocket and went over to the table to light her lamp. "I know quite well that you meant Dickie," she said. "Nobody in Millings would ever dream of comparing Mr. James Greely to a worm, even if he came out from the ground just in time for the early bird to peck him. I know that."
"You're ornery to-night, dearie," announced Amelia, and with exemplary tact she creaked and breathed herself to the door. There she had a relapse from tactfulness, however, and planted herself to stare. "Ain't you goin' to read your note?"
Sheila, to be rid of her, unfolded the paper and read. It was quite beautifully penned in green ink on violet paper. Jim had written both wisely and too well.
"My darling—Why not permit me to call you that when it is the simple and sincere truth?" An astonished little voice in Sheila's brain here seemed to counter-question mechanically "Why not, indeed?"—"I cannot think of anything but you and how I love you. These little notes I am going to keep a-sending you are messengers of love. You will never meet with a more tremendous lover than me…. Be my Queen," Jim had written with a great climatic splash of ink, and he had signed himself, "Your James."
Sheila's face was crimson when she put down the note. She stared straight in front of her for an instant with very large eyes in this scarlet rose of countenance and then she crumpled into mirth. She put her face into her hands and rocked. It seemed as though a giant of laughter had caught her about the ribs.
Amelia stared and felt a wound. She swallowed a lump of balked sentiment as she went out. Her idol was faintly tarnished, her heroine's stature preceptibly diminished. The sort of Madame du Barry atmosphere with which Sheila's image was surrounded in Amelia's fancy lost a little of its rosy glow. The favorite of Kings, the amorita of Dukes, does not rock with laughter over scented notes from a High Desirable.
"She ain't just quite up to it," was Amelia's comment, which she probably could not have explained even to herself.
Sheila presently was done with laughter. She ate a nibble of dinner as soberly as Amelia could have wished, then sat back, her eyes closed with a resolve to think clearly, closely, to some determination of her life. But Jim's note, which had so roused her amusement, began to force itself in another fashion upon her. She discovered that it was an insufferable note. It insinuated everything, it suggested—everything. It was a boastful messenger. It swaggered male-ishly. It threw out its chest and smacked its lips. "See what a sad dog my master is," it said; "a regular devil of a fellow." Sheila found her thoughts confused by anger. She found that she was too disturbed for any clear decision. She was terribly weary and full of dread for the long night before her. And a startled look at her clock told her it was time now to go over to the saloon.
She got up, went to her mirror, smoothed her rippled hair with two strokes of a brush, readjusted her cap, and decided that, for once, a little powder on the nose was a necessity. Carthy must not see that she had been crying. As it was, her brilliant color was suspicious, and her eyes, with their deep distended look of tears. She shut them, drew a breath, put out her light, and went down the back stairs to a narrow alley. It led from the hotel to the street that ran back of The Aura … the street to which she had taken young Hilliard the night before.
The alley seemed to Sheila, as she stepped into it from the glare of the electric-lighted hotel, a stream of cool and silvery light. Above lay a strip of tender sky in which already the stars shook. In this high atmosphere they were always tremulous, dancing, beating, almost leaping, with a fullness of quick light. They seemed very near to the edges of the alley walls, to be especially visiting it with their detached regard, peering down for some small divine occasion for influence. Sheila prayed to them a desperate prayer of human helplessness.
CHAPTER XIII
SYLVESTER CELEBRATES
"Hey, you girl there! Hi! Hey!"
These exclamations called in a resonant, deep-chested voice succeeded at last in attracting Sheila's attention. She had lingered at the alley's mouth, shirking her entrance into the saloon, and now she saw, halfway down the short, wide street, a gesticulating figure.
At first, as she obeyed the summons, she thought the summoner a man, but on near view it proved itself a woman, of broad, massive hips and shoulders, dressed in a man's flannel shirt and a pair of large corduroy trousers, their legs tucked into high cowboy boots. She wore no hat, and her hair was cut square across her neck and forehead; hair of a dark rusty red, it was, and matched eyes like dark panes of glass before a fire, red-brown and very bright, ruddy eyes in a square, ruddy face, which, with its short, straight, wide-bridged nose, well-shaped lips, square chin, and brilliant teeth, made up a striking and not unattractive countenance.
"I've got a horse here; won't stand," said the woman. "Will you hold his head? Can leaking back here in my wagon, leaking all over my other stuff."
The horse came round the corner. He moved resolutely to meet them. He was the boniest, small horse Sheila had ever seen—a shadow of a horse, one-eyed, morose, embittered. The harness hung loose upon his meagerness; the shafts stuck up like the points of a large collar on a small old man.
"He's not running away," explained the owner superfluously. "It's just that he can't stop. You'd think, to look at him, that stopping would be his favorite sport. But you'd be mistaken. Go he must. He's kind of always crazy to get there—Lord knows where—probably to the end of his life."
Sheila held the horse, and rubbed his nose with her small and gentle hand. The creature drooped under the caress and let its lower lip, with a few stiff white hairs, hang and quiver bitterly. It half-closed its one useful eye, a pale eye of intense, colorless disillusionment.
When the wagon stopped, a dog who was trotting under it stopped too and lay down in the dust, panting. Sheila bent her head a little to see the dog. She had a child's intense interest in animals. Through the dimness she made out a big, wolfish creature with a splendid, clean, gray coat, his pointed nose, short, pointed ears, deep, wild eyes, and scarlet tongue, set in a circular ruff of black. His bushy tail curled up over his back.
"What kind of dog is that?" asked Sheila, thinking the great animal under the wagon better fitted to pull the load than the shadowy little horse in front of it.
"Quarter wolf," answered the woman in her casual manner of speech, her resonant voice falling pleasantly on the light coolness of the evening air; "Malamute. This fellow was littered on the body of a dead man."
Sheila had also the child's interest in tales. "Tell me about it," she begged fervently.
The woman stopped in her business of tying down a canvas cover over her load and gave Sheila an amused and searching look. She held an iron spike between her teeth, but spoke around it skillfully.
"Arctic exploration it was. My brother was one of the party. 'T was he brought me home Berg. Berg's mother was one of the sledge dogs. Party was shipwrecked, starved, most of the dogs eaten, one man dead. Berg's mother littered on the body one night. Next morning they were rescued and the new family was saved. Otherwise I guess they'd have had a puppy stew and Berg and his wife and family wouldn't be earning their living with me."
"How do they earn their living?" asked Sheila, still peering at the hero of the tale.
"They pull my sled about winters, Hidden Creek."
"Oh, you live in the Hidden Creek country?"
"Yes. Got a ranch up not far from the source. Ever been over The Hill?"
She came toward Sheila, gathered the reins into her strong, broad hands, held them in her teeth, and began to pull on her canvas gloves. She talked with the reins between her teeth as she had with the spike, her enunciation triumphantly forceful and distinct.
"Some day, I'm coming over The Hill," said Sheila, less successful with a contraction in her throat.
The woman made a few strides. Now she was looking shrewdly, close into
Sheila's face.
"You're a biscuit-shooter at the hotel?"
"No. I work in the saloon."
"In the saloon? Oh, sure. Barmaid. I've heard of you."
Here she put a square finger-tip under Sheila's chin and looked even closer than before. "Not happy, are you?" she said. She moved away abruptly. "Tired of town life. Been crying. Well, when you want to pull out, come over to my ranch. I need a girl. I'm kind of lonesome winters. It's a pretty place if you aren't looking for street-lamps and talking-machines. You don't hear much more than coyotes and the river and the pines and, if you're looking for high lights, you can sure see the stars …"
She climbed up to her seat, using the hub of her wheel for a foothold, and springing with surprising agility and strength.
Sheila stepped aside and the horse started instantly. She made a few hurried steps to keep up.
"Thank you," she said, looking up into the ruddy eyes that looked down.
"I'll remember that. What is your name?"
"Christina Blake, Miss Blake. I'll make The Hill before morning if
I'm lucky. Less dust and heat by night and the horse has loafed
since morning…. I mean that about coming to my place. Any time.
Good-bye to you."
She smiled a smile as casual in its own way as Sheila's own. Berg, under the wagon, trotted silently. He looked neither to right nor left. His wild, deep-set eyes were fastened on the heels of the small horse. He looked as though he were trotting relentlessly toward some wolfish goal of satisfied hunger. A little cloud of dust rose up from the wheels and stood between Sheila and the wagon. She conquered an impulse to run after it, shut her hand tight, and walked in at the back door of the saloon.
A teamster, with a lean, fatherly face, his mouth veiled by a shaggy blond mustache, his eyes as blue as larkspur, smiled at her across the bar.
"Hullo," said he. "How's your pony?"
Sheila had struck up one of her sudden friendships with this man, who visited the saloon at regular intervals. This question warmed her heart. The little pony of Jim's giving was dear. She thought of his soft eyes and snuggling nose almost as often and as fondly as a lover thinks of the face of his lady.
"Tuck's splendid, Mr. Thatcher," she said, leaning her elbows on the bar and cupping her chin in her hands. Her face was bright with its tender, Puckish look. "He's too cute. He can take sugar out of my apron pocket. And he'll shake hands. I'd just love you to see him. Will you be here to-morrow afternoon?"
"No, ma'am. I'm pullin' out about sunup. Round the time you tumble into bed. Got to make The Hill."
"How's your baby?"
A shining smile rewarded her interest in the recent invalid. "Fine and dandy. You ought to see her walk!"
"Isn't that splendid! And how's the little boy? Is he with you?"
"No, ma'am. I kind o' left him to mind the ranch. He's gettin' to be a real rancher, that boy. He was sure sorry not to make Hidden Creek this trip, though. Say, he was set on seein' you. I told him about you."
Sheila's face flamed and her eyes smarted. Gratitude and shame possessed her. This man, then, did not speak of her as "Hudson's Queen"—not if he told his boy about her. She turned away to hide the flame and smart. When she looked back, Sylvester himself stood at Thatcher's elbow. He very rarely came into the saloon. At sight of him Sheila's heart leaped as though it had been struck.
"Say, Sheila," he murmured, "I'm celebratin' to-night."
She tried to dismiss from her mind its new and ugly consciousness. She tried to smile. The result was an expression strange enough.
Sylvester, however, missed it. He was dressed in one of the brown checked suits, a new one, freshly creased; there was a red wild-rose bud in his buttonhole. The emerald gleamed on his well-kept, sallow hand. He was sipping from his glass and had put a confidential hand on Thatcher's shoulder. He grinned at Carthy.
"Well, sir," he said, "nobody has in-quired as to my celebration. But I'm not proud. I'll tell you. I'm celebratin' to-night the winnin' of a bet."
"That's sure a deservin' cause," said Thatcher.
"Yes, sir. Had a bet with Carthy here. Look at him blush! Carthy sure-ly hates to be wrong. And he's mostly right in his prog-nos-ti-cations. He sure is. You bet yer. That's why I'm so festive."
"What'd he prognosticate?" asked Thatcher obligingly. He had moved his shoulder away from Hudson's hand.
Sylvester wrinkled his upper lip into its smile and looked down into his glass. He turned his emerald.
"Carthy prophesied that about this time a little—er—dream—of mine would go bust," said Hudson. He lifted up his eyes pensively to Sheila, first his eyes and then his glass. "Here's to my dream—you, girl," he said softly.
He drank with his eyes upon her face, drew a deep breath, and looked about the room.
Thatcher glanced from him to Sheila. "Goodnight to you, ma'am," he said with gentleness. "Next time I'll bring the boy."
"Please, please do."
Sheila put her hand in his. He looked down at it as though something had startled him. In fact, her touch was like a flake of snow.
When Thatcher had gone, Sylvester leaned closer to her across the bar. He moved his glass around in his hand and looked up at her humbly.
"The tables kind of turned, eh?" he said.
"What do you mean, Mr. Hudson?" Sheila, by lifting her voice, tried to dissipate the atmosphere of confidence, of secrecy. Carthy had moved away from them, the other occupants of the saloon were very apparently not listening.
"Well, ma'am," Sylvester explained, "six months ago I was kind of layin' claim to gratitude from you, and now it's the other way round."
"Yes," she said. "But I am still grateful." The words came, however, with a certain unwillingness, a certain lack of spontaneity.
"Are you, though?" He put his head on one side so that Sheila was reminded of Dickie. For the first time a sort of shadowy resemblance between father and son was apparent to her. "Well, you've wiped the reckonin' off the slate by what you've done for me. You've given me my Aura. Say, you have been my fairy godmother, all right. Talk about wishes comin' true!"
Again he looked about the room, and that wistfulness of the visionary stole into his face. His eyes came back to her with an expression that was almost beautiful. "If only that Englishman was here," he sighed. "Yes ma'am. I'm sure celebratin' to-night!"
It was soon very apparent that he was celebrating. For an hour he stood every newcomer to a drink, and then he withdrew to a table in a shadowy corner, and sitting there, tilted against the wall, he sipped from his glass, smoked and dreamed. Hour after hour of the slow, noisy night went by and still he sat there, watching Sheila through the smoke, seeing in her, more and more glowingly, the body of his dream.
It was after dawn when Sheila touched Carthy's elbow. The big Irishman looked down at her small, drawn face.
"Mr. Carthy," she whispered, "would it be all right if I went home now?
It's earlier than usual, but I'm so—awfully tired?"
There was so urgent an air of secrecy in her manner that Carthy muttered his permission out of the corner of his mouth. Sheila melted from his side.
The alley that had been silvery cool with dusk was now even more silvery cool with morning twilight. Small sunrise clouds were winging over it like golden doves. Sheila did not look at them. She ran breathless to her door, opened it, and found herself face to face with Dickie.