Hidden Creek - Katharine Newlin Burt
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.