Hidden Creek - Katharine Newlin Burt
From far away up the mountain-side came the fierce baying of the dog
pack. Cosme pulled himself together and stood up. His face had an
ignorant, baffled look, the look of an unskilled and simple mind
caught in a web.
"I reckon she--she isn't coming down," he said slowly, without lifting
his eyes from the floor. "I reckon I'll be going. I won't wait."
He walked to the door, his steps falling without spring, and went out and
so across the porch and the clearing to his horse.
At the sound of the closing door there came a flurry of movement in the
loft. The trap was raised. Sheila came quickly down the ladder. She was
dressed in a pair of riding-breeches and her hair was cropped like Miss
Blake's just below the ears. The quaintest rose-leaf of a Rosalind she
looked, just a wisp of grace, utterly unlike a boy. All the soft, slim
litheness with its quick turns revealed--a little figure of unconscious
sweet enchantment. But the face was flushed and tear-stained, the eyes
distressed. She stood, hands on her belt, at the foot of the ladder.
"Why has he gone? Why didn't he wait?"
Miss Blake turned a frank, indulgent face. But it was deeply
flushed. "Oh, shucks!" she said, "I suppose he got tired. Why didn't
you come down?"
Sheila sent a look down her slim legs. "Oh, because I _am_ a fool. Miss
Blake--did you _really_ burn my two frocks--both of them?" Her eyes
coaxed and filled.
"It's all they're fit for, my dear. You can make yourself new ones. You
know it's more sensible and comfortable, too, to work and ride in
breeches. I know what I'm doing, child.--I've lived this way quite a
number of years. You look real nice. I can't abide female floppery,
anyhow. What's it a sign of? Rotten slavery." She set her very even teeth
together hard as she said this.
But Sheila was neither looking nor listening. She had heard horse's
hoofs. Her cheeks flamed. She ran to the door. She stood on the porch
and called.
"Cosme Hilliard! Come back!"
There was no answer. A few minutes later she came in, pale and puzzled.
"He didn't even wave," she said. "He turned back in his saddle and stared
at me. He rode away staring at me. Miss Blake--what did you say to him?
You were talking a long time."
"We were talking," said Miss Blake, "about dogs and how to raise 'em. And
then he up and said goodbye. Oh, Sheila, it's all right. He'll be back
when he's got over being miffed. Why, he expected you to come tumblin'
down the ladder head over heels to see him--a handsome fellow like that!
Shucks! Haven't you ever dealt with the vanity of a young male before?
It's as jumpy as a rabbit. Get to work."
And, as though to justify Miss Blake's prophecy, just ten days later,
Hilliard did come again. It was a Sunday and Sheila had packed her
lunch and gone off on "Nigger Baby" for the day. The ostensible object
of her ride was a visit to the source of Hidden Creek. Really she was
climbing away from a hurt. She felt Hilliard's wordless departure and
prolonged absence keenly. She had not--to put it euphemistically--many
friends. Her remedy was successful. Impossible, on such a ride, to
cherish minor or major pangs. She rode into the smoky dimness of
pine-woods where the sunlight burned in flecks and out again across the
little open mountain meadows, jeweled with white and gold, blue and
coral-colored flowers, a stained-glass window scattered across the
ground. From these glades she could see the forest, an army of tall
pilgrims, very grave, going up, with long staves in their hands, to
worship at a high shrine. The rocks above were very grave, too, and
grim and still against the even blue sky. Across their purplish gray a
waterfall streaked down struck crystal by the sun. An eagle turned in
great, swinging circles. Sheila had an exquisite lifting of heart, a
sense of entire fusion, body blessed by spirit, spirit blessed by body.
She felt a distinct pleasure in the flapping of her short, sun-filled
hair against her neck, at the pony's motion between her unhampered
legs, at the moist warmth of his neck under her hand--and this physical
pleasure seemed akin to the ecstasy of prayer.
She came at last to a difficult, narrow, canon trail, where the pony
hopped skillfully over fallen trees, until, for very weariness of his
choppy, determined efforts, she dismounted, tied him securely, and made
the rest of her climb on foot. Hidden Creek tumbled near her and its
voice swelled. All at once, round the corner of a great wall of rock, she
came upon the head. It gushed out of the mountain-side in a tumult of
life, not in a single stream, but in many frothy, writhing earth-snakes
of foam. She sat for an hour and watched this mysterious birth from the
mountain-side, watched till the pretty confusion of the water, with its
half-interpreted voices, had dizzied and dazed her to the point of
complete forgetfulness of self. She had entered into a sort of a trance,
a Nirvana ... She shook herself out of it, ate her lunch and scrambled
quickly back to "Nigger Baby." It was late afternoon when she crossed the
mountain glades. Their look had mysteriously changed. There was something
almost uncanny now about their brilliance in the sunset light, and when
she rode into the streaked darkness of the woods, they were full of
ghostly, unintelligible sounds. To rest her muscles she was riding with
her right leg thrown over the horn as though on a side saddle--a great
mass of flowers was tied in front of her. She had opened her shirt at the
neck and her head was bare. She was singing to keep up her heart. Then,
suddenly, she had no more need of singing. She saw Cosme walking toward
her up the trail.
His face lacked all its vivid color. It was rather haggard and stern. The
devils he had swept out of his heart a fortnight earlier had, since then,
been violently entertained. He stepped out of the path and waited for
her, his hands on his hips. But, as she rode down, she saw this look
melt. The blood crept up to his cheeks, the light to his eyes. It was
like a rock taking the sun. She had smiled at him with all the usual
exquisite grace and simplicity. When she came beside him, she drew rein,
and at the same instant he put his hand on the pony's bridle. He looked
up at her dumbly, and for some reason she, too, found it impossible to
speak. She could see that he was breathing fast through parted lips and
that the lips were both cruel and sensitive. His hand slid back along
"Nigger Baby's" neck, paused, and rested on her knee. Then, suddenly, he
came a big step closer, threw both his arms, tightening with a python's
strength, about her and hid his face against her knees.
"Sheila," he said thickly. He looked up with a sort of anguish into her
face. "Sheila, if you are not fit to be the mother of my children, you
are _sure_ fit for any man to love."
Her soft, slim body hardened against him even before her face. They
stared at each other for a minute.
"Let me get down," said Sheila.
He stepped back, not quite understanding. She dropped off the horse,
dragging her flowers with her, and faced him. She did not feel small or
slender. She felt as high as a hill, although she had to look up at him
so far. Her anger had its head against the sky.
"Why do you talk about a man's love?" she asked him with a queer sort
of patience. "I think--I hope--that you don't know anything about a
man's love, oh, the _way_ men love!" She thought with swift pain of
Jim, of Sylvester; "Oh, the _way_ they love!" And she found that,
under her breath, she was sobbing, "Dickie! Dickie!" as though her
heart had called.
"Will you take back your horse, please?" she said, choking over these
sobs which hurt her more at the moment than he had hurt her. "I'll never
ride on him again. Don't come back here. Don't try to see me any more. I
suppose it--it--the way you love me--is because I was a barmaid, because
you heard people speak of me as 'Hudson's Queen.'" She conquered one of
the sobs. "I thought that after you'd looked into my face so hard that
night and stopped yourself from--from--my lips, that you had understood."
She shook her head from side to side so violently, so childishly, that
the short hair lashed across her eyes. "No one ever will understand!" She
ran away from him and cried under her breath, "Dickie! Dickie!"
She ran straight into the living-room and stopped in the middle of the
floor. Her arms were full of the flowers she had pulled down from "Nigger
Baby's" neck.
"What did you want to bring in all that truck--?" Miss Blake began,
rising from the pianola, then stopped. "What's the matter with you?" she
asked. "Did your young man find you? I sent him up the trail." Her red
eyes sparkled.
"He insulted me!" gasped Sheila. "He dared to insult me!" She was
dramatic with her helpless young rage. "He said I wasn't fit to--to be
the mother of his children. And"--she laughed angrily, handling behind
Cosme's back the weapon that she had been too merciful to use--"and _his_
mother is a murderess, found guilty of murder--and of worse!"
A sort of ripple of sound behind made her turn.
Cosme had followed her, was standing in the open door, and had heard her
speech. The weapon had struck home, and she saw how it had poisoned all
his blood.
He vanished without a word. Sheila turned back to Miss Blake a paler
face. She let fall all her flowers.
"Now he'll never come back," she said.
She climbed up the ladder to her loft.
There she sat for an hour, listening to the silence. Her mind busied
itself with trivial memories. She thought of Amelia Plecks.... It would
have comforted her to hear that knock and the rattle of her dinner tray.
The little sitting-room at Hudson's Hotel, with its bit of tapestry and
its yellow tea-set and its vases filled with flowers, seemed to her
memory as elaborate and artificial as the boudoir of a French princess.
Farther than Millings had seemed from her old life did this dark little
gabled attic seem from Millings. What was to be the end of this strange
wandering, this withdrawing of herself farther and farther into the
lonely places! She longed for the noise of Babe's hearty, irrepressible
voice with its smack of chewing, of her step coming up the stairs to that
little bedroom under Hudson's gaudy roof. Could it be possible that she
was homesick for Millings? For the bar with its lights and its visitors
and its big-aproned guardian? Her lids were actually smarting with tears
at the recollection of Carthy's big Irish face.... He had been such a
good, faithful watch-dog. Were men always like that--either watch-dogs
or wolves? The simile brought her back to Hidden Creek. It grew darker
and darker, a heavy darkness; the night had a new soft weight. There
began to be a sort of whisper in the stillness--not the motion of pines,
for there was no wind. Perhaps it was more a sensation than a sound, of
innumerable soft numb fingers working against the silence ... Sheila got
up, shivering, lighted her candle, and went over to the small, four-paned
window under the eaves. She pressed her face against it and started back.
Things were flying toward her. She opened the sash and a whirling scarf
of stars flung itself into the room. It was snowing. The night was blind
with snow.
CHAPTER IX
WORK AND A SONG
On the studio skylight the misty autumn rain fell that night, as the snow
fell against Sheila's window-panes, with a light tapping. Below it Dickie
worked. He had very little leisure now for stars or dreams. For the first
time in his neglected and mismanaged life he knew the pleasure of
congenial work; and this, although Lorrimer worked him like a slave. He
dragged him over the city and set his picture-painting faculty to labor
in dark corners. Dickie, every sense keen and clean, was not allowed to
flinch. No, his freshness was his value. And the power that was in him,
driven with whip and spur, throve and grew and fairly took the bit in its
teeth and ran away with its trainer.
"Look here, my lad," Lorrimer had said that morning, "you keep on laying
hands on the English language the way you've been doing lately and I'll
have to get a job for you on the staff. Then my plagiarism that has been
paying us both so well comes to an end. I won't have the face to edit
stuff like this much longer." Lorrimer did not realize in his amazement
that Dickie's mind had always busied itself with this exciting and
nerve-racking matter of choosing words. From his childhood, in the face
of ridicule and outrage, he had fumbled with the tools of Lorrimer's
trade. No wonder that now knowledge and practice, and the sort of
intensive training he was under, magically fitted all the jumbled odds
and ends into place. Dickie had stopped looking over his shoulder. The
pursuing pack, the stealthy-footed beasts of the city, had dropped
utterly from his flying imagination. There was only one that remained
faithful--that craving for beauty--half-god, half-beast. Against him
Dickie still pressed his door shut. Lorrimer's gift of work had not
quieted the leader of the pack. But it had brought Dickie something that
was nearly happiness. The very look of him had changed; he looked driven
rather than harried, keen rather than harassed, eager instead of vague,
hungry rather than wistful. Only, sometimes, Dickie's brain would
suddenly turn blank and blind from sheer exhaustion. This happened to him
now. The printed lines he was studying lost all their meaning. He put his
forehead on his hands. Then he heard that eerie, light tapping above him
on the skylight. But he was too tired to look up.
It was on that very afternoon when Sheila rode down the trail with her
flowers tied before her on the saddle, singing to keep up her heart. It
was that very afternoon when she had cried out half-consciously for
"Dickie--Dickie--Dickie"--and now it was, as though the cry had traveled,
that a memory of her leapt upon his mind; a memory of Sheila singing.
She had come into the chocolate-colored lobby from one of her rides with
Jim Greely. She had held a handful of cactus flowers. She had stopped
over there by one of the windows to put them in a glass. And to show
Dickie, a prisoner at his desk, that she did not consider his
presence--it was during the period of their estrangement--she had sung
softly as a girl sings when she knows herself to be alone: a little
tender, sad chanting song, that seemed made to fit her mouth. The pain
her singing had given him that afternoon had cut a picture of her on
Dickie's brain. Just because he had tried so hard not to look at her. Now
it jumped out at him against his closed, wet lids. The very motions of
her mouth came back, the positive dear curve of her chin, the
throat there slim against the light. Hard work had driven her
image a little from his mind lately; it returned now to revenge
his self-absorption--returned with a song.
Dickie got up and wandered about the room. He tried to hum the air, but
his throat contracted. He tried to whistle, but his lips turned stiff. He
bent over his book--no use, she still sang. All night he was tormented by
that chanting, hurting song. He sobbed with the hurt of it. He tossed
about on his bed. He could not but remember how little she had loved him.
All at once there came to him a mysterious and beautiful release. It
seemed that the cool spirit, detached, winged, drew him to itself or
became itself entirely possessed of him. He was taken out of his pain
and yet he understood it. And he began suddenly, easily, to put it into
words. The misery was ecstasy, the hurt was inspiration, the song sang
sweetly as though it had been sung to soothe and not to make him suffer.
"Oh, little song you sang to me"--
Ah, yes, at heart she had been singing to him--
"A hundred, hundred days ago,
Oh, little song, whose melody
Walks in my heart and stumbles so;
I cannot bear the level nights,
And all the days are over-long,
And all the hours from dark to dark
Turn to a little song ..."
Dickie, not knowing how he got there, was at his table again. He was
writing. He was happy beyond any conception he had ever had of happiness.
That there was agony in his happiness only intensified it. The leader of
the wolf-pack, beast with a god's face, the noblest of man's desires,
that passionate and humble craving for beauty, had him by the throat.
So it was that Dickie wrote his first poem.
CHAPTER X
WINTER
Winter snapped at Hidden Creek as a wolf snaps, but held its grip as a
bulldog holds his. There came a few November days when all the air and
sky and tree-tops were filled with summer again, but the snow that had
poured itself down so steadily in that October storm did not give way. It
sank a trifle at noon and covered itself at night with a glare of ice. It
was impossible to go anywhere except on snow-shoes. Sheila quickly
learned the trick and plodded with bent knees, limber ankles, and
wide-apart feet through the winter miracle of the woods. It was another
revelation of pure beauty, but her heart was too sore to hold the
splendor as it had held the gentler beauty of summer and autumn. Besides,
little by little she was aware of a vague, encompassing uneasiness. Since
the winter jaws had snapped them in, setting its teeth between them and
all other life, Miss Blake had subtly and gradually changed. It was as
though her stature had increased, her color deepened. Sometimes to Sheila
that square, strong body seemed to fill the world. She was more and more
masterful, quicker with her orders, charier of her smiles, shorter of
speech and temper. Her eyes seemed to grow redder, the sparks closer to
flame, as though the intense cold fanned them.
Once they harnessed the dogs to the sled and rode down the country for
the mail. The trip they made together. Sheila sat wrapped in furs in
front of the broad figure of her companion, who stood at the back of the
sledge, used a long whip, and shouted to the dogs by name in her great
musical voice of which the mountain echo made fine use. They sped close
to the frozen whiteness of the world, streaked down the slopes, and were
drawn soundlessly through the columned vistas of the woods. Here, there,
and everywhere were tracks, of coyotes, fox, rabbit, martin, and the
little pointed patteran of winter birds, yet they saw nothing living.
"What's got the elk and moose this season?" muttered Miss Blake. Nothing
stirred except the soft plop of shaken snow or the little flurry of
drifting flakes. These frost-flakes lay two inches deep on the surface of
the snow, dry and distinct all day in the cold so that they could be
blown apart at a breath. Miss Blake was cheerful on this journey. She
sang songs, she told brief stories of other sled trips. At the
post-office an old, lonely man delivered them some parcels and a vast
bagful of magazines. There was a brief passage of arms between him and
Miss Blake. She accused him of withholding a box of cartridges, and would
not be content till she had poked about his office in dark corners. She
came out swearing at the failure of her search. "I needed that shot,"
she said. "My supply is short. I made sure it'd be here to-day." There
were no letters for either of them, and Sheila felt again that queer
shiver of her loneliness. But, on the whole, it was a wonderful day, and,
under a world of most amazing stars, the small, valiant ranch-house, with
its glowing stove and its hot mess of supper, felt like home.... Not long
after that came the first stroke of fate.
The little old horse left them and, though they shoed patiently for miles
following his track, it was only to find his bones gnawed clean by
coyotes or by wolves. Sheila's tears froze to her lashes, but Miss
Blake's face went a little pale. She said nothing, and in her steps
Sheila plodded home in silence. That evening Miss Blake laid hands on
her.... They had washed up their dishes. Sheila was putting a log on the
fire. It rolled out of her grasp to the bearskin rug and struck Miss
Blake's foot. Before Sheila could even say her quick "I'm sorry," the
woman had come at her with a sort of spring, had gripped her by the
shoulders, had shaken her with ferocity, and let her go. Sheila fell
back, her own hands raised to her bruised shoulders, her eyes
phosphorescent in a pale face.
"Miss Blake, how dare you touch me!"
The woman kicked back the log, turned a red face, and laughed.
"Dare! You little silly! What's to scare me of you?"
An awful conviction of helplessness depressed Sheila's heart, but she
kept her eyes leveled on Miss Blake's.
"Do you suppose I will stay here with you one hour, if you treat me
like this?"
That brought another laugh. But Miss Blake was evidently trying to make
light of her outbreak. "Scared you, didn't I?" she said. "I guess you
never got much training, eh!"
"I am not a dog," said Sheila shortly.
"Well, if you aren't"--Miss Blake returned to her chair and took up a
magazine. She put the spectacles on her nose with shaking hands. "You're
my girl, aren't you? You can't expect to get nothing but petting from
me, Sheila."
If she had not been icy with rage, Sheila might have smiled at this. "I
don't know what you mean, Miss Blake, by my being your girl. I work for
you, to be sure. I know that. But I know, too, that you will have to
apologize to me for this."
Miss Blake swung one leg across the other and stared above her glasses.
"Apologize to _you_!"
"Yes. I will allow nobody to touch me."
"Shucks! Go tell that to the marines! You've never been touched, have
you? Sweet sixteen!"
Hudson's kiss again scorched Sheila's mouth and her whole body burned.
Miss Blake watched that fire consume her, and again she laughed.
"I'm waiting for you to apologize," said Sheila again, this time between
small set teeth.
"Well, my girl, wait. That'll cool you off."
Sheila stood and felt the violent beating of her heart. A log in the wall
snapped from the bitter frost.
"Miss Blake," she said presently, a pitiful young quaver in her voice,
"if you don't beg my pardon I'll go to-morrow."
Miss Blake flung her book down with a gesture of impatience. "Oh, quit
your nonsense, Sheila!" she said. "What's a shaking! You know you can't
get out of here. It'd take you a week to get anywhere at all except into
a frozen supper for the coyotes. Your beau's left the country--Madder
told me at the post-office. Make the best of it, Sheila. Lucky if you
don't get worse than that before spring. You'll get used to me in time,
get broken in and learn my ways. I'm not half bad, but I've got to be
obeyed. I've got to be master. That's me. What do you think I've come
'way out here to the wilderness for, if not because I can't stand
anything less than being master? Here I've got my place and my dogs and a
world that don't talk back. And now I've got you for company and to do my
work. You've got to fall into line, Sheila, right in the ranks. Once,
some one out there in the world"--she made a gesture, dropped her chin on
her big chest, and looked out under her short, dense, rust-colored
eyelashes--"tried to break _me_. I won't tell you what he got. That's
where I quit the ways of women--yes, ma'am, and the ways of men." She
stood up and walked over to the window and looked out. The dogs were
sleeping in their kennels, but a chain rattled. "I've broke the
wolf-pack. You've seen them wriggle on their bellies for me, haven't you?
Well, my girl, do you think I can't break you?" She wheeled back and
stood with her hands on her hips. It was at that moment that she seemed
to fill the world. Her ruddy eyes glowed like blood. They were not quite
sane. That was it. Sheila went suddenly weak. They were not _quite_
sane--those red eyes filled with sparks.
The girl stepped back and sat down in her chair. She bent forward,
pressed her hands flat together, palm to palm between her knees, and
stared fixedly down at them. She made no secret of her desperate
preoccupation.
Miss Blake's face softened a little at this withdrawal. She came back to
her place and resumed her spectacles.
"I'll tell you why I'm snappy," she said presently. "I'm scared."
This startled Sheila into a look. Miss Blake was moistening her lips.
"That horse--you know--the coyotes got him. I guess he went down and they
fell upon him. Well, he was to feed the dogs with until I could get my
winter meat."
"What do you mean?"
"That's what I buy 'em for. Little old horses, for a couple of bits,
and work 'em out and shoot 'em for dog-feed. Well, Sheila, when they're
fed, they're dogs. But when they're starved--they're wolves ... And I
can't think what's come to the elk this year. To-morrow I'll take out my
little old gun."
To-morrow and the next day and the next she took her gun and strapped on
her shoes and went out for all day long into the cold. Each time she came
back more exhausted and more fierce. Sheila would have her supper ready
and waiting sometimes for hours.
"The dogs have scared 'em off," said Miss Blake. "That must be the
truth." She let the pack hunt for itself at night, and they came back
sometimes with bloody jaws. But the prey must have been small, for they
were not satisfied. They grew more and more gaunt and wolfish. They would
howl for hours, wailing and yelping in ragged cadence to the stars.
Table-scraps and brews of Indian meal vanished and left their bellies
almost as empty as before.