Hidden Creek - Katharine Newlin Burt
"Well," said Sylvester apologetically, "she's one of the wiry kind,
aren't you, Miss Sheila?"
Sheila was struggling with an attack of hysterical mirth. She nodded
and put her muff before her mouth to hide an uncontrollable quivering
of her lips.
"Momma" had not spoken. Her face was all one even tone of red, her
nostrils opened and shut, her lips were tight. Sylvester, however, was in
a genial humor. He leaned forward with his arms folded along the back of
the front seat and pointed out the beauties of Millings. He showed Sheila
the Garage, the Post-Office, and the Trading Company, and suddenly
pressing her shoulder with his hand, he cracked out sharply:
"There's The Aura, girl!"
His eyes were again those of the artist and the visionary. They glowed.
Sheila turned her head. They were passing the double door of the saloon
and went slowly along the front of the hotel.
It stood on that corner where the main business street intersects with
the Best Residence Street. Its main entrance opened into the flattened
corner of the building where the roof rose to a fantastic facade. For the
rest, the hotel was of yellowish-brick, half-surrounded by a wooden porch
where at milder seasons of the year in deep wicker chairs men and women
were always rocking with the air of people engaged in serious and not
unimportant work. At such friendlier seasons, too, by the curb was always
a weary-looking Ford car from which grotesquely arrayed "travelers" from
near-by towns and cities were descending covered with alkali dust--faces,
chiffon veils, spotted silk dresses, high white kid boots, dangling
purses and all, their men dust-powdered to a wrinkled sameness of aspect.
At this time of the year the porch was deserted, and the only car in
sight was Hudson's own, which wriggled and slipped its way courageously
along the rutted, dirty snow.
Around the corner next to the hotel stood Hudson's home. It was a large
house of tortured architecture, cupolas and twisted supports and strange,
overlapping scallops of wood, painted wavy green, pinkish red and yellow.
Its windows were of every size and shape and appeared in unreasonable,
impossible places--opening enormous mouths on tiny balconies with twisted
posts and scalloped railings, like embroidery patterns, one on top of the
other up to a final absurdity of a bird cage which found room for itself
between two cupolas under the roof.
Up the steps of the porch Mrs. Hudson mounted grimly, followed by Babe.
Sylvester stayed to tinker with the car, and Sheila, after a doubtful,
tremulous moment, went slowly up the icy path after the two women.
She stumbled a little on the lowest step and, in recovering herself, she
happened to turn her head. And so, between two slender aspen trees that
grew side by side like white, captive nymphs in Hudson's yard, she saw a
mountain-top. The sun had set. There was a crystal, turquoise
translucency behind the exquisite snowy peak, which seemed to stand there
facing God, forgetful of the world behind it, remote and reverent and
most serene in the light of His glory. And just above where the turquoise
faded to pure pale green, a big white star trembled. Sheila's heart
stopped in her breast. She stood on the step and drew breath, throwing
back her veil. A flush crept up into her face. She felt that she had been
traveling all her life toward her meeting with this mountain and this
star. She felt radiant and comforted.
"How beautiful!" she whispered.
Sylvester had joined her.
"Finest city in the world!" he said.
CHAPTER IV
MOONSHINE
Dickie Hudson pushed from him to the full length of his arm the ledger of
The Aura Hotel, tilted his chair back from the desk, and, leaning far
over to one side, set the needle on a phonograph record, pressed the
starter, and absorbed himself in rolling and lighting a cigarette. This
accomplished, he put his hands behind his head and, wreathed in aromatic,
bluish smoke, gave himself up to complete enjoyment of the music.
It was a song from some popular light opera. A very high soprano and a
musical tenor duet, sentimental, humoresque:
"There, dry your eyes,
I sympathize
Just as a mother would--
Give me your hand,
I understand, we're off to slumber land
Like a father, like a mother, like a sister, like a brother."
Listening to this melody, Dickie Hudson's face under the gaslight
expressed a rapt and spiritual delight, tender, romantic, melancholy.
He was a slight, undersized youth, very pale, very fair, with the face of
a delicate boy. He had large, near-sighted blue eyes in which lurked a
wistful, deprecatory smile, a small chin running from wide cheek-bones
to a point. His lips were sensitive and undecided, his nose unformed, his
hair soft and easily ruffled. There were hard blue marks under the
long-lashed eyes, an unhealthy pallor to his cheeks, a slight
unsteadiness of his fingers.
Dickie held a position of minor importance in the hotel, and his pale,
innocent face was almost as familiar to its patrons as to those of the
saloon next door--more familiar to both than it was to Hudson's
"residence." Sometimes for weeks Dickie did not strain the scant welcome
of his "folks." To-night, however, he was resolved to tempt it. After
listening to the record, he strolled over to the saloon.
Dickie was curious. He shared Millings's interest in the "young lady from
Noo York." Shyness fought with a sense of adventure, until to-night, a
night fully ten nights after Sheila's arrival, the courage he imbibed at
the bar of The Aura gave him the necessary impetus. He pulled himself up
from his elbow, removed his foot from the rail, straightened his spotted
tie, and pushed through the swinging doors out into the night.
It was a moonlit night, as still and pure as an angel of annunciation--a
night that carried tall, silver lilies in its hands. Above the small,
sleepy town were lifted the circling rim of mountains and the web of
blazing stars. Sylvester's son, after a few crunching steps along the icy
pavement, stopped with his hand against the wall, and stood, not quite
steadily, his face lifted. The whiteness sank through his tainted body
and brain to the undefiled child-soul. The stars blazed awfully for
Dickie, and the mountains were awfully white and high, and the air
shattered against his spirit like a crystal sword. He stood for an
instant as though on a single point of solid earth and looked giddily
beyond earthly barriers.
His lips began to move. He was trying to put that mystery, that
emotion, into words ... "It's white," he murmured, "and
sharp--burning--like--like"--his fancy fumbled--"like the inside of a
cold flame." He shook his head. That did not describe the marvelous
quality of the night. And yet--if the world had gone up to heaven in a
single, streaming point of icy fire and a fellow stood in it, frozen,
swept up out of a fellow's body.... Again he shook his head and his eyes
were possessed by the wistful, apologetic smile. He wished he were not
tormented by this queer need of describing his sensations. He remembered
very vividly one of the many occasions when it had roused his father's
anger. Dickie, standing with his hand against the cold bricks of The
Aura, smiled with his lips, not happily, but with a certain amusement,
thinking of how Sylvester's hand had cracked against his cheek and sent
all his thoughts flying like broken china. He had been apologizing for
his slowness over an errand--something about leaves, it had been--the
leaves of those aspens in the yard--he had told his father that they had
been little green flames--he had stopped to look at them.
"You damn fool!" Sylvester had said as he struck.
"You damn fool!" Once, when a stranger asked five-year-old Dickie his
name, he had answered innocently "Dickie-damn-fool!"
"They'll probably put it on my tombstone," Dickie concluded, and, stung
by the cold, he shrank into his coat and stumbled round the corner of the
street. The reek of spirits trailed behind him through the purity like a
soiled rag.
Number 18 Cottonwood Avenue was brilliantly lighted. Girlie was playing
the piano, Babe's voice, "sassing Poppa," was audible from one end to the
other of the empty street. Her laughter slapped the air. Dickie
hesitated. He was afraid of them all--of Sylvester's pensive, small,
brown eyes and hard, long hands, of Babe's bodily vigor, of Girlie's mild
contemptuous look, of his mother's gloomy, furtive tenderness. Dickie
felt a sort of aching and compassionate dread of the rough, awkward
caress of her big red hand against his cheek. As he hesitated, the door
opened--a blaze of light, yellow as old gold, streamed into the blue
brilliance of the moon. It was blotted out and a figure came quickly down
the steps. It had an air of hurry and escape. A small, slim figure, it
came along the path and through the gate; then, after just an instant of
hesitation, it turned away from Dickie and sped up the wide street.
Dickie named it at once. "That's the girl," he said; and possessed by
his curiosity and by the sense of adventure which whiskey had fortified,
he began to walk rapidly in the same direction. Out there, where the
short street ended, began the steep side of a mesa. The snow on the road
that was graded along its front was packed by the runners of freighting
sleighs, but it was rough. He could not believe the girl meant to go for
a walk alone. And yet, would she be out visiting already, she, a
stranger? At the end of the street the small, determined figure did not
stop; it went on, a little more slowly, but as decidedly as ever, up the
slope. On the hard, frozen crust, her feet made hardly a sound. Above the
level top of the white hill, the peak that looked remote from Hudson's
yard became immediate. It seemed to peer--to lean forward, bright as a
silver helmet against the purple sky. Dickie could see that "the girl"
walked with her head tilted back as though she were looking at the sky.
Perhaps it was the sheer beauty of the winter night that had brought her
out. Following slowly up the hill, he felt a sense of nearness, of
warmth; his aching, lifelong loneliness was remotely comforted because a
girl, skimming ahead of him, had tilted her chin up so that she could see
the stars. She reached the top of the mesa several minutes before he did
and disappeared. She was now, he knew, on the edge of a great plateau, in
summer covered with the greenish silver of sagebrush, now an unbroken,
glittering expanse. He stood still to get his breath and listen to the
very light crunch of her steps. He could hear a coyote wailing off there
in the foothills, and the rushing noise of the small mountain river that
hurled itself down upon Millings, ran through it at frenzied speed, and
made for the canon on the other side of the valley. Below him Millings
twinkled with a few sparse lights, and he could, even from here,
distinguish the clatter of Babe's voice. But when he came to the top,
Millings dropped away from the reach of his senses. Here was dazzling
space, the amazing presence of the mountains, the pressure of the starry
sky. Far off already across the flat, that small, dark figure moved. She
had left the road, which ran parallel with the mountain range, and was
walking over the hard, sparkling crust. It supported her weight, but
Dickie was not sure that it would do the same for his. He tried it
carefully. It held, and he followed the faint track of small feet. It did
not occur to him, dazed as he was by the fumes of whiskey and the heady
air, that the sight of a man in swift pursuit of her loneliness might
frighten Sheila. For some reason he imagined that she would know that he
was Sylvester's son, and that he was possessed only by the most sociable
and protective impulses.
He was, besides, possessed by a fateful feeling that it was intended that
out here in the brilliant night he should meet her and talk to her. The
adventurous heart of Dickie was aflame.
When the hurrying figure stopped and turned quickly, he did not
pause, but rather hastened his steps. He saw her lift her muff up to
her heart, saw her waver, then move resolutely toward him. She came
thus two or three steps, when a treacherous pitfall in the snow opened
under her frightened feet and she went down almost shoulder deep.
Dickie ran forward.
Bending over her, he saw her white, heart-shaped face, and its red mouth
as startling as a June rose out here in the snow. And he saw, too, the
panic of her shining eyes.
"Miss Arundel"--his voice came thin and tender, feeling its way
doubtfully as though it was too heavy a reality--"let me help you. You
_are_ Miss Arundel, aren't you? I'm Dickie--Dickie Hudson, Pap Hudson's
son. You hadn't ought to be scared. I saw you coming out alone and took
after you. I thought you might find it kind of lonesome up here on the
flat at night in all the moonlight--hearing the coyotes and all. And,
look-a-here, you might have had a time getting out of the snow. Oncet a
fellow breaks through it sure means a floundering time before a fellow
pulls himself out--"
She had given him a hand, and he had pulled her up beside him. Her smile
of relief seemed very beautiful to Dickie.
"I came out," she said, "because it looked so wonderful--and I wanted
to see--" She stopped, looking at him doubtfully, as though she
expected him not to understand, to think her rather mad. But he
finished her sentence.
"--To see the mountains, wasn't it?"
"Yes." She was again relieved, almost as much so, it seemed, as at the
knowledge of his friendliness. "Especially that big one." She waved her
muff toward the towering peak. "I never did see such a night! It's
like--it's like--" She widened her eyes, as though, by taking into her
brain an immense picture of the night, she might find out its likeness.
Dickie, moving uncertainly beside her, murmured, "Like the inside of a
cold flame, a very white flame."
Sheila turned her chin, pointed above the fur collar of her coat, and
included him in the searching and astonished wideness of her look.
"You work at The Aura, don't you?" she asked with childlike _brusquerie_.
Dickie's sensitive, undecided mouth settled into mournfulness. He
looked away.
"Yes, ma'am," he said plaintively.
Sheila's widened eyes, still fixed upon him, began to embarrass him. A
flush came up into his face.
She moved her look across him and away to the range.
"It _is_ like that," she said--"like a cold flame, going up--how did you
think of that?"
Dickie looked quickly, gratefully at her. "I kind of felt," he said
lamely, "that I had got to find out what it was like. But"--he shook his
head with his deprecatory smile--"but that don't tell it, Miss Arundel.
It's more than that." He smiled again. "I bet you, you could think of
somethin' better to say about it, couldn't you?"
Sheila laughed. "What a funny boy you are! Not like the others. You don't
even look like them. How old are you? When I first saw you I thought you
were quite grown up. But you can't be much more than nineteen."
"Just that," he said, "but I'll be twenty next month."
"You've always lived here in Millings?"
"Yes, ma'am. Do you like it? I mean, do you like Millings? I hope you
do."
Sheila pressed her muff against her mouth and looked at him over it. Her
eyes were shining as though the moonlight had got into their misty
grayness. She shook her head; then, as his face fell, she began to
apologize.
"Your father has been so awfully kind to me. I am so grateful. And the
girls are awfully good to me. But, Millings, you know?--I wouldn't
have told you," she said half-angrily, "if I hadn't been so sure you
hated it."
They had come to the edge of the mesa, and there below shone the small,
scattered lights of the town. The graphophone was playing in the saloon.
Its music--some raucous, comic song--insulted the night.
"Why, no," said Dickie, "I don't hate Millings. I never thought about it
that way. It's not such a bad place. Honest, it isn't. There's lots of
fine folks in it. Have you met Jim Greely?"
"Why, no, but I've seen him. Isn't that Girlie's--'fellow'?"
Dickie made round, respectful eyes. He was evidently very much impressed.
"Say!" he ejaculated. "Is that the truth? Girlie's aiming kind of high."
It was not easy to walk side by side on the rutted snow of the road.
Sheila here slipped ahead of him and went on quickly along the middle rut
where the horses' hoofs had beaten a pitted path.
She looked back at him over her shoulder with a sort of malice.
"Is it aiming high?" she said. "Girlie is much more beautiful than
Jim Greely."
"Oh, but he's some looker--Jim."
"Do you think so?" she said indifferently, with a dainty touch of scorn.
Dickie staggered physically from the shock of her speech. She had been
speaking--was it possible?--of Jim Greely....
"I mean Mr. James Greely, the son of the president of the Millings
National Bank," he said painstakingly, and a queer confusion came to him
that the words were his feet and that neither were under his control.
Also, he was not sure that he had said "Natural," or "National."
"I do mean Mr. James Greely," Sheila's clear voice came back to him. "He
is, I should think, a very great hero of yours."
"Yes, ma'am," said Dickie.
Astonished at the abject humility of his tone, Sheila stopped and turned
quite around to look at him. He seemed to be floundering in and out of
invisible holes in the snow. He stepped very high, plunged, put out his
hand, and righted himself by her shoulder. And he stayed there, lurched
against her for a moment. She shook him off and began to run down the
hill. His breath had struck her face. She knew that he was drunk.
Dickie followed her as fast as he could. Several times he fell, but, on
the whole, he made fairly rapid progress, so that, by the time she dashed
into the Hudsons' gate, he was only a few steps behind her and caught the
gate before it shut. Sheila fled up the steps and beat at the door with
her fist. Dickie was just behind her.
Sylvester himself opened the door. Back of him pressed Babe.
"Why, say," she said, "it's Sheila and she's got a beau already. You're
some girl--"
"Please let me in," begged Sheila; "I--I am frightened. It's your
brother, Dickie--but I think--there's something wrong--"
Sylvester put his hand on her and pushed her to one side.
He strode out on the small porch. Dickie wavered before him on
the top step.
"I thought I'd make the ac-acquaintance of the young lady," he began
doubtfully. "I saw her admiring at the stars and I--"
"Oh, you did!" snarled Hudson. "All right. Now go and make acquaintance
with the bottom step." He thrust a long, hard hand at Dickie's chest, and
the boy fell backward, clattering ruefully down the steps with a rattle
of thin knees and elbows. At the bottom he lay for a minute, painfully
huddled in the snow.
"Go in, Miss Sheila," said Sylvester. "I'm sorry my son came home
to-night and frightened you. He usually has more sense. He'll have more
sense next time."
He ran down the steps, but before he could reach the huddled figure it
gathered itself fearfully together and fled, limping and staggering
across the yard, through the gate and around the corner of the street.
Hudson came up, breathing hard.
"Where's Sheila?" he asked sharply.
"She ran upstairs," said Babe. "Ain't it a shame? What got into Dick?"
"Something that will get kicked out of him good and proper to-morrow,"
said his father grimly.
He stood at the bottom of the steep, narrow stairs, looking up, his hands
thrust into his pockets, his under lip stuck out. His eyes were unusually
gentle and pensive.
"I wouldn't 'a' had her scared that way for anything," he said, "not for
anything. That's likely to spoil all my plans."
He swore under his breath, wheeled about, and going into the parlor he
shut the door and began walking to and fro. Babe crept rather quietly up
the stairs. There were times when even Babe was afraid of "Poppa."
CHAPTER V
INTERCESSION
Babe tiptoed up the first flight, walked solidly and boldly up the
second, and ran up the third. She had decided to have a talk with Sheila,
to soothe her indignation, and, if possible, to explain Dickie. It seemed
to Babe that Dickie needed explanation.
Sheila's room was at the top of the house--the very room, in fact, whose
door opened on the bird cage of a balcony between two cupolas. Babe came
to the door and knocked. A voice answered sharply: "Come in," and Babe,
entering, shut the door and leaned against it.
It was a small, bare, whitewashed room, with a narrow cot, a washstand,
a bureau, and two extraordinary chairs--a huge one that rocked on
damaged springs, enclosed in plaited leather like the case of an
accordion, and one that had been a rocker, but stood unevenly on its
diminished legs. Babe had protested against Momma's disposal of the
"girl from Noo York," and had begged that Sheila be allowed to share her
own red, white, and blue boudoir below. But Sheila had preferred her
small room. It was red as a rose at sunset, still and high, remote from
Millings, and it faced The Hill.
Now, the gaslight flared against the bare walls and ceiling. Sheila's
hat and coat and muff lay on the bed where she had thrown them. She
stood, looking at Babe. Her face was flushed, her eyes gleamed, that
slight exaggeration of her chin was more pronounced than usual.
Babe put her head on one side. "Oh, say, Sheila, why bother about Dickie.
Nobody cares about Dickie. He'll get a proper bawlin'-out from Poppa
to-morrow. But I'd think myself simple to be scared by him. He's
harmless. The poor kid can't half help himself now. He got started when
he was awful young."
"Oh," said Sheila, as sharply as before, stopping before Babe, "I'm not
frightened. I'm angry--angry at myself. I _like_ Dickie. I like him!"
Babe's lips fell apart. She sat down in the accordion-plaited chair and
rocked. A squealing, shaking noise accompanied the motion. Her fingers
sought and found against the chair-back a piece of chewing-gum which she
had stuck there during her last visit to Sheila. Babe hid and resurrected
chewing-gum as instinctively as a dog hides and resurrects his bones.
"I can _see_ you likin' Dickie," she remarked ironically.
"But I do, I tell you! He was sweet. He didn't say a word or do a thing
to frighten me--"
"But he was full, Shee, you know he was."
"Yes. He'd been drinking. I smelt it. And he didn't walk very straight,
and he was a little mixed in his speech. But, all the same, he was as
good as gold. And friendly and nice. I might have walked home quietly
with him and sent him away at the door. And he wouldn't have been seen by
his father." Sheila's eyes filled. "It was dreadful--to--to knock him
down the steps!"
"Say, if you'd had as much to put up with from Dickie as Poppa's had--"
"Oh," said Sheila in a tone that welled up as from under a weight, "if I
had always lived in Millings, I'd drink myself!"
Babe looked red and resentful, but Sheila's voice rushed on.
"That saloon is the only interesting and attractive place in town. The
only thrilling people that ever come here go in through those doors. I've
seen some wonderful-looking men. I'd like to paint them. I've made some
drawings of them--men from over there back of the mountains."
"You mean the cowboys from over The Hill, I guess," drawled Babe
contemptuously. "Those sagebrush fellows from Hidden Creek. I don't think
a whole lot of them. Put one of them alongside of one of our town boys!
Why, they don't speak good, Sheila, and they're rough as a hill trail.
You'd be scared to death of them if you knew them better."
"They look like real men to me," said Sheila. "And I never did
like towns."
"But you're a town girl."
"I am not. I've been in cities and I've been in the country. I've never
lived in a town."
"Well, there'll be a dance one of these days next summer in the Town
Hall, and maybe you'll meet some of those rough-necks. You'll change your
mind about them. Why, I'd sooner dance with a sheep-herder from beyond
the bad-lands, or with one of the hands from the oil-fields, than with
those Hidden Creek fellows. Horse-thieves and hold-ups and Lord knows
what-all they are. No account runaways. Nothing solid or respectable
about them. Take a boy like Robert, now, or Jim--"
Sheila put her hands to her ears. Her face, between the hands, looked
rather wicked in a sprite-like fashion.
"Don't mention to me Mr. James Greely of the Millings National Bank!"
Babe rose pompously. "I think you're kind of off your bat to-night,
Sheila Arundel," she said, chewing noisily. "First you run out at night
with the mercury at 4 below and come dashing back scared to death,
banging at the door, and then you tell me you like Dickie and ask me not
to mention the finest fellow in Millings!"
"The finest fellow in the finest city in the world!" cried Sheila and
laughed. Her laugh was like a torrent of silver coins, but it had the
right maliceful ring of a brownie's "Ho! Ho! Ho!"
Babe stopped in the doorway and spoke heavily.
"You're short on sense, Sheila," she said. "You're kind of dippy ...
going out to look at the stars and drawing pictures of that Hidden Creek
trash. But you'll learn better, maybe."