Hidden Creek - Katharine Newlin Burt
"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 canon, 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 canons, 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.