Hidden Creek - Katharine Newlin Burt
"How do they earn their living?" asked Sheila, still peering at the hero
of the tale.
"They pull my sled about winters, Hidden Creek."
"Oh, you live in the Hidden Creek country?"
"Yes. Got a ranch up not far from the source. Ever been over The Hill?"
She came toward Sheila, gathered the reins into her strong, broad hands,
held them in her teeth, and began to pull on her canvas gloves. She
talked with the reins between her teeth as she had with the spike, her
enunciation triumphantly forceful and distinct.
"Some day, I'm coming over The Hill," said Sheila, less successful with a
contraction in her throat.
The woman made a few strides. Now she was looking shrewdly, close into
Sheila's face.
"You're a biscuit-shooter at the hotel?"
"No. I work in the saloon."
"In the saloon? Oh, sure. Barmaid. I've heard of you."
Here she put a square finger-tip under Sheila's chin and looked even
closer than before. "Not happy, are you?" she said. She moved away
abruptly. "Tired of town life. Been crying. Well, when you want to pull
out, come over to my ranch. I need a girl. I'm kind of lonesome winters.
It's a pretty place if you aren't looking for street-lamps and
talking-machines. You don't hear much more than coyotes and the river and
the pines and, if you're looking for high lights, you can sure see the
stars ..."
She climbed up to her seat, using the hub of her wheel for a foothold,
and springing with surprising agility and strength.
Sheila stepped aside and the horse started instantly. She made a few
hurried steps to keep up.
"Thank you," she said, looking up into the ruddy eyes that looked down.
"I'll remember that. What is your name?"
"Christina Blake, Miss Blake. I'll make The Hill before morning if
I'm lucky. Less dust and heat by night and the horse has loafed
since morning.... I mean that about coming to my place. Any time.
Good-bye to you."
She smiled a smile as casual in its own way as Sheila's own. Berg, under
the wagon, trotted silently. He looked neither to right nor left. His
wild, deep-set eyes were fastened on the heels of the small horse. He
looked as though he were trotting relentlessly toward some wolfish goal
of satisfied hunger. A little cloud of dust rose up from the wheels and
stood between Sheila and the wagon. She conquered an impulse to run after
it, shut her hand tight, and walked in at the back door of the saloon.
A teamster, with a lean, fatherly face, his mouth veiled by a
shaggy blond mustache, his eyes as blue as larkspur, smiled at her
across the bar.
"Hullo," said he. "How's your pony?"
Sheila had struck up one of her sudden friendships with this man, who
visited the saloon at regular intervals. This question warmed her heart.
The little pony of Jim's giving was dear. She thought of his soft eyes
and snuggling nose almost as often and as fondly as a lover thinks of the
face of his lady.
"Tuck's splendid, Mr. Thatcher," she said, leaning her elbows on the bar
and cupping her chin in her hands. Her face was bright with its tender,
Puckish look. "He's too cute. He can take sugar out of my apron pocket.
And he'll shake hands. I'd just love you to see him. Will you be here
to-morrow afternoon?"
"No, ma'am. I'm pullin' out about sunup. Round the time you tumble into
bed. Got to make The Hill."
"How's your baby?"
A shining smile rewarded her interest in the recent invalid. "Fine and
dandy. You ought to see her walk!"
"Isn't that splendid! And how's the little boy? Is he with you?"
"No, ma'am. I kind o' left him to mind the ranch. He's gettin' to be a
real rancher, that boy. He was sure sorry not to make Hidden Creek this
trip, though. Say, he was set on seein' you. I told him about you."
Sheila's face flamed and her eyes smarted. Gratitude and shame possessed
her. This man, then, did not speak of her as "Hudson's Queen"--not if he
told his boy about her. She turned away to hide the flame and smart. When
she looked back, Sylvester himself stood at Thatcher's elbow. He very
rarely came into the saloon. At sight of him Sheila's heart leaped as
though it had been struck.
"Say, Sheila," he murmured, "I'm celebratin' to-night."
She tried to dismiss from her mind its new and ugly consciousness. She
tried to smile. The result was an expression strange enough.
Sylvester, however, missed it. He was dressed in one of the brown
checked suits, a new one, freshly creased; there was a red wild-rose bud
in his buttonhole. The emerald gleamed on his well-kept, sallow hand. He
was sipping from his glass and had put a confidential hand on Thatcher's
shoulder. He grinned at Carthy.
"Well, sir," he said, "nobody has in-quired as to my celebration. But I'm
not proud. I'll tell you. I'm celebratin' to-night the winnin' of a bet."
"That's sure a deservin' cause," said Thatcher.
"Yes, sir. Had a bet with Carthy here. Look at him blush! Carthy sure-ly
hates to be wrong. And he's mostly right in his prog-nos-ti-cations. He
sure is. You bet yer. That's why I'm so festive."
"What'd he prognosticate?" asked Thatcher obligingly. He had moved his
shoulder away from Hudson's hand.
Sylvester wrinkled his upper lip into its smile and looked down into his
glass. He turned his emerald.
"Carthy prophesied that about this time a little--er--dream--of mine
would go bust," said Hudson. He lifted up his eyes pensively to Sheila,
first his eyes and then his glass. "Here's to my dream--you, girl," he
said softly.
He drank with his eyes upon her face, drew a deep breath, and looked
about the room.
Thatcher glanced from him to Sheila. "Goodnight to you, ma'am," he said
with gentleness. "Next time I'll bring the boy."
"Please, please do."
Sheila put her hand in his. He looked down at it as though something had
startled him. In fact, her touch was like a flake of snow.
When Thatcher had gone, Sylvester leaned closer to her across the bar. He
moved his glass around in his hand and looked up at her humbly.
"The tables kind of turned, eh?" he said.
"What do you mean, Mr. Hudson?" Sheila, by lifting her voice, tried to
dissipate the atmosphere of confidence, of secrecy. Carthy had moved away
from them, the other occupants of the saloon were very apparently not
listening.
"Well, ma'am," Sylvester explained, "six months ago I was kind of layin'
claim to gratitude from you, and now it's the other way round."
"Yes," she said. "But I am still grateful." The words came, however, with
a certain unwillingness, a certain lack of spontaneity.
"Are you, though?" He put his head on one side so that Sheila was
reminded of Dickie. For the first time a sort of shadowy resemblance
between father and son was apparent to her. "Well, you've wiped the
reckonin' off the slate by what you've done for me. You've given me my
Aura. Say, you have been my fairy godmother, all right. Talk about wishes
comin' true!"
Again he looked about the room, and that wistfulness of the visionary
stole into his face. His eyes came back to her with an expression that
was almost beautiful. "If only that Englishman was here," he sighed. "Yes
ma'am. I'm sure celebratin' to-night!"
It was soon very apparent that he was celebrating. For an hour he stood
every newcomer to a drink, and then he withdrew to a table in a shadowy
corner, and sitting there, tilted against the wall, he sipped from his
glass, smoked and dreamed. Hour after hour of the slow, noisy night went
by and still he sat there, watching Sheila through the smoke, seeing in
her, more and more glowingly, the body of his dream.
It was after dawn when Sheila touched Carthy's elbow. The big Irishman
looked down at her small, drawn face.
"Mr. Carthy," she whispered, "would it be all right if I went home now?
It's earlier than usual, but I'm so--awfully tired?"
There was so urgent an air of secrecy in her manner that Carthy
muttered his permission out of the corner of his mouth. Sheila melted
from his side.
The alley that had been silvery cool with dusk was now even more silvery
cool with morning twilight. Small sunrise clouds were winging over it
like golden doves. Sheila did not look at them. She ran breathless to her
door, opened it, and found herself face to face with Dickie.
CHAPTER XIV
THE LIGHT OF DAWN
There was a light of dawn in the room and through the open window blew in
the keen air of daybreak. Dickie was standing quite still in the middle
of the floor. He was more neat and groomed than Sheila had ever seen him.
He looked as though he had stepped from a bath; his hair was sleek and
wet so that it was dark above the pure pallor of his face; his suit was
carefully put on; his cuffs and collar were clean. He did not have the
look of a man that has been awake all night, nor did he look as though he
had ever been asleep. His face and eyes were alight, his lips firm and
delicate with feeling.
Before him Sheila felt old and stained. The smoke and fumes of the bar
hung about her. She was shamed by the fresh youthfulness of his slender,
eager carriage and of his eyes.
"Dickie," she faltered, and stood against the door, drooping wearily,
"what are you doing here at this hour?"
"What does the hour matter?" he asked impatiently. "Come over to the
window. I want you to look at this big star. I've been watching it. It's
almost gone. It's like a white bird flying straight into the sun."
He was imperative, laid his cool hand upon hers and drew her to the
window. They stood facing the sunrise.
"Why did you come here?" again asked Sheila. The beauty of the sky only
deepened her misery and shame.
"Because I couldn't wait any longer than one night. It's sure been an
awful long night for me, Sheila ... Sheila--" He drew the hand he still
held close to him with a trembling touch and laid his other hand over it.
Then she felt the terrible beating of his heart, felt that he was
shaking. "Sheila, I love you." She had hidden her face against the
curtain, had turned from him. She felt nothing but weariness and shame.
She was like a leaden weight tied coldly to his throbbing youth. Her hand
under his was hot and lifeless like a scorched rose. "I want you to come
away with me from Millings. You can't keep on a-working in that saloon.
You can't a-bear to have folks saying and thinking the fool things they
do. And I can't a-bear it even if you can. I'd go loco, and kill. Sheila,
I've been thinking all night, just sitting on the edge of my bed and
thinking. Sheila, if you will marry me, I will promise you to take care
of you. I won't let you suffer any. I will die"--his voice rocked on the
word, spoken with an awful sincerity of young love--"before I let you
suffer any. If you could love me a little bit"--he stopped as though that
leaping heart had sprung up into his throat--"only a little bit,
Sheila," he whispered, "maybe--?"
"I can't," she said. "I can't love you that way even a little bit. I
can't marry you, Dickie. I wish I could. I am so tired."
She drew her hand away, or rather it fell from the slackening grasp of
his, and hung at her side. She looked up from the curtain to his face. It
was still alight and tender and pale.
"You're real sure, Sheila, that you _never_ could?--that you'd rather go
on with this--?"
She pressed all the curves and the color out of her lips, still looking
at him, and nodded her head.
"I can't stay in Millings," Dickie said, "and work in Poppa's hotel and
watch this, Sheila--unless, some way, I can help you."
"Then you'd better go," she said lifelessly, "because I can't see what
else there is for me to do. Oh, I shan't go on with it for very long,
of course--"
He came an eager half-step nearer. "Then, anyway, you'll let me go away
and work, and when I've kind of got a start, you'll let me come back
and--and see if--if you feel any sort of--different from what you do now?
It wouldn't be so awful long. I'd work like--like Hell!" His thin hand
shot into a fist.
Sheila's lassitude was startled by his word into a faint, unwilling
smile.
"Don't laugh at me!" he cried out.
"Oh, Dickie, my dear, I'm not laughing. I'm so tired I can hardly stand.
And truly you must go now. I'm horrid to you. I always am. And yet I do
like you so much. And you are such a dear. And I feel there's something
great about you. I should be glad for you to leave Millings. There is a
much better chance for you away from Millings. I feel years old to-day. I
think I've grown up too old all at once and missed lovely things that I
ought to have had. Dickie"--she gave a dry sort of sob--"_you_ are one of
the lovely things."
His arms drew gently round her. "Let me kiss you, Sheila," he pleaded
with tremulous lips. "I want just to kiss you once for good-bye. I'll be
so careful. If you knowed how I feel, you'd let me."
She lifted up her mouth like an obedient child. Then, back of Dickie, she
saw Sylvester's face.
It was more sallow than usual; its upper lip was drawn away from the
teeth and deeply wrinkled; the eyes, half-closed, were very soft; they
looked as though there was a veil across their pensiveness. He caught
Dickie's elbow in his hand, twisted him about, thrusting a knee into his
back, and with his other long, bony hand he struck him brutally across
the face. The emerald on his finger caught the light of the rising sun
and flashed like a little stream of green fire.
Dickie, caught unawares by superior strength, was utterly defenseless. He
writhed and struggled vainly, gasping under the blows. Sylvester forced
him across the room, still inflicting punishment. His hand made a great
cracking sound at every slap.
Sheila hid her face from the dreadful sight. "Oh, don't, don't, don't!"
she wailed again and again.
Then it was over. Dickie was flung out; the door was locked against him
and Sylvester came back across the floor.
His collar stood up in a half-moon back of his ears, his hair fell across
his forehead, his face was flushed, his lip bled. He had either bitten it
himself or Dickie had struck it. But he seemed quite calm, only a little
breathless. He was neither snarling nor smiling now. He took Sheila very
gently by the wrists, drawing her hands down from her face, and he put
her arms at their full length behind her, holding them there.
"You meet Dickie here when you're through work, dream-girl," he said
gently. "You kiss Dickie when you leave my Aura, you little beacon light.
I've kept my hands off you and my lips off you and my mind off you,
because I thought you were too fine and good for anything but my ideal.
And all this while you've been sneaking up here to Dickie and Jim and
Lord knows who else besides. Now, I am agoin' to kiss you and then you
gotta get out of Millings. Do you hear? After I've kissed you, you ain't
good enough for my purpose--not for mine."
Gathering both her hands in one of his, he put the hard, long fingers of
his free hand back of her head, holding it from wincing or turning and
his mouth dropped upon hers and seemed to smother out her life. She
tasted whiskey and the blood from his cut lips.
"You won't tell _me_, anyway, that lie again," he panted, keeping his
face close, staring into her wide eyes of a horrified childishness--"that
you've never been kissed."
Again his lips fastened on her mouth. He let her go, strode to the door,
unlocked it, and went out.
She had fallen to the floor, her head against the chair. She beat the
chair with her hands, calling softly for her father and for her God. She
reproached them both. "You told me it was a good old world," she sobbed.
"You told me it was a good old world."
CHAPTER XV
FLAMES
A hot, dry day followed on the cool dawn. In his room Dickie lay across
his bed. The sun blazed in at his single long window; the big flies that
had risen from the dirty yard buzzed and bumped against the upper pane
and made aimless, endless, mazy circles above and below one another in
the stifling, odorous atmosphere. Dickie lay there like an image of
Icarus, an eternal symbol of defeated youth; one could almost see about
his slenderness the trailing, shattered wings. He had wept out the first
shock of his anger and his shame; now he lay in a despairing stupor. His
bruised face burned and ached; his chest felt tight with the aching and
burning of his heart. Any suspicion of his father's interpretation of his
presence in Sheila's room was mercifully spared him, but the knowledge
that he had been brutally jerked back from her pure and patient lips, had
been ignominiously punished before her eyes and turned out like a whipped
boy--this knowledge was a dreadful torture to his pride. Sheila, to be
sure, did not love him even a little bit; she had said so. All the
longing and the tumult of his heart during these months had made no more
impression upon her than a frantic sea makes upon the little bird at the
top of the cliff. She had, he must think, hardly been aware of it. And
it was such a terrible and frantic actuality. He had fancied that it must
have beaten forever, day by day, night by night, at her consciousness.
Can a woman live near so turbulent a thing and not even guess at its
existence? Her hand against his heart had lain so limp and dead. He
hadn't hoped, of course, that she loved him the way he loved. Probably no
one else could feel what he felt and live--so Dickie in young love's
eternal fashion believed in his own miracle; but she might have loved him
a little, a very little, in time--if she hadn't seen him beaten and
shamed and cuffed out of her presence like a dog. Now there was no hope.
No hope at all. No hope. Dickie rocked his head against his arm. He had
told Sheila that he would take care of her, but he could not even defend
himself. He had told her that he would die to save her any suffering,
but, before her, he had writhed and gasped helplessly under the weight of
another man's hand, his open hand, not even a fist.... No after act of
his could efface from Sheila's memory that picture of his ignominy. She
had seen him twisted and bent and beaten and thrown away. His father had
triumphantly returned to reassure and comfort her for the insult of a
boy's impertinence. Would Sheila defend him? Would she understand? Or
would she not be justified in contemptuous laughter at his pretensions?
Such thoughts--less like thoughts, however, than like fiery fever
fits--twisted and scorched Dickie's mind as he lay there. They burnt into
him wounds that for years throbbed slowly into scars.
At noon the heat of his room became even more intolerable than his
thoughts. His head beat with pain. He was bathed in sweat, weak and
trembling. He dragged himself up, went to his washstand, and dipped his
wincing face into the warmish, stale water. His lips felt cracked and dry
and swollen. In the wavy mirror he saw a distorted image of his face,
with its heavy eyes, scattered hair, and the darkening marks of his
father's blows, punctuated by the scarlet scratches of the emerald. He
dried his face, loosened his collar, and, gasping for air, came out into
the narrow hall.
The hotel was very still. He hurried through it, his face bent, and went
by the back way to the saloon. At this hour Sheila was asleep. Carthy
would be alone in The Aura and there would be few, if any, customers.
Dickie found the place cool and quiet and empty, shuttered from the sun,
the air stirred by electric fans. Carthy dozed in his chair behind the
bar. He gave Dickie his order, somnambulantly. Dickie took it off to a
dim corner and drank with the thirst of a wounded beast.
Three or four hours later he staggered back to his room. A thunderstorm
was rumbling and flashing down from the mountains to the north. The
window was purple-black, and a storm wind blew the dirty curtains,
straight and steady, into the room. The cool wind tasted and smelt of hot
dust. Dickie felt his dazed way to the bed and steadied himself into a
sitting posture. With infinite difficulty he rolled and lighted a
cigarette, drew at it, took it out, tried to put it again between his
lips, and fell over on his back, his arm trailing over the edge of the
bed. The lighted cigarette slipped from his fingers to the ragged strip
of matting. Dickie lay there, breathing heavily and regularly in a
drunken and exhausted sleep.
A vivid, flickering pain in his arm woke him. He thought for an instant
that he must have died and dropped straight into Hell. The wind still
blew in upon him, but it blew fire against him. Above him there was a
heavy panoply of smoke. His bedclothes were burning, his sleeve was on
fire. The boards of his floor cracked and snapped in regiments of flame.
He got up, still in a half stupor, plunged his arm into the water
pitcher, saw, with a startled oath, that the woodwork about his door was
blazing in long tongues of fire which leaped up into the rafters of the
roof. His brain began to telegraph its messages ... the hotel was on
fire. He could not imagine what had started it. He remembered Sheila.
He ran along the passage, the roar of that wind-driven fire following
him as the draft from his window through his opened door gave a sudden
impulse to the flames, and he came to Sheila's sitting-room. He
knocked, had no answer, and burst in. He saw instantly that she had
gone. Her father's picture had been taken, her little books, her
sketches, her work-basket, her small yellow vase. Things were scattered
about. As he stood staring, a billow of black smoke rolled into the
room. He went quickly through the bedroom and the bath, calling
"Sheila" in a low, uncertain voice, returned to the sitting-room to
find the air already pungent and hot. There was a paper pinned up on
the mantel. Sheila's writing marched across it. Dickie rubbed the smoke
from his eyes and read:
"I am going away from Millings. And I am not coming back. Amelia may have
the things I have left. I don't want them."
This statement was addressed to no one.
"She has gone to New York," thought Dickie. His confused mind became
possessed with the immediate purpose of following her. There was an
Eastern train in the late afternoon. Only he must have money and it
was--most of it--in his room. He dashed back. The passage was ablaze; his
room roared like the very heart of a furnace. It was no use to think of
getting in there. Well, he had something in his pocket, enough to start
him. He plunged, choking, into Sheila's sitting-room again. For some
reason this flight of hers had brought back his hope. There was to be a
beginning, a fresh start, a chance.
He went over to the chair where Sheila had sat in the comfort, of his
arms and he touched the piece of tapestry on its back. That was his
good-bye to Millings. Then he fastened his collar, smoothed his hair,
standing close before Sheila's mirror, peering and blinking through the
smoke, and buttoned his coat painstakingly. There would be a hat
downstairs. As he turned to go he saw a little brown leather book lying
on the floor below the mantel. He picked it up. Here was something he
could take to Sheila. With an impulse of tenderness he opened it. His
eyes were caught by a stanza--
"The blessed damozel leaned out
From the gold bar of Heaven;
Her eyes were deeper than the depth
Of waters stilled at even;
She had three lilies in her hand,
And the stars in her hair were seven--"
There are people, no doubt, who will not be able to believe this truthful
bit of Dickie's history. The smoke was drifting across him, the roar of
the nearing fire was in his ears, he was at a great crisis in his
affairs, his heart was hot with wounded love, and his brain hot with
whiskey and with hope. Nevertheless, he did now, under the spell of those
printed words, which did not even remotely resemble any words that he had
ever read or heard before, forget the smoke, the roar, the love, the
hope, and, standing below Sheila's mirror, he did read "The Blessed
Damozel" from end to end. And the love of those lovers, divided by all
the space between the shaken worlds, and the beauty of her tears made a
great and mystic silence of rapture about him. "O God!" Dickie said
twice as he read. He brushed away the smoke to see the last lines,--"And
wept--I heard her tears." The ecstatic pain of beauty gripped him to the
forgetfulness of all other pain or ecstasy. "O God!"
He came to with a start, shut the book, stuck it into his pocket, and,
crooking his arm over his smarting eyes, he plunged out of the room.
Millings had become aware of its disaster. Dickie, fleeing by the back
way, leaping dangers and beating through fire, knew by the distant
commotion that the Fire Brigade, of which he was a member, was gathering
its men for the glory of their name. He saw, too, that with a wind like
this to aid the fire, there wasn't a chance for The Aura, and a queer
pang of sympathy for his father stabbed him. "It will kill Pap," thought
Dickie. Save for this pang, he ran along the road toward the station with
a light, adventurous heart. He did not know that he had started the fire
himself. The stupor of his sleep had smothered out all memory of the
cigarette he had lighted and let fall. Unwittingly Dickie had killed the
beauty of his father's dream, and now, just as unwittingly, he was about
to kill the object of his father's passion. When he looked back from the
station platform, the roof of The Aura was already in a blaze.