The Story of the Foss River Ranch Part 17

She had watched him with the never-failing eye of love, and had seen, to her horror, the signs she so dreaded. She could face disaster stoically, she could face danger unflinchingly, but this moral wrecking of the old man, who had been more to her than a father, was more than she could bear. Two great tears welled up into her beautiful, somber eyes and slowly rolled down her cheeks. She bowed like a willow bending to the force of the storm.

Her weakness was only momentary, however; her courage, bred from the wildness of her life surroundings, rose superior to her feminine weakness. She dashed her gloved hands across her eyes and wiped the tears away. She felt that she must be doing--not weeping. Had not she sealed a solemn compact with her lover? She must to work without delay.

She glanced round the room. Her gaze was that of one who wishes to rea.s.sure herself. It was as if the old life had gone from her and she was about to embark on a career new--foreign to her. A career in which she could see no future--only the present. She felt like one taking a long farewell to a life which had been fraught with nothing but delight.

The expression of her face told of the pain of the parting. With a heavy sigh she pa.s.sed out of the room--out into the chill night air, where even the welcome sounds of the croaking frogs and the lowing cattle were not. Where nothing was to cheer her for the work which in the future must be hers. Something of that solemn night entered her soul. The gloom of disaster was upon her.

It was only a short distance to Dr. Abbot's house. The darkness of the night was no hindrance to the girl. Hither she made her way with the light, springing step of one whose mind is made up to a definite purpose.

She found Mrs. Abbot in. The little sitting-room in the doctor's house was delightfully homelike and comfortable. There was nothing pretentious about it--just solid comfort. And the great radiating stove in the center of it smelt invitingly warm to the girl as she came in out of the raw night air. Mrs. Abbot was alternating between a basket of sewing and a well-worn, cheap-edition novel. The old lady was waiting with patience, the outcome of experience, for the return of her lord to his supper.

"Well, 'Aunt' Margaret," said Jacky, entering with the confidence of an a.s.sured welcome, "I've come over for a good gossip. There's n.o.body at home--up there," with a nod in the direction of the ranch.

"My dear child, I'm so pleased," exclaimed Mrs. Abbot, coming forward from her rather rigid seat, and kissing the girl on both cheeks with old-fas.h.i.+oned cordiality. "Come and sit by the stove--yes, take that hideous hat off, which, by the way, I never could understand your wearing. Now, when John and I were first en--"

"Yes, yes, dear. I know what you're going to say," interrupted the girl, smiling in spite of the dull aching at her heart. She knew how this sweet old lady lived in the past, and she also knew how, to a sympathetic ear, she loved to pour out the delights of memory from a heart overflowing with a strong affection for the man of her choice.

Jacky had come here to talk of other matters, and she knew that when "Aunt" Margaret liked she could be very shrewd and practical.

Something in the half-wistful smile of her companion brought the old lady quickly back from the realms of recollection, and a pair of keen, kindly eyes met the steady gray-black orbs of the girl.

"Ah, Jacky, my child, we of the frivolous s.e.x are always being forced into considering the mundane matters of everyday life here at Foss River. What is it, dear? I can see by your face that you are worrying over something."

The girl threw herself into an easy chair, drawn up to the glowing stove with careful forethought by the old lady. Mrs. Abbot reseated herself in the straight-backed chair she usually affected. She carefully put her book on one side and took up some darning, a.s.siduously inserting the needle but without further attempt at work. It was something to fix her attention on whilst talking. Old Mrs. Abbot always liked to be able to occupy her hands when talking seriously. And Jacky's face told her that this was a moment for serious conversation.

"Where's the Doc?" the girl asked without preamble. She knew, of course, but she used the question by way of making a beginning.

The old lady imperceptibly straightened her back. She now antic.i.p.ated the reason of her companion's coming. She glanced over the top of a pair of gold _pince-nez_, which she had just settled comfortably upon the bridge of her pretty, broad nose.

"He's down at the saloon playing poker. Why, dear?"

Her question was so innocent, but Jacky was not for a moment deceived by its tone. The girl smiled plaintively into the fire. There was no necessity for her to disguise her feelings before "Aunt" Margaret, she knew. But her loyal nature shrank from flaunting her uncle's weaknesses before even this kindly soul. She kept her fencing att.i.tude a little longer, however.

"Who is he playing with?" Jacky raised a pair of inquiring gray eyes to her companion's face.

"Your uncle and--Lablache."

The shrewd old eyes watched the girl's face keenly. But Jacky gave no sign.

"Will you send for him, 'Aunt' Margaret?" said the girl, quietly.

"Without letting him know that I am here," she added, as an afterthought.

"Certainly, dear," the old lady replied, rising with alacrity. "Just wait a moment while I send word. Keewis hasn't gone to his teepee yet. I set him to clean some knives just now. He can go. These Indians are better messengers than they are domestics." Mrs. Abbot bustled out of the room.

She returned a moment later, and, drawing her chair beside that of the girl, seated herself and rested one soft white hand on those of her companion, which were reposing clasped in the lap of her dungaree skirt.

"Now, tell me, dear--tell me all about it--I know, it is your uncle."

The sympathy of her tone could never have been conveyed in mere words.

This woman's heart expressed its kindliness in voice and eyes. There was no resisting her, and Jacky made no effort to do so.

For one instant there flashed into the girl's face a look of utter distress. She had come purposely to talk plainly to the woman whom she had lovingly dubbed "Aunt Margaret," but she found it very hard when it came to the point, She cast about in her mind for a beginning, then abandoned the quest and blurted out lamely the very thing from which she most shrank.

"Say, auntie, you've observed uncle lately--I mean how strange he is?

You've noticed how often, now, he is--is not himself?"

"Whisky," said the old lady, uncompromisingly. "Yes, dear, I have. It is quite the usual thing to smell' old man Smith's vile liquor when John Allandale is about. I'm glad you've spoken. I did not like to say anything to you about it. John's on a bad trail."

"Yes, and a trail with a long, downhill gradient," replied Jacky, with a rueful little smile. "Say, aunt," she went on, springing suddenly to her feet and confronting the old lady's mildly-astonished gaze, "isn't there anything we can do to stop him? What is it? This poker and whisky are ruining him body and soul. Is the whisky the result of his losses? Or is the madness for a gamble the result of the liquor?"

"Neither the one--nor the other, my dear. It is--Lablache."

The older woman bent over her darning, and the needle pa.s.sed, rippling, round a "potato" in the sock which was in her lap. Her eyes were studiously fixed upon the work.

"Lablache--Lablache! It is always Lablache, whichever way I turn.

Gee--but the whole country reeks of him. I tell you right here, aunt, that man's worse than scurvy in our ranching world. Everybody and everything in Foss River seems to be in his grip."

"Excepting a certain young woman who refuses to be ensnared."

The words were spoken quite casually. But Jacky started. Their meaning was driven straight home. She looked down upon the bent, gray head as if trying to penetrate to the thought that was pa.s.sing within. There was a moment's impressive silence. The clock ticked loudly in the silence of the room. A light wind was whistling rather shrilly outside, round the angles of the house.

"Go on, auntie," said the girl, slowly. "You haven't said enough--yet. I guess you're thinking mighty--deeply."

Mrs. Abbot looked up from her work. She was smiling, but behind that smile there was a strange gravity in the expression of her eyes.

"There is nothing more to say at present." Then she added, in a tone from which all seriousness had vanished, "Hasn't Lablache ever asked you to marry him?"

A light was beginning to dawn upon the girl.

"Yes--why?"

"I thought so." It was now Mrs. Abbot's turn to rise and confront her companion. And she did so with the calm manner of one who is a.s.sured that what she is about to say cannot be refuted. Her kindly face had lost nothing of its sweet expression, only there was something in it which seemed to be asking a mute question, whilst her words conveyed the statement of a case as she knew it. "You dear, foolish people. Can you not see what is going on before your very eyes, or must a stupid old woman like myself explain what is patent to the veriest fool in the settlement? Lablache is the source of your uncle's trouble, and, incidentally, you are the incentive. I have watched--I have little else to do in Foss River--you all for years past, and there is little that I could not tell you about any of you, as far as the world sees you.

Lablache has been a source of a world of thought to me. The business side of him is patent to everybody. He is hard, flinty, tyrannical--even unscrupulous. I am telling you nothing new, I know. But there is another side to his character which some of you seem to ignore. He is capable of strong pa.s.sions--ay, very strong pa.s.sions. He has conceived a pa.s.sion for you. I will call it by no other name in such an unholy brute as Lablache. He wishes to marry _you--he means to marry you_."

The silver-haired old lady had worked herself up to an unusual vehemence. She paused after accentuating her last words. Jacky, taking advantage of the break, dropped in a question.

"But--how does this affect my uncle?"

"Aunt" Margaret sniffed disdainfully and resettled the gla.s.ses which, in the agitation of the moment, had slipped from her nose.

"Of course it affects your uncle," she continued more quietly. "Now listen and I will explain." Once more these two seated themselves and "Aunt" Margaret again plunged into her story.

"Sometimes I catch myself speculating as to how it comes about that you have inspired this pa.s.sion in such a man as Lablache," she began, glancing into the somberly beautiful face beside her. "I should have expected that ma.s.s of flesh and money--he always reminds me of a jelly-fish, my dear--ugh!--to have wished to take to himself one of your gaudy b.u.t.terflies from New York or London for a wife; not a simple child of the prairie who is more than half a wild--wild savage." She smiled lovingly into the girl's face. "You see these coa.r.s.e money-grubbers always prefer their pills well gilded, and, as a rule, their matrimonial pills need a lot of gilding to bring them up to the standard of what they think a wife should be. However, it was not long before it became plain to me that he wished to marry you. He may be a master of finance; he may disguise his feelings--if he has any--in business, so that the shrewdest observer can discover no vulnerable point in his armor of dissimulation. But when it comes to matters pertaining to--to--love--quite the wrong word in his case, my dear--these men are as babes; worse, they are fools. When Lablache makes up his mind to a purpose he generally accomplishes his end--"

"In business," suggested Jacky, moodily.

"Just so--in business, my dear. In matters matrimonial it may be different. But I doubt his failure in that," went on Mrs. Abbot, with a decided snap of her expressive mouth. "He will try by fair means or foul, and, if I know anything of him, he will never relinquish his purpose. He asked you to marry him--and of course you refused, quite natural and right. He will not risk another refusal from you--these people consider themselves very sensitive, my dear--so he will attempt to accomplish his end by other means--means much more congenial to him, the--the beast. There now, I've said it, my dear. The doctor tells me that he is quite the most skilful player at poker that he has ever come across."

"I guess that's so," said the girl, with a dark, ironical smile.

"And that his luck is phenomenal," the old lady went on, without appearing to notice the interruption. "Very well. Your uncle, the old fool--excuse me, my dear--has done nothing but gamble all his life. The doctor says that he believes John has never been known to win more than about once in a month's play, no matter with whom he plays. You know--we all know--that for years he has been in the habit of raising loans from this monumental cuttle-fish to settle his losses. And you can trust that individual to see that these loans are well secured. John Allandale is reputed very rich, but the doctor a.s.sures me that were Lablache to foreclose his mortgages a very, very big slice of your uncle's worldly goods would be taken to meet his debts.