Lightnin Part 18

Marvin had not been seen in the neighborhood since a few days after Bill Jones had disappeared. He had returned to his cabin, after having established himself in an office in San Francisco with the intention of taking Bill back with him. During the days spent on the trails in search of the old man he had successfully evaded Sheriff Blodgett and had gone back to his office, where he had received a forwarded letter from Bill at the veterans' home at Yountville. He had taken one trip to the home with the purpose of persuading Bill to return with him to the city. But when he saw how comfortable Bill was there in the hillside country, surrounded by the old veterans who vied with one another in recounting their past prowess, he decided to let him alone until such time as he could effect a reconciliation between Bill and Mrs. Jones.

This, he trusted, would be at the termination of the case brought against him by the Pacific Railroad to recover the timber which he had sold to Rodney Harper previous to the sale of his timber-land to the Golden Gate Land Company by Mrs. Marvin. Then, too, he hoped the way would be made straight for him and Millie, although he had half lost hope under his realization of Thomas's superior eligibility.

These things, known to the latter, destroyed his composure and made the lapse between the filing of Mrs. Jones's divorce suit and the termination of its three months' summons by publication, required by law, a period of anxiety. He knew that if Marvin were vindicated before Mrs. Jones could secure her divorce his whole framework would collapse, as Millie and Mrs. Jones, straightforward as they were, would brook no hint of dishonesty on his part. Once discovered as unworthy of trust, their confidence in him would be broken and Marvin would be restored to full standing, not only in Millie's affections, but in Mrs. Jones's approval.

In the latter part of March he took a hurried trip to Reno, where, in conference with Blodgett, who had never been able to forgive Marvin's evasion of arrest, maneuvers to have the two suits tried at the same time sent him back to San Francisco rejoicing in the antic.i.p.ation that his days of discomfort would soon be over and he could return to his own world again.

CHAPTER XIV

Mid-April came with its arabesquan days of sunlight and shadow and its fragile broidery of new leaf and timid blossom. It was as if its coming had stirred anew the life in Reno's divorce colony. All winter the courts had been dull, most of the men and women seeking divorces arriving in the early fall and biding their time of six months by hibernating through the long, cold season. But now there was a renewed activity in divorce circles. The court calendars were full and there was a steady stream of gaily clad applicants making their way in and out of the Washoe County court-house, going in with nervous, hasty, anxious tread and coming out with a gait which spoke of a new freedom and a smile that bespoke life as once again worth living.

It was one morning just after the flux of spring divorces had begun that Sheriff Blodgett stood looking over the calendar in Judge Lemuel Townsend's court-room. He scowled as he read the words announcing that the first case was that of the Railroad Company versus John Marvin. He patted the warrant which still occupied the waiting list in his pocket.

Placing a chair close to the court-room door, he waited for the crowd to begin to file in. He knew that he could not arrest a man in the court-room, but he intended to keep his eye on the corridor, and to that end had propped one of the doors open with a chair so that he could see clear to the swinging doors that led in from the street. If Marvin put in an appearance, he intended to arrest him at once. The thought gave him satisfaction and he sat twirling his long, drooping mustache with one hand and fondling the handcuffs in his coat pocket with the other.

Revenge at last would play its part to-day, for, even if Marvin failed to appear and therefore balked him again, the railroad company would get judgment, anyway.

It was at this point in his reverie that Thomas entered the court-room, greeting the sheriff with a genial, "Oh, h.e.l.lo there, Blodgett! I guess our day's come."

With a patronizing pat on Blodgett's shoulder, Thomas pa.s.sed and went to the clerk, where he procured a list of the day's cases. He, too, nodded in satisfaction, as he saw that the Pacific Railroad case, in which he was attorney, was to come up first. Running his finger down the line, he stopped at another close to the end, smiled again, and turned to the sheriff.

"The Marvin case is first," he observed.

The sheriff nodded and a frown slowly puckered his brow. He walked slowly up to Thomas, who stood at the clerk's desk just within the railing. He hesitated, clearing his throat, and found the courage to ask, with a slight timidity in his voice and manner, "You ain't a-goin'

to bring up the old story of my serving the warrant at Calivada, are you?"

Thomas laughed. "No," he replied; "I don't think I'll have to go into that. But I will ask you about the time you went to Marvin's camp."

Blodgett heaved his shoulders in relief, and, with hands in his pockets, went back to his station at the door. "That's all right!" He exhaled a full breath once again.

Thomas turned the leaves of the calendar, looked ahead for a day or two, without noticing much that he saw, then turned the leaves back again to the day's list. He went to the court-room window and looked out upon the valley that ran from Reno up toward the foothills. He sniffed the keen, cool air that was blown up to him. He stood contemplating the rus.h.i.+ng waters of the Truckee River below. After several minutes' thought he faced Blodgett again.

"I'm going to ask you what time you were at Marvin's camp, for I want to show he was taking down the timber," he announced.

"I didn't get out where the timber was," the sheriff replied.

"But you know he had a gang of lumbermen there?" In Thomas's tone and in the gleam on his cold, blue eyes the sheriff caught the message of persuasion.

"Oh, sure." He nodded with the air of a man who understood what was wanted of him.

"And they drove you off by force?"

Blodgett nodded again.

"And you remember the date?"

"I guess I won't fergit it." There was emphasis in Blodgett's answer and he arose impatiently from his chair and stood, his arms akimbo, peering down the corridor. "Do you think Marvin'll be here to-day?" This time he was interlocutor. "I got a notion he won't," he added, fathering his disappointment by admitting the possibility of frustration in the one desire that had held him ever since Marvin had foiled him by the technicality of the state boundary-line. He was bound, however, that there should be no opportunity for escape this time.

"I don't care whether he turns up or not," Thomas answered, going to the lawyers' table, opening his brief-case, and setting them out before him as he swung gracefully into a chair. "The case is a cinch," he emphasized, with a grin that found reflection in Blodgett's eyes.

With a warning to the clerk to keep an eye on things until he should return, Blodgett left the court-room and swaggered up the corridor, stopping at the door of the other rooms and taking a frowning survey of the occupants, hoping that Marvin had entered one of them by mistake. If John Marvin was in Reno he was not going to escape arrest this day. With this comforting conclusion in mind, he took up his stand just outside of the court-house door at the top of the steps.

In the mean time Everett Hammond, escorting Mrs. Jones and Millie Buckley, entered Judge Townsend's court-room and were greeted effusively by Thomas.

"Oh, good morning!" He bowed low over Mrs. Jones's hand, which he held in his. "I'm glad to see you." Staring at Millie, who looked very fetching in a trim blue serge tailor suit, he beamed. "How fine you look this morning; quite irresistible, I a.s.sure you!"

Millie blushed and looked with frightened glance from the judge's bench to the lawyers' table, and from there to the witness-stand and back toward the door, for all the world as if she were contemplating a rapid escape. She took a deep breath. "I don't feel irresistible," she said.

"I feel just as if I wanted to cry and run away." She pouted at Thomas, with entreaty in her pretty eyes.

Thomas laughed, put his hand on her arm in deprecation, and shrugged her fears away. "Oh, the trial won't amount to anything, little lady. What do you say to that, Mrs. Jones?"

The older woman's brown eyes were staring straight ahead, as if she saw a real horror and was without power to controvert it. "All I can say,"

she replied, in a high-pitched, high-strung voice, "is that I'm here."

She waited for a moment, casting furtive glances at Hammond and Thomas, who stood one on each side of her. Having found the courage to a.s.sert herself, she burst out, "And I wish I wasn't!"

"Now, now, Mrs. Jones!" There was banter in Hammond's voice, but there was concern in the wise direction of his eyes toward Thomas. "You're a mighty brave woman and I know you're going through with this, for it means that you'll be in a much better position to find your husband and look out for your old age after you get the money for the place."

Mrs. Jones made no response, but cast anxious eyes about the room, and she folded her hands in resignation across her ample waist-line.

"It's like going to the dentist. The worst part is making up your mind to it." Thomas leaned over Mrs. Jones and smiled his most engaging smile. He received no answer to it, so he turned to Millie, who stood at the other side of him.

Before he could speak, the girl rid herself of the question that had been ever present in her mind now for six months, and one which she had never failed to ask him every time she saw him or wrote to him.

"Have you heard anything of daddy?"

Thomas's smile disappeared. He left the little group of four in the middle of the s.p.a.ce inside of the rails and sat down again at the table, annoyance in the slump with which he threw himself into his chair. "No, we haven't been able to locate him." He would have been sullen had he dared, but his game was too nearly played and he did not wish to foozle at the last, so he controlled his mood and forced a smile as he thought of a method of getting away from his client's importunity for awhile.

"It must be distasteful for you two women to remain in here any longer than possible," he said, rising from his chair again and pointing to a door at one side of the court-room. "Lennon," he called to the clerk, "my clients can wait in there, can't they?"

The clerk acquiescing, he and Hammond courteously escorted Mrs. Jones and Millie to the door and showed them into a small room which had been fitted up for hysterical women overcome with the proceeding in their cases, or for those who, like Mrs. Jones and Millie, wished to avoid the embarra.s.sment of a long wait in the court-room.

As the two women went through the door, Thomas turned to Hammond and advised, in a low voice: "You better go, too, Hammond. Keep them cheered up."

With bad grace in his shrug and in his eyes, he followed Thomas's suggestion, first murmuring in his partner's ear: "I'll be d.a.m.n glad when this day is over. All I've been doing this last week is to keep these darned women from backing out."

CHAPTER XV

By this time the court-room was filling up with its usual motley crowd of interested parties and spectators. There were the seekers after freedom, a heterogeneous collection of them, in all sorts and conditions of clothes, of all ages and of all kinds of faces and figures. There were the women from the millionaire colonies of the East, chic, sleek, and composed. They retired into a far corner with their attorneys, conferring in low tones, or else sitting, apparently unperturbed, while waiting for their cases to be called. There were always the adventuress types, chic, too, but made up with an eye to future conquest, their skirts always tighter or wider or shorter or longer than the style decreed, their hair a little more so-so, their lips redder, their cheeks rosier, and their faces whiter than their more conservative sisters of a narrower way. There were tired women from far states not allowing divorces for cruelty or desertion. They sat, in nondescript clothes, most of them, with eyes heavy-lidded, as if they were too weary to care much what happened to them. There were gay young creatures, dancers and small-time vaudeville actresses, who refused to take life seriously and who availed themselves of a dull season to make themselves free for another venture. There was a sprinkling of men, one of them a lumber magnate from an Eastern state, another a noted cabaret entertainer. They sat around, restlessly out of place, but at the same time taking an interest in those about them.

Supplementing these were the spectators. Among them were tourists who came to Reno for the express purpose of attending the divorce trials.

Inquisitive folk, regular residents of the town, dropped in to pa.s.s an hour's time and to gather gossip for the afternoon tea-table.

Club-women, anxious to find food for reform, took up their seats close to the railing, determined that no word of the testimony or proceedings should escape them. And there were the usual hangers-on, old men and women with nothing to do, who found entertainment in listening to the human dramas unfolded from the witness-stand.