The Lady Doc Part 51

"Very."

"And you're not done paying," she added significantly.

"That remains to be seen."

Dr. Harpe's eyes narrowed in thought.

"Ess," in a patronizing drawl, "why don't you pull your freight? I'll advance you the money myself."

"Run away? Why?"

"You're going to be arrested--that's a straight tip. You may get off, but think what you'll have to go through first. Skip till things simmer down. They'll not go after you."

The girl flashed a smile of real merriment at her, which almost cost Dr.

Harpe her self-control. The young and now glowing beauty of the girl before her, the unconscious air of superiority and confidence which had its wellspring in some mysterious source was maddening to her. The interview was taxing her self-control to the limit and she felt that in some inexplicable way the tables were turning.

"You--won't go, then?" Her voice held a menace.

"Why should I, since I am innocent? Take a vacation yourself, Dr. Harpe, with the money you so generously offer me. You need it."

She followed the girl's dancing eyes to the mirror opposite which was tilted so that it reflected the whole of her uncouth pose. Slid far down in the chair with her heels resting on the floor and wrinkling hose exposed above her boottops, a knot of dull, red hair slipped to one side with shorter ends hanging in dishevelment about her face, she looked--the thought was her own--like a drab of the streets in the magistrate's court in the morning. She was startled, shocked by her own appearance. Was she, Emma Harpe, as old, as haggard, as evil-looking as that!

She had clung with peculiar tenacity to the hallucination that she still had youthful charm of face and figure. As she stared, it seemed as though the sand was sliding a little faster from beneath her feet. She shoved the loose knot of hair to its place and straightened herself, growing hot at the realization that she had betrayed to Essie Tisdale something of her consternation.

She turned upon her fiercely--

"Look here, Ess, if you want to be friends with me, and have my influence to get you out of this mess, you'd better change your tactics."

"Haven't I yet made it clear to you that I care no more for your friends.h.i.+p than for your enmity? Do you imagine that you can frighten liking, or force respect after the occasion which we both remember?"

"There's one thing I can do--I can make Crowheart too hot to hold you!"

Her grip on herself was going fast.

Essie Tisdale stood up and, folding her arms, drew herself to her slim height while she looked at her in contemptuous silence.

"I know there is no low thing to which you would not stoop to make good your boast. You make me think of a viper that has exhausted its venom.

You have the disposition to strike, but you no longer have the power."

"You think not? And why? Do you imagine that your position in Crowheart will be changed one iota by the fact that you've got a few dollars that are red with blood?" She flung the taunt at her with savage insolence.

"My position in Crowheart is of no importance to me. But"--her voice cut like finely tempered steel--"don't goad me too far. Don't forget that I know you for what you are--a moral plague--creeping like a pestilence among people who are not familiar with your face. I know, and you _know_ that I know you are in no position, Dr. Harpe, to point a finger at the commonest women in the dance hall below."

The woman sprang from her chair and walked to her with the crouching swiftness of a preying animal. She grasped Essie Tisdale's wrist in a grip which left its imprint for hours after.

"How dare you!"

Essie Tisdale raised her chin higher.

"How dare I?" She smiled in the infuriated woman's face. "It takes no courage for me to oppose you now. When I was a biscuit-shooter here, as you lost no opportunity to remind me, you loomed large! That time has gone by. Crowheart will know you some day as I know you. Your name will be a byword in every saloon and bunk-house in the country!"

"I'll _kill_ you!"

The tense fingers were curved like steel hooks as she sprang for Essie Tisdale's slender throat, but even as the girl shoved her chair between them a masculine voice called "Esther" and a rap came upon the door.

Doctor Harpe's arms dropped to her side and she clutched handfuls of her skirt as she struggled for self-control.

Essie Tisdale walked swiftly to the door and threw it wide. The towering stranger stood in the corridor looking in amazement from one woman to the other.

The girl turned and said with careful distinctness:

"You have been so occupied of late that perhaps you have not heard the news. My uncle--Mr. Richard Kincaid--Dr. Harpe."

XXVIII

THE SWEETEST THING IN THE WORLD

Dr. Harpe standing at her office window saw the lovely Pearline Starr, curled and dressed at ten in the morning, trip down the street bearing a gla.s.s of buffalo berry jelly in her white-gloved hands, while Mrs. Percy Parrott sitting erect in the Parrotts' new, second-hand surrey, drove toward the hotel, carefully protecting from accident some prized package which she held in her lap. Mrs. Parrott was wearing her new ding-a-ling hat, gra.s.s-green in color, which, topping off the moss-colored serge which, closely fitting her attenuated figure, gave Mrs. Parrott a surprising resemblance to a katydid about to jump.

Dr. Harpe could not see Mrs. Abe Tutts walking gingerly across lots carrying a pot of baked beans and brown bread in her two hands, nor Mrs.

Alva Jackson panting up another street with a Lady Baltimore cake in the hope of reaching the hotel before her dearest friend and enemy Mrs.

Tutts, but Dr. Harpe knew from what she already had seen and from the curious glances cast at the windows of the Terriberry House, that the town was agog with Essie Tisdale's romantic story and her newly established relations.h.i.+p to the important looking stranger. Mrs.

Terriberry could be trusted to attend to that and in her capable hands it was certain to lose nothing in the telling.

The story was simple enough in itself and had its counterpart in many towns throughout the West. Young d.i.c.k Kincaid had run away from his home on the bank of the Mississippi River to make his fortune in the mining camps of the far West. He did not write, because the fortune was always just a little farther on. The months slipped into years, and when he returned with the "stake" which was to be his peace offering, the name of Kincaid was but a memory in the community, and the restless Mississippi with its ever-changing channel flowed over the valuable tract of black-walnut timber which had const.i.tuted the financial resources of the Kincaids. The little sister had married a westerner as poor as he was picturesque, and against her parents' wishes. They had gone, never to be heard from again, disappeared mysteriously and completely, and Samuel Kincaid had died, he and his wife, as much of loneliness and longing as of age.

The triumphant return of his boyish dreams was, instead, an acute and haunting remorse. The success that had been his, the success that was to be his in the near-by city, never erased the bitter disappointment of that home-coming. He had searched in vain for some trace of the little sister whom he had loved. He had never given up hoping and that hope had had its weight in influencing him to make the tedious trip to Crowheart.

And then, as though the Fates had punished him enough for his filial neglect, his sister's eyes had looked out at him from the flower-like face at the funeral of old Edouard Dubois. He had followed up his impulse, and the rest is quickly told, for all Crowheart knew the story of Essie Tisdale's miraculous rescue and of the picture primer which had furnished the single clue to her ident.i.ty.

With the news of Essie Tisdale's altered position--and Mrs. Terriberry missed no opportunity to convey the impression that Kincaid's resources were unlimited--the tide turned and the buffalo berry jelly, the Lady Baltimore cake, baked beans and Mrs. Parrott's tinned lobster salad, were the straws which in Crowheart always showed which way the wind was blowing. That the ladies bearing these toothsome offerings had not been speaking to Essie for some months past was a small matter which they deemed best to forget.

Not so Mrs. Terriberry.

Mrs. Terriberry not only had Essie Tisdale's score to pay off but her own as well, and who knows but that the latter was the sharper incentive? To have been obliged to watch through a crack in the curtain the fas.h.i.+onable world rustle by on its way to Mrs. Alva Jackson's euchre had occasioned a pang not easily forgotten. To have knowledge of the monthly meetings of Mrs. Parrott's Shadow Embroidery Cla.s.s only through the Society Column of the Crowheart _Courier_ and to be deprived of the privilege of hearing Mrs. Abe Tutts's paper upon Wagnerian music at the Culture Club were slights that rankled.

She was suspiciously close at hand when the ladies appeared in the office of the Terriberry House with their culinary successes; also she was wearing the red foulard which never went out of the closet except to funerals and important functions.

Although the most conspicuous thing about these early callers was the parcels they carried, Mrs. Terriberry chose to ignore them.

"Why, how do you do, Mrs. Parrott, and Miss Starr, too. It's a lovely day to be out, isn't it?" Her voice was distinctly patronizing and she extended a languid hand to Mrs. Jackson. "And usin' your brain like you do, Mrs. Tutts, writin' them pieces for the Culture Club, I suppose you have to git exercise."

"I've brought Essie some lobster salad from a receipt that mamma sent me," said Mrs. Parrott when she could get an opening, "and while it's canned lobster, it's really delicious!"

"The whites of sixteen aigs I put in this Lady Baltimore cake, and it's light as a feather."