The Rim of the Desert Part 30

It was a mild evening, the last in February, and Jimmie, who had received two copies of the March issue of _Sampson's Magazine_ direct from the publisher, celebrated the event by taking the Society Editor canoeing on Lake Was.h.i.+ngton. Instead of helping with the bow paddle, of which she was fully capable, Miss Atkins settled against the pillows facing him, with the masterpiece in her lap. The magazine was closed, showing his name among the specially mentioned on the cover, but she kept the place with her finger. She had a pretty hand, and it was adorned by the very best diamond that could be bought at Hanson's for one hundred and fifty dollars.

She waited, watching Jimmie's stroke, while the Peterboro slipped out from the boathouse and rose quartering to the swells of a pa.s.sing launch. Her hat was placed carefully behind her in the bow, and the light wind roughened her hair, which was parted on the side, into small rings on her forehead. It gave her an air of boyish camaraderie, and the young author's glance, moving from the magazine and the ring, swept her whole trim figure to the mannish, flat-heeled little shoes, and returned to her face. "This is my red-letter day," he said.

"It's the proudest in my life," answered Geraldine, and the way in which she said it made him catch his breath.

"It makes me feel almost sure enough to cut loose from the _Press_ and go into business for myself."

"Oh, I shouldn't be in a hurry to leave the paper, if I were you," she replied, "even though _Sampson's_ has asked to see more of your work."

"It isn't the magazine opening I am considering; though I shall do what I can in that way, of course. But what would you think of an offer to take full charge of a newspaper east of the Cascades? It's so." He paused, nodding in emphasis to the confirmation. "The letter is there in my coat pocket. It's from Bailey--you remember that young fellow I told you about who made an investment in the Wenatchee valley. Well, it seems they have incorporated a town on some of that property. His city lots are selling so fast he has raised the price three times. And they have put him up for mayor. He says it's mighty hard to run an election without a newspaper, and even if it's a late start, we will be ready next time. And the valley needs advertising; people in the east don't know where Wenatchee apples grow. You understand. He will finance a newspaper--or rather he and Lucky Banks are going to--if I will take the management. He is holding offices now, in a brick block that is building, until he hears from me."

"Is it in Hesperides Vale, where the Bankses live?"

"Yes. The name of the town is Weatherbee. And I heard from that little miner, too." Jimmie paused, smiling at the recollection. "It was a kind of supplement to Bailey's letter. He thought likely I could recommend some young fellow to start a newspaper. A married man was preferred, as it was a new camp and in need of more ladies."

Geraldine laughed, flus.h.i.+ng softly, "Isn't that just like him?" she said.

"I can see his eyes twinkling."

"It sounds rather good to me," Jimmie went on earnestly. "I have confidence in Bailey. And it was mother's dream, you know, to see me establish a paper over there; it would mean something to me to see it realized--but--do you think you could give up your career to help me through?"

Geraldine was silent, and Jimmie leaned forward a little, resting on his stroke. "I know I am not worth it, but so far as that goes, neither was my father; yet mother gave up everything to back him. She kept him on that desert homestead the first five years, until he proved up and got his patent, and he might have stayed with it, been rich to-day, if she had lived."

"Of course I like you awfully well," said Geraldine, flus.h.i.+ng pinkly, "and it isn't that I haven't every confidence in you, but--I must take a little time to decide."

A steamer pa.s.sed, and Jimmie resumed his strokes, mechanically turning the canoe out of the trough. Geraldine opened the magazine and began to scan the editor's note under the t.i.tle. "Why," she exclaimed tremulously, "did you know about this? Did you see the proofs?"

"No. What is the excitement? Isn't it straight?"

"Listen!" Miss Atkins sat erect; the cus.h.i.+on dropped under her elbow; her lips closed firmly between the sentences she read.

"'This is one of those true stories stranger than fiction. This man, who wantonly murdered a child in his path and told of it for the amus.e.m.e.nt of a party of pleasure-seekers aboard a yacht on Puget Sound, who should be serving a prison sentence to-day, yet never came to a trial, is Hollis Tisdale of the Geographical Survey; a man in high favor with the administration and the sole owner of the fabulously rich Aurora mine in Alaska. The widow of his partner who made the discovery and paid for it with his life is penniless. Strange as it may seem--for the testimony of a criminal is not allowable in a United States court--Hollis Tisdale has been called as a witness for the Government in the pending Alaska coal trials!"

The Society Editor met Jimmie's appalled gaze. "It sounds muckraky," she commented, still tremulously. "But these new magazines have to do something to get a hold. This is just to attract public attention."

"They'll get that, when Tisdale brings a suit for libel. Hope he will do it, and that the judgment will swamp them. They must have got his name from Mrs. Feversham."

"It looks political," said Geraldine conciliatingly, "as though they were striking through him at the administration."

"Go on," said Jimmie recklessly. "Let's have it over with."

And Geraldine launched quickly into the story. It had been mercilessly and skilfully abridged. All those undercurrents of feeling, which Jimmie had faithfully noted, had been suppressed; and of David Weatherbee, whom Tisdale had made the hero of the adventure, there was not a word.

"Great guns!" exclaimed the unfortunate author at the finish. "Great-- guns!"

But Geraldine said nothing. She only closed the magazine and pushed it under the pillow out of sight. There was a long silence. A first star appeared and threw a wavering trail on the lake. Jimmie, dipping his paddle mechanically, turned the Peterboro into this pale pathway. The pride and elation had gone out of his face. His mouth drooped disconsolately.

"And you called this your proudest day," he broke out at last.

An unexpected gentleness crept over the Society Editor's countenance. "It would be great to help create a city," she said then. "To start with it ourselves, at the foundations and grow." And she added very softly, with a little break in her voice: "I've decided to resign and go to Weatherbee."

CHAPTER XXIV

s...o...b..UND IN THE ROCKIES AND "FIT AS A MOOSE"

Tisdale, who was expected to furnish important testimony in the Alaska coal cases, had been served official notice at the hospital during Banks'

visit. The trial was set for the twenty-fourth of March and in Seattle.

The prospector had found him braced up in bed, and going over the final proof of his Mata.n.u.ska report, with the aid of a secretary. "You better go slow, Hollis," he said. "You are looking about as reliable as your shadow.

Likely the first puff of a wind would lift you out of sight. My, yes. But I just ran over to say h.e.l.lo, and let you know if it's the expense that's hurrying you, there's a couple of thousand in the Wenatchee bank I can't find any use for, now the water-works are done and the house. You can have it well's not. It ain't drawing any interest." And Tisdale had taken the little man's hand between both his own and called him "true gold." But he was in no pressing need of money, though it was possible he might delay in refunding those sums Banks had advanced on the project. He was able enough to be on his feet, but these doctors were cautious; it might be another month before he would be doing a man's work.

He started west, allowing himself ample time to reach Seattle by the fifteenth of March, when Banks' option expired, but the fourteenth found him, after three days of delay by floods, s...o...b..und in the Rockies. The morning of the fifteenth, while the rotaries were still clearing track ahead, he made his way back a few miles to the nearest telegraph station and got into communication with the mining man.

"How are you?" came the response from Weatherbee. "Done for? Drop off at Scenic Hot Springs, if your train comes through. She wrote she was there.

Came up with a little crowd for the coasting. Take care of yourself, and here is to you.

"Lucky."

And Tisdale, with the genial wrinkles deepening at the corners of his eyes once more, wired: "Fit as a moose. Go fifteenth. Close business."

A judge may p.r.o.nounce a sentence yet, at the same time, feel ungovernable springs of sympathy welling from the depths of his heart, and while Tisdale pushed his way back to the stalled train, he went over the situation from Beatriz Weatherbee's side. He knew what the sale of that desert tract must mean to her; how high her hopes had flown since the payment of the bonus. Looking forward to that final interview when, notwithstanding his improvements, Banks should relinquish his option, he weighed her disappointment. In imagination he saw the light go out of her eyes; her lip, that short upper lip with its curves of a bow, would quiver a little, and the delicate nostril; then, instantly, before she had spoken a word, her indomitable pride would be up like a lifted whip, to sting her into self-control. Oh, she had the courage; she would brave it out. Still, still, he had intended to be there, not only to press the ultimate purpose, but to--ease her through. Banks might be abrupt. He was sorry. He was so sorry that though he had tramped, mushed a mile, he faced about, and, in the teeth of a bitter wind, returned to the station.

The snow was falling thickly; it blurred his tracks behind him; the crest of a drift was caught up and carried, swirling, into the railroad cut he had left, and a great gust tore into the office with him. The solitary operator hurried to close the door and, s.h.i.+vering, stooped to put a huge stick of wood in the stove. "It's too bad," he said. "Forgot the main point, I suppose. If this keeps up, and your train moves to-morrow, it will be through a regular snow canyon. I just got word your head rotary is out of commission, but another is coming up from the east with a gang of shovellers. They'll stop here for water. It's a chance for you to ride back to your train."

"Thank you, I will wait," Tisdale answered genially. "But I like walking in this mountain air. I like it so well that if the blockade doesn't lift by to-morrow, I am going to mush through and pick up a special to the coast."

While he spoke, he brushed the snow from his shoulders and took off his hat and gloves. He stood another moment, rubbing and pinching his numb hands, then went over to the desk and filled a telegraph blank. He laid down the exact amount of the charges in silver, to which he added five dollars in gold.

The operator went around the counter and picked up the money. For an instant his glance, moving from the message, rested on Tisdale's face in curious surprise. This man surely enjoyed the mountain air. He had tramped back in the teeth of a growing blizzard to send an order for violets to Hollywood Gardens, Seattle. The flowers were to be expressed to a lady at Scenic Hot Springs.

After that Tisdale spent an interval moving restlessly about the room. He read the advertis.e.m.e.nts on the walls, studied the map of the Great Northern route, and when the stove grew red-hot, threw open the door and tramped the platform in the piping wind. Finally, when the keyboard was quiet, the operator brought him a magazine. The station did not keep a news-stand, but a conductor on the westbound had left this for him to read. There was a mighty good yarn--this was it--"The Tenas Papoose." It was just the kind when a man was trying to kill time.

Tisdale took the periodical. No, he had not seen it aboard the train; there were so many of these new magazines, it was hard to choose. He smiled at first, that editor's note was so preposterous, so plainly sensational; or was it malicious? He re-read it, knitting his brows. Who was this writer Daniels? His mind ran back to that day aboard the _Aquila_. Aside from the Morgansteins and Mrs. Weatherbee, there had been no one else in the party until the lieutenant was picked up at Bremerton, after the adventure was told. But Daniels--he glanced back to be sure of the author's name--James Daniels. Now he remembered. That was the irrepressible young fellow who had secured the photographs in Snoqualmie Pa.s.s at the time of the accident to the Morganstein automobile; who had later interviewed Mrs. Weatherbee on the train. Had he then sought her at her hotel, ostensibly to present her with a copy of the newspaper in which those ill.u.s.trations were published, and so ingratiated himself far enough in her favor to gather another story from her?

Tisdale went over to a chair near the window and began to go over those abridged columns. He turned the page, and his lips set grimly. At last he closed the magazine and looked off through the drifting snow. He had been grossly misrepresented, and the reason was clear.

This editor, struggling to establish a new periodical, had used Daniels'

material to attract the public eye. He may even have had political ambitions and aimed deeper to strike the administration through him. He may have taken this method to curry favor with certain moneyed men. Still, still, what object had there been in leaving Weatherbee completely out of the story? Weatherbee, who should have carried the leading role; who, lifting the adventure high above the sensational, had made it something fine.

Again his thoughts ran back to that cruise on the _Aquila_. He saw that group on the after-deck; Rainier lifting southward like a phantom mountain over the opal sea; and westward the Olympics, looming clear-cut, vivid as a scene in the tropics; the purplish blue of the nearer height sharply defined against the higher amethyst slope that marked the gorge of the Dosewallups. This setting had brought the tragedy to his mind, and to evade the questions Morganstein pressed, he had commenced to relate the adventure. But afterwards he had found himself going into the more intimate detail with a hope of reviving some spark of appreciation of David in the heart of his wife. And he had believed that he had. Still, who else, in all that little company, could have had any motive in leaving out Weatherbee? Why had she told the story at all? She was a woman of great self-control, but also she had depths of pride. Had she, in the high tide of her anger or pique, taken this means to retaliate for the disappointment he had caused her?

The approaching work-train whistled the station. He rose and went back to the operator's desk and filled another blank. This time he addressed a prominent attorney, and his close friend, in Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C. And the message ran:

"See _Sampson's Magazine_, March, page 330. Find whether revised or Daniels' copy."