Hidden Creek Part 17

d.i.c.kie bent from her look as though he felt a pain. He took her hands up close to his breast. "Who told you that they called you that?" he asked breathlessly.

"That's what every one calls me--the men over in the Big Horn country--they tell men that are coming to Millings to be sure to look up 'Hudson's Queen.' Do they mean the Hotel, d.i.c.kie? They _do_ mean the Hotel, don't they, d.i.c.kie?--that I am _The_ Hudson's Queen?"

The truth sometimes presents itself like a withering flame. d.i.c.kie got up, put away her hands, walked up and down, then came back to her. He had heard the epithet and he knew its meaning. He wrestled now with his longing to keep her from such understanding, or, at least, to soften it.

She had asked for the clear truth and he had promised it to her. He stood away because he could not trust himself to endure the wincing of her hands and body when she heard the truth. He hoped dimly that she might not understand it.

"They don't mean the Hotel, Sheila," he said harshly. "They mean--Father.

You know now what they mean--?" In her stricken and bewildered eyes he saw that she did know. "I would like to kill them," sobbed d.i.c.kie suddenly. "I would like to kill--_him_. No, no, Sheila, don't you cry.

Don't you. It's not worth cryin' for. It's jest ignorant folks's ignorant and stupid talk. It's not worth cryin' for." He sat down on the arm of her chair and fairly gathered her into his arms. He rocked and patted her shoulder and kissed her gently on her hair--all with that boyishness, that brotherliness, that vast restraint so that she could not even guess the strange and unimaginable pangs he suffered from his self-control.

Before d.i.c.kie's resolution was burnt away by the young inner fire, Sheila withdrew herself gently from his arms and got up from the chair. She walked over to one of the two large windows--the sunset windows she called them, in contradistinction to the one sunrise window--and stood composing herself, her hands twisted together and lifted to the top of the lower sash, her forehead rested on them.

A rattle of china, a creaking step outside the door, interrupted their tremulous silence in which who knows what mysterious currents were pa.s.sing between their young minds.

"It's my dinner," said Sheila, and d.i.c.kie walked over mechanically and opened the door.

Amelia Plecks came panting into the room, set the tray down on a small table, and looked contempt at d.i.c.kie.

"There now, Miss Arundel," she said with breathless tenderness, "I've pro-cured a dandy chop for you. You said you was kind of famished for a lamb chop, and, of course, in a sheep country good mutton's real hard to come by, and this ain't properly speaking--lamb, _but_--! Well, say, it's just dandy meat."

She ignored d.i.c.kie as one might ignore the presence of some obnoxious insect in the reception-room of a queen. Her eyes were disgustedly fascinated by his presence, but in her conversation she would not admit this preoccupation of disgust.

"I'll be going," said d.i.c.kie.

Amelia nodded as one who applauds the becoming move of an inferior.

"Here's a note for you, Miss Arundel," she said, coming over to Sheila's post at the window, where she was trying to hide the traces of her tears.

"Well, say, who's been botherin' you?" Amelia's voice went down a long, threatening octave to a sinister ba.s.s note, at the voicing of which she turned to look at d.i.c.kie.

"Good-night, Sheila," he said diffidently; and Sheila coming quickly toward him, put out her hand. The note Amelia had handed her fell. d.i.c.kie and Amelia both bent to pick it up.

"No, you don't," said Amelia, s.n.a.t.c.hing it and accusing him, by her tone, of inexpressibly base intentions. "Say, Miss Arundel," in a whisper of thrilled confidence, "_Mister Jim_! Uh?"

"Thank you, d.i.c.kie," murmured Sheila, half-embarra.s.sed, half-amused by her adoring follower's innuendoes. "Thank you for everything. I shall have to think what I can do ... Good-night."

d.i.c.kie, his eyes forcibly held away from Jim's note, murmured, "Good-night, ma'am," and went out, closing the door with exaggerated gentleness. The quietness of his departure seemed to spare Sheila's sensitiveness.

"Ain't he a worm, though!" exclaimed Amelia, sparing n.o.body's sensitiveness.

"He's nothing of the sort," Sheila protested indignantly. "He is a dear!"

Amelia opened her prominent eyes and pursed her lips. A rea.s.suring light dawned on her bewilderment. "Oh, say, dearie, I wasn't speakin' of your Mister Jim. I was makin' reference to d.i.c.kie."

Sheila thrust the note into her pocket and went over to the table to light her lamp. "I know quite well that you meant d.i.c.kie," she said.

"n.o.body in Millings would ever dream of comparing Mr. James Greely to a worm, even if he came out from the ground just in time for the early bird to peck him. I know that."

"You're ornery to-night, dearie," announced Amelia, and with exemplary tact she creaked and breathed herself to the door. There she had a relapse from tactfulness, however, and planted herself to stare. "Ain't you goin' to read your note?"

Sheila, to be rid of her, unfolded the paper and read. It was quite beautifully penned in green ink on violet paper. Jim had written both wisely and too well.

"My darling--Why not permit me to call you that when it is the simple and sincere truth?" An astonished little voice in Sheila's brain here seemed to counter-question mechanically "Why not, indeed?"--"I cannot think of anything but you and how I love you. These little notes I am going to keep a-sending you are messengers of love. You will never meet with a more tremendous lover than me.... Be _my_ Queen," Jim had written with a great climatic splash of ink, and he had signed himself, "Your James."

Sheila's face was crimson when she put down the note. She stared straight in front of her for an instant with very large eyes in this scarlet rose of countenance and then she crumpled into mirth. She put her face into her hands and rocked. It seemed as though a giant of laughter had caught her about the ribs.

Amelia stared and felt a wound. She swallowed a lump of balked sentiment as she went out. Her idol was faintly tarnished, her heroine's stature preceptibly diminished. The sort of Madame du Barry atmosphere with which Sheila's image was surrounded in Amelia's fancy lost a little of its rosy glow. The favorite of Kings, the _amorita_ of Dukes, does not rock with laughter over scented notes from a High Desirable.

"She ain't just quite up to it," was Amelia's comment, which she probably could not have explained even to herself.

Sheila presently was done with laughter. She ate a nibble of dinner as soberly as Amelia could have wished, then sat back, her eyes closed with a resolve to think clearly, closely, to some determination of her life.

But Jim's note, which had so roused her amus.e.m.e.nt, began to force itself in another fas.h.i.+on upon her. She discovered that it was an insufferable note. It insinuated everything, it suggested--everything. It was a boastful messenger. It swaggered male-ishly. It threw out its chest and smacked its lips. "See what a sad dog my master is," it said; "a regular devil of a fellow." Sheila found her thoughts confused by anger. She found that she was too disturbed for any clear decision. She was terribly weary and full of dread for the long night before her. And a startled look at her clock told her it was time now to go over to the saloon.

She got up, went to her mirror, smoothed her rippled hair with two strokes of a brush, readjusted her cap, and decided that, for once, a little powder on the nose was a necessity. Carthy must not see that she had been crying. As it was, her brilliant color was suspicious, and her eyes, with their deep distended look of tears. She shut them, drew a breath, put out her light, and went down the back stairs to a narrow alley. It led from the hotel to the street that ran back of The Aura ...

the street to which she had taken young Hilliard the night before.

The alley seemed to Sheila, as she stepped into it from the glare of the electric-lighted hotel, a stream of cool and silvery light. Above lay a strip of tender sky in which already the stars shook. In this high atmosphere they were always tremulous, dancing, beating, almost leaping, with a fullness of quick light. They seemed very near to the edges of the alley walls, to be especially visiting it with their detached regard, peering down for some small divine occasion for influence. Sheila prayed to them a desperate prayer of human helplessness.

CHAPTER XIII

SYLVESTER CELEBRATES

"Hey, you girl there! Hi! Hey!"

These exclamations called in a resonant, deep-chested voice succeeded at last in attracting Sheila's attention. She had lingered at the alley's mouth, s.h.i.+rking her entrance into the saloon, and now she saw, halfway down the short, wide street, a gesticulating figure.

At first, as she obeyed the summons, she thought the summoner a man, but on near view it proved itself a woman, of broad, ma.s.sive hips and shoulders, dressed in a man's flannel s.h.i.+rt and a pair of large corduroy trousers, their legs tucked into high cowboy boots. She wore no hat, and her hair was cut square across her neck and forehead; hair of a dark rusty red, it was, and matched eyes like dark panes of gla.s.s before a fire, red-brown and very bright, ruddy eyes in a square, ruddy face, which, with its short, straight, wide-bridged nose, well-shaped lips, square chin, and brilliant teeth, made up a striking and not unattractive countenance.

"I've got a horse here; won't stand," said the woman. "Will you hold his head? Can leaking back here in my wagon, leaking all over my other stuff."

The horse came round the corner. He moved resolutely to meet them. He was the boniest, small horse Sheila had ever seen--a shadow of a horse, one-eyed, morose, embittered. The harness hung loose upon his meagerness; the shafts stuck up like the points of a large collar on a small old man.

"He's not running away," explained the owner superfluously. "It's just that he can't stop. You'd think, to look at him, that stopping would be his favorite sport. But you'd be mistaken. Go he must. He's kind of always crazy to get there--Lord knows where--probably to the end of his life."

Sheila held the horse, and rubbed his nose with her small and gentle hand. The creature drooped under the caress and let its lower lip, with a few stiff white hairs, hang and quiver bitterly. It half-closed its one useful eye, a pale eye of intense, colorless disillusionment.

When the wagon stopped, a dog who was trotting under it stopped too and lay down in the dust, panting. Sheila bent her head a little to see the dog. She had a child's intense interest in animals. Through the dimness she made out a big, wolfish creature with a splendid, clean, gray coat, his pointed nose, short, pointed ears, deep, wild eyes, and scarlet tongue, set in a circular ruff of black. His bushy tail curled up over his back.

"What kind of dog is that?" asked Sheila, thinking the great animal under the wagon better fitted to pull the load than the shadowy little horse in front of it.

"Quarter wolf," answered the woman in her casual manner of speech, her resonant voice falling pleasantly on the light coolness of the evening air; "Malamute. This fellow was littered on the body of a dead man."

Sheila had also the child's interest in tales. "Tell me about it," she begged fervently.

The woman stopped in her business of tying down a canvas cover over her load and gave Sheila an amused and searching look. She held an iron spike between her teeth, but spoke around it skillfully.