Hidden Creek Part 28

He was absent and irritable again. d.i.c.kie accompanied him down the three long, narrow flights and climbed back to his loneliness. He was, however, very much excited by his adventure, excited and disturbed. He felt restless. He walked about and whistled to himself.

Until now he had had but one companion--the thought of Sheila. It was extraordinary how immediate she was. During the first dreadful weeks of his drudgery in the stifling confusions of the restaurant, when even the memory of Sylvester's tongue-las.h.i.+ngs faded under the acute reality of the head waiter's sarcasms, that love of his for Sheila had fled away and left him dull and leaden and empty of his soul. And his tiny third-story bedroom had seemed like a coffin when he laid himself down in it and tried to remember her. It had come to him like a mountain wind, overwhelmingly, irresistibly, the desire to live where she lived: the first wish he had had since he had learned that she was not to be found by him. And the miracle had accomplished itself. Mrs. Halligan had been instructed to get a lodger at almost any price for the long-vacant studio room. She lowered the rent to the exact limit of d.i.c.kie's wages. She had never bargained with so bright-eyed a hungry-looking applicant for lodgings. And that night he lay awake under Sheila's stars. From then on he lived always in her presence. And here in the room that had known her he kept himself fastidious and clean. He shut out the wolf-pack of his shrewd desires. The room was sanctuary. It was to rescue Sheila rather than himself that d.i.c.kie fled up to the stars. So deeply, so intimately had she become a part of him that he seemed to carry her soul in his hands. So had the young dreamer wedded his dream. He lived with Sheila as truly, as loyally, as though he knew that she would welcome him with one of those downward rushes or give him G.o.dspeed on sultry, feverish dawns with a cool kiss. d.i.c.kie lay sometimes across his bed and drew her cheek in trembling fancy close to his until the anguish wet his pillow with mute tears.

Now to this dual loneliness Lorrimer had climbed, and d.i.c.kie felt, rather gratefully, that life had reached up to the aching unrealities of his existence. His tight and painful life had opened like the first fold of a fan. He built upon the promise of a friends.h.i.+p with this questioning, impertinent, mocking, keenly sympathetic visitor.

But a fortnight pa.s.sed without Lorrimer's appearing at the restaurant and, when at last he did come, d.i.c.kie, flying to his chair, was greeted by a cold, unsmiling word, and a businesslike quotation from the menu.

He felt as though he had been struck. His face burned. In the West, a fellow couldn't do that and get away with it! He tightened an impotent, thin fist. He filled the order and kept his distance, and, absurdly enough, gave Lorrimer's tip to another waiter and went without his own dinner. For the first time in his life a sense of social inferiority, of humiliation concerning the nature of his work, came to him. He felt the pang of servitude, a pang unknown to the inhabitants of frontier towns.

When Sheila washed dishes for Mrs. Hudson she was "the young lady from Noo York who helps round at Hudson's house." d.i.c.kie fought this shame st.u.r.dily, but it seemed to cling, to have a sticky pervasiveness. Try as he might he couldn't brush it off his mind. Nevertheless, it was on the very heels of this embittering experience that life plucked him up from his slough. One of the leveling public catastrophes came to d.i.c.kie's aid--not that he knew he was a dumb prayer for aid. He knew only that every day was harder to face than the last, that every night the stars up there through Sheila's skylight seemed to glimmer more dully with less inspiration on his f.a.gged spirit.

The sluggish monotony of the restaurant's existence was stirred that September night by a big neighboring fire. Waiters and guests tumbled out to the call of fire-engines and running feet. d.i.c.kie found himself beside Lorrimer, who caught him by the elbow.

"Keep by me, kid," he said, and there was something in his tone that softened injury. "If you want a good look-in, I can get through the ropes."

He showed his card to a policeman, pulled d.i.c.kie after him, and they found themselves in an inner circle of the inferno. Before them a tall, hideous warehouse broke forth into a horrible beauty. It was as though a tortured soul had burst bars. It roared and glowed and sent up petals of smoky rose and seeds of fire against the blue-black sky. The crowds pressed against the ropes and turned up their faces to drink in the terror of the spectacle.

Lorrimer had out his notebook. "d.a.m.n fires!" he said. "They bore me. Does all this look like anything to you? That fire and those people and their silly faces all tilted up and turned red and blue and purple--"

He was talking to himself, and so, really, was d.i.c.kie when he made his own statement in a queer tone of frightened awe. "They look like a flower garden in h.e.l.l," he whispered.

Lorrimer threw up his chin. "Say that again, will you?" he snapped out.

"Go on! Don't stop! Tell me everything that comes into your d.a.m.n young head of a wandering Martian! Fly at it! I'll take you down."

"You mean," said d.i.c.kie, "tell you what I think this looks like?"

"That's what I mean, do."

d.i.c.kie smiled a queer sort of smile. He had found a listener at last. A moment later Lorrimer's pencil was in rapid motion. And the reporter's eyes shot little stabbing looks at d.i.c.kie's unselfconscious face. When it was over he snapped an elastic round his notebook, returned it to his pocket, and laid his hand on d.i.c.kie's thin, tense arm.

"Come along with me, d.i.c.k," said Lorrimer. "You've won. I've been fighting you and my duty to my neighbor for a fortnight. Your waiter days are over. I've adopted you. I'm my brother's keeper all right. We'll both go hungry now and then probably, but what's the odds! I need you. I haven't been able to hand in a story like that for years. I'm a burnt-out candle and you're the divine fire. I'm going to educate the life out of you. I'm going to train you till you wish you'd died young and ungrammatical in Millings. I may not be much good myself," he added solemnly, "but G.o.d gave me the sense to know the real thing when I see it. I've been fighting you, calling myself a fool for weeks. Come along, young fellow, don't hang back, and for your credit's sake close your lips so you won't look like a case of arrested development. First we'll say good-bye to the hash-hole and the white ap.r.o.n and then I'll take you up to your sky parlor and we'll talk things over."

"G.o.d!" said d.i.c.kie faintly. It was a prayer for some enlightenment.

CHAPTER VIII

DESERTION

Hilliard rode up along Hidden Creek on a frosty October morning.

Everywhere now the aspens were torches of gold, the cottonwood trees smoky and gaunt, the ground bright with fallen leaves. He had the look of a man who has swept his heart clean of devils...his face was keen with his desire. He sang as he rode--sweetly an old sentimental Spanish song, something his mother had taught him; but it was not of his mother he thought, or only, perhaps, deep down in his subconsciousness, of that early mother-wors.h.i.+p, age-old and most mysterious, which now he had translated and transferred.

"Sweet, sweet is the jasmine flower-- Let its stars guide thee.

Sweet is the heart of a rose...

Sweet is the thought of thee...

Deep in my heart..."

The dogs were off coursing the woods that afternoon, and the little clearing lay as still as a green lake under the threatening crest of the mountain. Cosme slipped from his horse, pulled the reins over his head, and left him to graze at will.

Miss Blake opened the ranch-house door at his knock. She greeted him with a sardonic smile. "I don't know whether you'll see your girl or not,"

she said. "Give her time to get over her tantrums."

Cosme turned a lightning look upon her. "Tantrums? Sheila?"

"Oh, my friend, she has a devil of her own, that little angel-face! Make yourself comfortable." Miss Blake pointed him to a chair. "I'll tell her you're here."

She went to the foot of the ladder, which rose from the middle of the living-room floor, and called heartily, an indulgent laugh in her voice, "You, Sheila! Better come down! Here's your beau."

There was no answer.

"Hear me, Sheila? Mis-ter Cos-me Hill-iard."

This time some brief and m.u.f.fled answer was returned. Miss Blake smiled and went over to her elk-horn throne. There she sat and sewed--an incongruous occupation it looked.

Cosme was leaning forward, elbows on knees, his face a study of impatience, anger, and suspicion.

"What made her mad?" he asked bluntly.

"O-oh! She'll get over it. She'll be down. Sheila can't resist a young man. You'll see."

"What did you do?" insisted the stern, crisp, un-western voice. When Cosme was angry he reverted rapidly to type.

"Why," drawled Miss Blake, "I crept up when she was drying her hair and I cut it off." She laughed loudly at his fierce start.

"Cut off her hair! What right--?"

"No right at all, my friend, but common sense. What's the good of all that fluffy stuff hanging about and taking hours of her time to brush and wash and what-not. Besides"--she shot a look at him--"it's part of the cure."

"By the Lord," said Cosme, "I'd like you to explain."

The woman crossed her legs calmly. She was still indulgently amused.

"Don't lose your head, young man," she advised. "Better smoke."

After an instant Cosme rolled and lighted a cigarette and leaned back in his chair. His anger had settled to a sort of patient contempt.

"I've put her into breeches, too," said Miss Blake.

"What the devil! What do you mean? She has a will of her own, hasn't she?"

"Oh, yes. But you see I've got Miss Sheila just about where I want her.

She's grateful enough for her food and the roof over her head and for the chance I'm giving her."

"Chance?" He laughed shortly. "Chance to do all your heavy work?"

"Why not say _honest_ work? It's something new to her."

There was a brief, thunderous silence. Cosme's cigarette burned between his stiff fingers. "What do you mean?" he asked, hoa.r.s.e with the effort of his self-control.