A Lover in Homespun Part 7

At last the evening of the torrid day with which this story opens, had arrived. Those who had been fortunate enough to get to the surface holes first, and get a little water, were was.h.i.+ng their s.h.i.+rts, while the less fortunate were lounging around the little tents--of which there were hundreds--welcoming the cool breeze which the dark, ominous clouds had brought up. Suddenly there was a blinding flash, followed by a loud report, and then from the warring clouds the longed-for rain began to pour in heavy sheets.

For some time before the storm broke, Joe had been standing in the opening of the tent, gazing with furrowed brow, through the gathering darkness, toward a tent much larger than those of the ordinary laborers, in the shadow of which was dimly outlined the forms of a man and a woman. He at once recognized the woman as Nellie Shuter (the only white woman in camp), daughter of Bill Shuter, a general storekeeper and purveyor of smuggled and doctored whiskey. The man with her he knew was his mate, Harry Langdon.

The moment the rain began to fall, Nellie ran into the large tent--her father's store--and left Harry, who, regardless of the storm, stood for fully a minute looking after her. As he was about to turn, a figure, m.u.f.fled in a gaudy colored blanket, emerged from behind an adjacent tent and touched him, in a supplicating manner, on the shoulder. He turned hastily, and seeing who it was, pushed the intruding hand away. As he did so the blanket fell away from the head and shoulders of the figure, and there stood revealed a young Indian girl belonging to the Cree tribe, several of whom--both Indians and squaws--had for weeks been following the encampment.

Instead of leaving him, she raised her hands in an imploring manner, and her lips moved. Her pleading evidently had no effect upon Harry, as he turned and left her abruptly. With an angry gesture she turned and vanished in the direction of the Indian encampment.

After Harry had returned, Joe sat for quite a long time with a troubled look on his face, silently pulling at his pipe. Harry seemed too much engrossed in thought to be aware of his companion's unwonted silence.

"I seed you again, to-night, with Bill Shuter's daughter," began Joe at last, breaking a silence that had begun to grow painful to him.

The reference to the girl caused a flush to steal over Harry's face, and he said, as he sat down by the big fellow's side, "You are very good, old fellow, to take the interest you do in me. I should have been in a queer way now had it not been for you; yet, old chap, I cannot bring myself to believe that Nellie Shuter and her father are as bad as you have hinted several times." As he concluded he walked to the opening of the tent and looked out: it was still raining heavily.

"I guess, Joe," he went on awkwardly, without turning, "that I shall take a run over to Shuter's store for a little while."

"I'd like to say a few words to you before you go."

Harry turned good-humoredly, and sat down on the bench again.

Covering his companion's knee with his great hand, Joe said gravely, as he looked down into his face: "I've not had much edication, as you know, Harry; but I've larned a mighty lot that schools don't teach, and one thing that I've got a mighty good hold of is sizin' up people, and if ever I met a bad egg Bill Shuter's one. You must know something about him yourself by this time, for he got you to gamble, and he's well-nigh won all you've made since you came to camp. If he'd won it fairly it'd been bad enough--seein' you were a greenhorn--but in my heart I believe he cheats you. I've tried to catch him at it, but he's too mighty sharp."

Joe's sombre countenance and equally sombre words were more than Harry could stand, and leaning his head against the giant's shoulder, he laughed incredulously.

"I happen to know," Joe went on doggedly, when his companion's laughter had died away, "that you don't gamble because you love it; but to please his daughter Nellie, who"--his remarks were interrupted by Harry springing to his feet and nervously pacing the tent.

But Joe had warmed up to his subject, and was not to be stopped; "As I said," he went on, "you gamble only to please his daughter, who is in league with her father. I've heard that she's told others, that are as sweet on her as you, that the best way to keep the old wolf quiet, and allow her to be courted, is to gamble with him. I tell you, Harry, that she's foolin' you, and that in truth she's as bad as he is, and--"

The interruption this time was effective enough: "It's cowardly of you, Joe Swan, to speak of her like that." Harry's eyes were gleaming with anger. "You are presuming on the kindnesses you have done me," he went on, halting in front of him, "and if her father and a few of his friends had been here, you would not have dared to speak in that manner. You know I love Nellie Shuter, and nothing you can say will make me break with her."

With this he almost ran out of the tent, leaving Joe dragging at his heavy blonde moustache and gazing at the patches in the canvas tent.

The minutes sped on, and still he continued to think. Finally he took the pipe out of his mouth, put it absently into his pocket and said to himself, as though he had solved a difficult problem, "The lad was right; I had no business to speak to him in that way, but what I said about them both I believe to be the truth, gospel truth, and sooner or later there's going to be trouble for him in Shuter's dive; and I'm going to be with him when it comes, although he did give me that hard rub about bein' afraid of Shuter and his friends."

He slowly picked up his hat, and was about to step out into the darkness when the Indian girl, whom he had seen accost Harry, noiselessly entered the tent, and drawing the wet blanket from her head, said pa.s.sionately, in quaint broken English, as she pointed in the direction of Shuter's store, "He go dare again--Harry--for see de white girl, Nellie; I see him go, and she no love him."

As Joe looked at her he saw she was far more prepossessing than the other squaws; while against her character he had not heard a word. He had seen her for the first time about three months ago, when she came to camp with some old squaws, to sell prairie chickens and ducks, which the braves had shot, and Indian-like had sent them to sell.

Her acquaintance with Harry had not been of long duration. The first time she met him he was lying in the deep rich gra.s.s, for it was the time the fever was upon him. Joe was away in the distance taking care of both the mules and the sc.r.a.per. So unexpectedly had she come across him, that her moccasined foot touched his hand before he was aware of her presence.

In his gentlemanly way he had risen and told her he was sorry he had been in her way, and then had sunk weakly back again. The suffering on his pinched boyish face went straight to her heart, which awoke to longings never known before.

Every day after this little adventure, on one pretext or another, she managed to encounter him. At first, he nodded and smiled and had a kindly word for her, but suddenly he ignored her altogether, for word of her infatuation had reached Nellie Shuter's ears, and she had acted as though she were displeased.

For a time the girl stayed away, and Harry thought she would not return; but one night, when he was walking alone on the prairie, she ran suddenly up to him, and pointing to the swiftly-flowing Red River, told him in the figurative language of her people, that because of him her heart was as troubled as the river was in the spring-time--when the melting snow vexed it so that it burst its barriers and flowed over the prairie. She went on in her childish, earnest way to tell him that she could not help loving him, and that if he would take her to be his wife she should work for him as long as she lived.

As he did not reply, a gleam of hope crept into her heart, and baring her dark arm, she showed him how strong it was, how it never grew weary, and how, if he would throw in his lot with her people, he should never have to work, as the squaws always worked for the braves.

It was no uncommon thing for French-Canadians to marry squaws, neither was it uncommon for squaws to offer themselves in marriage, and thus she did not know how strangely unnatural her proposition sounded to him. It never, in his inexperience, occurred to him to make any allowance for her on account of her life and environments, and he judged her as he would have judged a white girl.

As she looked up into his blue eyes and saw the look of dismay and contempt there, her intuitions told her her words had sounded unseemly to him, and that he abhorred her for them; and in her keen distress and anger she turned and fled.

Had he loved no other woman, it might have been the stoicism of her race would have saved her from further humiliation, but when she saw him walking with Nellie Shuter, saw the love-light in his eyes when he looked at her, and noted how flippantly, in return, Nellie treated him, her love swept away all feelings of pride, and she seized every opportunity of speaking to him. Naturally such a course only added to his distaste for her.

Joe had guessed that she had contracted a liking for Harry, but never until her visit to their tent had he imagined her falling so helplessly in love with him. And as he stood and looked into her dark, pa.s.sionate face, this new complication of Harry's affairs made him feel more ill at ease than ever. "Well, and if he has gone to Shuter's tent to see Nellie, what business is that of yours?" he asked sharply.

He would have liked to answer her kindly, and would have done so, had he not feared fanning into a keener flame her hopeless pa.s.sion.

The bronzed cheeks of the Indian girl flamed into a still deeper hue as she heard his words. But conquering her pa.s.sion, she told him again how dearly she loved Harry, while she was sure the white girl did not; and she had come to ask him to tell Harry this.

Joe, who could not trust himself to reply, pointed--with a sorry attempt at dignity--to the opening in the tent.

For a few moments she stood and looked at him with clenched hands and compressed lips, and then, without another word, turned and left, as he had silently ordered.

As Joe trudged through the darkness and rain in the direction of Shuter's store, he repeated several times, "It was pretty small to treat her like that; I never felt such a mean cuss before; but what in the world was I to do?"

As he finally entered Shuter's tent, which bore the dignified t.i.tle of store, a scene that would have appeared strangely fantastic to dwellers in cities, presented itself. Congregated together were about fifty sunburnt laborers, arrayed in coa.r.s.e woollen s.h.i.+rts. To their despondent-looking trousers the blue tenacious prairie mud clung like glue. Several nationalities were represented in the motley a.s.sembly, for it was the time of the great North-West boom, and men had been drawn from far and near.

In one corner of the tent was a quaint table or counter, constructed of three old boards and two trestles, upon which were deposited a lot of rolled Canadian smoking and chewing tobacco, clay pipes, and several long-necked bottles. Pinned to the tent, behind the counter, was a card, on which was scrawled, in characters which scorned all laws of proportion, "Mild Drinks." It was owing to the abhorred fas.h.i.+on of the North-West Mounted Police, of confiscating drinks that were not mild, that Shuter was led to display this prevaricating sign.

Behind the counter stood Nellie Shuter, a das.h.i.+ng, good-looking young woman of about twenty-three, while seated at a number of rude tables were laborers throwing dice and playing poker. Leaning nonchalantly on the counter were two or three young men, who were making themselves agreeable to the fair attendant behind it.

Joe quietly edged his way through the tent till he came to a table near the counter, at which were seated his mate, Harry Langdon, and Bill Shuter. Shuter was a tall, spare man, with a somewhat receding chin and small, very light-colored blue eyes, which had a habit of looking past one while their owner was speaking. A glance at Harry's face was sufficient to show that he had been drinking heavily.

Although Shuter had drunk sparingly, there was a strange irritable expression about his face.

Seating himself some little distance from the two men, Joe covertly watched the play. He soon perceived that Harry was paying little or no attention to the game--although it was poker--his attention being almost entirely fixed on Nellie, who was flirting outrageously with her admirers. Every time her flippant laugh reached him a pained look crossed his sensitive face, but she pretended to be as unconscious of it as she appeared to be of his reproachful glances.

Despite his loose play, however, Harry drew a number of hands that a child could have won with. Finally he laid down his cards and said, "I guess I won't play any more to-night, Shuter."

"Bring us a drink, Nellie," was Shuter's response.

As Harry raised to his lips the gla.s.s of reddish-looking fluid which Nellie brought, Shuter said insolently, "It's not the custom of men in this country to run away when they are winning." His daughter heard the words--as he had intended--and looking Harry full in the face, shrugged her shoulders contemptuously. No plan of attack could have been more subtle. Harry's face flushed violently, and sitting down hastily, he said: "You know it would take me weeks to win back the money I have lost with you; but it's all right; deal the cards."

As Joe sat and watched this by-play, he was so enraged that he could scarcely keep from springing to his feet and laying his huge hands on Shuter.

The biting insult appeared to somewhat sober Harry, and he watched his play more carefully. As his run of luck still continued, Shuter's ill-humor increased, till it was quite marked. After the fifth or sixth deal the crucial game arrived. Both players began to bet heavily on their hands. Harry met his opponent's bets without a tremor of excitement, and twice Shuter hesitated as though he would throw up the game--seeing he could not bluff Harry into doing so, and, consequently, forfeiting what was already on the table. Suddenly Shuter said, with an air of quiet confidence, "The stakes are pretty high now; what do you say to having only one raise more and then showing our hands? We evidently can't bluff each other, and the best hand will then have to win."

This subtle effort to discourage his opponent, and make him afraid of the next raise, failed, as Harry merely nodded and said, "Make your raise."

There was silence for a few seconds, and then Shuter said, "I will raise you thirty dollars better." Before this advance the stakes had run up to about forty dollars, so the raise, among such men, was a most unusual one. If Harry lost, it meant the forfeiture of his entire month's salary. Joe was now so intensely interested that he was leaning eagerly forward; he was suspicious of Shuter, and was watching him as a cat watches a mouse.

The heavy raise caused a slightly startled look to shoot into Harry's face; but he was now in it to the death and answered, "All right, I'll take you up; there's my cards" (four aces); "show me yours."

Joe saw a dangerous look leap into Shuter's eyes as Harry leaned forward, expectantly, to see what cards Shuter held.

Stretching out his hand, as if with the intention of also exposing his cards, Shuter deftly managed to knock off the table the remainder of the pack. As he did so he uttered an exclamation, as though his action had been accidental, and stooping began to gather up the cards; but while doing so dexterously dropped two of his own cards and replaced them with two others, thus giving himself a royal flush--a hand impossible to beat.

Quickly as the trick had been done it was detected by both Harry and Joe, and the next instant Harry was on his feet, his face convulsed with anger and his slight frame quivering with excitement.

Shuter also sprang to his feet, and as his thin lips parted into a forced, uncomprehending smile, Harry struck him with his fist, full in the face. Before Harry could draw back Shuter had seized him by the throat, and was fumbling in his pocket for an old sailor's knife which he was always known to carry; but before he could draw it he was swung violently off his feet and brought down with a thud on the table. He was little better than a child in Joe's grasp. The next instant the place was in an uproar, and a dozen men sprang on Joe; but it was only after a long struggle that they succeeded in drawing his terrified victim from his grasp.

As Shuter at last staggered to his feet, his daughter ran to his side.