The One-Way Trail Part 28

"Chasin' dollars," added Jane Restless, with a sniff.

Pretty laughed unpleasantly.

"Why not?" she asked, and promptly answered herself. "Guess her man's taught her. However, I don't blame her. Dollars are hard enough to come by in this place. Say, they tell me Eve's gettin' 'em in hundreds."

"Thousands," said Mrs. Rust, her eyes s.h.i.+ning.

"Say, ain't she lucky?" exclaimed Jane. "I don't care who knows it. I envy her good an' plenty. Thousands! Gee!"

"I don't know she's to be envied a heap," said Mrs. Rust. "I 'lows all men has their faults, but Will Henderson ain't no sort of bokay of virtues. He's a drunken b.u.m anyway."

"An' he knocks her about," added Pretty, with a snap.

"But he's pilin' up the dollars for her," Jane urged, still lost in serious contemplation of the fabulous sums her simple mind attributed to Eve's fortune.

But Pretty Wilkes had no sympathy with such excuses.

"Well, dollars or no dollars, I wouldn't change places with Eve for a lot. Guess there's some folk as would sell their souls for dollars,"

she said, eyeing Jane Restless severely. "But if dollars means having Will Henderson behind 'em, I'd rather get out an' do ch.o.r.es all my life."

"Guess you're right," acquiesced Mrs. Rust, thoughtfully. "Will's a whiskey souse an' poker playin' b.u.m. What I sez is, give me a fool man like my Rust, who's no more sense than to beat hot iron, an' keep out o' my way when I've a big wash doin'."

"That's so," agreed Pretty. "An' if I'm any judge, that's just 'bout how pore Eve feels."

"Pore?" sn.i.g.g.e.red Jane.

"Yes, 'pore.'" Pretty's manner a.s.sumed its most p.r.o.nounced austerity.

"That gal ain't what she was, an'--an' I can't get the rights of it.

What for does she keep right on with her needle, with all those dollars? She don't never laff now for sure. There's something on her mind, and it's my belief it's Will Henderson. Say, Kate Crombie told me that Eve never spent any o' those dollars, an' it was her belief she ain't never touched 'em. _She_ says it's 'cause of him. _She_ says it's 'cause she hates Will, has hated him ever since that time she fell agin the coal box. That was Will. Kate said so; and her man fixed Eve up. Say, he orter been lynched. An' if the men-folk won't do it, then we ought to. It makes my blood boil thinkin' of it. Pore Eve! I allus liked her. But she's fair lost her snap since she's got married.

Guess it 'ud bin different if she'd married Jim Thorpe."

"I don't know," exclaimed Jane, with some antagonism. "I don't know.

Jim Thorpe's a nice seemin' feller enough, someways, but----"

"But--what?" inquired Mrs. Rust, eagerly.

"Oh, nothin' much, on'y there's queer yarns goin' of that same Jim Thorpe. Restless was yarning with two of McLagan's boys, who are out huntin' the stolen cattle. Well, they got a yarn from one of the boys of the '[diamond] P.'s.' Course I don't know if it's right, but this feller seen a big bunch of cattle running where Jim keeps his stock.

An' he swore positive they was re-branded with Jim's mark. You know, '[double star],' which, as he pointed out, was an elegant brand for covering up an original brand. Them boys, Restless said, was off to look up the stock."

Jane told her story with considerable significance, and, for the moment, her two friends were held silent. Then Pretty Wilkes gathered herself to protest.

"But--but Jim's McLagan's foreman. He don't need to."

"That's just it. Folks wouldn't suspect him easy."

The force of Jane's argument almost carried conviction. But the blacksmith's wife liked Jim, and could not let Jane carry off honors so easily.

"Jim ain't no cattle-thief," she said. "And," she hurried on, with truly feminine logic, "if he was he'd be cleverer than that. Mark me, Jim's too dead honest. Now, if it was Will Henderson----"

But the gossip was becoming too concentrated, and Pretty helped it into a fresh channel.

"Talkin' of Will Henderson," she said, "Kate Crombie told me the Doc's goin' to make him say where he gets his gold--in the interest of public prosperity. That's how she called it. That's why he ain't showed up in town for nigh three weeks. Guess he'll go on keepin'

away."

"Doc's up again Will someways," said Jane.

"Most folks is," added Mrs. Rust.

"Doc's a bad one to get up against," observed Pretty. "If he's going to make Will talk, our men-folk 'll all get chasin' gold. I don't know, I'm sure. Seems to me a roast o' beef in the cook-stove's worth a whole bunch o' cattle that ain't yours. Well, I'll get on to home, an' get busy on the children's summer suitings--if you can call such stuff as Abe sells any sort o' suitings at all. Good-bye, girls."

She left the matrons and hurried away. A moment later Jane Restless went on to the butcher's, while Mrs. Rust pottered heavily along to Smallbones' store to obtain some iron bolts for her husband.

But these good women wronged Annie Gay when they hinted at time-serving to Eve on account of the money her husband was making. Her friends.h.i.+p for Eve was of much too long standing, and much too disinterested for it to be influenced by the other's sudden rise to prosperity. As a matter of fact it made her rejoice at the girl's sudden turn of fortune. She was cordially, unenviously glad of it.

She found Eve hard at work at her sewing-machine, in the midst of an acc.u.mulation of dress stuff, such as might well have appalled one unused to the business. But the busy rush of the machine, and the concentrated att.i.tude of the sempstress, displayed neither confusion nor worry beyond the desire to complete that which she was at work on.

Eve glanced up quickly as Annie came in. She gave her a glance of welcome, and silently bent over her work again. Annie possessed herself of a chair and watched. She liked watching Eve at work. There was such a whole-hearted determination in her manner, such a businesslike directness and vigor.

But just now there was more to hold her interest. The girl was not looking well. Her sweet young face was looking drawn, and, as she had told her that very morning, she looked like a woman who had gone through all the trials of rearing a young family on insufficient means. Now she was here she meant to have it out with Eve. She was going to abandon her role of sympathetic onlooker. She was going to delve below the surface, and learn the reason of Eve's present unsmiling existence.

All this she thought while the busy machine rattled down the cloth seams of Jane Restless's new fall suit. The low bent head with its soft wavy hair held her earnest attention, the bending figure, so lissome, yet so frail as it swayed to the motion of the treadle. She watched and watched, waiting for the work to be finished, her heart aching for the woman whom she knew to be so unhappy.

How she would have begun her inquiries she did not know. Nor did she pause to think. It was no use. She knew Eve's proud, self-reliant disposition, and the possibilities of her resenting any intrusion upon her private affairs. But she was spared all trouble in this direction, for suddenly the object of her solicitude looked up, raised her needle, and drew the skirt away from the machine.

"Thank goodness that's done," she exclaimed. Then she leaned back in her chair and stretched her arms and eased her aching back. "Annie, I'm sick of it all. Sick to death. It's grind, grind, grind. No lightness, nothing but dark, uncheered work." She turned her eyes to the window with a look of sorrowful regret. "Look at the sunlight outside. It's mocking, laughing. Bidding us come out and gather fresh courage to go on, because it knows we can't. I mean, what is the use of it if we do go out? It is like salt water to the thirsty man. He feels the moisture he so needs, and then realizes the maddening parching which is a hundred times worse than his original state.

Life's one long drear, and--and I sometimes wish it were all over and done with."

Annie's pretty eyes opened wide with astonishment. Here was the self-reliant Eve talking like the veriest weakling. But quick as thought she seized her opportunity.

"But, Eve, surely you of any folk has no right to get saying things.

You, with your husband heapin' up the dollars. Why, my dear, you don't need to do all this. I mean this dressmakin'. You can set right out to do just those things you'd like to do, an' leave the rest for folks that has to do it."

She rose from her chair and came to her friend's side, and gently placed an arm about her shoulders.

"My dear," she went on kindly, "I came here now to talk straight to you. I didn't know how I was to begin for sure, but you've saved me the trouble. I've watched you grow thinner an' thinner. I've sure seen your poor cheeks fadin', an' your eyes gettin' darker and darker all round 'em. I've seen, too, and worst of all, you don't smile any now.

You don't never jolly folks. You just look, look as though your grave was in sight, and--and you'd already give my man the contract. I----"

The girl's gentle, earnest, half-humorous manner brought a shadowy smile to Eve's eyes as she raised them to the healthy face beside her. And Annie felt shrewdly that she'd somehow struck the right note.

"Don't worry about me, Annie," she said. "I'm good for a few years yet." Then her eyes returned to the gloomy seriousness which seemed to be natural to them now. "I don't know, I s'pose I've got the miserables, or--or something. P'raps a dash of that sunlight would do me good. And--yet--I don't think so."

Suddenly she freed herself almost roughly from Annie's embracing arm and stood up. She faced the girl almost wildly, and leaned against the work-table. Her eyes grew hot with unshed tears. Her face suddenly took on a look of longing, of yearning. Her whole att.i.tude was one of appeal. She was a woman who could no longer keep to herself the heart sickness she was suffering.

"Yes, yes, I am sick. It's not bodily though, sure, sure. Oh, sometimes I think my heart will break, only--only I suppose that's not possible," she added whimsically. "Ah, Annie, you've got a good man.

You love him, and he loves you. No hards.h.i.+p would be a trouble to you, because you've got him. I haven't got my man, and," she added in a low voice, "I don't want him. That's it! Stare, child! Stare and stare.

You're horrified--and so am I. But I don't want him. I don't! I don't!

I don't! I hate him. I loathe him. Say it, Annie. You must think it.

Every right-minded woman must think it. I'm awful. I'm wicked.

I----!"