Colonel Starbottle's Client

“And do you mean to say,” said the lady, with a discordant laugh, “that you believe, because YOU didn’t go there and break the news, that nobody else will? That he won’t hear of it from the first man he meets?”

“He don’t meet any one up where he lives, and only Briggs and myself know it, and I’ll see that Briggs don’t tell. But it was mighty queer this whole thing comin’ upon me suddenly,—wasn’t it?”

“Very queer,” replied the lady; “for”—with the same metallic laugh—“you don’t seem to be given to this kind of weakness with your own family.”

If there was any doubt as to the sarcastic suggestion of her voice, there certainly could be none in the wicked glitter of her eyes fixed upon his face under her shading hand. But haply he seemed unconscious of both, and even accepted her statement without an ulterior significance.

“Yes,” he said, communingly, to the glaring embers of the hearth, “it must have been a special revelation.”

There was something so fatuous and one-idea’d in his attitude and expression, so monstrously inconsistent and inadequate to what was going on around him, and so hopelessly stupid—if a mere simulation—that the angry suspicion that he was acting a part slowly faded from her eyes, and a hysterical smile began to twitch her set lips. She still gazed at him. The wind howled drearily in the chimney; all that was economic, grim, and cheerless in the room seemed to gather as flitting shadows around that central figure. Suddenly she arose with such a quick rustling of her skirts that he lifted his eyes with a start; for she was standing immediately before him, her hands behind her, her handsome, audacious face bent smilingly forward, and her bold, brilliant eyes within a foot of his own.

“Now, Mr. Hays, do you want to know what this warning or special revelation of yours REALLY meant? Well, it had nothing whatever to do with that man on the summit. No. The whole interest, gist, and meaning of it was simply this, that you should turn round and come straight back here and”—she drew back and made him an exaggerated theatrical curtsey—“have the supreme pleasure of making MY acquaintance! That was all. And now, as you’ve HAD IT, in five minutes I must be off. You’ve offered me already your horse and sleigh to go to the summit. I accept it and go! Good-by!”

He knew nothing of a woman’s coquettish humor; he knew still less of that mimic stage from which her present voice, gesture, and expression were borrowed; he had no knowledge of the burlesque emotions which that voice, gesture, and expression were supposed to portray, and finally and fatally he was unable to detect the feminine hysteric jar and discord that underlay it all. He thought it was strong, characteristic, and real, and accepted it literally. He rose.

“Ef you allow you can’t stay, why I’ll go and get the horse. I reckon he ain’t bin put up yet.”

“Do, please.”

He grimly resumed his coat and hat and disappeared through the passage into the kitchen, whence, a moment later, Zuleika came flying.

“Well, what has happened?” she said eagerly.

“It’s all right,” said the woman quickly, “though he knows nothing yet. But I’ve got things fixed generally, so that he’ll be quite ready to have it broken to him by this time to-morrow. But don’t you say anything till I’ve seen Jack and you hear from HIM. Remember.”

She spoke rapidly; her cheeks were quite glowing from some sudden energy; so were Zuleika’s with the excitement of curiosity. Presently the sound of sleigh-bells again filled the room. It was Hays leading the horse and sleigh to the door, beneath a sky now starlit and crisp under a northeast wind. The fair stranger cast a significant glance at Zuleika, and whispered hurriedly, “You know he must not come with me. You must keep him here.”

She ran to the door muffled and hooded, leaped into the sleigh, and gathered up the reins.

“But you cannot go alone,” said Hays, with awkward courtesy. “I was kalkilatin’”—

“You’re too tired to go out again, dad,” broke in Zuleika’s voice quickly. “You ain’t fit; you’re all gray and krinkly now, like as when you had one of your last spells. She’ll send the sleigh back to-morrow.”

“I can find my way,” said the lady briskly; “there’s only one turn off, I believe, and that”—

“Leads to the stage station three miles west. You needn’t be afraid of gettin’ off on that, for you’ll likely see the down stage crossin’ your road ez soon ez you get clear of the ranch.”

“Good-night,” said the lady. An arc of white spray sprang before the forward runner, and the sleigh vanished in the road.

Father and daughter returned to the office.

“You didn’t get to know her, dad, did ye?” queried Zuleika.

“No,” responded Hays gravely, “except to see she wasn’t no backwoods or mountaineering sort. Now, there’s the kind of woman, Zuly, as knows her own mind and yours too; that a man like your brother Jack oughter pick out when he marries.”

Zuleika’s face beamed behind her father. “You ain’t goin’ to sit up any longer, dad?” she said, as she noticed him resume his seat by the fire. “It’s gettin’ late, and you look mighty tuckered out with your night’s work.”

“Do you know what she said, Zuly?” returned her father, after a pause, which turned out to have been a long, silent laugh.

“No.”

“She said,” he repeated slowly, “that she reckoned I came back here to-night to have the pleasure of her acquaintance!” He brought his two hands heavily down upon his knees, rubbing them down deliberately towards his ankles, and leaning forward with his face to the fire and a long-sustained smile of complete though tardy appreciation.

He was still in this attitude when Zuleika left him. The wind crooned over him confidentially, but he still sat there, given up apparently to some posthumous enjoyment of his visitor’s departing witticism.

It was scarcely daylight when Zuleika, while dressing, heard a quick tapping upon her shutter. She opened it to the scared and bewildered face of her brother.

“What happened with her and father last night?” he said hoarsely.

“Nothing—why?”

“Read that. It was brought to me half an hour ago by a man in dad’s sleigh, from the stage station.”

He handed her a crumpled note with trembling fingers. She took it and read:—

“The game’s up and I’m out of it! Take my advice and clear out of it too, until you can come back in better shape. Don’t be such a fool as to try and follow me. Your father isn’t one, and that’s where you’ve slipped up.”

“He shall pay for it, whatever he’s done,” said her brother with an access of wild passion. “Where is he?”

“Why, Jack, you wouldn’t dare to see him now?”

“Wouldn’t I?” He turned and ran, convulsed with passion, before the windows towards the front of the house. Zuleika slipped out of her bedroom and ran to her father’s room. He was not there. Already she could hear her brother hammering frantically against the locked front door.

The door of the office was partly open. Her father was still there. Asleep? Yes, for he had apparently sunk forward before the cold hearth. But the hands that he had always been trying to warm were colder than the hearth or ashes, and he himself never again spoke nor stirred.

It was deemed providential by the neighbors that his youngest and favorite son, alarmed by news of his father’s failing health, had arrived from the Atlantic States just at the last moment. But it was thought singular that after the division of the property he entirely abandoned the Ranch, and that even pending the division his beautiful but fastidious Eastern bride declined to visit it with her husband.

JOHNSON’S “OLD WOMAN.”

It was growing dark, and the Sonora trail was becoming more indistinct before me at every step. The difficulty had increased over the grassy slope, where the overflow from some smaller watercourse above had worn a number of diverging gullies so like the trail as to be undistinguishable from it. Unable to determine which was the right one, I threw the reins over the mule’s neck and resolved to trust to that superior animal’s sagacity, of which I had heard so much. But I had not taken into account the equally well-known weaknesses of sex and species, and Chu Chu had already shown uncontrollable signs of wanting her own way. Without a moment’s hesitation, feeling the relaxed bridle, she lay down and rolled over.

In this perplexity the sound of horse’s hoofs ringing out of the rocky canyon beyond was a relief, even if momentarily embarrassing. An instant afterwards a horse and rider appeared cantering round the hill on what was evidently the lost trail, and pulled up as I succeeded in forcing Chu Chu to her legs again.

“Is that the trail from Sonora?” I asked.

“Yes;” but with a critical glance at the mule, “I reckon you ain’t going thar tonight.”

“Why not?”

“It’s a matter of eighteen miles, and most of it a blind trail through the woods after you take the valley.”

“Is it worse than this?”

“What’s the matter with this trail? Ye ain’t expecting a racecourse or a shell road over the foothills—are ye?”

“No. Is there any hotel where I can stop?”

“Nary.”