Louisiana Lou. A Western Story

“Is it that I am honored by having this mercenary drunkard for a husband?” she said to herself. “Mon Dieu! One would think so!”

Yet she could find nothing really offensive in his attitude to the affair, unless that he was almost too respectful. She suspected that he had been drinking and that his air was due to the exaggeration induced by liquor – or else, and that was worse – he was deliberately, with drunken humor, making a burlesque of his very deference.

The signing of the contract and the ceremony before the maire were successfully completed and De Launay turned to her with a deep bow. The maire, puzzled at the utterly emotionless quality of this wedding, congratulated them formally, and Solange acknowledged it with stiff thanks and a smile as stiff and mirthless. But it was to De Launay that the official showed the deepest respect, and that angered her again.

Her pride was restored somewhat after they had left the mairie and were on their way back to her rooms. A squat, swarthy individual, in the dingy uniform of the French marines, doffed his cap and stepped up to them, speaking to Solange in French, tinged with a broad Breton accent.

“And is it true, Morgan la fée,” he asked, ducking his head, “that this man has been married to you?”

“Why, yes, it is true, Brebon,” she answered, kindly. The man looked searchingly into her face, observing the coldness of it.

“If it is by your will, mademoiselle,” he answered, “it is well. But,” and he swung his lowering head on its bull neck toward De Launay, “if this man who has taken you should ever make you regret, you shall let me know, Morgan la fée! If he causes you a single tear, I shall make sausage meat out of him with a knife!”

Solange shook her head in protest, but just behind her she heard a low laugh from De Launay.

“But, mon brave,” said he, “you would find this one a tough swine to carve!”

The Breton stared at him like a sullen and dangerous bull and moved away, saying no more. But Solange felt cheered. There were some who regarded her ahead of this soldier of fortune whom she had hired to masquerade as her husband.

She had little to cheer her in the next few days before she took the train for Le Havre. In the neighborhood where her marriage had become known, the fact that De Launay had left her at her door and came to see her only occasionally and then stayed but a moment was a fruitful subject of comment. What sort of a marriage was this! Suspicion began, gradually, to take the place of confidence in her. The women that had been her worshiping friends now spoke behind her back, hinting at some scandal. Nasty tales began to circulate as feminine jealousy got the upper hand. In the presence of soldiers these tongues were silent, but there were other males in the quarter who were not soldiers. Big, beefy Achille Marot, who kept the butcher shop on the corner had never been one, except in the reserve, where he had done some police duty behind the front. And Marot was a bully, foul of mind and foul of mouth. The whispers of the women were meat and drink to him. Solange had seen fit to resent in a practical manner some of his freedoms. Her poilu friends had nearly wrecked his shop for him on that occasion. But now she was married – this was said with a suggestive raise of the shoulders and eyebrows – and the poilus were not so much in evidence.

“Ah! what have I always said to you about this one!” Marot remarked as Solange passed his shop on her way to her rooms one day. He was looking out at her and smirking at Madame Ricot, the neighborhood gossip and scold. “Is this what one calls a marriage? Rather is it that such a marriage indicates that a marriage was necessary – and arranged conveniently, is it not? For observe that this broken adventurer who, as I know, was kicked out of the army in disgrace, is not a real husband at all, as every one may see. It is reasonable to suppose, therefore, that the affair has been arranged to hide something, is it not?”

A hand that was like steel closed on the beefy neck of the butcher and a calm voice behind him spoke in his ear.

“Now here is a word for you, my friend, from De Launay, the légionnaire, and you will do well to remember it! A tongue that is evil will win you an evil end and words that are not true will result in your throat being cut before you know it. Realize that, Marot, my friend, and say again that De Launay was kicked out of the army!”

“Death of a dog!” sputtered the butcher, twisting in the iron grasp on his neck. “I will slit thy belly – ”

“Thou wilt do nothing but root in the mud as is thy nature,” said De Launay and kicked him vigorously into the gutter where he did, indeed, plow the filth with his nose. Madame Ricot uttered a shrill shriek for the police, and Solange, who had been unconscious of it all, turned about to see De Launay standing on the sidewalk brushing his hands while the butcher rolled in the mud. At this moment a gendarme came running up.

“Take that carrion and lock him up!” said De Launay, calmly. “I accuse him of public indecency, spreading scandal and criminal slander. He has said that I, the General de Launay, was kicked out of the army for unmentioned crimes. I will prefer charges against him in the morning.”

“Monsieur le général, it shall be done,” said the gendarme, with a smart salute. He grabbed the groveling butcher and hoisted him from his wallow. “Come along with me, Marot! I have long had my eye on thee! And is there a charge against the woman, my general?”

Madame Ricot was gaping wide-mouthed and silent at the unexpected result of her appeal to the forces of the law. And now she shrank fearfully back toward the gathering crowd.

“There is no charge – as yet,” said De Launay. “But she is suspected of being a procuress and a vile scold. If it is she who has been injuring respected reputations, I shall soon know it, and then – ”

“I shall be at your service, my general,” the gendarme assured him, and, with another salute, departed, jerking the roaring Marot with him. De Launay sauntered on, with his rolling walk, toward Solange, who turned and walked away from him so that he did not overtake her until they had come to her apartment.

“There is entirely too much gossip in this quarter,” said De Launay, casually, as she wheeled about at the entrance to her rooms. “It is just as well that you are getting out of it.”

“It is just as well,” agreed Solange, angrily. “For if I remain here much longer the gossip that you arouse will ruin me.”

“Again,” said De Launay, rather dryly, “I apologize.”

Solange was left to feel at fault. She knew that she had been unjust, but De Launay’s casual ways and his very indifferent deference angered her. Yet it could not last much longer since they were to take a train for Le Havre that evening and sail upon the following day. De Launay had called regarding the final arrangements.

Her passports had been secured and her passage on the Astarte, of the Blue Star line, was arranged for. How this had been done she did not inquire, remaining in ignorance of efforts spent by De Launay in securing the intercession of the French and American military authorities in order that she might have suitable accommodations on the crowded liner, which was being used as a troopship. A high dignitary of an allied nation had had to postpone his sailing in order that Madame de Launay might travel in a first-class stateroom.

Even so, the girl, concerned chiefly with her own adventure, and strange to the conditions existing, suspected nothing. The little stateroom was none too luxurious, for the Astarte was not one of the best boats, and four or five years of war service had not improved her. And she had no notion that De Launay, even for such comfort as this, had paid an exorbitant price out of his own pocket. He had given her the rate of the second-cabin berth, a dingy little inside cubby-hole, which he himself occupied.

The voyage was long and slow and dull. The swarming troops and military men crowded the ship to embarrassing fullness and Solange kept mostly to her cabin. She saw little of De Launay, who had not the run of the upper decks as she had, though his rank was recognized and he was made free of the lounge where the military men congregated. She heard somewhat of him, however, and what she heard angered her still more. It was chiefly in the line of gossip and conjecture as to why Madame de Launay, who seemed to be distinguished because she was Madame de Launay, should be traveling alone, first class, while the famous soldier shared a stuffy hole in the wall with a Chicago merchant. The few women aboard, nurses, Y. M. C. A. workers, welfare workers on war missions, picked up the talk among the officers and passed their curiosity on to Solange through stewardesses and maids. Every one seemed to think it strange, and Solange acknowledged that it was strange – stranger than they thought. But the thing that rankled was the fact that the assiduous care of the stewardess, her very obsequiousness, seemed to emanate from De Launay. It was because she was De Launay’s wife that she was a figure of importance – although she pictured him as a discredited mercenary who was even now, probably, indulging his bestial appetite for liquor in the officers’ lounge and boasting of his exploits to a congenial audience.

Her one consoling thought was that it could not last much longer. True, New York would not mean the last of him since he was to accompany her to her destination, but that should not take long. Once at Sulphur Falls, which she understood to be her final railroad station, he could be relegated to his proper place.

Something like this did happen, though not in the measure she anticipated. They landed in New York on a chill, rainy day, and De Launay appeared at the gangway with his usual rolling gait, as though half intoxicated, eyes half closed and indifferent. His bow was almost mocking, she thought, with the flash of irritation that he always aroused in her. Other passengers looked at him curiously and at herself with some wonder, whispers running among them. Behind her veil she flushed, realizing that her own personality was not so much the subject of interest as his. She was uncomfortably aware that he was a striking figure, tall and handsome in spite of his careless demeanor and slouching walk. It was all the more reprehensible that such a man should make so little of himself.

But De Launay led her through the customs with a word that worked like magic and soon had her in a taxicab. He took her to a small and good hotel, not at all conspicuous, and saw that she was properly taken care of and supplied with American currency. Then, as she turned to follow the bell boy to her rooms, he bowed again. But she hesitated a moment.

“May I ask,” she said, with some contrition roused by his care of her, “where you are going?”

“To my usual haunts, mademoiselle,” he answered, carelessly. “But I shall be within reach. To-morrow afternoon the train leaves for the West. I will see that everything goes well.”

“See that it goes well with you,” she answered, a little tartly, “if not for your own sake, then for mine.”

“Things go – as they go, with me,” he answered, with a shrug. Solange turned away, but she felt somewhat more kindly toward him.

In part this was due to the fact that she was no longer overshadowed by him. The hotel clerks knew nothing of him. As soon as he passed without the zone of military activities, he became nothing and no one. They only knew that they had been liberally tipped to afford Madame de Launay every service and comfort, and, as her appearance was striking and distinguished, they rendered the service with an impressive enthusiasm. From this point on De Launay took his rightful place as a mere appanage.

When they left New York Solange was apparently in full control and De Launay a mere courier. Used to short European trips, it did not occur to her that the price for which she secured drawing-room accommodations on the Twentieth Century Limited was ridiculously low, and as De Launay had proved capable of handling such matters, and she was a stranger, she gladly and unquestioningly left such things in his hands. He, himself, had a berth in some obscure part of the train and remained there. The maid and the porter of her car hovered around her with solicitude, and she became very favorably impressed with the kindliness and generosity of America, extended, apparently, without thought of reward.

At Chicago De Launay again showed himself in what she supposed was his true light. He had seen her to a hotel for the two or three hours they had to wait there and had escorted her back to her train again. While she was settling herself in her compartment she chanced to look out of the window before the train left the station and perceived her escort conversing with an individual who was not prepossessing. It was a short, broad man, dressed roughly, wearing boots covered by his trousers and with a handkerchief knotted about his neck. He wore a wide-brimmed, high-crowned felt hat, old and battered, its brim curled disreputably at all angles. She perceived that, after a few words together, this fellow and De Launay appeared to be on the best of terms, shaking hands cordially, conversing with much laughter and an occasional slap on the back. Finally the man, in the shelter of a truck loaded with baggage, produced a bottle from his hip pocket and offered it to De Launay who, with a preliminary salute, lifted it to his mouth. After which he wiped the neck of it with his hand and passed it back, the man duplicating his action.

The train was about to start and, with a few hilarious farewells, they parted and De Launay rolled in her direction while the other tramp strolled away at a gait very much like the general’s. Two of a kind, she thought, bitterly; two ruffians who were hail-fellow-well-met – and she was married to one of them! A soldier of France, a distinguished general, to descend to this level! It was almost inconceivable.

But the train started and the long journey began.

Hour after hour the landscape flashed past the windows. Day faded to night, and Solange slept as best she could on the reeling train. In the morning she awoke to pass another weary time of gazing from the windows at the endless checkerboard of prairie farms rolling past, divided into monotonous squares by straight, dusty roads, each with its house and big red barn forming an exact replica of every other. She ate and dozed, tried to read a magazine but found the English more than usually difficult to understand, though ordinarily she read it with facility. Now her thoughts were in French and they persisted in coming back to her mission and to the man who accompanied her.

Another long, almost endless day of blatant sun and baked, brown prairie, passing by almost imperceptible degrees into wide plains, flat and dry, cut by wire fences here and there, but no longer checkerboarded in a maddening monotony of pattern. No longer did the houses and red barns succeed one another at exact intervals. In fact they seemed to have almost disappeared and had changed their character, such of them as she saw. They were rough, unpainted board affairs, for the most part, with here and there a more pretentious edifice. But in any case they were scarce and far apart. Low, grass-roofed dugouts also were to be seen at times, but, generally speaking, the view presented almost nothing but an endless vista of rolling, baked plain, covered with scattering grass and dusty gray sage.

And then, far ahead, a dim blue line against the horizon, the mountains appeared. When she awoke in the morning they were rolling majestically through wild gorges under towering peaks clad in snow. Pines and firs shaded the slopes, and the biting, rare air of the peaks burned her lungs. She forgot De Launay, forgot the depression that had grown upon her with the realization of the immensity into which she was plunging, and felt her spirit soaring in exhilaration and hopes of success. Mountain born and bred, she reacted buoyantly to the inspiration of the environment. The preposterous nature of her quest, a realization of which had been growing upon her, as the endless miles unrolled before her, was forgotten. She felt at home and at ease in the rugged hills, capable of doing anything she set out to do, no longer fettered with the binding restrictions of civilization and no longer bound by the cold laws of probability.

She wanted to summon De Launay, to point out to him the glories of the landscape and to let its purity and strength sink into him for the salvation of his manhood. But he remained aloof, lost, she surmised, in the buffet, drinking illicit liquor with disreputable boon companions.

Then, in time, they passed the mountain rampart, though they never again got entirely out of sight of it, and descended into other desolate plains, broken here and there by patches of green and fertile land where villages and farms stood. Beside a leaden, surging inland sea, across a vast plain of alkali, plunging through enormous gorges cut out of the solid, towering rock, they entered mountains again, and again shot out onto barren plains, now, however, rusty brown and rough with broken and jagged lava. Another night was descending when, with defiant shrieks of the whistle, the train shot out upon a vast bench and, with flickering electric lights flashing past the windows, and glass reflecting back its blazing stack, it rolled with tolling bell into a station. The porter appeared.

“Sulphuh Falls, ma’am! Hoyeah’s whah you gits off!”

Then De Launay lurched into view behind the porter and she felt a sudden revulsion against the thrill of interest and anticipation that had seized her.

CHAPTER VI

WHERE THE DESERT HAD BEEN

Solange awoke in the bustling, prosperous environment of Sulphur Falls, nestled in the flats below the cañon of the Serpentine, with a feeling of ease and comfort. She had expected to find some wild, frontier village, populated by Indians and cowboys, a desperate and lawless community, and, instead, encountered a small but luxurious hotel, paved streets, shops, people dressed much as they had been in New York. She knew nothing of the changes that had taken place with the building of the great irrigation dam and the coming of the war factories which belched smoke back at the foot of the cañon. She did not realize that, twenty years ago, there had been no town, nothing but limitless plains on which cattle and sheep grazed, a crude ferry and a road house. It was beyond her present comprehension that in a dozen years a city could have sprung up harboring twenty thousand souls and booming with prosperity. Nor did she reflect upon the possible consequences these unknown facts might have upon her search.