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Judith Of The Plains by Marie Manning

M >> Marie Manning >> Judith Of The Plains



Harper & Brothers Publishers
New York And London

Copyright, 1903. By Harper & Brothers

Printed In The United States Of America





[Image #1]

Peter's Hand Sought Hers, And All Her Woman's Fear Of The Vague Terrors Of
The Dreadful Night Spoke In Her Answering Pressure--See p. 154.





CONTENTS


"Town"
The Encounter
Leander And His Lady
Judith, The Postmistress
The Trail Of Sentiment
A Daughter Of The Desert
Chugg Takes The Ribbons
The Rodneys At Home
Mrs. Yellett And Her "Gov'ment"
On Horse-thief Trail
The Cabin In The Valley
The Round-up
Mary's First Day In Camp
Judith Adjusts The Situation
The Wolf-hunt
In The Land Of The Red Silence
Mrs. Yellett Contends With A Cloudburst
Foreshadowed
"Rocked By A Hempen String"
The Ball






JUDITH OF THE PLAINS





I


"Town"


It was June, and a little past sunrise, but there was no hint of early
summer freshness in the noxious air of the sleeping-car as it toiled like
a snail over the infinity of prairie. From behind the green-striped
curtains of the berths, now the sound of restless turning and now a
long-drawn sigh signified the uneasy slumber due to stifling air and
discomfort.

The only passenger stirring was a girl whose youth drooped under the
unfavorable influences of foul air, fatigue, and a strained anxiety to
come to the end of this fateful journey. She had been up while it was yet
dark, and her hand--luggage, locked, strapped, and as pitifully new at the
art of travelling as the girl herself, clustered about the hem of her blue
serge skirt like chicks about a hen. The engine shrieked, but its voice
sounded weak and far off in that still ocean of space; the girl tightened
her grasp on the largest of the satchels and looked at the approaching
porter tentatively.

"We're late twenty-fi'e minutes," he reassured her, with the hopeless
patience of one who has lost heart in curbing travellers' enthusiasms.

She turned towards the window a pair of shoulders plainly significant of
the burdensome last straw.

"Four days and nights in this train"--they were slower in those days--"and
now this extra twenty-five minutes!"

Miss Carmichael's famous dimple hid itself in disgust. The demure lines of
mouth and chin, that could always be relied upon for special pleading when
sentence was about to be passed on the dimple by those who disapproved of
dimples, drooped with disappointment. But the light-brown hair continued
to curl facetiously--it was the sort of hair whose spontaneous rippling
conveys to the seeing eye a sense of humor.

The train plodded across the spacious vacancy that unrolled itself farther
and farther in quest of the fugitive horizon. The scrap of view that came
within a closer range of vision spun past the car windows like a bit of
stage mechanism, a gigantic panorama rotating to simulate a race at
breakneck speed. But Miss Carmichael looked with unseeing eyes; the
whirling prairie with its golden flecks of cactus bloom was but part of
the universal strangeness, and the dull ache of homesickness was in it
all.

"My dear! my dear!"--a head in crimpers was thrust from between the
curtains of the section opposite--"I've been awake half the night. I was so
afraid I wouldn't see you before you got off."

The head was followed, almost instinctively, by a hand travelling
furtively to the crimpers that gripped the lady's brow like barnacles
clinging to a keel.

Mary expressed a grieved appreciation at the loss of rest in behalf of her
early departure, and conspicuously forbore to glance in the direction of
the barnacles, that being a first principle as between woman and woman.

"And, oh, my dear, it gets worse and worse. I've looked at it this
morning, and it's worse in Wyoming than it was in Colorado. What it 'll be
before I reach California, I shudder to think."

"It's bound to improve," suggested Mary, with the easy optimism of one who
was leaving it. "It couldn't be any worse than this, could it?"

The neuter pronoun, it might be well to state, signified the prairie; its
melancholy personality having penetrated the very marrow of their train
existence, they had come to refer to it by the monosyllable, as in certain
nether circles the head of the house receives his superlative distinction
in "He."

Again the locomotive shrieked, again the girl mechanically clutched the
suit-case, as presenting the most difficult item in the problem of
transportation, and this time the shriek was not an idle formality. The
train slowed down; the uneasy sleepers behind the green-striped curtains
stirred restlessly with the lessening motion of their uncouth cradle. The
porter came to help her, with the chastened mien of one whose hopes of
largess are small, the lady with the barnacles called after her redundant
farewells, and a moment later Miss Carmichael was standing on the station
platform looking helplessly after the train that toiled and puffed, yet
seemed, in that crystalline atmosphere, still within arm's-reach. She
watched it till its floating pennant of smoke was nothing but a gray
feather blowing farther and farther out of sight on the flat prairie.

The town--it would be unkind to mention its name--had made merry the night
before at the comprehensive invitation of a sheepman who had just disposed
of his wool-clip, and who said, by way of general summons, "What's the use
of temptin' the bank?" "Town," therefore, when Mary Carmichael first made
its acquaintance, was still sleeping the sleep of the unjust. Those among
last night's roisterers who had had to make an early start for their camps
were well into the foot-hills by this time, and would remember with
exhilaration the cracked tinkle of the dance-hall piano as inspiring music
when the lonesomeness of the desert menaced and the young blood again
clamored for its own.

"Town"--it contained in all some two dozen buildings--was very unlovely in
slumber. It sprawled in the lap of the prairies, a grimy-faced urchin,
with the lines of dismal sophistication writ deep. Yet where in all the
"health resorts" of the East did air sweep from the clean hill-country
with such revivifying power? It seemed a glad world of abiding youth.
Surely "Town" was but a dreary illusion, a mirage that hung in the
unmapped spaces of this new world that God had made and called good; an
omen of the abominations that men would make when they grew blind to the
beauty of God's world.

Mary Carmichael, with much the feelings of a cat in a strange garret,
wandered about the sluggard town; and presently the blue-and-white sign of
a telegraph office, with the mythological figure of a hastening messenger,
suggested to her that a reassuring telegram was only Aunt Adelaide's due.
Whereupon she began to rap on the door of the office, a scared pianissimo
which naturally had little effect on the operator, who was at home and
asleep some three blocks distant. But the West is the place for woman if
she would be waited upon. No seven-to-one ratio of the sexes has tempered
the chivalry of her sons of the saddle. A loitering something in a
sombrero saw rather than heard the rapping, and, at the sight, went in
quest of the dreaming operator without so much as embarrassing Miss
Carmichael with an offer of his services. And presently the operator,
whose official day did not begin for some two hours yet, appeared, much
dishevelled from running and the cursory nature of his toilet, prepared to
receive a message of life and death.

The wire to Aunt Adelaide ran:


"Practically at end of journey. Take stage to Lost Trail this
morning. Am well. Don't worry about me.

"MARY."


And the telegraph operator, dimly remembering that he had heard Lost Trail
was a "pizen mean country," and that it was tucked some two hundred miles
back in the foot-hills, did not find it very hard to forgive the girl, who
was "practically at end of journey," particularly as the dimple had come
out of hiding, and he had never been called upon to telegraph the word
"practically" before. He was a progressive man and liked to extend his
experiences.

After sending the telegram, Miss Carmichael, quite herself by reason of
the hill air, felt that she was getting along famously as a traveller, but
that it was an expensive business, and she was glad to be "practically" at
the end of her journey. And, drawing from her pocket a square envelope of
heavy Irish linen, a little worn from much reading, but primarily an
envelope that bespoke elegance of taste on the part of her correspondent,
she read:


"LOST TRAIL, WYOMING.

"My Dear Miss Carmichael,--Pray let me assure you of my
gratification that the preliminaries have been so satisfactorily
arranged, and that we are to have you with us by the end of June.
The children are profiting from the very anticipation of it, and
it will be most refreshing to all us isolated ones to be able to
welcome an Eastern girl as a member of our family.

"Although the long journey across the continent is trying,
particularly to one who has not made it before, I hope you may not
find it utterly fatiguing. Please remember that after leaving the
train, it will be necessary to take a stage to Lost Trail. If it
is possible, I shall meet you with the buckboard at one of the
stage stations; otherwise, keep to the stage route, being careful
to change at Dax's Ranch.

"Unfortunately, the children vary so in their accomplishments that
I fear I can make no suggestions as to what you may need to bring
with you in the way of text-books. But I think you will find them
fairly well grounded.

"I had a charming letter from Mrs. Kirkland, who said the
pleasantest things possible of you. I am glad the wife of our
Senator was able conscientiously to commend us.

"With our most cordial good wishes for a safe journey, believe me,
dear Miss Carmichael,

"Sincerely yours,

"SARAH YELLETT."


In the mean time, "Town" came yawning to breakfast. It was not so prankish
as it had been the night before, when it accepted the sheepman's
broad-gauge hospitality and made merry till the sun winked from behind the
mountains. It made its way to the low, shedlike eating-house with a
pre-breakfast solemnity bordering on sulkiness. Not a petticoat was in
sight to offset the spurs and sombreros that filed into breakfast from
every point in the compass, prepared to eat primitively, joke broadly, and
quarrel speedily if that sensitive and often inconsistent something they
called honor should be brushed however lightly.

But the eternal feminine was within, and, discovering it, the temper of
"Town" was changed; it ate self-consciously, made jokes meet for the ears
of ladies, and was more interested in the girl in the sailor-hat than it
was in remembering old feuds or laying the foundations of new.

In its interior aspect, the eating-house conveyed no subtle invitation to
eat, drink, and be merry. On the contrary, its mission seemed to be that
of confounding appetite at every turn. A long, shedlike room it was, with
walls of unpainted pine, still sweating from the axe. Festoons of
scalloped paper, in conflicting shades, hung from the ceiling, a menace to
the taller of the guests. On the rough walls some one, either prompted by
a latent spirit of aestheticism or with an idea of abetting the town
towards merrymaking--an encouragement it hardly required--had tacked posters
of shows, mainly representing the tank-and-sawmill school of drama.

Miss Carmichael sat at the extreme end of the long, oilcloth-covered
table, on which a straggling army of salt and pepper shakers, catsup
bottles, and divers commercial condiments seemed to pause in a discouraged
march. A plague of flies was on everything, and the food was a threat to
the hardiest appetite. One man summed up the steak with, "You got to work
your jaw so hard to eat it that it ain't fair to the next meal."

His neighbor heaved a sigh. "This here formation, whatever it be"--and he
turned the meat over for better inspection--"do shore remind me of an
indestructible doll that an old maid aunt of mine giv' my sister when we
was kids. That doll sort of challenged me, settin' round oncapable o'
bein' destroyed, and one day I ups an' has a chaw at her. She war
ondestructible, all right; 'fore that I concluded my speriments I had left
a couple o' teeth in her."

"Well, I discyards the steak and draw to a pair of aces," and the first
man helped himself to a couple of biscuits.

Miss Carmichael knew, by the continual scraping of chairs across the
gritty floor, that the places at the table must be nearly all taken; and
while she anticipated, with an utterly unreasonable terror, any further
invasion of her seclusion at the end of the table, still she could not
persuade herself to raise her eyes to detect the progress of the enemy,
even in the interest of the diary she had kept so conscientiously for the
past three days; which was something of a loss to the diary, as those
untamed, manly faces were well worth looking at. Reckless they were in
many instances, and sometimes the lines of hardship were cruelly writ
across young faces that had not yet lost the down of adolescence, but
there were humor and endurance and the courage that knows how to make a
crony of death and get right good sport from the comradeship. Their faults
were the faults of lusty, red-blooded youth, and their virtues the
open-handed generosity, the ready sympathy of those uncertain tilters at
life who ride or fall in the tourney of a new country.

At present, "the yearling," drinking her execrable coffee in an agony of
embarrassment, weighed heavily on their minds. They would have liked to
rise as a man and ask if there was anything they could do for her. But as
a glance towards the end of the table seemed to increase her discomfiture
tenfold, they did the kindest and for them the most difficult thing and
looked in every direction but Miss Carmichael's. With a delicacy of
perception that the casual observer might not have given them credit for,
they had refrained from taking seats directly opposite her, or those
immediately on her right, which, as she occupied the last seat at the
table, gave her at least a small degree of seclusion.

As one after another of them came filing in, bronzed, rugged, radiating a
beauty of youth and health that no sketchy exigence of apparel could
obscure, some one already seated at the table would put a foot on a chair
opposite him and send it spinning out into the middle of the floor as a
hint to the new-comer that that was his reserved seat. And the
cow-puncher, sheep-herder, prospector, or man about "Town," as the case
might be, would take the hint and the chair, leaving the petticoat
separated from the sombreros by a table-land of oilcloth and a range of
four chairs.

But now entered a man who failed to take the hint of the spinning chair.
In fact, he entered the eating-house with the air of one who has dropped
in casually to look for a friend and, incidentally, to eat his breakfast.
He stopped in the doorway, scanned the table with deliberation, and
started to make his way towards Mary Carmichael with something of a
swagger. Some one kicked a chair towards him at the head of the table.
Some one else nearly upset him with one before he reached the middle, and
the Texan remarked, quite audibly, as he passed:

"The damned razor-back!"

But the man made his way to the end of the table and drew out the chair
opposite Miss Carmichael with a degree of assurance that precipitated the
rest of the table into a pretty pother.

Suppose she should countenance his audacity? The fair have been known to
succumb to the headlong force of a charge, when the persistence of a long
siege has failed signally. What figures they would cut if she did!--and
Simpson, of all men! A growing tension had crept into the atmosphere of
the eating-house; knives and forks played but intermittently, and Mary,
sitting at the end of the oilcloth-covered table, felt intuitively that
she was the centre of the brewing storm. Oh, why hadn't she been contented
to stay at home and make over her clothes and share the dwindling fortunes
of her aunts, instead of coming to this savage place?

"From the look of the yearling's chin, I think he'll get all that's coming
to him," whispered the man who had nearly upset him with the second chair.

"You're right, pard. If I'm any good at reading brands, she is as
self-protective as the McKinley bill."

The man Simpson was not a pleasant vis-a-vis. He wore the same picturesque
ruffianliness of apparel as his fellows, but the resemblance stopped
there. He lacked their dusky bloom, their clearness of eye, the suppleness
and easy flow of muscle that is the hall-mark of these frontiersmen. He
was fat and squat and had not the rich bronzing of wind, sun, and rain.
His small, black eyes twinkled from his puffy, white face, like raisins in
a dough-pudding.

He was ogling Mary amiably when the woman who kept the eating-house
brought him his breakfast. Mrs. Clark was a potent antidote for the
prevailing spirit of romance, even in this woman-forsaken country. A good
creature, all limp calico, Roman nose, and sharp elbows, she brought him
his breakfast with an ill grace that she had not shown to the others. The
men about the table gave him scant greeting, but the absence of enthusiasm
didn't embarrass Simpson.

He lounged expansively on the table, regarding Miss Carmichael attentively
meanwhile; then favored her with the result of his observations, "From the
East, I take it." And the dumpling face screwed into a smile whose mission
was pacific.

Every knife and fork in the room suspended action in anxiety to know how
the "yearling" would take it. Would their chivalry, which strained at a
gnat, be compelled to swallow such a conspicuous camel as the success of
Simpson? With the attitude he had taken towards the girl, there had crept
into the company an imperceptible change; deep-buried impulses sprang to
the surface. If a scoundrel like Simpson was going to try his luck, why
shouldn't they? They didn't see a pretty girl once in a blue moon. With
the advent of the green-eyed monster at the board, each man unconsciously
became the rival of his neighbor.

But Miss Carmichael merely continued her breakfast, and if she heard the
amiable deductions of Simpson regarding her, she gave no sign. But a
rebuff to him was in the nature of an appetizer, a fillip to press the
acquaintance. He encroached a bit farther on the narrow limits of the
table and continued, "Nice weather we're having."

Miss Carmichael gave her undivided attention to her coffee. The spurs and
sombreros, that had not relaxed a muscle in their strained observation of
the little drama, breathed reflectively. Perhaps it was just as well that
they had not emulated Simpson in his brazen charge; the "yearling" was not
to be surprised into talking, that was certain.

"He shore is showing hisself to be a friendly native," commented the man
who had sacrificed milk-teeth investigating the indestructible doll.

"Seems to me that the system he's playing lacks a heap of science. My
money's on the yearling." And the man who had "discarded the steak and
drawn to the biscuits" leaned a little forward that he might better watch
developments.

Simpson by this time fully realized his error, but failure before all
these bantering youngsters was a contingency not to be accepted lightly.
As he phrased it to himself, it was worth "another throw." "Seems kind o'
lonesome not having any one to talk to while you're eatin', don't it?"

Miss Carmichael's air of perfect composure seemed a trifle out of tune
with her surroundings; the nice elevation of eyebrow, the slightly
questioning curl of the lip as she, for the first time apparently, became
aware of the man opposite, seemed to demand a prim drawing-room rather
than the atmosphere of the slouching eating-house.

"Well, really, I've hardly had a chance of finding out." And her eyes were
again on her coffee-cup. And there was joy among the men at table that
they had not rushed in after the manner of those who have a greater
courage than the angels.

"No offence meant," deprecated Simpson, with an uneasy glance towards the
other end of the table, where the men sat with necks craned forward in an
attitude uncomfortably suggestive of hounds straining at the leash.
Simpson felt rather than saw that something was afoot among the sombreros.
There was a crowding together in whispered colloquy, and in a flash some
half-dozen of them were on their feet as a man. Descending upon Simpson,
they lifted him, chair and all, to the other end of the table, as far
removed as possible from Miss Carmichael.

The man who thought Simpson's system lacked science rubbed his hands in
delight. "She took the trick all right; swept his hand clean off the
board!"





II


The Encounter


Simpson, from the seat to which he had been so rapidly transplanted,
looked about him with blinking anxiety. It was more than probable that the
boys intended "to have fun with him," though his talking, or rather trying
to talk, to a girl that sat opposite him at an eating-house table was,
according to his ethics, plainly none of their business. He knew he wasn't
popular since he had done for Jim Rodney's sheep, though the crime had
never been laid at his door, officially. He had his way to make, the same
as the next one; and, all said and done, the cattle-men were glad to get
Jim Rodney's sheep off the range, even if they treated him as a felon for
the part he had played in their extermination.

Thus reasoned Simpson, while he marked with an uneasy eye that the temper
of the company had grown decidedly prankish with the exit of the girl,
who, after having caused all the trouble, had, with an irritating quality
peculiar to her sex, vanished through the kitchen door.

Some three or four of the boys now ran to Simpson's former seat at the
table and rushed towards him with his half-eaten breakfast, as if the
errand had been one of life and death. They showered him with mock
attentions, waiting on him with an exaggerated deference, and the pale,
fat man, remembering the hideousness of some of their manifestations of a
sense of humor, breathed hard and felt a falling-off of appetite.

Costigan, the cattle-man, a strapping Irish giant, was clearing his throat
with ominous sounds that suggested the tuning-up of a bass fiddle.

"Sure, Simpson, me lad, if ye happen to have a matther av fifty dollars,
'tis mesilf that can tell ye av an illegint invistmint."

Simpson looked up warily, but Costigan's broad countenance did not harbor
the wraith of a smile. "What kin I git for fifty chips? 'Tain't much,"
mused the pariah, with the prompt inclination to spend that stamps the
comparative stranger to ready money.

"Ye can git a parrut, man--a grane parrut--to kape ye coompany while ye're
aiting--"

Simpson interrupted with an oath.

"Don't be hard on old Simmy; remember he's studied for the ministry! How
did I savey that Simpson aimed to be a sharp on doctrine?" A cow-puncher
with a squint addressed the table in general. "I scents the aroma of dogma
about Simpson in the way he throwed his conversational lariat at the
yearling. He urbanes at her, and then comes his 'firstly,' it being a
speculation as to her late grazing-ground, which he concludes to be the
East. His 'secondly' ain't nothing startling, words familiar to us all
from our mother's knee--'nice weather'--the congregation ain't visibly
moved. His 'thirdly' is insinuating. In it he hints that it ain't good for
man to be alone at meals--"

"'Twas the congregation that added the 'foinelly,' though, before hastily
leaving be the back door!" and Costigan slapped his thigh.

"The gentleman in question don't seem to be makin' much use of his present
conversational opportunities. I'm feelin' kinder turned down myself"; and
the Texan began to look over his six-shooter.

The man with the squint looked up and down the board.

"Gentlemen, I believe the foregoing expresses the sentiment of this
company, which, while it incloodes many foreign and frequent-warring
elements, is at present held together by the natchral tie of eating."

Thumping with knife and fork handles, stamping of feet, cries of "Hear!
hear!" with at least three cow-boy yells, argued well for a resumption of
last night's festivities. Simpson glowered, but said nothing.

"Seems to me you-all goin' the wrong way 'bout drawin' Mistu' Simpson out.
He is shy an' has to be played fo' like a trout, an' heah you-all come at
him like a cattle stampede." The big Texan leaned towards Simpson. "Now
you-all watch my methods. Mistu' Simpson, seh, what du think of the
prospects of rain?"

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