Part 22 (1/2)
Barslow, and my regahd fo' my own honah, pledged as it is to those to whom I have sold these properties on the representations I have made as to the prospects of the city, will not puhmit me to admit!”
This seemed to him entirely conclusive, and cut off the investigation.
Conversation like this, in which Josie questioned the Captain and seemed ever convinced by his answers, gave her high rank in the Captain's estimation.
”Like most ladies,” said he, ”Miss Trescott is a little inclined to ovah-conservatism; but unlike most people of both s.e.xes, she is quite able to grasp the lahgest views when explained to huh, and huh mental processes ah unerring. I have nevah failed to make the most complicated situation cleah to huh--nevah!”
And all this time Mr. Trescott was safeguarded at home, looking after his horses, carriages, and grounds, and at last permitted to come over to our house and pa.s.s the evening with me occasionally. It was on one of these visits that he spread out the map on the table and explained to me the advantages of his ranch on Wolf Nose Creek. The very thought of the open range and the roaming herds seemed to strengthen him.
”You talk,” said I, ”as if it were all settled. Are you really going out there?”
”Wal,” said he, after some hesitation, ”it kind o' makes me feel good to lay plans f'r goin'. I've made the deal with Aleck Macdonald f'r the water front--it's a good spec if I never go near it--an' I guess I'll send a bunch o' steers out to please Josie an' her ma. They're purtendin' to be stuck on goin', an' I've made the bargain to pacify 'em; but, say, do you know what kind of a place it is out on one o' them ranches?”
”In a general way, yes,” said I.
”W'l, a general way wun't do,” said he. ”You've got to git right down to p'ticklers t' know about it, so's to know. It's seventy-five miles from a post-office an' twenty-five to the nearest house. How would you like to hev a girl o' yourn thet you'd sent t' Chicago an' New York and the ol' country, an' spent all colors o' money on so's t' give her all the chanst in the world, go out to a place like that to spend her life?”
”I don't know,” said I, for I was in doubt; ”it might be all right.”
”You wouldn't say that if it was up to you to decide the thing,” said he. ”W'y it would mean that this girl o' mine, that's fit for to be--wal, you know Josie--would hev to leave this home we've built--that she's built--here, an' go out where there hain't n.o.body to be seen from week's end to week's end but cowboys, an' once in a while one o' the greasy women o' the dugouts. Do you know what happens to the nicest girls when they don't see the right sort o' men--at all, y' know?”
I nodded. I knew what he meant. Then I shook my head in denial of the danger.
”I don't b'lieve it nuther,” said he; ”but is it any cinch, now? An'
anyhow, she'll be where she wun't ever hear a bit o' music, 'r see a picter, 'r see a friend. She'll swelter in the burnin' sun an' parch in the hot winds in the summer, an' in the winter she'll be shet in by blizzards an' cold weather. She'll see nothin' but kioats, prairie-dogs, sage-brush, an' cactus. An' what fer! Jest for nothin' but me! To git me away from things she's afraid've got more of a pull with me than what she's got. An' I say, by the livin' Lord, I'll go under before I'll give up, an' say I've got as fur down as that!”
It is something rending and tearing to a man like Bill, totally unaccustomed to the expression of sentiment, to give utterance to such depths of feeling. Weak and trembling as he was, the sight of his agitation was painful. I hastened to say to him that I hoped there was no necessity for such a step as the one he so strongly deprecated.
”I d' know,” said he dubiously. ”I thought one while that I'd never want to go near town, 'r touch the stuff agin. But I'll tell yeh something that happened yisterday!”
He drew up his chair and looked behind him like a child preparing to relate some fearsome tale of goblin or fiend, and went on:
”Josie had the team hitched up to go out ridin', an' I druv around the block to git to the front step. An' somethin' seemed to pull the nigh line when I got to the cawner! It wa'n't that I wanted to go--and don't you say anything about this thing, Mr. Barslow; but somethin' seemed to pull the nigh line an' turn me toward Main Street; an' fust thing I knew, I was a-drivin' h.e.l.l-bent for O'Brien's place! Somethin' was a-whisperin' to me, 'Go down an' see the boys, an' show 'em that yeh can drink 'r let it alone, jest as yeh see fit!' And the thought come over me o' Josie a-standin' there at the gate waitin' f'r me, an' I set my teeth, an' jerked the hosses' heads around, an' like to upset the buggy a-turnin'. 'You look pale, pa,' says Josie. 'Maybe we'd better not go.'
'No,' says I, 'I'm all right.' But what ... gits me ... is thinkin'
that, if I'll be hauled around like that when I'm two miles away, how long would I last ... if onst I was to git right down in the midst of it!”
I could not endure the subject any longer; it was so unutterably fearful to see him making this despairing struggle against the foe so strongly lodged within his citadel. I talked to him of old times and places known to us both, and incidentally called to his mind instances of the recovery of men afflicted as he was. Soon Josie came after him, and Jim dropped in, as he was quite in the habit of doing, making one of those casual and informal little companies which const.i.tuted a most distinctive feature of life in our compact little Belgravia.
Josie insisted that life in the cow country was what she had been longing for. She had never shot any one, and had never painted a cowboy, an Indian, or a coyote--things she had always longed to do.
”You must take me out there, pa,” said she. ”It's the only way to utilize the capital we've foolishly tied up in the department of the fine arts!”
”I reckon we'll hev to do it, then, little gal,” said Bill.
”My mind,” said Jim, ”is divided between your place up on the headwaters of Bitter Creek and Paris. Paris seems to promise pretty well, when this fitful fever of business is over and we've cleaned up the mill run.”
Art, he went on, seemed to be a career for which he was really fitted.
In the foreground, as a cowboy, or in the middle distance, in his proper person as a tenderfoot, it seemed as if there was a vocation for him. Josie made no reply to this, and Jim went away downcast.
The Addison-Giddings wedding drew on out of the future, and seemed to loom portentously like doom for the devoted Clifford. It may have suggested itself to the reader that Mr. Giddings was an abnormally timid lover. The eternal feminine at this time seemed personified in Laura, and worked upon him like an obsession. I have never seen a case quite like his. The manner in which the marriage was regarded, and the extent to which it was discussed, may have had something to do with this.