Part 30 (1/2)
He resented the rebuke, but chiefly her self-control. The bully in him wanted to see tears, to see her overawed and humble; she had too much a.s.surance for a social cipher. If she did not realize that fact yet, it was for him to let her know it.
He brought the front legs of his chair down with a thump and thundered:
”Yes--it's closed, and it won't be opened, neither! You'd better not start in tryin' to stir up somethin', or you'll be sorry--as it is, you're a detriment to the community!”
He mistook her white-faced silence, and added with less violence:
”Why don't you fade away, anyhow--sell out and get into something in your line in some good town or city?”
She was s.h.i.+vering as with a chill as she walked closer and asked in a hoa.r.s.e whisper:
”What would you suggest--exactly?”
Ah, this was more like it! There was something even beneficent in his relaxed features as he answered:
”You could open a first-cla.s.s place with your stake. It's quick and big money, if you can get the right kind of a stand-in with the police. No cheap joint, but a high-toned dance hall in some burg where you can get a liquor license. That's my advice to you.”
”It's what I thought you meant, but I wanted to be sure of it!” Her voice came between her teeth, guttural, and the face into which his startled eyes looked was the face of Jezebel of the Sand Coulee. ”I'd kill you if I had anything to do it with, but, so help me G.o.d, you shan't say that to me and get away with it!”
The girl struck him full across the face with such force that he recoiled under it, while the prints of her fingers stood out like scars on his sallow cheek for a full minute. She was gone before he recovered, but curses followed her as she ran panting in her blind rage down the narrow stairway.
Kate felt as though liquid fire were racing through her veins, like some one rus.h.i.+ng from a house with his clothes on fire, as she tore open the knot of the bridle reins and swung into the saddle. She did not need to hear the words to know that the guffaw which reached her from a group on the sidewalk was inspired by some coa.r.s.e witticism concerning her.
There was not a single friendly pair of eyes, or one pair that was even neutral, among the many that looked at her and after her as she gave her horse its head and let it clatter at a gallop that was all but a run down the main street and over the road that led out of Prouty.
It was a crisis, and intuitively she recognized it--one of those emotional climaxes that sear and burn and leave their scars forever.
The powerful horse bounded up the steep grade without slackening, but at the top she checked it, and from the edge of the bench stood looking down upon the crude town sprawling on the flat beneath her. It represented one antagonistic personality to her, and as such she addressed it aloud, with deliberately chosen words, as one throwing down the gauntlet to an enemy.
”You've hurt me! You've never done anything else but hurt me, and I've forgiven and forgotten and tried to make myself believe you didn't mean it. Now I know better.
”You still have it in your power to hurt me, to anger me, sometimes to defeat me. I am one and you are many, but you can't crush me, you can't break my heart or spirit; you can't keep me down! I'll succeed! I may be years in doing it, but I'll win out over you. I'll be remembered when you're rotten in your graves, and if I can live long enough I'll pay back every blow you've ever given me, one by one, and collectively--no matter what it costs me!”
CHAPTER XIV
LIKE ANY OTHER HERDER
The northeast wind lifted Kate's shabby riding skirt and flapped it against her horse's flank as she sat in the saddle with field gla.s.ses to her eyes looking intently at a covered wagon that was crawling over the sagebrush hummocks, its top swaying at perilous angles. She s.h.i.+vered unconsciously as the loose ends of her silk neckerchief fluttered and snapped in front of her and the limp brim of her Stetson blew straight against the crown of it.
”There are certainly two of them,” she murmured, ”and they must be lost or crazy to be wandering through the hills at this season. They had better get back to the road, if they don't want to find themselves snowed up in a draw until summer.”
She replaced the gla.s.ses in the case that she wore slung by a strap over her shoulder, and looked behind her. They were undoubtedly snow clouds that the wind was driving before it from the distant mountains.
”Good thing I brought my sour-dough,” she muttered as she untied the sheepskin-lined canvas coat from the back of her saddle. ”We'd better sift along, Cherokee, and turn the sheep back to the bed-ground.”
By the time the sheep had fed slowly back and settled themselves for the night on the gently sloping side of a draw above the sheep wagon there was just daylight enough left for her to feed and hobble the horse and cut wood without lighting a lantern. From half a mutton hanging outside at the back of the wagon she cut enough for her own supper, and fed the young collie she was training. Then, she dipped a bucket of water from the barrel, made a fire in the tiny camp stove and put on the tea kettle. She looked with distaste at a pile of soiled dishes that remained from Bowers's breakfast, and at the unmade bunk with a grimy flour sack for a pillow case.
”Thank goodness, Bowers will be back to-morrow!”