Part 60 (1/2)

THE SHEEP QUEEN

The long mixed train crawling into the stockyards at Omaha, with its ice-encased wheels, its fringe of icicles pendant from the eaves, and snow from the wind-swept plains of western Nebraska piled on the roofs, looked like an Arctic Special.

Kate stood on the rear platform of the swaying caboose looking with wearied unkindled eyes at the myriad lights of the first city she had ever seen. Those eyes were dark-circled with fatigue, her face streaked with soft coal soot, while the wrinkled riding skirt in which she had slept was soiled and torn. Her fleece-lined canvas coat was b.u.t.toned to the throat, and she leaned negligently against the rail, watching from under the broad brim of her Stetson the twinkling lights increase.

It had been Kate's intention when she left Prouty to catch a fast pa.s.senger train and meet her sheep at a feeding station a few miles outside of Omaha, but the violence of the storm had changed her plans and she had remained to spend many tedious hours waiting on side-tracks, and this, together with the work of unloading to feed and water, and insufficient sleep, had brought her as near exhaustion as she ever had found herself.

There was no eagerness in the sheep woman's face, only the impersonal curiosity of a spectator at a display in which he had no part. She accepted as a matter of course the fact that she would be here, as she was at home, an outsider, an alien.

Kate saw nothing interesting or unusual in what she had done--it was all in the day's work. She was merely one of innumerable stock raisers bringing the results of months and years of patient effort to the great stock market of the west. As she looked listlessly at the dark silhouette of tanks and towers, skysc.r.a.pers and gable roofs, at countless threads of smoke going straight up in the still air from the great hive of industry and life, she wondered at her apathy, at the fact that there was no antic.i.p.ation in her mind.

Her face darkened. Had Prouty, along with other things, robbed her of the capacity for enjoyment? Had it crushed out of her the last remnant of the spirit of youth? Was she old, already hopelessly old at heart?

Her feeling toward the town gradually had crystallized into a cold animus, silent and unwavering, but now, as she suddenly whirled about and looked into the red winter sunset where, back there, beyond the Beyond, Prouty lay, a wave of hatred surged over her, to make her tingle to the finger tips.

Usually Prouty was personified in her mind as a hulking coward, bullying the weak, fawning upon the strong, with no guiding principle in life save self-interest, but to-night, as she visualized it across the intervening miles, snow-bound, wind-swept, desolate, it was in the guise of a s.h.i.+vering pauper, miserable in his present, fearful of his future.

Her grip tightened on the rail of the swaying caboose and all the envenomed bitterness of her nature was in her choking voice as she said between her teeth:

”Curse you and curse you and curse you! I hate you! You've robbed me of the happiness that belonged to my youth. You've destroyed my faith in human kind. Whatever of sweetness there was in my nature you have turned to gall. When my Day comes I'll strike you without mercy--I'll beat you to the earth if it's in my power!”

It was fully night before they were able to get right-of-way into the yards, and Kate drew a deep breath of relief when the grinding wheels finally stopped. She and Bowers swung down together from the high step to the cinder path which lay between their own cars and a train of cattle bawling on a parallel track. As they stumbled along in the darkness toward the engine they heard brisk footsteps coming from that direction.

”Low bridge!” Bowers warned jocularly as they drew close.

In stepping aside to avoid Bowers the pedestrian b.u.mped into Kate.

”I beg your pardon!” The voice was pleasant--deep.

Kate murmured a commonplace.

At the instant a brakeman hung out from the handrail of a car of the cattle train and swung his lantern. Instinctively Kate and the man with whom she had collided looked at each other in the arc of light. In their haste they had scarcely slackened their steps, and it was only a second's glimpse that each had of the other's face, but it was long enough to give to each a sense of bewildered surprise. The look they had exchanged was the look one man gives to another--level, fearless--for there never was anything of coquetry in Kate's gaze, and the impression she had received was of poise, patience and worldly wisdom tinged with a sadness in which there was no bitterness.

The man walked on a pace, stopped and swung about abruptly. Evidently he could see nothing in the darkness--he could hear only the retreating footsteps on the cinder path. Then suddenly, aloud, sharply, out of his bewilderment he cried:

”By G.o.d! That woman looks like me!”

Kate and Bowers walked on without comment upon the incident, but when they had reached the yard, Bowers detached himself from Kate's side and made a rush to the nearest light where, turning his back with a secretive air, he took from the inner pocket of his inside coat the worn and yellowed photograph that Mullendore had recognized in Bowers's wagon. He looked at it long and hard.

Kate was too engrossed in directing and helping with the work of unloading, counting the sheep that had smothered, looking after those that had been injured in transit, feeding, watering, to be conscious of the attention she attracted among the helpers and others in the yards.

There had been ”sheep queens” in the stockyards before--raucous-voiced, domineering, s.e.xless, inflated to absurdity by their success--but none with Kate's personal attractiveness and her utter lack of self-consciousness. As she walked about on the long platform beside the pens, tall, straight, picturesque, with her free movements, her wide gestures when she used her hands, together with her quiet air of authority, she was the most typical and interesting figure that had come out of the far west for a long time.

When the last thing was done that required her personal attention, Kate went to a nearby hotel recommended by one of the employees of the stockyard. It was third-rate and shabby, unpretentious even in its prime, but it looked imposing to Kate, who never had seen anything better than the Prouty House.

The loose tiling clacked as she walked across the office to the clerk's desk. That person eyed her dubiously as she laid the flour sack containing her belongings on the counter and registered. He saw in Kate only a woman peculiarly dressed, with a tanned and not too clean face, dishevelled hair, weary-eyed, and alone at a late hour. He missed altogether the indefinable atmosphere of character and substantiality which a more discerning and experienced person would have recognized at once.

”Baggage?” curtly, as she returned him the pen.

She indicated the grimy flour sack.