Part 10 (2/2)

Teams were hitched to the narrow plank walk before the battlemented wooden stores. Men stood here and there in listless knots, smoking, talking of the weather and of seeding, while their wives, surrounded by shy children, traded within. Being Sat.u.r.day night, the saloons were full of men, and shouts and the clink of beer mugs could be heard at intervals. But the larger crowd was gathered at the post-office: uncouth farmers of all nationalities, clerks, land-sharks, lawyers, and giggling girls in couples, who took delight in mingling with the crowd.

Judge Sid Balser was over from Boomtown, and was talking expansively to a crowd of ”leading citizens” about a scheme to establish a horse-car line between Boomtown and Belleplain.

Colonel Arran, of the Belleplain _Argus_, in another corner, not ten feet away, was saying that the judge was ”a scoundrel, a blow-hard, and would down his best lover for a pewter cent,” to all of which the placid judge was accustomed and gave no heed.

Bert paid no attention to the colonel or to the judge, or to any of this buzzing. ”They are just talking to hear themselves make a noise, anyway. They talk about building up the country--they who are a rope and a grindstone around the necks of the rest of us, who do the work.”

When Gearheart reached his box he found a large, square letter in it, and looking at it saw that it was from Flaxen directed to Anson. ”Her picture, probably,” he said as he held it up. As he was pus.h.i.+ng rapidly out he heard a half-drunken fellow say, in what he thought was an inaudible tone:

”There's Gearheart. Wonder what's become of his little Norsk.”

Gearheart turned, and pus.h.i.+ng through the crowd, thrust his eyes into the face of the speaker with a glare that paralysed the poor fool.

”What's become o' your sense?” he snarled, and his voice had in it a carnivorous note.

With this warning he turned contemptuously and pa.s.sed out, leaving the discomfited rowdy to settle accounts with his friends. But there was a low note in the ruffian's voice, an insinuating inflection, which stayed with him all along the way home, like a bad taste in the mouth.

He saw by the aid of a number of these side-lights of late that Flaxen never could come back to them in the old relation; but how could she come back?

Gearheart stopped and gazed thoughtfully upward. She must come back as the wife of Ans or himself. ”Pooh! she is only a child,” he said, snapping his finger and walking on. But the insistence remained. ”She is not a child--she is a maiden, soon to be a woman; she has no relatives, no home to go to but ours after her two or three years of schooling are over. It must still be her home; no breath of scandal shall touch her if I can prevent it; and after her two years are up”--after a long, motionless reverie he strode forward--”she shall choose between us.”

There had grown up between the two friends of late a constraint, or, to be more exact, Gearheart had held himself in before his friend, had not discussed these problems with him at all. ”Ans is just like a boy,” he had said to himself; ”he don't seem to understand the case, and I don't know as it's my duty to enlighten him; he either feels very sure about her, or he has not understood the situation.”

He was thinking this now as he strode across the spongy sod toward the lighted windows of the shanty. The air was damp and chill, for the ice was not yet out of the ponds or swamps of tall gra.s.ses. An occasional prairie-c.o.c.k sent forth a m.u.f.fled, drowsy ”boom”; low-hung flights of geese, gabbling anxiously, or the less-orderly ducks, with hissing wings, swept by overhead, darkly limned against the stars. There was a strange charm in the raw air. The weary man almost forgot his pain as he drew deep breathings of the night.

It was significant of the restraint that had grown up between him and Anson that he held the letter from Flaxen unopened in his hand simply because it was directed to his friend. He knew that it was as much to him as to Anson, and yet, feeling as he had of late, he would not open it, for he would have been angry if Anson had opened one directed to him. He simply judged Anson by himself.

The giant was asleep when he entered. His great, s.h.a.ggy head lay beside the lamp on his crossed arms. Bert laid the letter down beside him and shook him.

”h.e.l.lo! got back, hey?” the sleeper said, rousing up sluggishly.

”Anything?” Then he caught sight of the letter. ”Oh, bless her little heart! Wonder what it is? Picture, bet my hat!” Here he opened it.

”Gee-whittiker, thunder and turf, gosh-all--Friday!--look a-there!

Ain't she growed!” he yelled, holding the picture by the corner and moving it into all sorts of positions. ”That's my little girl--our Flaxen; she can't grow so purty but what I'd know her. See that hair done up on the top of her head! Look at that dress, an' the thingumajigs around her neck! Oh, she's gittin' there, Smith, hey?”

”She's changing pretty fast,” said Bert listlessly.

”Changin' fast! Say, ol' man, what's the matter with you? Are y' sick?”

”I'm played out, that's all.”

”Darn my skin! I should think y' would be, draggin' all day, an' then walkin' all o' four mile to the post-office. Jest lay down on the bed there, ol' boy, while I read the letter to yeh. Say, ol' man, don't you git up in the mornin' till you please. I'll look after the breakfast,”

insisted Anson, struck with remorse by the expression on Bert's face.

”But here's the letter. Short an' sweet.”

DEAR BOYS [Bless the little fist that wrote that!]. I send my picture. I think it is a nice one. The girls say it flatters me, but Will says it don't [What the devil do we care what Will says?]--I guess it does, don't you? I wish I had a picture of you both; I want to show the girls how handsome you are [she means me, of course. No, confound it] how handsome you are both of you. I wish you would send me your pictures both of you. I ain't got much to say. I will write again soon.

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