Part 4 (1/2)

IV

Judith, The Postmistress

The arrival of Chugg's stage with the mail should have been coincident with the departure of the stage that brought the travellers from ”Town,”

but Chugg was late-a tardiness ascribed to indulgence in local lethe waters, for Lemuel Chugg had survived a romance and drank to forget that woman is a variable and a changeable thing. In consequence of which the sober stage-driver departed without the mails, leaving Mary Carmichael and the fat lady to scan the horizon for the delinquent Chugg, and incidentally to hear a chapter of prairie romance.

Some sort of revolution seemed to be in progress in the room in which the travellers had breakfasted. Mrs. Dax had a.s.sumed the office of dictator, with absolute sway. Leander, as aide-de-camp, courier, and staff, executed marvellous feats of domestic engineering. The late breakfast-table, swept and garnished with pigeon-holes, became a United States post-office, prepared to transact postal business, and for the time being to become the social centre of the surrounding country.

Down the yellow road that climbed and dipped and climbed and dipped again over foot-hills and sprawling s.p.a.ce till it was lost in a world without end, Mary Carmichael, standing in the doorway, watched an atom, so small that it might have been a leaf blowing along in the wind, turn into a horseman.

There was inspiration for a hundred pictures in the way that horse was ridden. No flashes of daylight between saddle and rider in the jolting, Eastern fas.h.i.+on, but the long, easy sweep that covers ground imperceptibly and is a delight to the eye. It needed but the solitary figure to signify the infinitude of s.p.a.ce in the background. In all that great, wide world the only hint of life was the galloping horseman, the only sound the rhythmical ring of the nearing hoofs. The rider, now close enough for Miss Carmichael to distinguish the features, was a thorough dandy of the saddle. No slouching garb of exigence and comfort this, but a pretty display of doeskin gaiter, varnished boot, and smart riding-breeches. The lad-he could not have been, Miss Carmichael thought, more than twenty-was tanned a splendid color not unlike the bloomy shading on a nasturtium. And when the doughty horseman made out the girl standing in the doorway, he smiled with a lack of formality not suggested by the town-cut of his trappings. Throwing the reins over the neck of the horse with the real Western fling, he slid from the saddle in a trice, and-Mary Carmichael experienced something of the gasping horror of a shocked old lady as she made out two splendid braids of thick, black hair. Her doughty cavalier was no cavalier at all, but a surprisingly handsome young woman.

Miss Carmichael gasped a little even as she extended her hand, for the masquerader had pulled off her gauntlet and held out hers as if she was conferring the freedom of the wilderness. It was impossible for a homesick girl not to respond to such heartiness, though it was with difficulty at first that Mary kept her eyes on the girl's face. Curiosity, agreeably piqued, urged her to take another glimpse of the riding clothes that this young woman wore with such supreme unconcern.

Now, ”in the East” Mary Carmichael had not been in the habit of meeting black-haired G.o.ddesses who rode astride and whose a.s.surance of the pleasure of meeting her made her as self-conscious as on her first day at dancing-school; and though she tried to prove her cosmopolitanism by not betraying this, the attempt was rather a failure.

”Are you surprised that I did not wait for an introduction?” the girl in the riding clothes asked, noticing Mary's evident uneasiness; ”but you don't know how good it is to see a girl. I'm so tired of spurs and sombreros and cattle and dust and distance, and there's nothing else here.”

”Where I come from it's just the other way-too many petticoats and hat-pins.”

The horseman who was no horseman dropped Miss Carmichael's hand and went into the house. Mary wondered if she ought to have been more cordial.

From the back door came Leander, with dishcloths, which he began to hang on the line in a dumb, driven sort of way.

”Who is she?” asked Mary.

”Her?” he interrogated, jerking his head in the direction of the house.

”The postmistress, Judith Rodney; yes, that's her name.” He dropped his voice in the manner of one imparting momentous things. ”She never wears a skirt ridin', any more than a man.”

Mary felt that she was tempting Leander into the paths of gossip, undoubtedly his besetting sin, but she could not resist the temptation to linger. He had disposed of his last dish-cloth, and he withdrew the remaining clothes-pin from his mouth in a way that was pathetically feminine.

”She keeps the post-office here, since Mrs. Dax lost the job, and boards with us; p'r'aps it's because she is my wife's successor in office, or p'a'ps it's jest the natural grudge that wimmin seem to harbor agin each other, I dunno, but they don't sandwich none.”

Leander having disposed of his last dish-towel, squinted at it through his half-closed eyes, like an artist ”sighting” a landscape, saw apparently that it was in drawing, and next brought his vision to bear on the back premises of his own dwelling, where he saw there was no wifely figure in evidence.

”Sh-sh-h!” he said, creeping towards Mary, his dull face transfigured with the consciousness that he had news to tell. ”Sh-sh-her brother's a rustler. If 'twan't for her”-Leander went through the grewsome pantomime of tying an imaginary rope round his neck and throwing it over the limb of an imaginary tree. ”They're goin' to get him for sh.o.r.e this time, soon as he comes out of jail; but would you guess it from her bluff?”

There was no mistaking the fate of a rustler after Mr. Dax's grisly demonstration, but of the quality of his calling Mary was as ignorant as before.

”And why should they do that?” she inquired, with tenderfoot simplicity.

”Stealin' cattle ain't good for the health hereabouts,” said Leander, as one who spoke with authority. ”It's apt to bring on throat trouble.”

But Mary did not find Leander's joke amusing. She had suddenly remembered the pale, gaunt man who had walked into the eating-house the previous morning and walked out again, his errand turned into farce-comedy by the cowardice of an unworthy antagonist. The pale man's grievance had had to do with sheep and cattle. His name had been Rodney, too. She understood now. He was Judith Rodney's brother, and he was in danger of being hanged.

Mary Carmichael felt first the admiration of a girl, then the pity of a woman, for the brave young creature who so stoutly carried so unspeakable a burden. But she could not speak of her new knowledge to Leander.

She glanced towards this childlike person and saw from his stealthy manner that he had more to impart. He walked towards the kitchen door, saw no one, and came back to Mary.

”There ain't a man in this Gawd-forsaken country wouldn't lope at the chance to die for her-but the women!” Leander's pantomimic indication of absolute feminine antagonism was conclusive.

”The wimmin treats her scabby-just scabby. Don't you go to thinkin' she ain't a good girl on that account”; and something like an att.i.tude of chivalrous protection straightened the apologetic crook in his craven outline.