Part 22 (1/2)

”That's what I never can understand about men. If Kate were going out--and told me she was going, why--I should just demand to know where, when, how, and why, and every other old thing a curious feminine mind could think of in the way of cross-examination. But there, men surely are queer folks.”

”Good-bye, Mr. Bryant,” said Kate. She had suddenly lost something of her lightness. Her dark eyes had become very thoughtful.

Helen, on the contrary, was bubbling over with high spirits, and was loath to part from their new acquaintance.

”I hated your coming, Mr. Bryant,” she explained radiantly. ”I tell you so frankly. Some day, when I know you a heap better, I'll tell you why,” she added mysteriously. ”But I'm glad now you came. And thank you for bringing the books. You'll like Dirty O'Brien. He's an awful scallywag, but he's--well, he's so quaint. I like him--and his language is simply awful. Good night.”

”Good night.”

Bill held the girl's hand a moment or two longer than was necessary.

It was such a little brown hand, and seemed almost swamped in his great palm. He released it at last, however, and smiled into her sunny gray eyes.

”I'm glad you feel that way. You know I have a sort of sneaking regard for the feller who can forget good talk, and--and explode a bit. I--I can do it myself--at times.”

Helen stood at the door as the man took his departure. The evening was still quite light, and Bill, looking back to wave a farewell, fell further as a victim to the picture she made in the framing of the doorway.

Helen turned back as he pa.s.sed from view.

”You going out, Kate, dear?” she asked quickly.

Kate nodded.

”Where?”

”Out.”

And somehow Helen forgot all the other inquiries she might have made.

CHAPTER XIV

THE HOUSE OF DIRTY O'BRIEN

It was late at night. The yellow lamplight left hard faces almost repulsive under the fantastic shadows it so fitfully impressed upon them. The low-ceiled room, too, gained in its sordid aspect. An atmosphere of moral degradation looked out from every shadowy corner, claiming the features of everybody who came within the dull radiance of the two cheap oil lamps swinging from the rafters.

Dirty O'Brien's saloon was a fitting setting for a proprietor with such a name. Crime of every sort was suggested in its atmosphere at all time; but at night, when the two oil lamps, with their smoky chimneys, were burning, when drink was flowing, when the room was full of rough bechapped men belonging to the valley, with their long hair, their unwashed skins, their frowsy garments, and the firearms adorning their persons, when strident voices kept up an almost continual babel of coa.r.s.e oaths, interlarded with rough laughter, or deadly quarrelings, when the permeation of alcohol had done its work and left its victims in a condition when self-control, at all times weak enough in these untamed citizens, was at its lowest ebb, then indeed the stranger, unaccustomed to such sights and sounds, might well feel that at last a cesspool of civilization had been reached.

The room was large in floor s.p.a.ce, but the bark-covered rafters, frowsy with cobwebs, were scarcely more than two feet above the head of a six-foot man. The roof was on a gradual, flat slope from the bar to the front door, which was flanked by windows on either side of it.

So low were the latter set, and so small were they, that a well-grown man must have stooped low to peer through the befouled gla.s.s panes.

The walls of the building were of heavy lateral logs bare as the day they were set up, except for a coating of whitewash which must have stood the wear of at least ten years.

The evening had been a long and noisy one; longer and noisier than usual. For a note of alarm had swept through the town--an alarm which, in natures as savage and unscrupulous as those of the citizens of the valley, promptly aroused the desperate fighting spirit always pretty near the surface.

The gathering was pretty well representative of the place. The bar had been crowded all night. Some of the men were plain townsmen belonging to the purely commercial side of the place, and these were clad as became citizens of any little western towns.h.i.+p. But they were the very small minority, and had no particularly elevating effect upon the aspect of the gathering. Far and away the majority were of the prairie, men from outlying farms and ranches, whose hard, bronzed features and toil-stained kits, marked them out as legitimate workers who found their recreation in the foul purlieus of this drinking booth merely from lack of anything more enticing. Then, too, a few dusky-visaged, lank-haired creatures wearing the semi-barbaric costume of the prairie half-breed found a place in the gathering.

But none of these were the loud-voiced, hard-swearing complainants.

That was left to a section of the citizens of the town who had everything in the world to lose by the coming of the police. As the evening wore on these gradually drew everybody's interest in the matter, until the stirring of pa.s.sions raised the babel of tongues to an almost intolerable clamor.

Dirty O'Brien, sinister and cynical, stood behind his bar serving every customer with a rapidity and nonchalance which the presence of the police in the place could never disturb. But the situation was well within his grasp. On this particular night his mandate had gone forth, and, in his own bar, he was an absolute autocrat. Each drink served must be devoured at once, and the empty gla.s.s promptly pa.s.sed back across the counter. These were hastily borne off by an a.s.sistant to an adjoining room, where, in secret cupboards let into the sod part.i.tion wall, the kegs of smuggled spirit were secreted. All drinks were poured out in this room, and, on the first alarm, the secret cupboards could be hidden up, and all sign of the traffic concealed.