The Trail Rider/Chapter 19
"IT wasn't nothing but one of them back-breakin' headaches like a woman will git ever so often," Uncle Boley said. "I went up there this morning to see how she was, and she met me at the door herself, her eyes as big as tea-cups, but smilin', son, smilin'."
"She'd smile, sir, I'd bet you a purty, if the last drop of blood was bein' drawn from her veins, like that old-time Roman lady, sir, and she'd 'low it didn't hurt a bit."
"I never heard tell of the lady you speak of, son, but Sallie McCoy can stand pain and sufferin' as good as any Indian that ever lived. She's been through it; she bends before the wind like a wilier, but when the sun comes out you see her standin' straight, maybe with some signs of tears like the rain on the willer-leaves, but standin' straight up with her eyes on the sky."
"This was different to any trouble she'd ever met before, and it must have cut her deeper, Uncle Boley, deeper than death and bereavement."
"Yes, she always had the highest respect of everybody—oh, well, she has yet, too. Them scoundrels a firin' her out of her job in the school won't make anybody that knows her think the less of her."
"She realizes that, sir, I'm sure. But there must be a good many newcomers in this town that don't know her. That's where it'll hurt. But there's a day of reckonin' close, sir, mighty close! And when it comes, I tell you, Uncle Boley, that school-board'll go down on their knees to her, and they'll take off their hats to me, and stand to one side when I go by, and I'll bet you a purty they'll do it, sir!"
Uncle Boley was putting holes through the sole of a mighty boot, preparing it for the thread. He left his awl standing in the leather, his hammer free of his hand on the bench, and looked at Texas with sharp, questioning eyes.
"I thought you looked danged pert and rambunctious for a feller that ain't got no name or fame or character whatsomever, as the lawyer said. What's been happenin'?"
"Something happened, Uncle Boley, that put me in tune like a fiddle, and raised my heart up like a bird in the morning. A friend of mine struck town last night lookin' for me, a little Indian feller from down in the Nation, Bennie Chouteau by name, and he came bearin' proof that puts the responsibility for them southern cattle on Henry Stott so certain he can't back out of it to save his ornery skin."
"Amen!"
Uncle Boley gave the bench a whack with his hammer that made the bottle of blacking on the shelf jump, and the finished boots standing there in a row shift as if they were setting their heels for a jig.
"Yes, sir; and that ain't all, it ain't half—it ain't more than the first word of what that little feller knows!"
"A man can't hide it—it'll come up agin him, it'll come up agin him out of the ground!"
Uncle Boley's hand trembled as he jerked the awl from the boot-sole and held it like a dagger.
"Miss Sallie's a comin', sir, as I live!"
Texas rose in embarrassment, pushed back his chair, and retreated as far as the partition, where he stood with his back against Uncle Boley's bedroom door. Few marks of his battle with the cowman Sawyer remained on his face that morning, where a new animation lighted the severity of its lines. Neither was there anything to be ashamed of, to draw back and attempt to hide, in his dress, which was neat and clean, with a flash of scarlet necktie at the collar of his gray woolen shirt, and tucked into his bosom as if it sprung from the fire of his heart.
Yet he looked as if he would have run away if he had been given time, as thirsty as his heart was for the cool laving of those soft, brown eyes, as hungry as his soul for the music of her voice. But there was not time for retreat; Sallie was in the door.
She was dressed in white linen, and her face was as pale as some religious penitent's who had knelt night-long beside a shrine. The virginal sorrow of her eyes struck the heart like a sad soft chord from a great, vibrant organ. She paused in the door a moment, a packet of papers and letters in her hand.
Uncle Boley rose to greet her in the ceremonious way that he always carried toward her, and she went forward without hesitation, or reservation, or question in her heart, and gave Hartwell her hand. Certain now that he was to be neither blasted nor scorned, he placed the chair for her, and the little shop instantly became for him the most glorious place in the world.
"You wasn't expectin' to find this feller here, was you?" Uncle Boley asked in the bantering lightness so common in the manner of the old toward the young.
"I hoped I'd find Mr. Hartwell here, Uncle Boley," she admitted with frankness, lifting her eyes to Hartwell's face, a flush in her pale cheeks. The fire at once sprang to Hartwell's own brown, homely face, as if it leaped the space between them from heart to heart and found congenial fuel there.
"Well, you had a right to," said Uncle Boley, rather taken aback by her ready confession.
Texas stood up proudly, his head held high, glad that she was not ashamed to have it known that she had sought his company, despised as he was of men.
"I was afraid, from what mother said last night, that you might be gone, or about to leave, Mr. Hartwell. I want to ask you not to leave Cottonwood on my account, if there is any reason whatever for your staying on."
"Thank you, Miss Sallie. I felt so lonesome and cussed, and full of blame last night after I'd talked with your mother that I just wanted to sneak off into a corner somewhere and die like a dog. But things have changed around wonderfully since then, Miss Sallie. I've just got to stay around here for a day or two more."
"I'm glad it's coming out right for you." She gave him such a look that his heart melted in him, as it felt, with a most delicious pain. "Have the cattlemen found out their mistake, Mr. Hartwell?"
"Not just yet," said he portentously. "A friend of mine—here he comes now."
Fannie and Hartwell had arranged between them for a little test on Uncle Boley, for the purpose of learning under the shrewd eyes of that sharp-seeing old fellow how well her disguise covered her indentity. If it was sufficient to pass with him, they believed it would hold good anywhere in Cottonwood. In the end they intended to take him into their confidence, for Hartwell knew that he could be trusted to the rim of the world.
Fannie appeared in the door with a quick, half-careless, "Hello, Texas," hat pulled over her eyes, very much an Indian in appearance, indeed. She was wearing gloves with red stars worked into the gauntlets, and spurs with rowels which clicked on the floor as she walked. She was a trim figure of a cowboy, but not unusual in a field where lightframed men were the general rule.
Confident and careless as she appeared there when Texas introduced her as his friend Ben Chouteau, from the Nation, Fannie had walked in shrinking fear between the hotel and Uncle Boley's shop. She dreaded meeting some of the old gang who had been the tyrants of her past life of oppression, unconscious herself how truly effective was her disguise.
"I wanted you to meet my friend, Uncle Boley," Texas explained, "for we may need your help on certain matters of business that we've got to clear up in this town in the next day or two."
"You can count on me to the last button of my jeans, boys. I used to know some Chouteaus up by Westport—might you be related to that crowd,"
"Distantly related," Fannie replied, speaking in a low voice. She felt uncomfortable under the eyes of Sallie McCoy, although without reason apparently, for Sallie had opened the Kansas City paper and seemed oblivious to all outside its pages.
"Them folks was French-Indians, and good business men, too. I don't recall now what tribe they belonged to, but they all went off to the Nation a long time ago."
"My people are Shawnees," said Fannie, sure of herself there, for it was entirely true.
Sallie McCoy turned her eyes upward to look over the top of the paper as Fannie spoke, and sat studying the masquerader a moment. Fannie stood with her back to Sallie, facing Uncle Boley across the little counter, Texas over by the door.
From where he stood Hartwell watched Sallie's behavior with alarm, for her close reading of the paper was only a sham and a pretense to cover her close scrutiny of the stranger from the Nation. When Fannie was not speaking, Sallie's eyes were decorously on the paper; when she spoke, they lifted, although the position of her face did not change. But there was nothing of suspicion, wonder, even curiosity in the look which she swept over Fannie Goodnight's back. It was more like the indefinable, knowledge-gathering stare of a little girl.
"I've made boots for lots of them big Indians down there," said Uncle Boley; "them ranchers along just below the line. They used to come up here regular, but in the last year or so they've been givin' me the go-by."
He named over several, all of whom Fannie knew, and added some detail to what the old man had said to prove the genuineness of her acquaintance. This pleased Uncle Boley mightily; it was the same as meeting an old friend. And Fannie was glad that such a safe vein had been opened for her to follow. It relieved her of the necessity of facing about and talking to Sallie McCoy, whose cool brown eyes she seemed to feel looking through her, right down to the end of her last pitiful secret, and despising them all.
Texas was growing so uneasy that he was beginning to sweat. He wanted to pass a hint to Fannie to go, and stood shifting his weight from leg to leg, debating whether it wouldn't be the most honest thing to take Sallie into the secret then and there, thus relieving the suspicion that he saw growing up in her mind. But doubt over Sallie's readiness to accept on such short notice, and under such peculiar conditions, the girl who had been a party to defrauding her out of her victory in the roping contest, held him back.
Fannie managed to break out of Uncle Boley's windy grasp at last. She turned to Texas with a hasty word that she must go. She shook hands with Uncle Boley, and from the door nodded good-by to Sallie, who inclined her head, her eyes lifting for a flash from the paper, and dropping instantly again to her reading.
"Nice kid," said Uncle Boley, "and a youngster, from his talk."
"Yes, sir, quite young, sir," said Texas, drawing a long breath for the first time in ten minutes as Fannie passed the window and was gone from sight.
Sallie folded her paper, gathered her mail, got up, and stood looking Texas Hartwell in the eyes as straight as if she aimed a rifle to shoot him dead. Her face was colorless, her eyes full of indignant fire.
"Mr. Hartwell, I don't believe there is any reason whatever, sir, for you to remain in Cottonwood another hour! The best thing—the manliest thing—you can do will be to take the first train that passes, no matter which way it goes!"
She passed him, holding her skirt back for fear the hem of it might brush him, and almost darted out of the door, and away. Uncle Boley leaned over the counter and looked after her, his beard working, his mouth open, but no sound coming out of him in that moment of greatest astonishment of his long and crowded years.
Texas was little less winded, although astonishment over her action was not among his emotions. Too well he knew the cause of her sudden scorn. The high feeling of pride that lately had warmed him and lifted him to the clouds was gone; his hope had collapsed in one swift word. The sun seemed to have gone under a cloud, the noise out of life and the world.
"Well, what in the hell!" said Uncle Boley.
"Sir, I've gone and mussed it all up again!" said Texas miserably. "That wasn't any man that was in here a minute ago, Uncle Boley; it was a girl dressed up like one, and she knew it!"
"A girl? What do you mean trickin' Sallie? What girl, damn it all, what girl?"
"Fannie Goodnight, sir. We wanted—"
Uncle Boley stood rolling his head from side to side as if he had been struck with a mortal pain. He groaned, eyes closed, hands clasping his head like an old Jew mourning beside the temple wall.
"She knew it, sir—she knew it from the first look! I'd give my heart out of my body if I could undo what's done, Uncle Boley!"
"Any fool can say that after he's kicked over the mush! Well, you've done it now, you've fixed yourself with her for good. I don't blame her, you keepin' that girl down there at the hotel under false pretenses—"
"I'm not keeping her, sir! She's payin' her way; I ain't got—"
"In your room, under pretext she's a man!"
"No such a thing, sir, Uncle Boley, sir!"
Texas was so vehement in his denial that he was almost wild. He swung his long arms, and slammed his hat down on the counter as if stripping himself to fight.
"Well, maybe not in the same room, but it looks just as bad to Sallie."
"She'll think I brought her up here to parade before her face!"
"Yes, and worse than that. No man can imagine the things a woman can think when she believes somebody else has crowded her out of his heart."
"There's not room even for a ghost to come in there beside Miss Sallie edgeways, Uncle Boley."
"You'll have a gay old time makin' her believe you."
"I'll never have even the show of doin' it!"
"What'd that darned Fannie want to go puttin' on britches for and paradin' herself around?"
"Uncle Boley, she wouldn't dare to show her face in this town in her own clothes. Stott thinks he killed her down there on Clear Creek the night of the raid—she's got a gash three inches long on the back of her head where he hit her with his gun."
"Say, is that so?"
Uncle Boley began to see through it like a reasonable man. Texas told him the facts in the matter, and how Fannie had come there in that disguise to find him. Before he was very far into the story the old man's face was glowing with admiration, and when he concluded Uncle Boley put out his hand in token that his belief and his friendship remained unshaken.
"I hope to see you two turn that feller Stott over like a snappin' turtle left on his back in the road."
"It will be done, Uncle Boley. And when it's done I'll set my foot on the road to go—I'll not have anything to stay around here for any more."
"If you're thinkin' about Sallie, I reckon not."
"I meant well—you can tell her when I'm gone that I meant well; but I kind of always tangled my feet up in the rope."
"You didn't have no call to fetch that girl up here to test her on me. I'd 'a' took you? word for it, Texas."
"I know it, sir."
"But it looks like things is shaped and set, and a man can't go around 'em, no matter which way he dodges. I guess it was laid out for this thing to come between you and Sallie. Well, a girl that'll do what Fannie tried to do for you ain't the worst kind a man could hitch up to; I don't care what mistakes she's made before."
"Her wings are singed, Uncle Boley, but her heart's as good as they make 'em."
Uncle Boley went to his bench and took up his work. He drove holes and he stitched, with his wax-end on his beard, and said nothing for a long time. Texas stood in the door, his temples throbbing, his world absolutely empty. Even the great work ahead of him seemed to have no purpose and no flavor now. But it must be finished, giving him a clean passport when he should turn his face away from that place to come back no more.
"It'll strike deep in Sallie," Uncle Boley said in time. "I don't think she'll ever overlook this. Well, I'm sorry. I had hopes I'd see you two settled down here, where maybe I could go to lay my head among them that cared for me when my time came at last."
"I'm sorry, Uncle Boley, from the bottom of my heart."
But the words had a perfunctory sound in his own ear as he spoke, and he knew there could be no consolation in them for Uncle Boley. Texas lingered on a little while in the shop, and then left to wander off over the prairie, where he could be alone with his troubles under the sky.
Late in the afternoon he visited the bank to inquire after Stott's return. To his satisfaction he learned that the banker would come home on the early morning train.