The Exile of The Lariat/Chapter 8
CHAPTER VIII
THE GRAY STALLION
HUGH’S night was a complex one, woven of anger, of passionate desire to turn to Miriam in his perplexity, of an almost uncontrollable yearning to dish everything and return to his old freedom on the plains. But, nursing Red Wolf as he fought his fight, the hours were full of Bookie and Bookie’s last moments on that very cot. He would not, he could not break faith. He had not yet fathomed what the wise old man had meant when he had pleaded with him to give all. But, somehow, he would learn Miriam would help him.
Eagle Wing returned at dawn with his mother, but Hugh, long ago disillusioned as to the possibilities for cleanliness in a blanket Indian, dared not install the old woman as nurse. After she was satisfied that her man was well cared for, he sent her over to Fred’s camp by the river, with the promise that she could see Red Wolf whenever she wished.
The old chief scarcely had spoken during the night. But when his squaw had gone, he astonished Hugh by opening his eyes and saying to Eagle Wing:
“You take the gray stallion?”
“No,” said Eagle Wing “Pink got ’em in his stable.”
“No has got,” grunted Red Wolf. “He say Hughie got. You go tell Pink you got ’em.”
“But no have got ’em,” protested Eagle Wing, rising nevertheless to obey.
“That’s all right,” agreed Red Wolf. “But you save Hughie trouble.”
“No!” said Hugh, decidedly. “Pink has done all the harm to me he can. But he will make you two a lot of trouble if he thinks you have that stallion. Let it alone, Red Wolf.”
The old man sighed. “You’re a heap big fool, Hughie!” But his tone was that of acquiescence and affection, and shortly he was asleep.
Hugh’s conference with Mrs. Ellis was but of few moments’ duration. He was at breakfast in the tiny Chinese restaurant beyond the barber shop when the stout chairman bore down upon him. She took a chair opposite him, gamely ordered a cup of the vile coffee and said, “How’s Red Wolf?”
“Fair. He’ll be crawling around in a week. The recuperative power of these Indians is marvelous.”
“And what’s the final answer?”
Lines of pain suddenly appeared in Hugh’s face. “Mrs. Ellis, I don’t want to go into politics. I am a man with a single ambition, whose chosen vocation satisfies that ambition to its depths. I believe that I can save the Old Sioux Tract without going into politics, and I’m going to try. I like you and I’d like to help you about the Children’s Code. In fact, I will help you in every way I can, after I’ve done this other job. Won’t that satisfy you?”
Mrs. Ellis sipped the mess of coffee Ah Lang placed before her almost to its dregs before she replied:
“And I like you, Mr. Stewart. I like you so much that I hate to see you break your heart against that gang at Cheyenne. But I believe it’s best that you do so. And when they have finished with you, you send for me to come down to The Lariat to look at your spring line of books. And I’ll come. In the meantime, I’m going to do one thing for you. I’m going to get my brother to hold up the granting of the charter for a month or so. He’s on the Commission. I can’t get more than that out of him, though.”
Hugh looked at Mrs. Ellis keenly. She must have been very beautiful as a girl. Her face now was a little aggressive, but still it was handsome. She wore her masses of white hair anyhow on the back of her head. She wore a very smart black toque at a very unbecoming angle and the cut of her suit was all wrong for her stout figure. But Hugh did not know this. He liked her and smiled as he said:
“I believe you’ve got a good many things up your sleeve. And I’m not at all sure but what you’re as clever a politician as Mrs. Morgan.”
“I’ll never be as successful as she, because I’m not as unscrupulous as she is,” replied Mrs. Ellis.
“Well,” said Hugh, “I don’t know anything about politics, but I’d say there wasn’t any business in life from busting broncos to making governors where a perfectly lucid honesty wouldn’t win in the end.”
“We’ll see if that’s true!” Mrs. Ellis returned his smile as she rose, offering him her hand. “I’m taking the nine o’clock Limited. Don’t rise. You aren’t half through your breakfast. Good-by, my boy. I wish you were happier.”
“I’m happier than I deserve to be at that! Good-by, Mrs. Ellis, and thank you.”
He had a sudden sinking of his heart as she hurried past the restaurant window. He had made a friend, only to put her from him. Then he wondered, aimlessly enough, how his tall, gray-eyed mother would have looked with white hair, and finished his breakfast on that contemplation.
He wrote that day for a room in Cheyenne and made his plans for going over to the state capital the following week when Red Wolf would be able to move to the camp by the river. He arranged for Fred Allward to keep The Lariat for him, Fred’s broken arm being the only damage he had sustained beyond a grievously hurt pride, which seated itself in utter bitterness toward Mrs. Morgan.
The final parting between Fred and Mrs. Morgan took place in The Lariat. Fred limped into the book store two days after the accident, to find Hugh somewhat the worse for lack of sleep.
“How’s Red Wolf? Anybody helping you to take care of him? Nice town, this! Well, maybe I ain’t an ace yet, but, anyhow, I can spell you nights on this job.”
“You can do more than that, Fred. You can run this place for me while I go up to Cheyenne to see what I can do with the Public Service Commission.”
The little mining man brightened. He looked appraisingly at the shop, then at Hugh. “One thing is sure, Hughie. I can’t be any worse than you are. Did you ever think you might kind of get rid of some of the dust and dirt on them shelves?”
“Now look here, Fred! Don’t try any house-cleaning in here! That is all right in the sheep wagon, but not in The Lariat. You’ll find everything on the shelves labeled and bearing a price mark. All you’ve got to do is to read the label when some one asks a question.”
Fred groaned. “Who do you think will ask about a mess like that? Lord! Here comes Mrs. Morgan!”
Both men stood in silence before the stove while Mrs. Morgan came deliberately down the room.
“Good morning, Fred I’ve come to offer you a job. What would you charge to act as my chauffeur?”
“Your what?” gasped Fred.
“My chauffeur. Pink is so full of mysterious business these days that he’s no use to me. And I know Hughie won’t be using you for a long time.”
“You want a chauffeur? For that jitney of yours?”
“Yes, I do, Fred. I’m exceedingly busy and I don’t want to keep mussed up driving.”
“Me! a chauffeur! Now I know you’re crazy! Why, I wouldn’t drive a car for you if you was the last woman on earth.”
Mrs. Morgan drew herself up. “May I ask why?”
“I’ll tell you why, Lizzie Morgan. It ain’t as if I hadn’t known you since you used to wash dishes up on the old ranch.”
“I’ve never tried to deceive anybody about that,” said Hugh’s mother-in-law quickly.
“Good reason why. Everybody knows it. But there’s nobody worth anything could hold that against you. Where you make a mistake is that, having washed dishes on a ranch where I was sinking an oil well, you ask me to be a chauffeur for you.”
“That sounds to me like a mighty silly reason for turning down a good job!” exclaimed Mrs. Morgan.
“Wait a moment! I’m not through. Red Wolf had a little ranch up beyond the dude ranch, years ago. And you knew I’d prospected oil on it. And you knew Red Wolf was discouraged about making it pay as a ranch. And you and Pink went over before Red Wolf knew what I’d found and traded him a couple of horses and some old chromos and a bolt of red calico for it. And that’s how you and Pink got your start. And when I heard of it I told the old Injun about the oil and took him over to your place and tried to make him kick up a row with you. And he said, ‘No! A trade was a trade.’ And he never bothered you about it, did he?”
Hugh, who had moved over to the sleeping Indian’s cot, waited with interest for his mother-in-law’s reply. He never had heard of this episode. She was standing stiffly erect.
“Certainly, he didn’t bother me. Why should he?”
Fred grunted with disgust. “Well, one reason is that he pretty often went hungry and cold from then on.”
“But the oil didn’t pan out and Pink and I did work like dogs and made the ranch pay. An Indian couldn’t have done that.”
“And now,” Fred went on, bitterly, “you and Pink are still at it. Won’t let him stay in the hotel while he’s sick. And you’ve stole his stallion.”
“I know nothing whatever about that stallion. I didn’t want the Indian around. He doesn’t talk, but that squaw of his has said bad things about me and I had the leading women of the state staying in the hotel. Evidently, neither you nor Hughie has the slightest conception of the foresight and will-power it requires for a woman to come up from dish-washing to my position!”
“O yes we have!” Hughie spoke grimly. “That’s why we are both determined to shift for ourselves. We don’t want to get under the chariot wheels.”
Mrs. Morgan turned on him. “Do you mean to tell me that you’d turn down the backing of the women of this state for a little thing like that? That you really meant what you said the other night?”
“Certainly I meant it,” replied Hugh.
“What you really mean,” she said clearly, “is that you have come to the conclusion that you can put the deal over without us women. I’ll give you less than a month to come and ask for my help. And you’ll get no more till you do ask for it, Hughie! As far as you’re concerned, Fred Allward, you always were just a scatter-mouthed fool. I didn’t really want to have you drive the Ford. I just thought the job might stop your idiotic talk about me and the airplane. Good day to you both.”
And she left the room with a great deal of dignity. Fred stared after her, then turned to Hugh. “Can you beat that? I was doing the calling down, wasn’t I? And she took it away from me. How did she do it?”
Hugh shook his head, and Fred went on. “No wonder Jessie never amounted to shucks. She must have got discouraged young.”
“Jessie was meant to amount to a great deal,” said Hugh. “Fred, how can we settle Pink about that stallion?”
“Why should you care what he says?” demanded Fred.
“I don’t in the least care what he says. What I want is to get the gray back for Red Wolf. After what I’ve just heard about the Morgans’ ranch, I’m more determined than ever.”
“You let ’em go, Hughie,” said Red Wolf suddenly. “She heap smart, that woman. She makes bad medicine. And Pink. He not smart like her. His bad medicine is worse.”
“Do you mean you aren’t going to put up a fight for that stallion, Red Wolf? Why, what’s come over you?” asked Hugh.
“Pink, he’s making bad medicine for you about that horse. You let ’em go. Great Spirit, he never mean for Injuns to have good luck, anyhow.”
“By Jove,” insisted Hugh, “I’ll find that gray, some time! See if I don’t.”
Fred, who had been inspecting the shelves with the interest of one who had never seen them before, shook his head. “Red Wolf is right, Hughie. That whole Morgan crowd always has been a hoodoo to you. Say, supposing I sell out all your books while you are gone?”
“What do you plan, an auction?” Hugh laughed.
“No, but I’ve got an idea. I’m going to fix up some kind of a premium system for everybody that buys a book. You can’t expect a person to go right out and buy a book just for the sake of the book. You got to bait ’em along somehow. Let me think for a while. And while I’m thinking, I’ll look out for Red Wolf. You go lie down and get a nap. And don’t you get up no matter who comes in. You might spoil a sale.”
And with a smile and a sigh, Hugh obeyed.
Pink turned Fort Sioux upside down for several days in his search for the gray stallion.
Curiously enough to the eastern mind, the episode of the disappearance of the horse served to rouse to active dislike what before had been only resentment about Hugh’s stand on the Thumb Butte dam site. A plainsman even of the second or third generation has a peculiar attitude toward horse flesh. On the average, he is rather hard on horses. He is not so much a lover of horses as he is a constant user of them. They are a necessity to him, even now in the automobile age. And he cannot and will not tolerate any misappropriation of his horses. The idea today is not altogether tradition that a horse thief is beyond the pale while a man with notches on his gun may be a hero. It is still true on the plains that a man is only a man while a good horse is a mount.
Somehow, as Pink stormed through Fort Sioux, the impression grew that Hugh had taken the gray stallion out of Pink’s stable for Red Wolf. It did not in the least matter about the validity of Pink’s claim to ownership. The horse had been roped by an Indian on free range. And an Indian had about the same consideration in Fort Sioux in this case as a negro would have had under similar circumstances in a little southern town.
Hugh realized this a day or so before he left for Cheyenne. When he came upon Pink in the hotel corral where Fossil was kept, the landlord of the Indian Massacre was in conference with Billy Chamberlain. The two watched Hugh groom his horse. Then as Hugh threw the saddle over Fossil's shining back, Billy said:
“How does that cow pony like the job of breaking a stallion?”
Hugh gave the barber a direct look. “What do you mean, Billy?”
“I guess you know what I mean, Hughie?”
Hugh cinched the saddle, then walked over to the fence where the barber perched.
“Come now, Billy, if I'd taken that stallion, do you think I’d be afraid to tell Pink so? Maybe you could make me stand without hitching, but honestly, do you think that poor fat man could?”
Billy laughed in spite of himself, but sobered quickly to say, “Everybody in Fort Sioux is sore about it, Hughie.”
“Are you sore, Billy?” asked Hugh.
“I suppose if I was with you all the time I wouldn’t be. You could taffy up a drunken Chinaman. But I am sore.”
“You bet he is, and he’ll be sorer before I’m through,” snarled Pink.
Hugh ignored his father-in-law. “You are sore about the dam site, Billy. That’s fair enough. But you aren’t such a fool as to let Pink blind you about the horse. Let me tell you this, though. When I get the chance, I shall take the horse away from Pink and give him to Red Wolf”
“Hah!” exclaimed Billy “Then don’t you see you’re no better than Pink says you are.”
“O for Heaven’s sake!” groaned Hugh, and he mounted Fossil and had galloped out to the flats across the river before his exasperation gave way to a rueful chuckle.
Hugh reached Cheyenne in a snow flurry: dry, hard pellets of snow, a high wind, dust, a clatter of cavalry hard a-gallop up the smartly paved street, a sprinkling of Derby hats and top coats. Cheyenne was not the frontier town it had been ten years before, thought Hugh as he prepared to storm the Governor’s fortress. Not a difficult matter at all. Governor Eli knew his Wyoming, and he was as easy to see in the Capitol in Cheyenne as he was on his huge ranch in the Wind River country. Within two hours after Hugh had left the local which brought him up from Fort Sioux he was sitting in the outer office of the Governor’s suite, while a secretary communicated his presence to the Governor. He was not kept waiting.
Governor Eli was thin and short, with an aquiline nose, smooth shaven face, and keen black eyes, set a trifle too close together. He had a pleasant smile that disclosed even teeth discolored by tobacco.
He shook hands with Hugh heartily. “From Fort Sioux, eh, Mr. Stewart? You’re old Bookie Smith’s nephew, aren’t you?”
“Yes, I am, Governor. Did you know my uncle?”
“For many years! A great character. Too bad we could never get him into politics. What is your line, Mr. Stewart?”
“They call me a bone digger down in my country, sir. I’m a paleontologist, a hunter of fossils.”
“Fossils, eh? Any money in it?”
“A scant living.”
“I suppose you were your uncle's heir, though,” the Governor nodded. Then at a sudden pricking of memory, he laughed, “Ah, I have you placed now, Stewart. Bookie’s will!” He pressed a button and a secretary appeared. “Anderson, bring me in the clipping containing Bookie Smith’s will. You recall that I made a dinner speech for the Elks about it?”
The secretary nodded, and Governor Eli turned back to Hugh. “The will was exactly like Bookie. He didn’t like to have a fossil-digging nephew, eh?”
“I’m afraid I was a great disappointment to the dear old man,” said Hugh slowly. “I was sorry, but, after all, there are things a man must decide for himself.”
“Yes, there are,” agreed the Governor with ready understanding. “Here is the will” He glanced at it. “That last clause is what impressed me. Made a speech with that as a text. Wanted the Elks to back up a state traveling library” He paused, reminiscently, then said abruptly, “And what can I do for you, Mr. Stewart?”
“Down in our country, Governor,” began Hugh, slowly, “there are ten thousand acres of land on the Roaring Chief known as the Old Sioux Tract. As you know, Uncle Bookie left it to me, with certain stipulations. He knew how much I wanted it because, even before his death, I had good reason to believe it would prove to be one of the greatest fossil fields in the world. I suppose,” tentatively, “that a great fossil field means very little to you, Governor?”
Governor Eli’s smile was apologetic. “It doesn’t exactly excite my avarice, Stewart. But I’m open-minded. Go ahead.”
Hugh glanced from the Governor to the window, past which the snow twisted in great gray spirals, and plunged into the story now so painfully familiar to him. Governor Eli, obviously at first only politely interested, gradually focused his wandering gaze on Hugh’s face and watched its play of expression with concentrated attention. When the tale was finished, he lighted the cigar that had grown cold between his lips.
“So they are trying to get their charter now. What have you done to block them, Mr. Stewart?”
Hugh had made no mention of Mrs. Morgan or of Mrs. Ellis. “I have done nothing that amounts to anything, Governor, except now, to come to you.”
The Governor nodded. “Have you ever thought of going into public life, Stewart, speaking and that kind of thing, you know?”
“Yes, I’ve thought of it—only to dislike the idea more every time I think of it.”
“And right, too, old man! It’s a dog’s life! God knows, I’ve never stopped regretting the day I let myself be dragged off my ranch into the legislature. Don’t you ever let it be done to you. Now then, we must see what we can do to save your fossils. Supposing you let me have a few days to turn round in. Where can we reach you? The Plains Hotel? Good! Don’t stray too far from the telephone.”
Hugh rose, a pleasant feeling of accomplishment lifting the look of melancholy from lip and eye. He made his departure high with hope. What a fool he had been to delay coming to headquarters so long! He smiled contemptuously at his former petticoat-ridden self and strode down the wind-scourged streets at sudden peace with the world.
But there followed several days during which Hugh gradually lost the utter confidence in Governor Eli’s sympathy with which he had left the conference. When five days had passed he returned to the Capitol The Governor was not in. He went back to the hotel and wrote the Governor a letter, to which he received a courteous reply. Governor Eli had the matter in hand and would tell Mr. Stewart of the results as soon as they were obtained.
Hugh threw the letter in the waste-paper basket and began to walk the floor. An hour of this, then he found a list of the members of the Public Utilities Commission and began what were probably the bitterest weeks of all his political life. He found it so exceedingly difficult to procure an interview with the members of the commission that he was not long in realizing that they knew his name and errand and did not wish to see him. But a man who could work for three months with awl and whisk broom to disinter the bones of an eighty-foot dinosaur was not to give up lightly the mere matter of getting an interview with a reluctant commissioner. He looked up a former college mate, the managing editor of one of the local newspapers, and from him received a thorough though rapid education as to the particular kinds of politics that caused one to see the commission as through a veil, darkly. He was also enlightened in detail as to Governor Eli’s decidedly confusing attitude toward the magnificent natural resources of the richly endowed State of Wyoming.
The newspaper man talked much to Hugh about the necessity for bringing pressure to bear on the Governor and on the commission.
“What kind of pressure?” demanded Hugh belligerently.
“Something of the nature of a swap, with a kick concealed in the offer,” replied his friend. “But honestly, Hugh, you are wasting your time. It’s too late for you to beat out a big concern like the Eastern Electric Corporation. You go find you another fossil field, old man. Though it’s a darned shame for you to waste yourself digging up bones.”
Hugh grunted and left the newspaper office with a set jaw. And by dint of persistent telephoning and writing, he finally interviewed each member of the commission. They were politely indifferent to his statement and his plea. John Houghton, Mrs. Ellis’ brother, alone, did more than agree to take the matter under consideration. He suggested that, after Christmas, Hugh appear before a session of the commission. He did not mention his sister, nor did Hugh.
Hugh went from Houghton’s office to the Governor’s. There he sat for two days. It was probably that something menacing behind his melancholy gaze finally pierced the highly weather-proofed skin of Anderson, the Governor’s secretary, or this waiting game would have brought no results. The Governor and his secretary were accustomed to it. But late in the afternoon of the second day, after a colloquy with his chief, Anderson peremptorily bade Hugh to come into the inner room.
The Governor’s pleasant smile was lacking. “I’m sorry you saw fit, Mr. Stewart, to see the members of the commission. I thought you had placed yourself in my hands.”
“Do you think I was wise to do so, sir?” asked Hugh.
The Governor’s eyebrows went up.
Hugh went on, his low voice never rising but his eyes growing darker as he progressed. “I am not a politician Governor Eli, so it has taken me nearly a month to learn what any cross-roads boss evidently knows in Wyoming: that the natural resources of this state are threatened by a ring of men who are as lawless as the old Jimmie Duncan gang my uncle drove out of the Sioux Tract.”
“Do you wish to name any names?” demanded the Governor, sharply.
“I don’t mind,” answered Hugh. He pulled a list of the names of the Public Utilities Commission from his pocket and read it through. “And of course, you know, Governor Eli,” he added, “that your own name is always mentioned as the leader of the gang.”
The older man pulled himself slowly to his feet. He leaned far over his desk, his face white with anger. “Young man,” he said, “you’ve got more courage than you have sense. My advice to you is to go back to Fort Sioux, and to go back quick.”
“And my advice to you,” returned Hugh, steadily, “is to help me save the Old Sioux Tract.”
“You nameless fool!” exclaimed the Governor, contemptuously. “I’d lose my temper if I weren’t sorry to see a man obviously meant for better things ruining himself for a bone quarry. I can do nothing for you.”
Hugh, who had been standing throughout the interview, looked slowly around the room with its handsome appointments and thought with a sudden pang of regret and homesickness of The Lariat and its shelf-lined walls. Then he looked the Governor over as impersonally as though he were a newly disclosed dinosaur.
“Governor,” he said, “if you’d been doing my kind of work instead of yours, you’d have learned that it’s the casual happenings of life of which time is most apt to make the imperishable record. To speak in legend, we have no picture of the flaming sword that closed the Garden of Eden to us forever. But the cast of a worm that crawled over the path down which Adam and Eve fled before the sword is preserved to us, perfect in every detail. Your treatment of me is of course only one of the trivial details of your daily official life. Yet, I assure you that it would be quite like one of time’s curious ineptitudes to cause this particular detail to be preserved in stone and to permit some of the really big achievements of your career to be lost forever.”
“What are you doing? Threatening me?” sneered Governor Eli.
“Threatening you? No!” replied Hugh “Perhaps I’m merely trying to make you see life as I see it—as a span so appallingly short that it staggers me to think of the—the ineptitudes if you will—with which we deliberately crowd our days.” He suddenly twisted his long brown hands together and added, as if he were alone. “Life, so unimportant and of such staggering moment to each of us.”
Governor Eli scowled. Hugh caught the scowl, and again his gray eyes darkened.
“So you will not help me, Governor Eli?”
The Governor pressed the desk button furiously. To the secretary who appeared immediately he said, “Mr. Stewart has finished this and any other interview with me.”
“Well,” sighed Hugh, “it’s too bad.” And he followed Anderson from the room.
There seemed for the time nothing further to be done. He could not appear before the commission until after the Christmas holidays, and he knew that the granting of the charter to the Eastern Electric Corporation would be held up until after that hearing, thanks to Mrs. Ellis. And so, after a solitary Thanksgiving dinner in the hotel, Hugh returned to The Lariat.
Fred Allward welcomed him back. The little man had recovered in good shape from his accident, but was decidedly hostile to the idea of ever going within hailing distance of an airplane again.
“But what am I going to do with that wreck you wished on me, Fred?” asked Hugh.
“Marten’s got it in running shape again,” said Fred. “I guess I can sell it for you. I can sell most anything, by heck. I sold that set of the Elsie books to a cowman from the Jackson Hole country. I told him all the public libraries had suppressed ’em and he couldn’t buy ’em fast enough. What’s the news up at Cheyenne, Hughie?”
Hugh recounted his experiences and Fred swallowed tobacco juice and listened with indignant but absorbed interest.
“I’m going up there in January when you go,” he said, when Hugh had finished. “Some of them fellows will be shooting you.”
“You take care of The Lariat, Fred. You’re a better salesman than either Uncle Bookie or I.”
Fred nodded complacently. “Beats hell, don’t it?”
“How are things at the Indian Massacre?” asked Hugh.
“Ain’t been near ’em. But, Hughie, Pink’s built up a lot of mean feeling in town about you. Of course, the fact that you’re keeping money away from the town is at the bottom of it.”
“When I came out of the station today,” said Hugh, “Billy Chamberlain’s boy and some others I didn’t know yelled ‘Gray Stallion! Gray Stallion!’ at me. Pink hasn’t been keeping that fool thing going, has he? The man is crazy.”
“Crazy or not,” returned Fred, “he’s p’ison mad. He sees you spoiling his one big chance, and he’s going to load you with all the mud you can carry.”
Hughie grunted enigmatically, then asked, “Have you seen Jessie?”
“Yes, she’s asked me on the street a couple of times when you were coming back. She’s still up at the ranch, bookkeeping and such, she said. She didn’t tell me so, but Principal Jones says she has broke with her father. Wait a minute! Jones is just crossing the street. Seems like he’s the only friend but me and Red Wolf you got in Fort Sioux.”
Principal Jones came in with a broad smile. “Well, Hughie! Glad to see you back. How are things in Cheyenne?”
Hugh shook hands and returned the smile. “Principal, I learned more about politics on this trip to Cheyenne than in all my life before.”
The old schoolmaster shook his head ruefully. “I was afraid of that. Did you run afoul of Grafton?”
“No, I didn’t see him. But I heard that he’d gone back to Chicago. Look here, Principal, aren’t you going to hurt your standing in Fort Sioux by coming in here?”
The old man laughed. “Pshaw, Hughie! Don’t you know that a schoolmaster hasn’t either standing or sex? He’s like a preacher. Sort of a tolerated nuisance.—Jokes aside, I’d like to help you, Hughie, if you can tell me how.”
“I’ll certainly tell you how, as soon as I learn a little more of the ropes,” returned Hugh gratefully. “Sit down, won’t you? It’s Saturday and you’re free.”
“Say, Principal,” said Fred, noisily replenishing the heater, “you tell Hughie about that row you heard Jessie had with Pink. I was just starting on it myself when you come in.”
The schoolmaster looked at Hugh questioningly. Every one, of course, knew that Jessie and Hugh were living separate lives, yet even this man, who had spanked the geologist many times, hesitated to appear to recognize the separation.
“Go on! Go on!” urged Fred “Don’t pay no attention to Hughie. I want him to know it.”
“Well,” said Principal Jones, “Jessie came over to the schoolhouse one day to see me about their having a little school up in the ranch. What with the little Indians and the help’s children, they’ve got a right to one. And while she was talking to me about this, Pink comes stamping in. 'Jess!’ he roars, ‘how come that you never come to the hotel to see your mother and me any more?’
“‘I don’t like what you’ve been doing to Hughie,’ says Jessie.
“‘And I don’t like what Hughie’s done to you,’ roars Pink. ‘Ain’t you got any pride?’
“‘I’ve got plenty,’ replies Jessie, ‘but what’s between Hughie and me is between us and nobody else.’
“She was perfectly cool, you understand, while Pink as usual was booming like a bull.
“‘Between you and him and that Miriam Page, you mean!’ he comes back. ‘Well, if you ain’t got no sense of shame, I have! In the good old days I’d have shot him. I may do it yet. But I’ve got one satisfaction. I’ve put a brand into him he’ll never lose. He’ll be marked as the Gray Stallion till he dies!’
“Jessie got up slowly, but you could see that she was angry enough to knock him down. I think she could have, too. She is six inches taller than he is and hard muscled as a range rider. But she held herself in and she says, slow—you know how lazy her voice is sometimes—‘Dad, that’s the most low-down thing I’ve ever known you to do, and you’ve done many of them. And if you don’t go to work at once to undo the harm you’ve done to him by it, I swear you and I break now, for good and all!’
“Pink, of course, went crazy for a minute It was all bluster, but he didn’t give in, and it wound up by her ordering him out of my office as cool as if he was the hired help. He went too, and she turned round and began discussing the school again with me. Jessie has changed and grown. Life has strange ways of forcing us to develop our better selves. I didn’t say anything about the interview except as Jessie was going to suggest that if she’d had the loyalty to you in years gone by that she had now, things might have been different. She gave me a quick little nod. That of course isn’t saying, Hughie, that I approve of your relation with Miriam Page, because I don’t. But I understand it.”
Fred suddenly flared up. “Don’t you pick at Hughie about that. You ain’t lived with him as I have and seen Jessie make fun of him and his work in front of people and jab at him about not being a man. She done it for years till she got him so he had his back up all the time. He wouldn’t have been half so single scented after fossils if she hadn’t been so plumb ornery about it. I think he’s a damn fool about Miriam Page, but all the same”
“Hold on, Fred,” said Hugh, quietly. “After all, my private life is private, isn’t it?”
“Nobody’s life is private!” exclaimed the schoolmaster. “You, of all people in Fort Sioux, Hughie, never have had any private life and never can have.”
“I don’t see why not!” ejaculated Hugh.
“It’s plain enough. Well, I just dropped in on my way to get a hair-cut. Are you going back to Cheyenne soon, Hughie?”
“After Christmas. I don’t say much, Principal, but I’m a whole lot bucked up to know you’re with me.”
The old man nodded. “Now I’ll go over and quarrel with Billy Chamberlain about you.”