Lahoma

CHAPTER XIII

A SURE-ENOUGH MAN

"Pardner, I sure am glad to see you—put 'er there again! How are you feeling, anyhow? Look mighty tough and wiry, I do say; Here, Bill!" Willock raised his voice to a powerful shout, "Bill! come and see what's blowed in with the tumbleweed and tickle-grass. A sure-enough man, that's what I call him, and me to fight if any dispute's made to the title, according."

The tall bronzed man who was leading his horse along the road entering the mountain horseshoe, smiled with a touch of gravity in the light of his gray eyes. Willock found his chin more resolute, his glance more assured and penetrating, while his step, firm and alert, told of dauntless purpose. He was no longer the wandering cowboy content with a bed on the ground wherever chance might find him at night, but a mature man who had taken root in the soil of his own acres. Only twenty-five or six, his features were still touched with the last lingering mobility of youth; but the set of his mouth and the gleam of his eyes hinted at years of battle against storms, droughts and loneliness. He was already a veteran of the prairie, despite his youth.

"Everything looks very natural!" murmured Wilfred Compton, gazing about on the seamed walls of granite in whose crevices the bright cedars mocked at winter's threatening hand.

"Yes, mountains is lots more natural than humans. They just sets there serene and indifferent not caring whether you likes their looks or not, and they let 'er blow and let 'er snow, it's all one to them. I reckon when we've been dead so long that nobody could raise a dispute as to whether we'd ever lived or not, that there same boulder what they calls Rocking Stone will still be a-making up its mind whether to roll down into the valley or stay where it was born. Wilfred, if you knowed how glad I am to see you again, you'd be sort of scared, I reckon, thinking you'd fell amongst cannibals. Wonder where that aged trapper is?" He shouted more lustily, and a bristling white head suddenly appeared on the summit of Turtle Hill.

"Great Scott!" yelled Bill Atkins, glaring down upon the approaching figure, "if it ain't Wilfred Compton again! Come on, come on, I was never as glad to see anybody in all my life!"

The young man looked at Willock somewhat dubiously. "He's very much altered, then, since I met him last. I'm afraid he has a gun hidden up there among the rocks."

"Oh, nux, nux," retorted Willock. "He's a-speaking fair. Come along!"

As they ascended the winding road, Wilfred vividly recalled the day when, from the same elevation, he had watched Lahoma buried in her day-dreams. A sudden turn brought the cove into view. Lahoma was not to be seen, but there was the cabin, the dugout and the three cedar trees in whose shade he had made the discovery that he could not regard Lahoma as a little girl. It seemed that the cabin door trembled—was Lahoma's hand upon the latch? And when she opened the door, what expression would flash upon that face he remembered so well? Would she be as glad as Willock and Bill Atkins, when she recognized him? Even one half as glad?

He sighed deeply—it was not to be expected. She had known him only an hour; since then, many settlers had invaded the country about the Granite Mountains, a city had sprung up, not far away—other towns were peeping through the sand, and blooming from canvas to wood and brick. The air tingled with the electric currents of new life and intense competition.

"Did Lahoma marry?" he asked abruptly as all three descended to the lower level of the cove.

"She never did, yet," replied Bill dryly. "Young man, I'm powerful glad to see you. It's rather chilly out here. I'll take your horse and we'll gather in the dugout and talk over what's happened since we last met. Brick, don't you begin on anything interesting till I come."

"You give me that horse," retorted Brick. "You're too aged a man to be messing with horses. You'll get a fall one of these days that'll lay you flat. You'll never knit them bones together, if you do; you ain't vital enough."

Bill clung grimly to the bridle, muttering something that showed no lack of vitality in his vocabulary.

"He won't let me take no care of him," complained Brick, as he conducted Wilfred to the dugout.

Wilfred cast a longing glance toward the cabin, and again he thought Lahoma's parlor door quivered. He even stopped in the path; but Willock went on, unconscious, and he was obliged to follow.

"It's a strange thing," remarked Brick, as he descended the hard dirt steps, "how Lahoma has acted on me. I mean, living with her these past twelve years, and all the rest of the world shut out, except Bill. Could I of been told before I saved little Lahoma from the highwaymen that I'd ever worry over an old coon like Bill Atkins, as to whether he broke his neck or not, I'd 'a' laughed, for I'd 'a' had to. But it sure does gall me to have him exposing himself as he does. I never wanted Bill to come here, but he just come, like a stray cat. First thing I knowed, he was a-purring at the fireside—well, not exactly a-purring, nuther, but sort of mewing, and looking ready to scratch. He just took up with us and now it's like always being scared to close a door for fear of catching his tail in the jamb—I'm talking in a figger. Come in, pard—this used to be Lahoma's boudoir before we built that cabin for her. See the carpet? Don't tell ME you're a-walking on it, and not noticing! See that little stove? I brung it clear across the mountains from a deserted wagon, when I was young. Two legs is gone and it's squat-bellied, and smokes if the wind gives it a chance; but I wouldn't trade it for a new one. Set on this bench. I recollect as well as if it 'us yesterday, Lahoma a-setting there with her legs untouching of the floor, learning 'A' and 'B' and asking thousands of questions and getting herself civilized. I couldn't do a finished job, but Bill took her by the hand later, then a Mrs. Featherby, what moved over in the west mountain, added stores from New England and travels in Europe. When the settlers come, she gleaned all they knowed, always a-rising and a-looking out for new country. That's a wonderful girl!" he added with conviction.

When Bill came, they sat about the stove, the light from the famous window bringing out with clear distinctness Brick's huge form and bristling beard, Bill's thin figure surmounted by its shock of white hair, and Wilfred's handsome grave face and splendidly developed physique. It was so warm below the ground that the fire in the stove was maintained at the lowest state possible; but when the western light quickly vanished from the window, the glowing coals gave homely cheer to the crude room.

In answer to their questioner, Wilfred told of his experiences on his quarter-section: how he had broken the prairie land, put in his crops, watched them wither away in the terrible dry months, roughed it through the winters, tried again, fought through another drought, staked all on the next spring's planting, raised a half-crop, paid off his chattel mortgage, tried again,—succeeded.

"I've stayed right with it," he said gravely, looking from one to the other as they smoked in silence, their eyes on his animated face. "Of course, they required me to stay on the land only during certain months, every year. But I stayed with it all the time; and I studied it; and when I failed, as I did year after year, I failed each time in a different way, because I learned my lesson. And when I'd walled off the cause of each failure, one by one, seemed like there opened before me a broad clear way that led right into the goal I'd been seeking from the first day. Then I closed out all my deals, and looked and saw that everything was trim and ready for winter—and got my horse and started for Greer County."

"And glad we are!" cried Bill Atkins. "I hope you can stay a long time."

"That depends ... Lahoma is well, I suppose?"

"The picture of health—when she left," Brick declared admiringly, "and the prettiest little gal this side of the angels. When the early sunlight peeps over the mountain and laughs at the cove that's sulking from thinking it's about to be left out in the day's doings—that's like Lahoma's smile. And when you get down sick as I done once from causes incidental to being made of flesh and blood, and she come and laid her hand on my burning forehead, her touch always made me think of an angel's wing, somehow, although I ain't never set up to be religious, and I think of such things as little as may be—except when Bill draws me to the subject from seeing him so puny, at times."

"Lahoma's not here?" Wilfred asked anxiously.

"Not now, nor for some time," answered Brick.

"I wish," interposed Bill glumly, "that when you're going to talk about me, Brick, you'd begin with Bill and not be dragging me in at the tail-end of what concerns other people. I reckon, Wilfred, you just traveled here to take a look at the country where you used to herd cattle?"

"That wasn't my reason. Principally, I wanted to see Lahoma; and incidentally, my brother."

"Your brother? HE ain't in these parts, is he?"

"No," ruefully, "but I expected him to be. When I left home to turn cow-puncher, I didn't tell anybody where I'd gone; but just before I left for Oklahoma to turn farmer, I wrote to my brother. And about a month ago, seeing things clearing up before me, I asked him to meet me here at Tent City—he's interested in new towns; he's employed by a rich man to plant hardware-stores, and I thought he might find an opening here. He came on, and was here several weeks with a party of sightseers from Chicago; but he left with them about a week ago."

Willock sat suddenly erect. "Couldn't have been that Sellimer crowd, I reckon, from Chicago?"

"Yes—Mrs. Sellimer and her daughter, and some of their friends."

Willock whistled loudly. "And that up-and-down looking chap in the gold nose-glasses was your brother?"

"Never thought of that," Bill exclaimed, "although he had your name—he looked so different! But now that you've laid aside your cowboy rigging, I guess you could sit in his class, down at the bottom of it."

Willock was uneasy. "I was told," he observed, "and I took the trouble to get datty on the subject, that them Sellimers—the mother and daughter, and the herd they drift with—is of the highest pedigree Chicago can produce. It sort of jolts me to find out that anybody we know is kin to the bunch!"

Wilfred laughed without bitterness. "Don't let my kinship to brother Edgerton disturb your ideal. We're so different that we parted without saying good-by, and although I had the weakness to imagine we might patch up old differences if we could meet here in the desert, I suppose we'd have fallen out in a day or two—we're so unlike. And as to Miss Sellimer—Annabel Sellimer—she is the girl whose letters I was carrying about with me when I first saw you. She refused me because I was as poor as herself; so you see, the whole bunch is out of my class."

"That's good," Willock's face cleared up. "Mind you, I ain't saying that as for me and Bill, we'd wouldn't rather sit with you in a dugout than with them in a palace on Lake Michigan. But it's all a matter of getting Lahoma out into the big world, and you gave me a terrible jolt, scaring me that after all we'd made a mistake, and they was just of your plain every-day cloth."

Wilfred moved uneasily. "Has Lahoma made their acquaintance, then?"

"It looks like it, don't it?"

"What looks like it?" Wilfred asked with sudden sharpness.

"Why, her going off, with 'em to spend the winter in high life."

"That's why I was so glad to see you," Bill explained, "her being gone, and us so lonesome. That's why I'd like to have you stay with us a long time—until she comes back, if it suits you."

"But I thought.... But I came here to see Lahoma," cried Wilfred, unable to conceal his disappointment. "I thought as I came up the road that I saw her half-opening the cabin-door."

"That was Red Feather taking a peep at you. He's the Indian that brought Lahoma to Willock, as a child. He comes, about once a year, to see us, but this time he was a little too late for Lahoma. Yes, she's gone East—they're all putting up in Kansas City just now; on their way to Chicago."

"Son," said Willock, puffing steadily at his pipe, "why did you want to see Lahoma?"

"Well—you know she was just a child when I was here before, but she's hovered before my mind a good deal—I've been too busy to seek the acquaintance of strangers—just want to keep the few I know." He blew a rueful breath. "You can't think how all my air-castles have fallen about my ears! I wanted to see Lahoma! Yes, I wanted to see how she'd turned out. I have a good farm, now, not very far from Oklahoma City and— Well, being alone there, year after year, a fellow gets to imagining a great many things—" He stopped abruptly.

"That's so," Willock agreed sympathetically. "I ain't a-saying that if Lahoma'd been like me and Bill, she mightn't of liked farming with you first-class. But she was born as an associate of high men and women, not cows and chickens. It's the big world for her, and that's where she's gone. She's with real folks. Be Mr. Edgerton Compton your brother, or be he not, you can't imagine him setting down with us sociable in this dugout. You're right about his being different. And the fact that Miss Sellimer turned you down is encouraging, too. It shows you couldn't run in her course; you didn't have the speed. I guess we ain't made no mistake after ail."

There was silence, broken presently, by Bill—"I'm glad you've come, sure!"

Presently the door opened, and the Indian chief glided into the apartment with a grunt of salutation. He spread his blanket in a corner, and sat down, turning a stolid face to the fire.

"Don't pay no attention to him," remarked Willock, as if speaking of some wild animal. "He comes and goes, and isn't troublesome if you feeds and sleeps him, and don't try to lay your hand on him."

Bill Atkins rose. "But I always light up when he comes," he remarked, reaching stiffly for a lantern which in due time glimmered from the partition wall. "Are you hungry, Wilfred? We never feed till late; it gives us something to sleep on. I lie awake pretty constantly all night, anyhow, and when I eat late, my stomach sorter keeps me company."

Wilfred declared that he was not in the least hungry.

"I'm afraid you're disappointed, son," observed Willock, filling his pipe anew.

Wilfred turned to him with a frank smile. "Brick—it's just awful! It's what comes from depending on something you've no right to consider a sure thing. I never thought of this cove without Lahoma in it; didn't seem like it could be so empty.... How did she get acquainted with Annabel?—and with my brother?"

"It come about, son. I see at once that the bunch of 'em was from the big world. I come home and told Bill, 'Them's the people to tow Lahoma out into life,' says I. So they invited her to spend the winter with them, the Sellimers did, and show her city doings."

"Yes—but how did it come about?"

"Nothing more natural. I goes over to their tent and I tells them of the curiosities and good points of these mountains, and gets 'em to come on a sort of picnic to explore. So here they comes, and they gets scattered, what with Bill and Lahoma and me taking different ways—they liked Lahoma first time they see her, as a matter of course. And so, that Miss Sellimer, she gets separated from all the rest, and I shows her a dandy hiding-place where nobody couldn't find her, and I shows her what a good joke it would be to pretend to be lost. So I leaves her there to go to tell her crowd she dares 'em to find her. Are you listening?"

"Of course."

"Well, while she was setting there waiting to be searched for, of a sudden a great big Injun in a blanket and feathers and red paint jumps down beside her and grabs her and picks her up, and about as quick as she knew anything, she was gagged and bound and being bore along through the air. I reckon it was a terrible moment for her. Now there is a crevice in the top of the mountain that nobody don't never explore, because it's just a crack in the rock that ain't to be climbed out of without a ladder. So the Injun carries her there, and lets her down with a rope that it seems he must of had handy somewheres, and he puts out; and there she is, in a holler in the mountain, not able to move or cry out no more than if she'd been captured by a regular highwayman."

Wilfred stared at Willock in complete bewilderment. Willock chuckled.

"There was a terrible time!" remarked Bill.

"Dark was a-coming on before the party got plumb scared," Willock continued, "but they brushed and combed that mountain looking for the poor lost lady, and as I tells 'em she's a-hiding a-purpose, they think it a pore sort of joke till midnight catches 'em mighty serious. Torches is carried here and there and everywhere, but no use. You would think that the next day the crowd would naturally look down in that crevice, but that's because I've posted you up on where she is. There's lots of other crevices, and no reason as they can see why Miss Sellimer should take the trouble to worm herself down into any of 'em—and as nobody saw that Injun, how could they suspicion foul play? It must of been AWFUL for pore Miss Sellimer, all bound and gagged in that horrible way, but it takes heroic treatment to get some cures—and so Lahoma went with 'em to spend the winter."

"But the Indian—?"

"Needn't think about HIM no more, son, we got no more use for THAT Injun. Well, on the next day, Lahoma is looking everywhere, being urged on by me, and lo, and behold! when she comes to that crevice—looked like she couldn't be induced to go there of her own will, but it was brung about finally—what does she see but a tomahawk lying right at the edge what must have been dropped there recent, or the crowd would have saw it the day before. It come to her that Miss Sellimer is a prisoner down below. She looks, but it's too dark to see nothing. Not telling nobody for fear of starting up false hopes, she gets a light and lowers it—and there is that miserable young woman, bound and gagged and her pretty dress all tore. Lahoma jumps to her feet to raise the cry, when she discovers a ladder under a boulder which the Injun must have put there meaning to descend to his victim when the coast was clear. Down she skins, and frees Miss Sellimer, who's half dead, poor young lady! Lahoma comes up the ladder and meets me and I carries her out just like a feather—Well, can't you imagine the rest? I reckon if Miss Sellimer lives a thousand years she'll never forget the awfulness of that big Injun and the angel sweetness of the little gal that saved her. Why, if Lahoma had asked for the rings off her fingers, she could have had 'em, diamonds and all."

Wilfred rose and went to stare at the darkness from the small square window. Not a word was spoken for some time. At last the silence was broken by the Indian— "UGH!" grunted Red Feather.

"Just so!" remarked Wilfred, with exceeding dryness.

"What are you thinking, Wilfred?" demanded Brick Willock.

"I'd have thought Lahoma would recognize the ladder."

"So she done; but couldn't the Injun have stole my ladder and carried it to that boulder? Just as soon as Miss Sellimer was well enough to travel, NOTHING couldn't hold her in these parts, and that's why your brother had to leave before seeing you—he's setting to Miss Sellimer, and if Lahoma don't git him away from her, I reckon he's a goner!"

Bill Atkins spoke vaguely. "It wasn't none of my doings."

Wilfred looked steadily at Willock. "What about your whiskers?"

"Oh, as to them, it was like old times; you takes a cloth and cuts it out—painted red—Psha! What are we talking of? Bill, let's show him her letter—what do you say?"

"I reckon it wouldn't hurt," Bill conceded.

"How'd you like it, Wilfred? We can't produce our little gal to keep you company, but her letter would sort of be like hearing her talk, wouldn't it? And if you stay with us a spell, we'll let you read 'em as they come."

Wilfred perceived that Willock was anxious to get his mind off the harrowing adventure of the crevice, and as he was eager to hear the letter, and as Brick and Bill were anxious to hear it again, nothing more was said about the "big Injun."

"Who'll read it?" asked Bill, as he drew the precious letter from the strong box behind the stove.

"Let Wilfred do the deed," Willock suggested. "It travels slow in my company, and though Bill reads 'er correct, he does considerable droning. I expect if Wilfred reads it with unction, it'll sound like a new document."

Wilfred drew the only stool in the room up beside the lantern, and Bill and Brick disposed themselves on the bench, each holding his pipe on his knee as if fearful of losing a word. Red Feather, his beady eyes fastened on the young man's face, sat gracefully erect, apparently alert to all that was going on. The lantern reddened the strong clean-cut face of the young man, and touched the upturned pages to the whiteness of snow. A sudden wind had sprung up, and the flaring blaze from the open stove-door touched to vivid distinctness the giant, the old man and the Indian. Brick closed the stove-door, and the sudden gloom brought out in mellow effect Wilfred's animated face, the dull yellow wall against which his sturdy shoulder rested, and the letter in his hand.