VII
SPRUDELL GOES EAST
With an air of being late for many important engagements, T. VictorSprudell bustled into the Hotel Strathmore in the Eastern city that hadbeen Slim's home and inscribed his artistic signature upon the register;and as a consequence Peters, city editor of the _Evening Dispatch_,while glancing casually over the proofs that had just come from thecomposing room, some hours later, paused at the name of T. VictorSprudell, Bartlesville, Indiana, among the list of hotel arrivals.
Mr. Peters shoved back his green shade, closed one eye, and with theother stared fixedly at the ceiling. One of the chief reasons why heoccupied the particular chair in which he sat was because he had amemory like an Edison record, and now he asked himself where and in whatconnection he had seen this name in print before.
Who was this Sprudell? What had he done? Had he run away with somebody,embezzled, explored--explored, that was more like it! Ah, now heremembered--Sprudell was a hero. Two "sticks" in the Associated Presshad informed the world how nobly he had saved somebody from something.
Peters scanned the city room. The bright young cub who leaps to fame ina single story was not present. The city editor had no hallucinationsregarding such members of his staff as he saw at leisure, but thoughtagain, as he had often thought before, that the world had lost some goodplumbers and gasfitters when they turned to newspaper work. He saidabruptly to the office boy:
"Tell Miss Dunbar to come here."
In a general way, Mr. Peters did not approve of women in journalism, buthe did disapprove very particularly of making any distinction betweenthe sexes in the office. Yet frequently he found himself gripping thechair arm to prevent himself from rising when she entered; and in hissecret soul he knew that he looked out of the window to note the weatherbefore giving her an out-of-town assignment. When she came into the cityroom now he conquered this annoying impulse of politeness by notimmediately looking up.
"You sent for me?"
"Go up to the hotel and see this man" (he underscored the name andhanded her the proof); "there might be a story in him. He savedsomebody's life out West--his guide's, as I recall it. Noble-herostory--brave tenderfoot rescuing seasoned Westerner--reversal of theusual picture. Might use his photograph."
"I'll try," as she took the slip. It was characteristic of her not toask questions, which was one of the several reasons why the city editorapproved of her.
"In that event I know we can count on it." Mr. Peters waited expectantlyand was not disappointed.
She was walking away but turned her head and looked back at him over hershoulder. The sudden, sparkling smile changed her face like somewizard's magic from that of a sober young woman very much in earnest toa laughing, rather mischievous looking little girl of ten or twelve.
There are a few women who even at middle-age have moments when it seemsas though the inexorable hand of Time were forced back to childhood bythe youthfulness of their spirit. For a minute, or perhaps a secondmerely, the observer receives a vivid impression of them as they lookedbefore the anxieties and sorrows which come with living had left theirimprint.
Helen Dunbar had this trick of expression to a marked degree and for afleeting second she always looked like a little girl in shoe-top frocksand pigtails. Mr. Peters had noticed it often, and as a student ofphysiognomy he had found the transformation so fascinating that he hadnot only watched for it but sometimes endeavored to provoke it. He alsoreflected now as he looked after her, that her appearance was a creditto the sheet--a comment he was not always able to make upon thetransitory ladies of his staff.
The unconscious object of the newspaper's attention was seated at a deskin the sitting-room of his suite in the Hotel Strathmore, alternatelyfrowning and smiling in the effort of composition.
Mr. Sprudell had a jaunty, colloquial style when he stooped to prose.
"Easy of access, pay dirt from the grass roots, and a cinch to save," hewas writing, when a knock upon the door interrupted him.
"Come in!" He scowled at the uniformed intruder.
"A card, sir." It was Miss Dunbar's, of the _Evening Dispatch_.
"What the dickens!" Mr. Sprudell looked puzzled. "Ah yes, of course!"For a second, an instant merely, Mr. Sprudell had quite forgotten thathe was a hero.
"These people _will_ find you out." His tone was bored. "Tell her I'llbe down presently."
When the door closed, he walked to the glass.
He twitched at his crimson neck scarf and whisked his pearl-gray spats;he made a pass or two with his military brushes at his cherished part,and took his violets from a glass of water to squeeze them dry on atowel. While he adjusted his boutonniere, he gazed at his smiling imageand twisted his neck to look for wrinkles in his coat. "T. VictorSprudell, Wealthy Sportsman and Hero, Reluctantly Consents to BeInterviewed" was a headline which occurred to him as he went down in theelevator.
The girl from the _Dispatch_ awaited him in the parlor. Mr. Sprudell'sgenial countenance glowed as he advanced with outstretched hand.
Miss Dunbar noted that the hand was warm and soft and chubby; nor wasthis dapper, middle-aged beau exactly the man she had pictured as thehero of a thrilling rescue. He looked too self-satisfied and fat.
"Now what can I do for you, my dear young lady?" Mr. Sprudell drew up achair with amiable alacrity.
"We have heard of you, you know," she began smilingly.
"Oh, really!" Mr. Sprudell lifted one astonished brow. "I cannotimagine----" He was thinking that Miss Dunbar had remarkably good teeth.
"And we want you to tell us something of your adventure in the West."
"Which one?"
"Er--the _last_ one."
"Oh, that little affair of the blizzard?" Mr. Sprudell laughedinconsequently. "Tut, tut! There's really nothing to tell."
"_We_ know better than that." She looked at him archly.
It was then he discovered that she had especially fine eyes.
"I couldn't have done less than I did, under the circumstances." Mr.Sprudell closed a hand and regarded the polished nails modestly."But--er--frankly, I would rather not talk for publication."
"People who have actually done something worth telling will never talk,"declared Miss Dunbar, in mock despair, "while those----"
"But you can understand," interrupted Mr. Sprudell, with a gesture ofdepreciation, "how a man feels to seem to"--he all but achieved ablush--"to toot his own horn."
"I can understand your reluctance perfectly" Miss Dunbar admittedsympathetically, and it was then he noticed how low and pleasant hervoice was. She felt that she did understand perfectly--she had a notionthat nothing short of total paralysis of the vocal cords would stop himafter he had gone through the "modest hero's" usual preamble.
"But," she urged, "there is so much crime and cowardice, so manydreadful things, printed, that I think stories of self-sacrifice andbrave deeds like yours should be given the widest publicity--a kind ofantidote--you know what I mean?"
"Exactly," Mr. Sprudell acquiesced eagerly. "Moral effect upon the youthof the land. Establishes standards of conduct, raises high ideals in themind of the reader. Of course, looking at it from that point ofview----" Obviously Mr. Sprudell was weakening.
"That's the view you must take of it," insisted Miss Dunbar sweetly.
Mr. Sprudell regarded his toe. Charming as she was, he wondered if shecould do the interview--him--justice. A hint of his interestingpersonality would make an effective preface, he thought, and a shortsketch of his childhood culminating in his successful business career.
"Out there in the silences, where the peaks pierce the blue----" beganMr. Sprudell dreamily.
"Where?" Miss Dunbar felt for a pencil.
"Er--Bitter Root Mountains." The business-like question and tonedisconcerted him slightly.
Mr. Sprudell backed up and started again:
"Out there in the silence, where the peaks pierce the blue, we pitchedour tents in the wilderness--in the forest primeval. We pillowed ourheads upon nature's heart,
and lay at night watching the cold starsshivering in their firmament." That was good! Mr. Sprudell wondered ifit was original or had he read it somewhere? "By day, like primordialman, we crept around beetling crags and scaled inaccessible peaks inpursuit of the wild things----"
"Who crept with you?" inquired Miss Dunbar prosaically. "How far wereyou from a railroad?"
A shade of irritation replaced the look of poetic exaltation uponSprudell's face. It would have been far better if they had sent a man. Aman would undoubtedly have taken the interview verbatim.
"An old prospector and mountain man named Griswold--Uncle Bill they callhim--was my guide, and we were--let me see--yes, all of a hundred milesfrom a railroad."
"What you were saying was--a--beautiful," declared Miss Dunbar, notinghis injured tone, "but, you see, unfortunately in a newspaper we musthave facts. Besides"--she glanced at the wrist watch beneath the frillof her coat sleeve--"the first edition goes to press ateleven-forty-five, and I would like to have time to do your storyjustice."
Mr. Sprudell reluctantly folded his oratorical pinions and dived toearth.
Beginning with the moment when he had emerged from the canyon where hehad done some remarkable shooting at a band of mountain sheep--hedoubted if ever he would be able to repeat the performance--and firstsensed danger in the leaden clouds, to the last desperate strugglethrough the snowdrifts in the paralyzing cold of forty below, with poorold Uncle Bill Griswold on his back, he told the story graphically, withgreat minuteness of detail. And when divine Providence led him at lastto the lonely miner's cabin on the wild tributary of the Snake, and hehad sunk, fainting and exhausted, to the floor with his inert burden onhis back, Mr. Sprudell's eyes filled, touched to tears by the story ofhis own bravery.
Miss Dunbar's wide, intent eyes and parted lips inspired him to gofurther. Under the stimulus of her flattering attention and the thoughtthat through her he was talking to an audience of at least two hundredthousand people, he forgot the caution which was always stronger thanany rash impulse. The circulation of the _Dispatch_ was local; andbesides, Bruce Burt was dead, he reasoned swiftly.
He told her of the tragedy in the lonely cabin, and described to herthe scene into which he had stumbled, getting into the telling somethingof his own feeling of shock. In imagination she could see the big,silent, black-browed miner cooking, baking, deftly doing a woman's work,scrubbing at the stains on logs and flooring, wiping away the blacksplashes like a tidy housewife. "_This_ is my story," she thought.
"Why did they quarrel?"
"It began with a row over pancakes, and wound up with a fight oversalt."
She stared incredulously.
"Fact--he said so."
"And what was the brute's name?"
He answered, not too readily:
"Why--Bruce Burt."
"And the man he murdered?"
"They called him Slim Naudain."
"Naudain!" Her startled cry made him look at her in wonder. "Naudain!What did they call him beside Slim?"
"Frederick was his given name."
"Freddie!" she whispered, aghast.
Sprudell stared at her, puzzled.
"It _must_ be! The name is too uncommon."
"I don't understand."
"He must have been my brother--my half-brother--my mother was marriedtwice. It is too dreadful!" She stared at Sprudell with wide, shockedeyes.
Sprudell was staring, too, but he seemed more disconcerted than amazed.
"It's hardly likely," he said, reassuringly. "When did you hear from himlast?"
"It has been all of twelve years since we heard from him evenindirectly. I wrote to him in Silver City, New Mexico, where we weretold he was working in a mine. Perhaps he did not get my letter; atleast I've tried to think so, for he did not answer."
Indecision, uncertainty, were uppermost among the expressions onSprudell's face, but the girl did not see them, for her downcast eyeswere filled with tears. Finally he said slowly and in a voice curiouslyrestrained.
"Yes, he did receive it and I have it here. It's a very strangecoincidence, Miss Dunbar, the most remarkable I have ever known; youwill agree when I tell you that my object in coming East was to find youand your mother for the purpose of turning over his belongings--thisletter you mention, an old photograph of you and some five hundreddollars in money he left."
"It's something to remember, that at least he kept my letter and mypicture." She swallowed hard and bit her lips for self-control. "He wasnot a good son or a good brother, Mr. Sprudell," she continued with aneffort, "but since my father and mother died he's been all I had. AndI've made myself believe that at heart he was all right and that when hewas older he would think enough of us some time to come home. I'vecounted on it--on him--more than I realized until now. It is"--sheclenched her hands tightly and swallowed hard again--"a blow."
Sprudell replied soothingly
"This fellow Burt said his partner thought a lot of you."
"It's strange," Helen looked up reflectively, "that a cold-bloodedmurderer like that would have turned over my brother's things--wouldhave sent anything back at all."
"I _made_ him," said Sprudell.
"I'm too shocked yet to thank you properly," she said, rising and givinghim her hand, "but, believe me, I do appreciate your disinterestedkindness in making this long trip from Bartlesville, and for totalstrangers, too."
"Tut! tut!" Mr. Sprudell interrupted. "It's nothing--nothing at all; andnow I wish you'd promise to dine with me this evening. I'll call for youif I may and bring the money and the letter and picture. From now on Iwant you to feel that I am a friend who is always at your service. Tut!tut! don't embarrass me with thanks."
He accompanied her to the door, then stepped back into the parlor towatch her pass the window and cross the street. He liked her brisk,alert step, her erect carriage, and the straight lines of the darkclothes she wore mightily became her slender figure. "Wouldn't a girllike that"--his full, red lips puckered in a whistle--"wouldn't _she_make a stir in Bartlesville!"
Sprudell returned to his task, but with abated enthusiasm. A vagueuneasiness, which may have been his conscience, disturbed him. He wouldwrite furiously, then stop and read what he had written with anexpression of dissatisfaction.
"Hang it all." He threw his work down finally, and, thrusting his handsin the pockets of his trousers, paced up and down the floor to "have itout." What could the girl do with the place if she had it? It was aproperty which required money and experience and brains to handle.Besides, he had committed himself to his friends, talked of it,promoted it partially, and they shared his enthusiasm. It was somethingwhich appealed intensely to the strong vein of sensationalism in him.What a pill it would be for his enemies to swallow if he went West andmade another fortune! They might hate him, but they would have to admithis brains. To emerge, Midaslike, from the romantic West with bags ofyellow gold was the one touch needed to make him an envied, a unique andpicturesque, figure. He _could not_ give it up. He meant to behonest--he _would_ be honest--but in his own way.
He would see that the girl profited by the development of the ground. Hewould find a way. Already there was a hazy purpose in his head which, ifit crystallized, would prove a most satisfactory way. Sprudell sat downagain and wrote until the prospectus of the Bitter Root Placer MiningCompany was ready for the printer.