CHAPTER XIX
THE EAGLE ADVENTURES INTO STRANGE LANDS
It can not be said that the Black Eagle of the Rocky Mountainsapproached civilization in any heroic disguise. At its best,accompanying a cattle train is not epic in its largeness. To prod cattleby means of a long pole, to pull out smothered sheep, are not inthemselves degrading deeds, but they are not picturesque in quality.They smell of the shambles, not of the hills.
Day by day the train slid down the shining threads of track like a longstring of rectangular green and brown and yellow beads. The caboose wasfilled with cattlemen and their assistants, who smoked, talked politics,told stories, and slept at all hours of the day, whenever a sparesegment of bench offered. Those who were awake saw everything andcommented on everything in sight. To some the main questions were whenand where they were to get dinner or secure a drink. The train, being a"through freight," ran almost as steadily as a passenger train, and thethirsty souls became quite depressed or savage at times by lack ofopportunities to "wet their whistles."
Mose was singularly silent, for he was reliving his boyish life on theplains and noting the changes which had taken place. The towns had growngray with the bleach of the weather. Farms had multiplied and fences cutthe range into pasture lands. As the mountains sank beneath the levelhorizon line his heart sank with them. Every hour of travel to the Eastwas to him dangerous, disheartening. On the second day he was ready toleap from the caboose and wave it good-by; but he did not--he merely saton the back platform and watched the track. He felt as if he were in oneof those aerial buckets which descend like eagles from the mines in theMarshall Basin; the engine appeared to proceed eastward of its ownweight, impossible to check or turn back.
The uncertainty of finding Mary in the millions of the city weakened hisresolution, but as he was aboard, and as the train slid while hepondered, descending, remorselessly, he determined to "stay with it" ashe would with a bucking broncho.
Kansas City with its big depot sheds filled with clangor and swarmingwith emigrants gave him a foretaste of Chicago. Two of his companionsproceeded to get drunk and became so offensive that he was forced tocuff them into quiet. This depressed him also--he had no other defensebut his hands. His revolvers were put away in his valise where theycould not be reached in a hurry. Reynolds had said to him, "Now, Mose,you're going into a country where they settle things with fists, soleave your guns at home. Keep cool and don't mix in where there's nocall to mix in. If a man gives you lip--walk off and leave him--don'thunt your guns."
Mose had also purchased a "hard" hat and shaved off his mustache inCanon City, and Reynolds himself would not have known him as hesauntered about the station room. Every time he lifted his fingers tohis mustache he experienced a shock, and coming before a big mirror overthe fireplace he stared with amazement--so boyish and so sorrowful didhe appear to himself. It seemed as though he were playing a part.
As the train drew out of the town, night was falling and the East grewmysterious as the thitherward side of the river of death. Familiarthings were being left behind. Uncertainties thickened like thedarkness. All night long the engine hooted and howled and jarred alongthrough the deep darkness, and every time the train stopped the cattleand sheep were inspected. Lanterns held aloft disclosed cattle beingtrampled to death and sheep smothering. Wild shouting, oaths, brokeforth accompanied by thumpings, and the rumbling and creaking of cars asthe cattle surged to and fro, and at the end, circles of fire--lanternssignaling "Go ahead"--caused a wild rush for the caboose.
Morning brought to light a land of small farms, with cattle in minutepastures, surrounded by stacks of hay and grain, plowed fields,threshing crews, and teams plodding to and fro on dusty roads. Theplainsman was gone, the prairie farmer filled the landscape. Townsthickened and grew larger. At noon the freight lay at a siding to letthe express trains come in at a populous city, and in the wait Mosefound time to pace the platform. The people were better dressed, thecowboy hat was absent, and nearly everybody wore not merely a coat but avest and linen collar. Some lovely girls looking crisp as columbines orplains' poppies looked at him from the doors of the parlor cars. Theysuggested Mary to him, of course, and made him realize how far he wasgetting from the range.
These dainty girls looked and acted like some of those he had seen inCanon City and the Springs. They walked with the same step and heldtheir dresses the same way. That must be the fashion, he thought. Themen of the town were less solemn than plainsmen, they smiled oftenerand they joked more easily. Mose wondered how so many of them made aliving in one place. He heard one girl say to another, "Yes--but he'sawful sad looking, don't you think so?" and it was some minutes beforehe began to understand that they were talking about him. Then he wishedhe knew what else they had said.
There was little chance to see the towns for the train whirled throughthem with furious jangle of bell and whiz of steam--or else drew up inthe freight yard a long way out from the station. When night fell onthis, the third day, they were nearing the Great River and all thecattlemen were lamenting the fact. Those who had been over the linebefore said:
"Too bad, fellers! You'd ought to see the Mississippi, she's a loo-loo.The bridge, too, is worth seein'."
During the evening there was a serious talk about hotels and theamusements to be had. One faction, led by McCleary, of Currant Creek,stood for the "Drovers' Home." "It's right out near the stockyards an'it's a good place. Dollar a day covers everything, unless you want a bigroom, which is a quarter extra. Grub is all right--and some darn nicegirls waitin' on the table, too."
But Thompson who owned the sheep was contemptuous. "I want to be intown; I don't go to Chicago to live out in the stockyards; I want to bewhere things go by. I ante my valise at the Grand Palace or the NewMerchants'; the best is good enough for me."
McCleary looked a little put down. "Well, that's all right for a man whocan afford it. I've got a big family and I wouldn't feel right to beblowing in two or three dollars a day just for style."
"Wherever the girls are thickest, there's where you'll find me," saidone of the young fellows.
"That's me," said another.
Thompson smiled with a superior air. "You fellers'll bring up down onSouth Clark Street before you end. Some choice dive on the levee isgappin' for you. Now, mind you, I won't bail you out. You go into thegame with your eyes open," he said, and his banter was highly pleasingto the accused ones.
McCleary turned to Harold, whom he knew only as "Hank," and said:
"Hank, you ain't sayin' a word; what're your plans?"
"I'll stay with you as long as you need me."
"All right; I'll take care o' you then."
Night fell before they came in sight of the city. They were woefullybehindhand and everything delayed them. After a hundred hesitationssucceeded by fierce forward dashes, after switching this way and that,they came to a final halt in a jungle of freight cars, a chaos ofmysterious activities, and a dense, hot, steaming atmosphere thatoppressed and sickened the men from the mountains. Lanterns sparkled andlooped and circled, and fierce cries arose. Engines snorted in sullenlabor, charging to and fro, aimlessly it appeared. And all around cattlewere bawling, sheep were pleading for release, and swine lifted theirpiercing protests against imprisonment.
"Here we are, in Chicago!" said McCleary, who always entered the city onthat side. "Now, fellers, watch out for yourselves. Keep your hands onyour wallets and don't blow out the electric light."
"Oh, you go to hell," was their jocular reply.
"We're no spring chickens."
"You go up against this town, my boys, and you'll think you're just outo' the shell."
Mose said nothing. He had the indifferent air of a man who had beenoften to the great metropolis and knew exactly what he wished to do.
It was after twelve o'clock when the crowd of noisy cattlemen trampedinto the Drovers' Home, glad of a safe ending of their trip. They wereall boisterous and all of them were liquorous except Harold, who dranklittle and remained
silent and uncommunicative. He had been mostefficient in all ways and McCleary was grateful and filled withadmiration of him. He had taken him without knowing who he was, merelybecause Reynolds requested it, but he now said:
"Hank, you're a jim-dandy; I want you. When you've had your spree here,you come back with me and I'll do the right thing by ye."
Harold thanked him in offhand phrase and went early to bed.
He had not slept in a hotel bed since the night in Marmion when Jack waswith him, and the wonderful charm and mystery and passion of those twodays, so intimately wrought in with passionate memories of Mary, cameback upon him now, keeping him awake till nearly dawn. He arose late andyet found only McCleary at breakfast; the other men had remained so longin the barroom that sleep and drunkenness came together.
After breakfast Harold wandered out into the street. To his left ahundred towers of dull gray smoke rose, and prodigious buildings set inempty spaces were like the cliffs of red stone in the Quirino. Beyond,great roofs thickened in the haze, farther on in that way lay Chicago,and somewhere in that welter, that tumult, that terror of the unknown,lived Mary.
With McCleary he took a car that galloped like a broncho, and startedfor the very heart of the mystery. As the crowds thickened, as the carsthey met grew more heavily laden, McCleary said:
"My God! Where are they all goin'? How do they all make a livin'?"
"That beats me," said Harold. "Seems as if they eat up all the grub inthe world."
The older man sighed. "Well, I reckon they know what they're doin', butI'd hate to take my chances among 'em."
If any man had told Harold before he started that he would growirresolute and weak in the presence of the city he would have bitterlyresented it, but now the mass and weight of things hitherto unimaginedappalled and bewildered him.
A profound melancholy settled over his heart as the smoke and gray lightof the metropolis closed in over his head. For half a day he did littlemore than wander up and down Clark Street. His ears, acute as a hound's,took hold of every sound and attempted to identify it, just as his eyesseized and tried to understand the forms and faces of the swarmingpavements. He felt his weakness as never before and it made him sullenand irritable. He acknowledged also the folly of thrusting himself intosuch a world, and had it not been for a certain tenacity of purposewhich was beyond his will, he would have returned with his companions atthe end of their riotous week.
Up till the day of their going he had made no effort to find Mary buthad merely loitered in the streets in the daytime, and at night hadvisited the cheap theaters, not knowing the good from the bad. The citygrew each day more vast and more hateful to him. The mere thought ofbeing forced to earn a living in such a mad tumult made him shudder. Theday that McCleary started West Harold went to see him off, and afterthey had shaken hands for the last time, Harold went to the ticketwindow and handed in his return coupon to the agent, saying, "I'd liketo have you put that aside for me; I don't want to run any chances oflosing it."
The agent smiled knowingly. "All right, what name?"
"Excell, 'XL,' that's my brand."
"All right, she's right here any time you want her--inside of the thirtydays--time runs out on the fifteenth."
"I savvy," said Harold as he turned away.
He disposed his money about his person in four or five small wads, andso fortified, faced the city. To lose his little fund would be likehaving his pack mule give out in the desert, and he took everyprecaution against such a calamity.
Nothing of this uncertainty and inner weakness appeared in his outwardactions, however. No one accused him of looking like an "easy mark" or"a soft thing." The line of his lips and the lower of his stronglymarked eyebrows made strangers slow of approach. He was never awkward,he could not be so any more than could a fox or a puma, but he wasrestless, irresolute, brooding, and gloomy.
He moved down to the Occidental Grand, where he was able to secure aroom on the top floor for fifty cents per day. His meals he picked upwherever he chanced to be when feeling hungry. When weary with hiswanderings he often returned to his seat on the sidewalk before thehotel and watched the people pass, finding in this a melancholypleasure.
One evening the night clerk, a brisk young fellow, took a seat besidehim. "This is a great corner for the girls all right. A feller can justabout take his pick here along about eight. They're after a ticket tothe theater and a supper. If a feller only has a few seemolleons tospare he can have a life worth livin'."
Mose turned a curious glance upon him. "If you wanted to find a partyin this town how would you go at it?"
"Well, I'd try the directory first go-off. If I didn't find him thereI'd write to some of his folks, if I knew any of 'em, and get a clew. IfI didn't succeed then I'd try the police. What's his name?"
Harold ignored this query.
"Where could I try this directory?"
"There's one right in there on the desk."
"That big book?"
"Yes."
"I didn't know what that was. I thought it was a dictionary."
The clerk shrieked with merriment. "The dictionary! Well, say, wherehave you been raised?"
"On the range."
"You mean cowboy?"
"Yes; we don't need directories out there. Does that book tell whereeverybody lives?"
"Well no, but most everybody shows up in it somewhere," replied theclerk quite soberly. It had not occurred to him that anybody could liveoutside a directory.
Harold got up and went to the book which he turned over slowly, lookingat the names. "I don't see that this helps a man much," he said to theclerk who came in to help him. "Here is Henry Coleman lives at 2201Exeter Street. Now how is a man going to find that street?"
"Ask a policeman," replied the clerk, much interested. "You're not usedto towns?"
"Not much. I can cross a mountain range easier than I can find one ofthese streets."
Under the clerk's supervision Harold found the Yardwells, Thomas andJames, but Mary's name did not appear. He turned to conservatories andlocated three or four, and having made out a slip of information setforth. The first one he found to be situated up several flights ofstairs and was closed; so was the second. The third was in a brilliantlylighted building which towered high above the street. On the eighthfloor in a small office a young girl with severe cast of countenance(and hair parted on one side) looked up from her writing and coldlyinquired:
"Is there anything I can do for you?"
"Is there a girl named Mary Yardwell in your school?" he asked with someeffort, feeling a hot flush in his cheek--a sensation new to him.
"I don't think so, I'll look," replied the girl with business civility.She thumbed a book to see and at length replied, "No, sir, there isnot."
"Much obliged."
"Not at all," replied the girl calmly, resuming her work.
Harold went down the steps to avoid the elevator. The next place wasoppressive with its grandeur. A tremendous wall, cold and dark (exceptfor a single row of lighted windows), loomed high overhead. In thecenter of an arched opening in this wall a white hot globe flamed,lighting into still more dazzling cleanliness a broad flight of marblesteps which led by a half turn to unknown regions above. Young peoplewere crowding into the elevator, girls in dainty costumes predominating.They seemed wondrously flowerlike and birdlike to the plainsman, andbrought back his school days at the seminary, and the time when he wasat ease with young people like this. He had gone far from themnow--their happy faces made him sad.
He walked up the stairway, four flights, and came to a long hall, whichrustled and rippled and sparkled with flights of young girls--eager,vivid, excited, and care-free. A few men moved about like dull-coatedrobins surrounded by orioles and canary birds.
A bland old man with clean-shaven mouth seemed to be the proper sourceof information, and to him Harold stepped with his question.
The old man smiled. "Miss Yardwell? Yes--she is one of our most valuedpupils. Certainly--Willy!" he called
to a small boy who carried alivery of startling newness, "go tell Miss Yardwell a gentleman wouldlike to see her."
"I suppose you are from her country home?" said the old gentleman, whoimagined a romance in this relation of a powerful and handsome young manto Miss Yardwell.
"I am," Harold replied briefly.
"Take a seat--she will be here presently."
Harold took the offered seat with a sick, faint feeling at the pit ofhis stomach. The long-hoped-for event was at hand. It seemed impossiblethat Mary could be there--that she was about to stand before him. Hismind was filled with the things he had arranged to say to her, but theywere now in confused mass, circling and circling like the wrack of aboat in a river's whirlpool.
He knew her far down the hall--he recognized the poise of her head andher walk, which had always been very fine and dignified. As sheapproached, the radiance of her dress, her beauty, scared him. Shelooked at him once and then at the clerk as if to say, "Is this theman?"
Then Harold arose and said, "Well, Mary, here I am."
For an instant she looked at him, and then a light leaped into her eyes.
"Why, Harold Excell!----" she stopped abruptly as he caught heroutstretched hands, and she remembered the sinister association of thename. "Why, why, I didn't know you. Where do you come from?" Her facewas flushed, her eyes eager, searching, restless. "Come in here," shesaid abruptly, and before he had time to reply, she led him to a littleanteroom with a cushioned wall seat, and they took seats side by side.
"It is impossible!" she said, still staring at him, her bosom pulsatingwith her quickened breath. "It is not you--it can't be you," shewhispered, "Black Mose sitting here--with me--in Chicago. You're indanger."
"I don't feel that way."
He smiled for the first time, and his fine teeth shining from hishandsome mouth led her to say:
"Your big mustaches are gone--that's the reason I didn't know you atonce--I don't believe I like you so well----"
"They'll grow again," he said; "I'm in disguise." He smiled again as ifin a joke.
Again the thought of who he really was flamed through her mind. "What alife you lead! How do you happen to be here? I never expected to see youin a city--you don't fit into a city."
"I'm here because you are," he replied, and the simplicity of his replymoved her deeply. "I came as soon as I got your letter," he went on.
"My letter! I've written only one letter, that was soon after your visitto Marmion."
"That's the one I mean. I got it nearly four years after you wrote it. Ihope you haven't changed since that letter."
"I'm older," she said evasively. "My father died a little over a yearago."
"I know, Jack wrote me."
"Why didn't you get my letter sooner?"
"I was on the trail."
"On the trail! You are always on the trail. Oh, the wild life you lead!I saw notices of you once or twice--always in some trouble." She lookedat him smilingly but there was sadness in her smile.
"It's no fault of mine," he exclaimed. "I can't stand by and see somepoor Indian or Chinaman bullied--and besides the papers alwaysexaggerate everything I do. You mustn't condemn me till you hear my sideof these scrapes."
"I don't condemn you at all but it makes me sad," she slowly replied."You are wasting your life out there in the wild country--oh, isn't itstrange that we should sit here? My mind is so busy with the wonder ofit I can't talk straight. I had given up ever seeing you again----"
"You're not married?" he asked with startling bluntness.
She colored hotly. "No."
"Are you engaged?"
"No," she replied faintly.
"Then you're mine!" he said with a clutch upon her wrist, a masterfulintensity of passion in his eyes.
"Don't--please don't!" she said, "they will see you."
"I don't care if they do!" he exultingly said; then his face darkened."But perhaps you are ashamed of me?"
"Oh, no, no--only----"
"I couldn't blame you if you were," he said bitterly. "I'm only a poordevil of a mountaineer, not fit to sit here beside you."
"Tell me about yourself," she hastened to say. "What have you been doingall these years?" She was determined to turn him from his savagearraignment of himself.
"It won't amount to much in your eyes. It isn't worth as much to me as Ithought it was going to be. When I found King had your promise--I hitthe trail and I didn't care where it led, so it didn't double on itself.I didn't want to see or hear anything of you again. What became ofKing? Why did you turn him loose?"
Her eyelids fell to shut out his gaze. "Well--after your visit Icouldn't find courage to fulfill my promise--and so I asked him torelease me--and he did--he was very kind."
"He couldn't do anything else."
"Go on with your story," she said hurriedly.
As they sat thus in the corner of the little sitting room, the pupilsand guests of the institution came and went from the cloak rooms, eyeingthe intent couple with smiling and curious glances. Who could that dark,handsome young man be who held Miss Yardwell with his glittering eyes?The girls found something very interesting in his bronzed skin and inthe big black hat which he held in his hands.
On his part Harold did not care--he scarcely noticed these figures.Their whispers were as unimportant as the sound of aspen leaves, theirfootfalls as little to be heeded as those of rabbits on the pine needlesof his camp. Before him sat the one human being in the world who couldcommand him and she was absorbed in interest of his story. He grew to atense, swift, eager narration as he went on. It pleased him to see herglow with interest and enthusiasm over the sights and sounds of the wildcountry. At last he ended.
"And so--I feel as though I could settle down--if I only had you. Thetrail got lonesome that last year--I didn't suppose it would--but itdid. After three years of it I was glad to get back to my old friends,the Reynolds. I thought of you every day--but I didn't listen to hearyou sing, because I thought you were King's wife--I didn't want to hearabout you ever--but that's all past now--I am here and you are here.Will you go back to the mountains with me this time?"
She looked away. "Come and see me to-morrow, I must think of this. It isso hard to decide--our lives are so different----" She arose abruptly."I must go now. Come into the concert, I'm going to sing." She glancedat him in a sad, half-smiling way. "I can't sing If I Were a Voice foryou, but perhaps you'll like my aria better."
As they walked along the corridor together they formed a singularlyhandsome couple. He was clad in a well-worn but neat black suit, whichhe wore with grace. His big-rimmed black hat was crushed in his lefthand. Mary was in pale blue which became her well, and on her softlyrounded face a thoughtful smile rested. She always walked with uncommondignity, and the eyes of many young men followed her. There wassomething about her companion not quite analyzable to her cityfriends--something alien and savage and admirable.
Entering the hall they found it well filled, but Mary secured a seatnear the side door for Harold, and with a smile said, "I may not see youtill to-morrow. Here is my address. Come up early. At three. I want along talk with you."
Left to himself the plainsman looked around the hall which seemed asplendid and spacious one to him. It was filled with ladies in beautifulcostumes, and with men in clawhammer coats. He had seen pictures ofevening suits in the newspapers but never before had he been privilegedto behold live men in them. The men seemed pale and puny for the mostpart. He had never before seen ladies in low-necked dresses and one justbefore him seemed shamelessly naked, and he gazed at her inastonishment. He was glad Mary had more modesty.
The concert interested him but did not move him. The songs werebrilliant but without meaning. He waited with fierce impatience for Maryto come on, and during this wait he did an inordinate amount ofthinking. A hundred new conceptions came into his besiegedbrain--engaging but by no means confusing him. He perceived that Marywas already as much a part of this high-colored life as she had been ofthe life of Marmion, quite at
ease, certain of herself, and the canonbetween them widened swiftly. She was infinitely further away from himthan before. His cause now entirely hopeless, he had no right to ask anysuch sacrifice of her--even if she were ready to make it.
As she stepped out upon the stage in the glare of the light, she seemedas far from him as the roseate crown of snow on Sierra Blanca, and heshivered with a sort of awe. Her singing moved him less than herdelicate beauty--but her voice and the pretty way she had of lifting herchin thrilled him just as when he sat in the little church at Marmion.The flowerlike texture of her skin and the exquisite grace of her handsplunged him into gloom.
He did not join in the generous applause which followed--he wondered ifshe would sing If I Were a Voice for him. He felt a numbness creepingover his limbs and he drew his breath like one in pain. Mary looked paleas a lily as she returned and stood waiting for the applause to dieaway. Then out over the tense audience, straight toward him, soared hervoice quivering with emotion--she dared to sing the old song for him.
Suddenly all sense of material things passed from the wild heart of theplainsman. He saw only the singer who stood in the center of a whiteflame. A soft humming roar was in his ears like the falling of raindrops on the leaves of maple trees. He remembered the pale little girlin the prison--this was not Mary--but she had the voice and the spiritof Mary----
Then the song stopped! The singer went away--the white light went withher and the yellow glare of lamps came back. He heard the passionateapplause--he saw Mary reappear and bow, a sad smile on her face--a smilewhich he alone could understand--her heart was full of pity for him.Then once more she withdrew, and staggering like one suffering fromvertigo--the eagle-hearted youth went out of the hall and down thepolished stairway like an outcast soul, descending from paradise intohell.
That radiant singer was not for such as Black Mose.