CHAPTER XXVII
THE SHEEP QUEEN
The long mixed train crawling into the stockyards at Omaha, with itsice-encased wheels, its fringe of icicles pendant from the eaves, andsnow from the wind-swept plains of western Nebraska piled on the roofs,looked like an Arctic Special.
Kate stood on the rear platform of the swaying caboose looking withwearied unkindled eyes at the myriad lights of the first city she hadever seen. Those eyes were dark-circled with fatigue, her face streakedwith soft coal soot, while the wrinkled riding skirt in which she hadslept was soiled and torn. Her fleece-lined canvas coat was buttoned tothe throat, and she leaned negligently against the rail, watching fromunder the broad brim of her Stetson the twinkling lights increase.
It had been Kate's intention when she left Prouty to catch a fastpassenger train and meet her sheep at a feeding station a few milesoutside of Omaha, but the violence of the storm had changed her plansand she had remained to spend many tedious hours waiting on side-tracks,and this, together with the work of unloading to feed and water, andinsufficient sleep, had brought her as near exhaustion as she ever hadfound herself.
There was no eagerness in the sheep woman's face, only the impersonalcuriosity of a spectator at a display in which he had no part. Sheaccepted as a matter of course the fact that she would be here, as shewas at home, an outsider, an alien.
Kate saw nothing interesting or unusual in what she had done--it was allin the day's work. She was merely one of innumerable stock raisersbringing the results of months and years of patient effort to the greatstock market of the west. As she looked listlessly at the darksilhouette of tanks and towers, skyscrapers and gable roofs, atcountless threads of smoke going straight up in the still air from thegreat hive of industry and life, she wondered at her apathy, at the factthat there was no anticipation in her mind.
Her face darkened. Had Prouty, along with other things, robbed her ofthe capacity for enjoyment? Had it crushed out of her the last remnantof the spirit of youth? Was she old, already hopelessly old at heart?
Her feeling toward the town gradually had crystallized into a coldanimus, silent and unwavering, but now, as she suddenly whirled aboutand looked into the red winter sunset where, back there, beyond theBeyond, Prouty lay, a wave of hatred surged over her, to make her tingleto the finger tips.
Usually Prouty was personified in her mind as a hulking coward, bullyingthe weak, fawning upon the strong, with no guiding principle in lifesave self-interest, but to-night, as she visualized it across theintervening miles, snow-bound, wind-swept, desolate, it was in the guiseof a shivering pauper, miserable in his present, fearful of his future.
Her grip tightened on the rail of the swaying caboose and all theenvenomed bitterness of her nature was in her choking voice as she saidbetween her teeth:
"Curse you and curse you and curse you! I hate you! You've robbed me ofthe happiness that belonged to my youth. You've destroyed my faith inhuman kind. Whatever of sweetness there was in my nature you haveturned to gall. When my Day comes I'll strike you without mercy--I'llbeat you to the earth if it's in my power!"
It was fully night before they were able to get right-of-way into theyards, and Kate drew a deep breath of relief when the grinding wheelsfinally stopped. She and Bowers swung down together from the high stepto the cinder path which lay between their own cars and a train ofcattle bawling on a parallel track. As they stumbled along in thedarkness toward the engine they heard brisk footsteps coming from thatdirection.
"Low bridge!" Bowers warned jocularly as they drew close.
In stepping aside to avoid Bowers the pedestrian bumped into Kate.
"I beg your pardon!" The voice was pleasant--deep.
Kate murmured a commonplace.
At the instant a brakeman hung out from the handrail of a car of thecattle train and swung his lantern. Instinctively Kate and the man withwhom she had collided looked at each other in the arc of light. In theirhaste they had scarcely slackened their steps, and it was only asecond's glimpse that each had of the other's face, but it was longenough to give to each a sense of bewildered surprise. The look they hadexchanged was the look one man gives to another--level, fearless--forthere never was anything of coquetry in Kate's gaze, and the impressionshe had received was of poise, patience and worldly wisdom tinged with asadness in which there was no bitterness.
The man walked on a pace, stopped and swung about abruptly. Evidentlyhe could see nothing in the darkness--he could hear only the retreatingfootsteps on the cinder path. Then suddenly, aloud, sharply, out of hisbewilderment he cried:
"By God! That woman looks like me!"
Kate and Bowers walked on without comment upon the incident, but whenthey had reached the yard, Bowers detached himself from Kate's side andmade a rush to the nearest light where, turning his back with asecretive air, he took from the inner pocket of his inside coat the wornand yellowed photograph that Mullendore had recognized in Bowers'swagon. He looked at it long and hard.
Kate was too engrossed in directing and helping with the work ofunloading, counting the sheep that had smothered, looking after thosethat had been injured in transit, feeding, watering, to be conscious ofthe attention she attracted among the helpers and others in the yards.
There had been "sheep queens" in the stockyards before--raucous-voiced,domineering, sexless, inflated to absurdity by their success--but nonewith Kate's personal attractiveness and her utter lack ofself-consciousness. As she walked about on the long platform beside thepens, tall, straight, picturesque, with her free movements, her widegestures when she used her hands, together with her quiet air ofauthority, she was the most typical and interesting figure that had comeout of the far west for a long time.
When the last thing was done that required her personal attention, Katewent to a nearby hotel recommended by one of the employees of thestockyard. It was third-rate and shabby, unpretentious even in itsprime, but it looked imposing to Kate, who never had seen anythingbetter than the Prouty House.
The loose tiling clacked as she walked across the office to the clerk'sdesk. That person eyed her dubiously as she laid the flour sackcontaining her belongings on the counter and registered. He saw in Kateonly a woman peculiarly dressed, with a tanned and not too clean face,dishevelled hair, weary-eyed, and alone at a late hour. He missedaltogether the indefinable atmosphere of character and substantialitywhich a more discerning and experienced person would have recognized atonce.
"Baggage?" curtly, as she returned him the pen.
She indicated the grimy flour sack.
A supercilious eyebrow went up.
"You'll have to pay in advance. Six bits."
Kate reddened.
"Is that customary, or because you don't like my looks?"
Taking umbrage at the asperity of her tone, he replied impudently:
"Well--I don't know you from a crow, do I?"
Kate's eyes flashed.
"You will before I leave Omaha."
He laughed incredulously as he took a key from the rack.
Kate followed him up the dirty stairway through a dingy hall to a stilldingier room in the back of the house. Long and narrow, it looked like akalsomined cave illumined by a lightning bug in a bottle when he turnedthe electric switch. She was too tired, however, to be critical and inher utter weariness lost consciousness as soon as her head touched thepillow and slept dreamlessly until the dawn came feebly through thecoarse lace curtain that, stiff and gray with dust, hung at the onewindow of the room.
She rubbed her eyes and looked in bewilderment at the unfamiliarsurroundings. Then she remembered, and the trip with all its attendantcircumstances came back. She speculated as to the probable amount thesheep had shrunken on the way, how they would compare with otherconsignments in the yards, whether the market conditions were favorableor otherwise, what the commission agents whom she had known throughcorrespondence for many years would be like.
Her experience with the night clerk came to mind and her frown at there
collection of his insolence changed to a puzzled look as she thoughtof her retort. Whatever had prompted her to make the empty boast that hewould know her before she left Omaha? It was as unlike her as anythingshe could imagine, but it had seemed to say itself.
She had a subconscious feeling that there was still something else ofwhich she wished to think before getting up, and as she searched hermind it flashed upon her--the stranger who had bumped into her in thedark. Of course, that was it! She heard his pleasant voice plainly andsaw his face with great distinctness as revealed by the brakeman'slight. While she recalled his features individually--his eyes, hismouth, his chin, and the meaning they conveyed, his manner with itsmixture of friendliness and reserve, she mechanically rubbed herforehead with her finger tips as though the action might assist incatching some elusive memory that was just beyond her reach. Her browsknit in perplexity and she murmured finally:
"He didn't seem a stranger, somehow--and yet--he was, of course. Itwould not be possible for me ever to forget a man like that. It seemedas if--" there was bewilderment in her face as she laid her hand uponher heart--"as if, somehow, I knew him here."
Kate's belief that no better sheep of their class than hers would befound in the stockyards was justified by subsequent events. Her shipmentnot only "topped the market," but she received for her yearling lambsfourteen dollars and sixty-five cents a head--the highest paid since theCivil War. This high rate was due not only to European disturbances, butto the quality and condition of the sheep; and, therefore, apart fromthe attention which she naturally would have attracted, she was, as theowner, an object of interest in the yards as well as in the stockexchange offices and the bank.
Basking in the reflected sunshine of his employer's success, Bowers cameas near strutting as was possible for one of his retiring temperament.
Kate was finding a new experience in her meeting with the members of thefirm to which she had consigned her sheep, and others with whom herbusiness brought her in contact about the crowded Exchange. Theseprosperous, clean-cut men, alert, incisive of speech and thought, werean unfamiliar type. Their undisguised approbation, their respect, theireagerness to be kind brought a new sensation to Kate, who had grown upand lived in an atmosphere of prejudice. There were moments when thetears were absurdly close to her eyes.
Aside from the circumstances which in any event would have attractedmore than a little attention to Kate, the extent of the recognition andthe courtesy extended to her was a personal triumph. Her simplicity andgood sense, her reserve, together with a kind of timid, questioningfriendliness, her unconsciousness of being in any way unusual, made heran instantaneous and complete success with those she met the followingday, and a celebrity in the yards.
Her business was finished within a few hours and when she made heradieu, Kate looked for Bowers to tell him that she was leaving forProuty on a night train, presuming that he would wish to do likewise.But Bowers appeared to have vanished as entirely as though he had beenshanghaied and was a hundred miles at sea. It was singular that he hadnot first learned her plans before leaving the stockyards.
The omission hurt Kate, for they had talked much of what they would doand see when they reached Omaha. Bowers, with his superior knowledge ofcity life, was to show her about; they were to dine together in one ofthe best restaurants, to see a play and look in the shops. Kate neverhad been on a street car or in a "machine," so she had counted on him topilot her from South Omaha to the city proper. Disappointed and hurt byBowers's neglect, she wandered aimlessly about the streets in thevicinity of her hotel, stopping occasionally to look at the cheap waresdisplayed in the windows of the small shops of South Omaha.
The hurrying passersby slackened their steps to stare at her in candidinterest, and she wondered if it were possible that her conspicuousnesshad anything to do with Bowers's mysterious disappearance. It seemed anungenerous thought, but how else account for it, knowing as she did thathe had no friends, no business in Omaha, and in the past there never hadbeen a time when he had not preferred her society to that of everyoneelse?
The elation consequent upon her day of triumph gradually oozed out, tobe replaced by the sense of dreariness that comes from being alone in acrowd. Then, too, she had a feeling of contempt for herself for theswift dreams of something different aroused by the day's events.Optimism had come to be synonymous with weakness to Kate. Now, as shestared indifferently at a display of tawdry blouses, she was askingherself if she had not yet learned her lesson, but that upon thestrength of a little ephemeral happiness she must needs begin and buildair castles again.
The waning day was cloudy, the crossings deep with slush, the pavementsdamp, and the chill of her wet soles made her shiver, adding the lasttouch to her forlornness and the depression which Bowers's desertion hadinduced. She dreaded returning to her cheerless room, but she could notwalk the streets indefinitely, so she bought a magazine to read until itwas time to dine alone in some one of the neighborhood's cheaprestaurants. The night clerk was already on duty and through thefly-specked plate-glass window of the office saw her coming. Dashingfrom behind the desk, he skated recklessly across the tiles to open thedoor.
"Say--you're all right!" His tone was emphatic and sincere.
Kate eyed him without enthusiasm.
"Why didn't you tell me?" he demanded.
"Tell you what?"
He held up the afternoon newspaper that he had in his hand.
Kate's own face looked back at her from the front page and her name inthe headlines met her astonished eyes. The picture, which had been madefrom a snapshot, was excellent, and the text was a highly coloredrecital of her achievements obtained from Bowers.
The clerk's tone conveyed his admiration as he confessed:
"Looks like you knew what you was talkin' about when you said I'd knowwho you was before you left Omaha."
Sitting on the edge of her bed Kate read the article again, but herfirst feeling of elation did not return. With her hands clasped aboutone knee, in her characteristic attitude, she stared at a festoon ofdusty cobwebs hanging from the ceiling, and there gradually crept overher a feeling of lassitude.
She had established a record price with the best trainload of rangesheep that ever had come into the stockyards; she had been accepted asan equal in achievement and intelligence by every one of the worthwhilemen with whom she had come in contact; and as a climax to the day'sevents she was proclaimed a successful woman in the public prints. Yet,in the silence of the cheerless room, she was cognizant of the fact thatnothing inside of her was changed thereby. There remained in her heartthe same dreary emptiness.
Two tears slipped slowly down her cheeks. She brushed them away with theback of her hand, looked at her watch, and got up. She had no appetite,but ordering food in a restaurant would help the time to pass. Afterrubbing such mud as she could from her boots, she smoothed her hairbefore the mirror and put on her hat. The sheep woman was the cynosureof the respectful gaze of many eyes as she came down the stairs.
Outside all the world was going home with eager, hurrying feet and shepaused, looking indifferently up and down the street. The nearestrestaurant was not inviting, but it answered well enough. After a fewmouthfuls, Kate crumpled the paper napkin, paid her bill, and walkeddispiritedly back to the hotel.
More often than not, the momentous happenings in life come withoutwarning, and with no stage-setting to enhance the dramatic effect.Certainly there was nothing in the announcement of the now too friendlyclerk that "she had a visitor who looked like new money," toprognosticate that once Kate had crossed the threshold of the red-plushparlor, her life would never be the same again.
It was Bowers, of course--she thought--Bowers come too late to take herto the restaurant whose delectable "grub" was one of his boastedmemories of Omaha. Her conclusion was correct that Bowers was there,wearing his new clothes like a disguise, his eyes shining witheagerness. But it was not Bowers that Kate saw in the dim light as shestepped through the doorway--it was the man who at intervals had
beenstrongly in her thoughts all day, for whom she had unconsciously kept alookout, impelled by an inexplicable desire to see him again and removethat perplexing, haunting sense of having seen him somewhere before.
Kate felt herself trembling when the man arose from the sofa facing thedoor. As if by divination she recognized some impending event ofimportance to herself. He was no casual caller brought by idlecuriosity, she was sure of that.
There was in his eyes a tremendous hope, and a yearning tenderness inhis face which seemed to draw her into his arms. It required an effortof will to remain passive as he approached.
Without explanation or apology, he put his hand under her chin andraised it with all gentleness, studying meanwhile every lineament of herface.
Kate watched the light of conviction grow in his eyes. Then she felt anarm about her shoulder and herself being drawn close against herfather's heart as he exclaimed brokenly:
"My baby-girl, grown up! My _Kate_!"