CHAPTER XVIII.

The Going Away of Laura and Clifford, and the Departure of Mr. Trescott.

"Thet little quirly thing there," said Mr. Trescott, spreading a map out

on my library table and pointing with his trembling and knobby

forefinger, "is Wolf Nose Crick. It runs into the Cheyenne, down about

there, an' 's got worlds o' water fer any sized herds, an' carries yeh

back from the river fer twenty-five miles. There's a big spring at the

head of it, where the ranch buildin's is; an' there's a clump o' timber

there--box elders an' cottonwoods, y' know. Now see the advantage I'll

have. Other herds'll hev to traipse back an' forth from grass to water

an' from water to grass, a-runnin' theirselves poor; an' all the time

I'll hev livin' water right in the middle o' my range."

His wife and daughter had carefully nursed him through the fever, as Dr.

Aylesbury called it, and for two weeks Mr. Trescott was seen by no one

else. Then from our windows Alice and I could see him about his grounds,

at work amongst his shrubbery, or busying himself with his horses and

carriages. Josie had transformed herself into a woman of business, and

every day she went to her father's office, opened his mail, and held

business consultations. Whenever it was necessary for papers to be

executed, Josie went with the lawyer and notary to the Trescott home for

the signing.

The Trescott and Tolliver business brought her into daily contact with

the Captain. He used to open the doors between their offices, and have

the mail sorted for Josie when she came in. There was something of

homage in the manner in which he received her into the office, and laid

matters of business before her. It was something larger and more

expansive than can be denoted by the word courtesy or politeness.

"Captain," she would say, with the half-amused smile with which she

always rewarded him, "here is this notice from the Grain Belt Trust

Company about the interest on twenty-five thousand dollars of bonds

which they have advanced to us. Will you please explain it?"

"Sutt'nly, Madam, sutt'nly," replied he, using a form of address which

he adopted the first time she appeared as Bill's representative in the

business, and which he never cheapened by use elsewhere. "Those bonds ah

debentures, which--"

"But what _are_ debentures, Captain?" she inquired.

"Pahdon me, my deah lady," said he, "fo' not explaining that at fuhst!

Those ah the debentures of the Trescott Development Company, fawmed to

build up Trescott's Addition. We sold those lands on credit, except fo'

a cash payment of one foath the purchase-price. This brought to us, as

you can see, Madam, a lahge amount of notes, secured by fuhst mortgages

on the Trescott's Addition properties. These notes and mortgages we

deposited with the Grain Belt Trust Company, and issued against them the

bonds of the Trescott Development Company--debentures--and the G. B. T.

people floated these bonds in the East and elsewhah. This interest

mattah was an ovahsight; I should have looked out fo' it, and not put

the G. B. T. to the trouble of advancing it; but as we have this mawnin'

on deposit with them several thousand dollahs from the sale of the

Tolliver's Subdivision papah, the thing becomes a mattah of no

impo'tance whatevah!"

"But," went on Josie, "how shall we be able to pay the next installment

of interest, and the principal, when it falls due?"

"Amply provided foh, my deah Madam," said the Captain, waving his arm;

"the defe'ed payments and the interest on them will create an ample

sinking fund!"

"But if they don't?" she inquired.

"That such a contingency can possibly arise, Madam," said the Captain in

his most impressive orotund, and with his hand thrust into the bosom of

his Prince Albert coat, "is something which my loyalty to Lattimore, my

faith in my fellow citizens, my confidence in Mr. Elkins and Mr.

Barslow, and my regahd fo' my own honah, pledged as it is to those to

whom I have sold these properties on the representations I have made as

to the prospects of the city, will not puhmit me to admit!"

This seemed to him entirely conclusive, and cut off the investigation.

Conversation like this, in which Josie questioned the Captain and seemed

ever convinced by his answers, gave her high rank in the Captain's

estimation.

"Like most ladies," said he, "Miss Trescott is a little inclined to

ovah-conservatism; but unlike most people of both sexes, she is quite

able to grasp the lahgest views when explained to huh, and huh mental

processes ah unerring. I have nevah failed to make the most complicated

situation cleah to huh--nevah!"

And all this time Mr. Trescott was safeguarded at home, looking after

his horses, carriages, and grounds, and at last permitted to come over

to our house and pass the evening with me occasionally. It was on one of

these visits that he spread out the map on the table and explained to me

the advantages of his ranch on Wolf Nose Creek. The very thought of the

open range and the roaming herds seemed to strengthen him.

"You talk," said I, "as if it were all settled. Are you really going out

there?"

"Wal," said he, after some hesitation, "it kind o' makes me feel good to

lay plans f'r goin'. I've made the deal with Aleck Macdonald f'r the

water front--it's a good spec if I never go near it--an' I guess I'll

send a bunch o' steers out to please Josie an' her ma. They're

purtendin' to be stuck on goin', an' I've made the bargain to pacify

'em; but, say, do you know what kind of a place it is out on one o' them

ranches?"

"In a general way, yes," said I.

"W'l, a general way wun't do," said he. "You've got to git right down to

p'ticklers t' know about it, so's to know. It's seventy-five miles from

a post-office an' twenty-five to the nearest house. How would you like

to hev a girl o' yourn thet you'd sent t' Chicago an' New York and the

ol' country, an' spent all colors o' money on so's t' give her all the

chanst in the world, go out to a place like that to spend her life?"

"I don't know," said I, for I was in doubt; "it might be all right."

"You wouldn't say that if it was up to you to decide the thing," said

he. "W'y it would mean that this girl o' mine, that's fit for to

be--wal, you know Josie--would hev to leave this home we've built--that

she's built--here, an' go out where there hain't nobody to be seen from

week's end to week's end but cowboys, an' once in a while one o' the

greasy women o' the dugouts. Do you know what happens to the nicest

girls when they don't see the right sort o' men--at all, y' know?"

I nodded. I knew what he meant. Then I shook my head in denial of the

danger.

"I don't b'lieve it nuther," said he; "but is it any cinch, now? An'

anyhow, she'll be where she wun't ever hear a bit o' music, 'r see a

picter, 'r see a friend. She'll swelter in the burnin' sun an' parch in

the hot winds in the summer, an' in the winter she'll be shet in by

blizzards an' cold weather. She'll see nothin' but kioats, prairie-dogs,

sage-brush, an' cactus. An' what fer! Jest for nothin' but me! To git me

away from things she's afraid've got more of a pull with me than what

she's got. An' I say, by the livin' Lord, I'll go under before I'll give

up, an' say I've got as fur down as that!"

It is something rending and tearing to a man like Bill, totally

unaccustomed to the expression of sentiment, to give utterance to such

depths of feeling. Weak and trembling as he was, the sight of his

agitation was painful. I hastened to say to him that I hoped there was

no necessity for such a step as the one he so strongly deprecated.

"I d' know," said he dubiously. "I thought one while that I'd never want

to go near town, 'r touch the stuff agin. But I'll tell yeh something

that happened yisterday!"

He drew up his chair and looked behind him like a child preparing to

relate some fearsome tale of goblin or fiend, and went on:

"Josie had the team hitched up to go out ridin', an' I druv around the

block to git to the front step. An' somethin' seemed to pull the nigh

line when I got to the cawner! It wa'n't that I wanted to go--and don't

you say anything about this thing, Mr. Barslow; but somethin' seemed to

pull the nigh line an' turn me toward Main Street; an' fust thing I

knew, I was a-drivin' hell-bent for O'Brien's place! Somethin' was

a-whisperin' to me, 'Go down an' see the boys, an' show 'em that yeh can

drink 'r let it alone, jest as yeh see fit!' And the thought come over

me o' Josie a-standin' there at the gate waitin' f'r me, an' I set my

teeth, an' jerked the hosses' heads around, an' like to upset the buggy

a-turnin'. 'You look pale, pa,' says Josie. 'Maybe we'd better not go.'

'No,' says I, 'I'm all right.' But what ... gits me ... is thinkin'

that, if I'll be hauled around like that when I'm two miles away, how

long would I last ... if onst I was to git right down in the midst of

it!"

I could not endure the subject any longer; it was so unutterably fearful

to see him making this despairing struggle against the foe so strongly

lodged within his citadel. I talked to him of old times and places known

to us both, and incidentally called to his mind instances of the

recovery of men afflicted as he was. Soon Josie came after him, and Jim

dropped in, as he was quite in the habit of doing, making one of those

casual and informal little companies which constituted a most

distinctive feature of life in our compact little Belgravia.

Josie insisted that life in the cow country was what she had been

longing for. She had never shot any one, and had never painted a cowboy,

an Indian, or a coyote--things she had always longed to do.

"You must take me out there, pa," said she. "It's the only way to

utilize the capital we've foolishly tied up in the department of the

fine arts!"

"I reckon we'll hev to do it, then, little gal," said Bill.

"My mind," said Jim, "is divided between your place up on the headwaters

of Bitter Creek and Paris. Paris seems to promise pretty well, when this

fitful fever of business is over and we've cleaned up the mill run."

Art, he went on, seemed to be a career for which he was really fitted.

In the foreground, as a cowboy, or in the middle distance, in his

proper person as a tenderfoot, it seemed as if there was a vocation for

him. Josie made no reply to this, and Jim went away downcast.

The Addison-Giddings wedding drew on out of the future, and seemed to

loom portentously like doom for the devoted Clifford. It may have

suggested itself to the reader that Mr. Giddings was an abnormally timid

lover. The eternal feminine at this time seemed personified in Laura,

and worked upon him like an obsession. I have never seen a case quite

like his. The manner in which the marriage was regarded, and the extent

to which it was discussed, may have had something to do with this.

The boom period anywhere is essentially an era in which public events

dominate those of a private character, and publicity and promotion, hand

in hand, occupy the center of the stage. Giddings, as editor and

proprietor of the _Herald_, was one of the actors on whom the lime-light

was pretty constantly focussed. Miss Addison, belonging to the Lattimore

family, and prominent in good works, was more widely known than he among

Lattimoreans of the old days, sometimes referred to by Mr. Elkins as the

trilobites, who constituted a sort of ancient and exclusive caste among

us, priding themselves on having become rich by the only dignified and

purely automatic mode, that of sitting heroically still, and allowing

their lands to rise in value. These regarded Laura as one of themselves,

and her marriage as a sacrament of no ordinary character.

Giddings, on the other hand, as the type of the new crowd who had done

such wonders, and as the embodiment of its spirit, was dimly sensed by

all classes as a sort of hero of obscure origin, who by strong blows had

hewed his way to the possession of a princess of the blood. So the

interest was really absorbing. Even the _Herald's_ rival, the _Evening

Times_, dropped for a time the normal acrimony of its references to the

_Herald_, and sent a reporter to make a laudatory write-up of the

wedding.

On the night before the event, deep in the evening, Giddings and a

bibulous friend insisted on having refreshments served to them in the

parlor of the clubhouse. This was a violation of rules. Moreover, they

had involuntarily assumed sitting postures on the carpet, rendering

waiting upon them a breach of decorum as well. At least this was the

view of Pearson, who was now attached to the club.

"You must excuse me, gentlemen," he said, "but Ah'm bound to obey

rules."

"Bring us," said Giddings, "two cocktails."

"Can't do it, sah," said Pearson, "not hyah, sah!"

"Bring us paper to write resignations on!" said Giddings. "We won't

belong to a club where we are bullied by niggers."

Pearson brought the paper.

"They's no rule, suh," said he, "again' suhvin' resignation papah

anywhah in the house. But let me say, Mistah Giddings, that Ah wouldn't

be hasty: it's a heap hahder to get inter this club now than what it was

when you-all come in!"

This suggestion of Pearson's was in every one's mouth as the most

amusing story of the time. Even Giddings laughed about it. But all his

laughter was hollow.

Some bets were offered that one of two things would happen on the

wedding-day: either Giddings (who had formerly been of abstemious

habits) would overdo the attempt to nerve himself up to the occasion and

go into a vinous collapse, or he would stay sober and take to his heels.

Thus, in fear and trembling, did the inexplicable disciple of Iago

approach his happiness; but, like most soldiers, when the battle was

actually on, he went to the fighting-line dazed into bravery.

It was quite a spectacular affair. The church was a floral grotto, and

there were, in great abundance, the adjuncts of ribbon barriers, special

electric illuminations, special music, full ritual, ushers, bridesmaids,

and millinery. Antonia was chief bridesmaid, and Cornish best man. The

severe conformity to vogue, and preservation of good form, were

generally attributed to his management. It was a great success.

There was an elaborate supper, of which Giddings partook in a manner

which tended to prove that his sense of taste was still in his

possession, whatever may have been the case with his other senses. Josie

was there, and Jim was her shadow. She was a little pale, but not at all

sad; her figure, which had within the past year or so acquired something

of the wealth commonly conceded to matronliness, had waned to the

slenderness of the day I first saw her in the art-gallery, but now, as

then, she was slim, not thin. To two, at least, she was a vision of

delight, as one might well see by the look of adoration which Jim poured

into her eyes from time to time, and the hungry gaze with which Cornish

took in the ruddy halo of her hair, the pale and intellectual face

beneath it, and the sensuous curves of the compact little form. For my

own part, my vote was for Antonia, for the belle of the gathering; but

she sailed through the evening, "like some full-breasted swan,"

accepting no homage except the slavish devotion of Cecil, whose constant

offering of his neck to her tread gave him recognition as entitled to

the reward of those who are permitted only to stand and wait.

Mr. Elkins had furnished a special train over the L. & G. W. to make the

run with the bridal party to Elkins Junction, connecting there with the

east-bound limited on the Pendleton line, thence direct to Elysium.

Laura, rosy as a bride should be, and actually attractive to me for the

first time in her life, sat in her traveling-dress trying to look

matter-of-fact, and discussing time-tables with her bridegroom, who

seemed to find less and less of dream and more of the actual in the

situation,--calm returning with the cutaway. Cecil and the coterie of

gilded youth who followed him did their share to bring Giddings back to

earth by a series of practical jokes, hackneyed, but ever fresh. The

largest trunk, after it reached the platform, blossomed out in a sign

reading: "The Property of the Bride and Groom. You can Identify the

Owners by that Absorbed Expression!" Divers revelatory incidents were

arranged to eventuate on the limited train. Precipitation of rice was

produced, in modes known to sleight-of-hand only. So much of this

occurred that Captain Tolliver showed, by a stately refusal to see the

joke, his disapproval of it--a feeling which he expressed in an aside to

me.

"Hoss-play of this so't, suh," said he, "ought not to be tolerated among

civilized people, and I believe is not! In the state of society in which

I was reahed such niggah-shines would mean pistols at ten paces, within

fo'ty-eight houahs, with the lady's neahest male relative! And propahly

so, too, suh; quite propahly!"

"Shall we go to the train, Albert?" said Alice, as the party made ready

to go.

"No," said I, "unless you particularly wish it; we shall go home."

"Mr. Barslow," said one of the maids, "you are wanted at the telephone."

"Is this you, Al?" said Jim's voice over the wire. "I'm up here at

Josie's, and I am afraid there's trouble with her father. When we got

here we found him gone. Hadn't you better go out and look around for

him?"

"Have you any idea where I'm likely to find him?" I asked. I saw at once

the significance of Bill's absence. He had taken advantage of the fact

of his wife and daughter's going to the wedding, and had yielded to the

thing which drew him away from them.

"Try the Club, and then O'Brien's," answered Jim. "If you don't find

him in one place or the other, call me up over the 'phone. Call me up

anyhow; I'll wait here."

The _Times_ man heard my end of the conversation, saw me hastily give

Alice word as to the errand which kept me from going home with her,

observed my preparations for leaving the company, and, scenting news,

fell in with me as I was walking toward the Club.

"Any story in this, Mr. Barslow?" he asked.

"Oh, is that you, Watson?" I answered. "I was going on an errand which

concerns myself. I was going alone."

"If you're looking for any one," he said, trotting along beside me, "I

can find him a good deal quicker than you can, probably. And if there's

news in it, I'll get it anyhow; and I'll naturally know it more from

your standpoint, and look at it more as you do, if we go together. Don't

you think so?"

"See here, Watson," said I, "you may help if you wish. But if you print

a word without my consent, I can and will scoop the _Times_ every day,

from this on, with every item of business news coming through our

office. Do you understand, and do you promise?"

"Why, certainly," said he. "You've got the thing in your own hands. What

is it, anyhow?"

I told him, and found that Trescott's dipsomania was as well known to

him as myself.

"He's been throwing money to the fowls for a year or two," he remarked.

"It's better than two to one you don't find him at the Club: the

atmosphere won't be congenial for him there."

At the Club we found Watson's forecast verified. At O'Brien's our

knocking on the door aroused a sleepy bartender, who told us that no one

was there, but refused to let us in. Watson called him aside, and they

talked together for a few minutes.

"All right," said the reporter, turning away from him, "much obliged,

Hank; I believe you've struck it."

Watson was leader now, and I followed him toward Front Street, near the

river. He said that Hank, the barkeeper, had told him that Trescott had

been in his saloon about nine o'clock, drinking heavily; and from the

company he was in, it was to be suspected that he would be steered into

a joint down on the river front. We passed through an alley, and down a

back basement stairway, came to a door, on which Watson confidently

knocked, and which was opened by a negro who let us in as soon as he saw

the reporter. The air was sickening with an odor which I then perceived

for the first time, and which Watson called the dope smell. There was an

indefinable horror about the place, which so repelled me that nothing

but my obligation could have held me there. The lights were dim, and at

first I could see nothing more than that the sides of the room were

divided into compartments by dull-colored draperies, in a manner

suggesting the sections of a sleeping-car. There were sounds of dreadful

breathings and inarticulate voices, and over all that sickening smell. I

saw, flung aimlessly from the crepuscular and curtained recesses, here

the hairy brawn of a man's arm, there a woman's leg in scarlet silk

stocking, the foot half withdrawn from a red slipper with a high French

heel. The Gate of a Hundred Sorrows had opened for me, and I stood as if

gazing, with eyes freshly unsealed to its horrors, into some dim

inferno, sibilant with hisses, and enwrapped in indeterminate

dragon-folds--and I in quest of a lost soul.

"He wouldn't go with his pal, boss," I heard the negro say. "Ah tried to

send him home, but he said he had some medicine to take, an' he 'nsisted

on stayin'."

As he ceased to speak, I knew that Watson had been interrogating him,

and that he was referring to the man we sought.

"Show me where he is," I commanded.

"Yes, boss! Right hyah, sah!"

In an inner room, on a bed, not a pallet like those in the first

chamber, was Trescott, his head lying peacefully on a pillow, his hands

clasped across his chest. Somehow, I was not surprised to see no

evidence of life, no rise and fall of the breast, no sound of breathing.

But Watson started forward in amazement, laid his hand for a moment on

the pallid forehead, lifted for an instant and then dropped the inert

hand, turned and looked fixedly in my face, and whispered, "My God! He's

dead!"

As if at some great distance, I heard the negro saying, "He done said he

hed ter tek some medicine, boss. Ah hopes you-all won't make no trouble

foh me, boss--!"

"Send for a doctor!" said I. "Telephone Mr. Elkins, at Trescott's home!"

Watson darted out, and for an eternity, as it seemed to me, I stood

there alone. There was a scurrying of the vermin in the place to snatch

up a few valuables and flee, as if they had been the crawling things

under some soon-to-be-lifted stone, to whom light was a calamity. I was

left with the Stillness before me, and the dreadful breathings and

inarticulate voices outside. Then came the clang and rattle of ambulance

and patrol, and in came a policeman or two, a physician, a _Herald_ man

and Watson, who was bitterly complaining of Bill for having had the bad

taste to die on the morning paper's time.

And soon came Jim, in a carriage, whirled along the street like a racing

chariot--with whom I rode home, silent, save for answering his

questions. Now the wife, gazing out of her door, saw in the street the

Something for which she had peered past me the other night.

The men carried it in at the door, and laid it on the divan. Josie, her

arms and shoulders still bare in the dress she had worn to the wedding,

broke away from Cornish, who was bending over her and saying things to

comfort her, and swept down the hall to the divan where Bill lay, white

and still, and clothed with the mystic majesty of death. The shimmering

silk and lace of her gown lay all along the rug and over the divan, like

drapery thrown there to conceal what lay before us. She threw her arms

across the still breast, and her head went down on his.

"Oh, pa! Oh, pa!" she moaned, "you never did any one any harm!... You

were always good and kind!... And always loving and forgiving.... And

why should they come to you, poor pa ... and take you from the things

you loved ... and ... murder you ... like this!"

Jim fell back, as if staggering from a blow. Cornish came forward, and

offered to raise up the stricken girl, whose eyes shone in her grief

like the eyes of insanity. Alice stepped before Cornish, raised Josie

up, and supported her from the room.

* * * * *

Again it was morning, when we--Alice, Jim, and I--sat face to face in

our home. An untasted breakfast was spread before us. Jim's eyes were on

the cloth, and nothing served to rouse him. I knew that the blow from

which he had staggered still benumbed his faculties.

"Come," said I, "we shall need your best thought down at the Grain Belt

Building in a couple of hours. This brings things to a crisis. We shall

have a terrible dilemma to face, it's likely. Eat and be ready to face

it!"

"God!" said he, "it's the old tale over again, Al: throw the dead and

wounded overboard to clear the decks, and on with the fight!"