CHAPTER XLIII

LOU GORE

“COME right on in, you poor child.” When Taisie Lockhart first had climbed down from the lofty cart seat and approached the front door of the Drovers’ Cottage, she walked straight into the arms of sturdy Lou Gore, matron of the first cowman’s hotel of the North and Florence Nightingale of the frontier. That good soul took the girl to her bosom, patting her shoulder like a mother. “My!” she exclaimed. “To think at first I might have took you for a boy!”

When they entered the door she felt her young charge wince, draw back. A tall young man stood in the office near the door. It seemed to Lou Gore that these two must somewhere have met, although she scarce heard the voice of either now as they saluted, acknowledged.

“Why, you knew that gentleman?” she asked later.

“Yes,” said Taisie; “he was once a neighbor of ours down in Texas. He was with us part way on the trail.”

“Oh-ho! Well, he don’t seem so very neighborly now, up here. He don’t talk to nobody except Wild Bill. Them two were shooting at a mark over on the street. My husband says neither of them didn’t miss. My dear, don’t never have anything to do with a man who is a shooter—take my advice. Men is bad, and shooters is worst.

“But now you come on in with me, child; I’ve got to take care of you. Law me, is this all the clothes you got—and this the Fourth of July?”

“Yes”—Taisie turned on her the gaze of her troubled eyes—“it’s all I’ve got. I am poor—unless we sell the cows. In Texas no one has anything but cows.”

“Well, you ain’t poor if them’s your cows. You’ll sell ’em all right. Everybody’s howling for cattle right now.

“But come back into my kitchen, my dear, and I’ll fix you up. Who is that hollering out in front?”

“Oh, that’s Milly, my black woman,” said Taisie. “She’s out in the cart. Wait, I’ll go get her.” And presently she returned with Milly, in one hand carrying her long-barreled weapon.

“Miss Taisie, Ah cross my ha’ht,” said she. “Ah’m sho’ Ah done seen dat no-’count nigger man o’ mine right down the street. If he ever do come a leetle bit closter I gwine to blow the lights outen him. Ah sho’ is!”

“Law sakes!” remarked Lou Gore. “How you talk! Set that gun down and come on and help me get this lady fixed up. If I only had a change of clothes for her,” she added, finger at lip, dubiously regarding Taisie’s male apparel. “We don’t fit each other.”

“Change of clothes, ma’am!” exclaimed Milly. “In her trunk out in the kyart she got all kind of clothes!”

“My mother’s wedding clothes!” Taisie smiled sadly. “I brought them along because I had no place to leave them. My own are all worn out.”

“Well, that’s all right, my dear. We got to fix you up a little first, you’re so dusty. I reckon my big dishpan will do. You’d think they’d have washtubs over at the store, but they haven’t; not one. There ain’t a bathtub in the whole state of Kansas, and never was. Plenty of shooting, but mighty little washing.”

She pushed Taisie down into a kitchen chair and tenderly removed her broad-brimmed hat. Thus was revealed the heavy queue of hair that lay down the girl’s neck and shoulders.

“Did you ever!” exclaimed Lou Gore. “Lemme cut that string off.” Her scissors were at her belt; a snip or two, a shake, a running through of her fingers, and the glorious flood of Anastasie Lockhart’s tresses fell about her as she sat, a Godiva in a cotton shirt.

“I am going to take off that shirt, my dear,” said Lou Gore, and leaned Taisie’s head against her own bosom. She caught the garment by the lower edge and left the girl sitting, tousled, her arms now huddled to her.

“My Lord, my dear,” exclaimed Lou Gore, “you’re a beauty! You don’t belong here. And wedding clothes? You say you’ve got wedding clothes out in the cart? You’ll need them. Look at that hair! My dear, how do you make it curl up on the end that way?”

It was Milly who explained: “It just quoil up on de fur end dat way nacherl. She got more hair den ary lady in Texas.”

Lou Gore stood back and looked at Taisie once more.

“My dear,” said she, “you are a beauty! What’s more, you are good. Give me a hour or two with you fixed up in woman clothes and I’ll marry you to any man you’ll point out to me.”

“In her trunk, I done told you,” interrupted Milly, “she got all kind o’ clothes; all silk—pink an’ blue an’ everything. Her maw had the pertiest clothes in Texas. She brung her clothes out from N’Awlins. You-all knows quality, ma’am.”

Lou Gore pursed a lip.

“Well, we’ll get the trunk in,” said she. “Now, child, you go into my room there and lay down until I get the water het. You’re that nervous, you jump when you see a young man standing around.”

Taisie Lockhart, clinging to Lou Gore’s hand, flung herself upon the white bed, the flame of her hair all about her shoulders, concealing her face. She began to sob indeed, utterly unnerved. Lou Gore understood this to be the fatigue of a thousand miles.

She must have slept. It seemed hours later that she was awakened by what seemed to be the sound of a door slammed shut. A few moments later came the sudden sound of a horse galloping. That was Del Williams, passing out of town.

Lou Gore heard the arrival of the railway train, saw men passing from the train. When she met Hickok and McMasters at the foot of the stair they told her what she would see if she went upstairs. But to the sturdy soul of Lou Gore hysterics were unknown. She did go upstairs, did make a certain discovery, did perform certain offices for the first man in Abilene to pass with his boots on. Then, whether in care of Abilene’s reputation or out of kindness for her sleeping guest, she did not open the door of Taisie’s room to tell her what had happened. Well, a man was dead. There would be others. Lou Gore sighed, her great hands wrapped in her apron.

“Milly,” said she at length to the black woman, whom she found in the kitchen, “you come help me get supper. It takes an awful lot of fried mush. And these men keep coming here, though I ain’t got this hotel really opened yet.”

* * * * *

When the party from the herd jogged into town the first man they met was McCoyne, and now he had news of his own.

“Wild Bill told me about the little trouble upstairs.” He nodded toward the Drovers’ Cottage. “One man seems to have left town. I didn’t want anybody to think we’ve got a tough town here. Fact is we haven’t got any courthouse or coroner or anything. We’ve got to hold an organization meeting and get these things fixed up before long. I just got a couple of men that was standing out near the door to go over and dig a good grave on the hill yonder; you can see it from here. First grave in Abilene, July 4, 1867. Well, Mr. Nabours, they buried your man fine; they fixed up some sort of a box for a coffin. I seen them two carry him over to the hill all right. I declare, I don’t believe there is a coffin in this whole town—our storekeepers is that negligent, got that poor a notion of goods. Now think of my getting so busy, forgetting to have our merchants order plenty of coffins! I don’t want Abilene to be back of no town in Kansas. You understand, in the hurry of getting things started, gentlemen, a man’s liable to overlook a lot of things.”

They informed McCoyne of the sale of the Del Sol herd. He shook each by the hand effusively.

“Didn’t I tell you”—to Nabours—“didn’t I say you’d find buyers up here in Abilene? Sold out, the first day you hit town! Sold out at twenty straight right through! More money than you ever seen before!”

“That ain’t no dream,” said Jim Nabours, taking a chew of tobacco. “Say, Mr. Pattison, you couldn’t raise some silver money, could you? This paper money is all right, of course; and if Dan McMasters says so, that paper on the bank is all right and it goes too. But silver is the only money that’s money in Texas. I don’t reckon my men would take any other kind, and I know old Sanchez wouldn’t. You can’t pay no Mexican nothing but silver.”

“You don’t need very much money,” smiled McMasters. “But, Jim, did you ever stop to figure how much money you’d have if you got it all in silver?”

“Why, no, I don’t reckon I ever did.”

“Well, a thousand dollars in silver weighs about sixty-three pounds—somewhere in there. Now, sixty times sixty is thirty-six hundred, isn’t it? You’d have pretty near two tons of money. You’d have to load a cart to get it home. If the Comanches didn’t get it, it’d sink any wagon you tried to ford.”

“My Lord!” said Jim Nabours. “My good Lord! Look what we escaped, coming North! Tell me, has Miss Taisie got that much money now?”

“She certainly has if she gets it all in silver,” smiled Pattison. “You begin to see what banks are good for?”

“By gum!” exclaimed McCoyne, slapping his thigh. “We certainly have got to have a bank in Abilene, right off! Anyhow, for looks we’ve got to have a church and a school; but a bank is almost as useful as a livery barn.”

“I’ll see what can be done about that when I get back to Kansas City,” said Pattison. “I’d not be surprised to see a million cattle come up the trail in the next two seasons. Think of the silver it would take to pay for them!”

“Mister,” said Jim Nabours, in a very genuine mental distress, “how much silver money would a million cows come to at twenty straight—I mean how many pounds?”

“So much that pretty soon we’ll have to have banks at both ends of the Texas trail,” said Pattison quietly. “So much that before long we’ll have to have railroads north and south instead of trails. So much that before long there’ll be a dozen towns instead of one handling the cattle coming North. So much that all this country north and west of here is going to be settled with people—farms, towns, railroads. Trail makers? The first trail maker of the world was a cow!”

He dropped his chin for an instant in thought.

“And the men who’ll be in on that,” he added presently, “are the ones who can see it now and not after a while. My new partner and I can see it now. We traded quick. I always trade fast or not at all.”

Nabours still remained uneasy.

“I’ve got five thousand paper dollars in my saddle pockets,” said he. “Where’s Miss Taisie at? I want to pay off the men. They’ll be wanting a little frolic. Won’t you come along and find her?”

He looked at Dan McMasters keenly, a little sadly. But though McMasters directed him to the Drovers’ Cottage, he excused himself. For this reason not even cheery Lou Gore could make Taisie Lockhart smile.

McMasters went after Wild Bill, whom he found, hands in pockets, watching a faro game.

“I’ve watched your men,” said Hickok, quietly getting McMasters to one side. “There are three or four of them. They don’t show any signs of leaving town.”

“The herd men are coming to town to-night,” said McMasters. “If we want help I can get it.”

The border man stroked his long yellow mustache.

“You and I wouldn’t need any help if we didn’t need any of them alive,” said he. “I’m going to sit in with you on this, because you can hold up your end. We can stick around for a while. Of course, your man Rudabaugh knows you are here. He’s got horses over at the Twin Livery Barn; I know that much. He may pull his freight any minute. Or he may be laying for a chance to plug you from around a corner.”

McMasters nodded quietly. Hickok went on: “Well, they didn’t keep your herd from coming through, did they? What price do you think your cattle will fetch?”

“They’re already sold,” said Dan McMasters.

He gave the details of the late transaction, including his own arrangement with Pattison for a northern-ranch venture. Hickok listened indifferently.

“I’m glad you took my advice,” said he. “That’s all out of my line. I only keep the peace. Looks like before long there’d be plenty of peace to keep.

“And that girl in the boy’s clothes is rich, eh? Well, I’m glad, aren’t you?”

“No one is gladder.”

“Where is she now? She’s vanished. Has she heard of the sale?”

“Not yet. Her foreman has just gone over to tell her. I think Lou Gore has been taking care of her. No, she doesn’t know yet that she’s rich.”