Chapter 14

Her mind was working in a circuitous way toward a definite goal which she herself had not as yet perceived, but when she did see it, it came with the flash of inspiration. She all but bounded to her feet and began to pace the floor in the quick strides of mental excitement. A plan suddenly outlined itself before her with the clearness of a written text. Her crushing disappointment was almost forgotten in the keen joy of working out the details of her plot. If only she could influence certain minds--could manipulate conditions.

"I can! I _will_!" She emphasized her determination with clenched fist.

After a hasty toilette she surveyed herself in the glass with satisfaction. The jaded look was fast fading under the stimulus of the congenial work ahead of her and little trace of her intemperate indulgence of the night remained.

"You're standing up well under the jolt, Harpe," she commented. "That letter was sure a body blow."

She seated herself at the breakfast table and in her habitual attitude of slouching nonchalance sat with half-lowered lids watching Essie Tisdale as she moved about the dining-room. There was something in her crouching pose, the cruel eagerness of her eyes, which suggested a bird of prey, but it was not until they were alone that she asked carelessly--

"How's the hand, Ess?"

The girl gave no sign of having heard.

"That was rather a bad fall you got."

Essie turned upon her with blazing eyes.

"Not so bad as you intended."

Dr. Harpe laughed softly and asked with a mocking pretence of surprise--

"Why, what do you mean?"

"You know perfectly well that I know you tripped me. You need not pretend with me. Don't you think I know by this time that you would go to any length to injure me--in any way--that you already have done so?"

"You flatter me; you overestimate my power."

"Not at all. How can I when I see the evidence of it every day? You have left me practically without a friend; if that flatters you, enjoy it to the utmost." The girl's eyes filled with tears.

"Not without _one_," she sneered significantly; "surely you don't mean that?"

The peach-blow color rose in the girl's cheeks.

"No," she answered with a touch of defiance, "not without one, or two when it comes to that."

"And who is--the other?"

"I can count on Mrs. Terriberry. Even you have no influence with her, Dr. Harpe."

"You are very sure of your two friends." The woman slouching over the table looked more than ever like a bird of prey.

"Very sure," Essie Tisdale answered, again in proud defiance.

"Then of course you know that Van Lennop left Crowheart this morning?" She drawled the words in cruel enjoyment with her eyes fixed upon the girl's face.

Her eyes shone malevolently as she saw it blanch.

"Didn't he tell you he was going? I'm amazed."

The girl stood in stunned silence.

"Yes, a telegram sent him to Mexico to look after some important interests there. Quite unexpected. He left a letter for me saying good-by and regretting that he would not be back. So you see, my dear Essie, that when it comes to the actual count your friends have simmered down to one." It was not enough that she should crush her, she wanted somehow to wring from her a cry of pain.

"You made a fool of yourself over him, Ess! The whole town laughed at you. You should have known that a man like Van Lennop, of his position, doesn't take a biscuit-shooter seriously. Green as you are you should have known that. You've ruined yourself in Crowheart, doggin' his footsteps every time he turned and all that sort of thing; he simply couldn't shake you. You're done for here; you're down and out and you might as well quit the flat. It's the best thing you can do, or marry the first man that asks you and settle down."

Essie Tisdale looked at her, speechless with pain and shock. She had no reply; in the face of such a leave-taking there seemed nothing for her to say. Every taunt was like a stab in her aching heart because she felt they must be true. It _was_ true, else he would not have left her without a word. What did it all mean? How could such sincerity be false! Was no one true in all the world? Oh, the sickening misery of it all--of life!

She turned away and left the dining-room, swaying a little as she walked.

Dr. Harpe returned to her room with a smirk of deep satisfaction upon her face.

"I soaked the knife home _that_ time," she murmured, pinning on her stiff-brimmed Stetson before the mirror, but, mingled with her gratification was a slight feeling of uneasiness because she had gone farther than she had intended in mentioning Van Lennop's letter and boasting that it had been left for her.

The pair of horses which she and Lamb owned in common was at the stable already harnessed for their semi-weekly trip to the camps along the Ditch, but Dr. Harpe turned their heads in the opposite direction and by noon had reached the sheep-camp of old Edouard Dubois.

She hitched her horses to the shearing-pen and opened the unlocked door of the cabin. A pan of freshly-made biscuit and a table covered with unwashed breakfast dishes told her that the cabin was being occupied, so she reasoned that it was safer to wait until some one returned than to search the hills for Dubois.

A barking sheep-dog told her of some one's approach, and in relief she went out to meet him, for she was restless and impatient of any delay. But instead of the lumbering old French Canadian she saw the Dago Duke coming leisurely from a near-by coulee, picturesque in the unpicturesque garb of a sheep-herder.

If there was no welcoming smile upon her face the Dago Duke was the last person to be embarrassed by the omission.

"Ah, 'Angels unawares' and so forth." The Dago Duke swept his hat from his head in a low bow. "A rare pleasure, Doctor, to return and find a lady----"

She flushed at the mocking emphasis.

"Cut that out; any fool can be sarcastic."

"You surprise and pain me. If it is sarcasm to refer to you as a lady----?"

"Where's Dubois?"

He waved his hand toward the coulee and she walked away.

The Dago Duke looked after her with an expression of amused speculation in his handsome eyes. What deviltry was she up to now?

"Addio, mia bella Napoli," he whistled. "Addio! addio!" What difference did it make so long as she confined her activities to Dubois?--since he had no more liking for one than the other.

The Dago Duke had applied to Dubois for work as a sheep-herder and got it.

After the memorable midnight session with pink lizards and the Gila monster, the Dago Duke applied for work as a sheep-herder and got it, chiefly because of his indifference to the question of wages.

"I want to get away from the gilded palaces of vice and my solicitous friends; I want to lead the simple, virtuous life of a sheep-herder until my system recovers from a certain shock," explained the applicant glibly, "and something within me tells me that you are not the man to refuse a job to a youth filled with such a worthy ambition."

Dubois grinned understandingly and gave him work at half a sheep-herder's usual pay.

Whatever the nature of Dr. Harpe's business with his employer, the interview appeared to have been eminently satisfactory to them both, for she was smiling broadly, while Dubois seemed not only excited but elated when they returned together.

He looked after her buggy as she drove away, and chuckled--

"Ha--she brings me good news--zat woman!"

While the Dago Duke was warming up the fried potatoes and bacon, which remained from breakfast, over the rusty camp-stove, Dubois was diving under his bunk for a box from which he produced a yellowed shirt and collar, together with a suit of black clothes, nearly new.

"Per Iddio! 'Tis the Day of Judgment and you've gotten inside information!" jeered the Dago Duke.

Dubois showed his yellowed teeth.

"Mais oui, 'eet is ze Resurrection."

"I swear, you look like Napoleon, Dubois!" gibed the Dago Duke, when he was fully arrayed.

"Why not?" The Frenchman's face wore a complacent smirk. "Ze Little Corporal, _he_ married a queen."

The frying-pan of fried potatoes all but dropped from the Dago Duke's hand, while his employer enjoyed to the utmost the amazement upon his face.

"The lady doc?"

Dubois threw up both hands in vehement protest.

"Non, non! Mon Dieu, non, non!"

The Dago Duke shrugged his shoulders impertinently.

"You aim higher, perhaps?"

"Mais certes," he leered. "Old Dubois has thirty thousand sheep."

"To exchange for----"

"A queen, ze belle of Crowheart--Mees Essie Teesdale!"

The Dago Duke stared and continued to regard his employer fixedly. Essie Tisdale! Had the solitude affected the old man's mind at last? Was he crazy? How else account for the preposterous suggestion, his colossal egotism? Why, Essie Tisdale, even to the Dago Duke's critical eye, was like a delicately tinted prairie rose, while old Dubois with his iron-gray hair bristling on his bullet-shaped head, his thick, furrow-encircled neck, his swarthy, obstinate, brutal face, was seventy, a remarkable seventy, it is true, but seventy, and far from prepossessing. It was too absurd! It must be one of the lady doc's practical jokes--it was sufficiently indelicate, he told himself. At any rate he would soon see Dubois returning crestfallen from his courting expedition, and the sight, he felt, was one he should relish.

"I'll reserve my congratulations until you come," said the Dago Duke as he picked up his sheep-herder's staff and returned to his band of sheep.

"You will have ze opportunity, my frien'," grinned Dubois confidently.

Dr. Harpe had advised--

"Give her a night to cry her eyes out. Twenty-four hours will put a crimp in her courage. Let the fact that she's jilted soak in. Give her time to realize what she's up against in Crowheart."

And the woman had been right in her reasoning, for a night of tears and grief, of shame and humiliation left Essie Tisdale with weakened courage, mentally and physically spent.

Back of everything, above all else loomed in black and gigantic proportions the fact that Van Lennop had gone away forever without a word to her, that he even had thought less of her when it came to leaving than of the woman whom he had seemed to avoid.

In the long hours of the night her tired brain constantly recalled the things which he had said that had made her glow with happiness at the time, but which she knew now were only the pleasant, idle words of the people who came from the world east of the big hills. Dr. Harpe was right when she had told her that in her ignorance of the world and its men she had misunderstood the kindness Van Lennop would have shown to any person in her position.

"But he didn't show it to her--he didn't show it to anyone else but me!" she would whisper in a fierce joy, which was short-lived, for, instantly, the crushing remembrance of his leave-taking confronted her.

Her face burned in the darkness when she remembered that Dr. Harpe had taunted her with having displayed her love to all the town. She no longer made any attempt to conceal it from herself, the sure knowledge had come with Van Lennop's departure, and she whispered it aloud in the darkness in glorious defiance, but the mood as quickly passed and her face flamed scarlet at the thought that she had unwittingly showed her precious secret to the unfriendly and curious.

She crept from bed and sat on the floor, with her folded arms upon the window-sill, finding the night air good upon her hot face. She felt weak, the weakness of black despair, for it seemed to her that her faith in human nature had received its final shock. If only there was some one upon whose shoulder she could lay her head she imagined that it might not be half so hard. There was Mrs. Terriberry, but after what had happened could she be sure even of Mrs. Terriberry? Could any inconsequential person like herself be sure of anybody if it conflicted with their interests? It seemed not. She shrank from voicing the thought, but the truth was she dared not put Mrs. Terriberry's friendship to any test.

"The best way to have friends," she whispered bitterly with a lump in her aching throat, "is not to need them."

She dreaded the beginning of another day, but it must be gotten through somehow, and not only that day but the day after that and all the innumerable, dreary days ahead of her. Finally she crept shivering to bed to await the ordeal of another to-morrow.

The long shadows of the afternoon's sun lay in the backyard of the Terriberry House when Essie sat down in the doorway to rest before her evening's work began. The girl's sad face rested in the palm of her hand and her shoulders drooped wearily as Mrs. Abe Tutts in her blue flannel yachting cap came down the road beside her friend Mrs. Jackson, who rustled richly in the watered silk raincoat which advertised the fact that she was either going to or returning from a social function. Mrs. Jackson's raincoat was a sure signal of social activity.

"Let's walk up clost along the fence and see how she's takin' it," suggested Mrs. Tutts amiably. "Gittin' the mitten is some of a pill to swaller. Don't you speak to her, Mis' Jackson?"

Mrs. Jackson glanced furtively over her shoulder and observed that Mrs. Symes was still standing on the veranda.

"If I come upon her face to face, but I don't go out of my way a-tall," she added in unconscious imitation of Mrs. Symes's newly-acquired languor of speech. "One rully can't afford to after her bein' _so_ indiscreet and all."

"Rotten, I says" declared Mrs. Tutts tersely.

"She looks kinda pale around the gills s'well as I can see from here," opined Mrs. Jackson, staring critically as they passed along. They tittered audibly. "I tell you what, Mrs. Tutts, Essie ought to get to work and marry some man what'll put her right up in society where Alva put me."

A biting comment which it caused Mrs. Tutts real suffering to suppress was upon the tip of that lady's tongue, but it was gradually being borne in upon her that the first families were not given to actual hand-to-hand conflicts, so she checked it and inquired significantly instead--

"But could he, after ridin' over the country t'hout no chaperon and all?"

Mrs. Tutts had only recently found out about chaperons and their function, but, since she had she insisted upon them fiercely, and Mrs. Jackson was finally forced to admit that this violation of the conventions was indeed hard to overlook.

Essie Tisdale was too unhappy either to observe the passing of the women or their failure to recognize her. In the presence of this new, real grief their friendliness or lack of it seemed a small affair. The only thing which mattered was Ogden Van Lennop's going. The sun, for her, had gone down and with the inexperience of youth she did not believe it ever would rise again.

The girl sat motionless, her chin still resting in her palm, until a tremulous voice behind her spoke her name.

"Essie."

She turned to see Mrs. Terriberry, buttoned into her steel-colored bodice and obviously flustered.

"Yes?" There was a trace of wonder in her voice.

At the sight of the pale face the girl upturned to her, Mrs. Terriberry's courage nearly failed her in the task to which she had nerved herself.

"Essie," she faltered, twisting her rings nervously, finally blurting out, "I'm afraid you'll have to go, Essie."

The girl started violently.

"Go?" she gasped. "Go?"

Mrs. Terriberry nodded, relieved that it was out.

"But why? Why?" It seemed too incredible to believe. This was the very last thing she had expected, or thought of.

Mrs. Terriberry avoided her eyes; it was even harder than she had anticipated. Why hadn't she let "Hank" Terriberry tell her himself! Mrs. Terriberry was one of that numerous class whose naturally kind hearts are ever warring with their bump of caution.

She was sorry now that she had been so impulsive in telling him all that Dr. Harpe had whispered over the afternoon tea at Mrs. Symes's now fashionable Thursday "At Home." It was the first of the coveted cards which Mrs. Terriberry had received and Dr. Harpe took care to adroitly convey the information that the invitation was due to her, and Mrs. Terriberry was correspondingly grateful.

"You can't afford to keep her; you simply can't afford it, Mrs. Terriberry," Dr. Harpe had whispered earnestly in a confidential corner.

"But," she had protested in feeble loyalty, "but I _like_ Essie."

"Of course you do," Dr. Harpe had agreed magnanimously; "so do I; she's a really beautiful girl, but you know how it is in a small town and I am telling you for your own good that you can't afford to harbor her."

"I couldn't think of turning her out just when she needs a friend," Mrs. Terriberry had replied with some decision, and Dr. Harpe's face had hardened slightly at the answer.

"It's your own affair, naturally," she had returned indifferently; "but I'll have to find accomodations elsewhere. If living in the same house would injure me professionally, merely a boarder, you can guess what it will do to you in a business way, and," she had added significantly, "socially."

Mrs. Terriberry had looked startled. After hanging to the fringe until she was all but exhausted, it was small wonder that she had no desire to again go through the harrowing experience of overcoming Society's objections to a hotelkeeper's wife.

"Certainly I don't blame you for hanging on to her as long as you can," Dr. Harpe had added, "and of course you would be the last to hear all the gossip that there is about her. But, on the whole, isn't it rather a high price to pay for--well, for a biscuit-shooter's friendship? Such people really don't count, you know."

Mrs. Terriberry who had once shot biscuits in a "Harvey's Eating House" murmured meekly--

"Of course not." But instantly ashamed of her weak disloyalty she had declared with a show of spirit, "However, unless Hank says she must go she can stay, for Essie has come pretty close to bein' like my own girl to me."

Dr. Harpe had been satisfied to let it rest at that, for she felt sure enough of Terriberry's answer.

"He needs my money, but if more pressure is necessary,"--she sniggered at the recollection of Mr. Terriberry's sentimental leanings--"I can spend an hour with him in the light of the 'meller moon.'"

Again Dr. Harpe was right. Mr. Terriberry needed the money, also his fears took instant alarm at the thought of losing so popular and influential a guest, one, who, as he told Mrs. Terriberry emphatically, could do him a power of harm. The actual dismissal of the girl who had grown to womanhood under his eyes he wisely left to his wife.

The girl stood up now, a slender, swaying figure: white, desolate, with uplifted arms outstretched, she looked like a storm-whipped flower.

"Oh, what shall I do! Where shall I go!"

The low, broken-hearted cry of despair set Mrs. Terriberry's plain face in lines of distress.

"Essie, Essie, don't feel so bad!" she begged chokingly.

The girl's answer was a swift look of bitter reproach.

"You can stay here until you find some place that suits you."

The girl shook her head.

"To-morrow I'll go--somewhere."

"Don't feel hard toward me, Essie," and she would have taken the girl's hand, but she drew it quietly away and stood with folded arms in an attitude of aloofness which was new to her.

"It's not that; it's only that I don't want your--pity. I don't think that I want anything you have to give. You have hurt me; you have cut me to the quick and something is happening--has happened--_here_!" She laid both hands upon her heart. "I feel still and cold and sort of--impersonal inside."

"Oh, Essie!"

"I understand perfectly, Mrs. Terriberry. You like me--you like me very much, but you are one kind of a coward, and of what value is a coward's friendship or regard? I don't mean to be impertinent--I'm just trying to explain how I feel. In your heart you believe in me, but you are afraid--afraid of public opinion--afraid of being left out of the teas and card parties which mean more to you than I do. You've known me all my life and fail me at the first test."

"I hate to hear you talk like that; it doesn't sound like Essie Tisdale." But in her heart she knew the girl was right. She was a coward; she had not the requisite courage to set her face against the crowd, but must needs turn and run with them while every impulse and instinct within her pulled the other way.

"Doesn't it?" The girl smiled bitterly. "Why should it? Can't you see--don't you understand that you've helped kill _that_ Essie Tisdale--that blundering, ignorant Essie Tisdale who liked everybody and believed in everybody as she thought they liked and believed in her?"

"Dear me! oh, dear me!" Mrs. Terriberry rubbed her forehead and groaned pathetically.

Any consecutive line of thought outside the usual channels pulled Mrs. Terriberry down like a spell of sickness. She looked jaded from the present conversation and her thoughts ran together bewilderingly.

"I know to-night how an outlaw feels when the posse's at his heels and he rides with murder in his heart," the girl went on with hardness in her young voice. "I know to-night why he makes them pay dear for his life when he takes his last stand behind a rock."

"Oh, Essie, don't!" Mrs. Terriberry wrung her garnet and moonstone-ringed fingers together in distress. "You mustn't get reckless!"

"What real difference does it make to you or anybody else how I get?" she demanded fiercely, and added: "You are showing me how much when you advertise to all the town by turning me out that you believe their evil tongues."

"I'm goin' to talk to Hank again----" but Essie stopped her with a vehement gesture.

"You needn't. I don't want pity, I tell you, I don't want favors. I am going to-morrow. There is some way out. There is a place in the world for me somewhere and I'll find it."

She turned away and walked toward the corral where the black omnibus horses nickered softly at her coming, while Alphonse and Gaston stood on their hind legs and squealed a vociferous welcome.

"My only friends----" and she smiled bitterly.

She winced when she saw a new face passing the kitchen door and realized that Mr. Terriberry already had filled her place. It was only one small thing more, but it brought again the feeling that the world was sinking beneath her feet.

She stood for a long time with her forehead resting on her folded arms which lay upon the top rail of the corral. The big 'bus horses shoved her gently with their soft muzzles, impatient to be noticed, but she did not lift her head until a step upon the hard-trodden yard roused her from her apathy of dull misery. She glanced around indifferently to see old Edouard Dubois lumbering toward her in the fast gathering dusk.

Dubois's self-conscious, ingratiating smile did not fade because she drew her arched eyebrows together in a slight frown. It took more than an unwelcoming face to divert the obstinate old Frenchman from any purpose firmly fixed in his mind.

"Ha--I am ver' glad to find you alone, Mees Teesdale, I lak have leetle talk with you." There was a purposeful look behind his set smile of agreeableness.

She shrank from him a little as he came close to her, but he appeared not to notice the movement, and went on--

"I hear you are in trouble--eh? I hear you get fire from ze hotel?"

Again the girl's face took on its new look of bitterness. That was the way in which they were expressing it, spreading the news throughout the town. They were losing no time--her friends.

"'Fired' is the word when a biscuit-shooter is dismissed," she returned coldly.

"I hear you get lef' by that loafer, too. I tole you, mam'selle, that fellow Van Lennop no good. I know that kind, I see that kind before, Mees Teesdale. Lak every pretty girl an' have good time, then 'pouf!--zat is all!"

She turned upon him hotly, her face a mixture of humiliation and angry resentment.