Chapter 8

"Grub City--hire buggy--drive Carcasonne," he muttered, and without a glance at the train which had betrayed him, or at the lady who had fallen upon him, so to speak, out of the skies, he moved forward with great strides, leaped a puddle, regained the embankment, and hastened along the ties, skipping every other one.

II

Progress is wonderful in the Far West. Since he had last seen it only a year had passed, and yet the lovely city of Grub had doubled its size. It now consisted of two saloons: the old "Life-Saving Station" and the new "Like Father Used to Take." The proprietor of the new saloon was the old saloon-keeper's son-in-law, and these, with their flourishing and, no doubt, amiable families, were socially gathered on the shady side of the Life-Saving Station. The shade was much the same sort that is furnished by trees in more favored localities, and the population of Grub City was enjoying itself. The rival wives, mother and daughter, ample, rosy women, were busy stitching baby clothes. Children already arrived were playing with a soap-box and choice pebbles and a tin mug at keeping saloon. A sunburned-haired, flaming maiden of sixteen was at work upon a dress of white muslin, and a young man of eighteen, brother by his looks to the younger saloon-keeper, heartily feasted a pair of honest blue eyes upon her plump hands as they came and went with the needle. It looked as if another year might see a third saloon in Grub City.

Saterlee approached the group, some of whose elders had been watching and discussing his approach.

"Do any of you own a boat?" he asked.

"Train D-railed?" queried the proprietor of the Life-Saving Station, "or was you just out for a walk?"

The family and family-in-law laughed appreciatively.

"The train put to sea in a washout," said Saterlee, "and all the passengers were drowned."

"Where you want to git?" asked the proprietor.

"Carcasonne," said Saterlee. "Not the junction--the resort."

"Well," said the proprietor, "there's just one horse and just one trap in Grub City, and they ain't for hire."

Again the united families laughed appreciatively. It was evident that a prophet is not always without honor in his own land.

"We've no use for them," said the great man, with the noble abandoning gesture of a Spanish grandee about to present a horse to a man travelling by canoe. And he added: "So they're for sale. Now what do you think they'd be worth to you?"

All the honest blue eyes, and there were no other colors, widened upon Saterlee.

"Fifty dollars," he said, as one accustomed to business.

It was then that a panting, female voice was raised behind him. "Sixty dollars!"

His showy acquaintance of the dining-car had followed him along the ties as fast as she could, and was just come up.

"I thought you two was a trust," commented the proprietor's wife, pausing with her needle in the air. "But it seems you ain't even a community of interests."

"Seventy dollars," said Saterlee quietly.

The lady advanced to his side, counting the change in her purse.

"Seventy-six dollars and eighty-five cents," she said.

"Eighty dollars," said Saterlee.

"Oh!" cried the lady, "seventy-six eighty-five is every cent I've got with me--and you're no gentleman to bid higher."

"Eighty," repeated Saterlee.

"Eighty dollars," said the son-in-law, "for a horse and buggy that a man's never seen is too good to be true."

"They are yours, sir," said the father-in-law, and he turned to his daughter's husband. "Is that horse in your cellar or in mine?" he asked. "I ain't set eyes on her since February."

The son-in-law, sent to fetch the horse, first paused at the cellar door of the Life-Saving Station, then, with a shake of the head and an "I remember _now_" expression, he approached and entered the subterrene of his own house and business, and disappeared, saying: "Whoa, there! Steady you!"

Saterlee turned quietly to the angry and tearful vision whom he had so callously outbid.

"Ma'am," he said, "if we come to my stop first or thereabouts, the buggy is yours to go on with. If we reach yours first, it's mine."

"Oh!" she exclaimed, her face brightening, "how good you are. But you'll let me go halves on the purchase money."

"If I appeared rude just now," he said, "it was to save a lady's pocket. Now then, you've wet them high-heeled shoes. Wherever you're going, it's a long drive. Let's go inside and dry our feet while they're hitching up. Which is your house?"

The proprietor of the Life-Saving Station indicated that building with his thumb, and told his daughter of the white muslin dress to kindle a fire in the stove. She slid her future wedding finery into a large paper bag, and entered the saloon by the "Family Entrance," ardently followed by her future husband.

The proprietor, Saterlee, and the showy lady followed more slowly, discussing roads.

"Now," said Saterlee, "if you're going further than Carcasonne Junction, I'll get off there. And either I'll walk to the hotel or hire another trap."

"Why!" exclaimed the lady, "are you bound for Carcasonne House? So am I."

"In that case," said Saterlee elegantly, "we'll go the whole hog together."

"Quite so," said the lady primly.

"You'd ought to make Carcasonne House by midnight," said the proprietor. "Put your feet up on that there stove."

"Heavens!" exclaimed the lady. "And if we don't make it by midnight?"

"We will by one or two o'clock."

The lady became very grave.

"Of course," she said, "it can't be helped. But it would be ever so much nicer if we could get in before midnight."

"I take your point, Ma'am," said Saterlee. "Before midnight is just a buggy ride--after midnight means being out all night together. I feel for you, Ma'am, but I'm dinged if I see how we can help ourselves. It's five now." He counted on his fingers: "six--seven--eight--nine--ten--'leven--twelve--seven hours--seven into forty--five and five-sevenths.... Ma'am," he said, "I can promise nothing. It's all up to the horse."

"Of course," said the lady, "it doesn't really matter. But," and she spoke a little bitterly, "several times in my life my actions and my motives have been open to misconstruction, and they have been misconstrued. I have suffered, sir, much."

"Well, Ma'am," said Saterlee, "my reputation as a married man and a father of many children is mixed up in this, too. If we are in late--or out late rather--and there's any talk--I guess I can quiet some of it. I rather guess I can."

He rose to his feet, a vast, round, deep man, glowing with health and energy.

"I once quieted a bull, Ma'am," said he, "by the horns. I would a held him till help came if one of the horns hadn't come off, and he ran away."

The proprietor entered the conversation with an insinuating wedge of a voice.

"I don't like to mind other folks' business," he said, "but if the lady is fretting about bein' out all night with a total stranger, I feel it my dooty to remark that in Grub City there is a justice of the peace." He bowed and made a gesture which either indicated his whole person, or that smug and bulging portion of it to which the gesture was more directly applied.

Saterlee and the lady did not look at each other and laugh. They were painfully embarrassed.

"Nothing like a sound splice," suggested the Justice, still hopeful of being helpful. "Failing that, you've a long row to hoe, and I suggest a life saver for the gent and a nip o' the same for the lady. I'd like you to see the bar," he added. "Mine is the show place of this here city--mirrors--peacock feathers--Ariadne in the nood--cash register--and everything hunky-dunk."

"We'll go you," said Saterlee. "At any rate, I will."

"Oh, I must see, too," said the lady, and both were relieved at the turn which the conversation had taken.

The proprietor removed the cheese-cloth fly protector from the two-by-three mirror over the bar, slipped a white jacket over his blue shirt, and rubbed his hands together invitingly, as if washing them.

"What's your pleasure, gents?" said he.

As the lady approached the bar she stumbled. Saterlee caught her by the elbow.

"That rail down there," he said, "ain't to trip over. It's to rest your foot on. So." He showed her. With the first sign of humor that she had shown, the lady suddenly and very capitally mimicked his attitude. And in a tough voice (really an excellent piece of acting): "What's yours, kid?" she said. And then blushed to the eyes, and was very much ashamed of herself. But Saterlee and the bartender were delighted. They roared with laughter.

"Next thing," said the bartender, "she'll pull a gun and shoot up the place."

Saterlee said: "Rye."

"I want to be in it," said the lady. "Can you make me something that looks like a drink, and isn't?"

"Scotch," said the proprietor without hesitation.

"No--no," she said, "Water and coloring matter."

She was fitted finally with a pony of water containing a few drops of Spanish Red and an olive.

The three touched glasses and wished each other luck all around. Saterlee paid eighty dollars and some change across the bar. But the proprietor pushed back the change.

"The drinks," he said grandly, "was on the house."

III

The united families bade them farewell, and Saterlee brought down the whip sharply upon the bony flank of the old horse which he had bought. But not for a whole minute did the sensation caused by the whip appear to travel to the ancient mare's brain. Not till reaching a deep puddle did she seem suddenly aware of the fact that she had been whipped. Then, however, she rushed through the puddle, covering Saterlee and the lady with mud, and having reached the other side, fell once more into a halting walk.

The lady was tightly wedged between Saterlee and the side of the buggy. Every now and then Saterlee made a tremendous effort to make himself narrower, but it was no use.

"If you begin to get numb," he said, "tell me, and I'll get out and walk a spell.... How clear the air is! Seems as if you could stretch out your hand and touch the mountains. Do you see that shadow half way up--on the left--about three feet off? Carcasonne House is somewhere in that shadow. And it's forty miles away."

Once more the road ran under a shallow of water. And once more the old mare remembered that she had been whipped, and made a rush for it. Fresh mud was added to that which had already dried upon them by the dry miracle of the air.

"She'd ought to have been a motor-boat," said Saterlee, the mud which had entered his mouth gritting unpleasantly between his teeth. "Last year there was _one_ spring hole _somewhere_ in these parts--this year it's all lakes and rivers--never was such rains before in the memory of man. Wonder what Gila River's doing?"

"What is Gila River?" she asked.

"It's a sand gully," he said, "that winds down from the mountains, and out across the plain, like a sure enough river. Only there's no water in it, only a damp spot here and there. But I was thinking that maybe it'll be going some now. We ought to strike it before dark."

The mare rushed through another puddle.

The lady laughed. "Please don't bother to hold her," she said; "I don't mind--now."

"I guess your dress ain't really hurt," commented Saterlee. "I remember my old woman--Anna--had a brown silk that got a mud bath, and came through all right."

"This is an old rag, anyway," said the showy lady, who was still showy in spite of a wart-like knot of dried mud on the end of her nose. And she glanced at her spattered but graceful and expensive white linen and hand-embroidered dress.

"Well, I can see one thing," said Saterlee, "that you've made up your mind to go through this experience like a good sport. I wish I didn't have to take up so much room."

"Never mind," she said, "I like to think that I could go to sleep without danger of falling out."

"That's so--that's so," said Saterlee. "Maybe it's just as well we're something of a tight fit."

"I have always mistrusted thin men," said the lady, and she hastily added: "Not that you're _fat_"

"My bones are covered," said Saterlee; "I admit it."

"Yes," she said, "but with big muscles and sinews."

"I am not weak," said Saterlee; "I admit it."

"What air this is," exclaimed the lady; "what delicious air. No wonder it cures people with lung trouble. Still, I'm glad mine are sound."

"I'm glad to hear you say that, Ma'am," said Saterlee. "When you said you were bound for Carcasonne House, I thought to myself, 'Mebbe she's got it,' and I felt mighty sorry."

"Do I look like a consumptive?" she asked.

"Bless me--no," said he. "But you're not stout, and, considering where you said you was going, you mustn't blame me for putting two and two together and getting the wrong answer."

"I don't blame you at all," she said, but a little stiffly. "It was perfectly natural. No," she said, "my daughter is at Carcasonne House. She had a very heavy cold--and other troubles--and _two_ doctors agreed that her lungs were threatened. Well, perhaps they were. I sent her to Carcasonne House on the doctors' recommendation. And it seems that she's just as sound as I am."

"What a relief to you, Ma'am," said Saterlee hastily.

"Yes," she said, but without enthusiasm, "a great relief."

He screwed his massive head around on his massive neck, not without difficulty, and looked at her. His voice sounded hurt.

"You don't seem very glad, Ma'am," he said.

Her answer, on a totally different topic, surprised him.

"Do you believe in blood?" she said. "Do you believe that blood will--_must_ tell?"

"Ma'am," he said, "if I can draw my check for twenty-five thousand dollars it's because I was born believing that blood will tell. It's because I've acted on it all my life. And it's the truth, and I've made a fortune out of it.... Cattle," he added in explanation.

"I don't know what you think of women," she said, "who talk of their affairs to strangers. But my heart is so full of mine. I did so hope to reach Carcasonne early this evening. It don't seem to me as if I could stand hours and hours behind that horse without talking to some one. Do you mind if I talk to you?" she appealed. "Somehow you're so big and steady-minded--you don't seem like a stranger."

"Ma'am," said Saterlee, the most chivalrous courtesy in his voice, for hers had sounded truly distressed, "fire away!"

"It's about my daughter," she said. "She has made up her mind to marry a young man whom I scarcely know. But about him and his antecedents I know this: that his father has buried three wives."

The blood rushed into Saterlee's face and nearly strangled him. But the lady, who was leaning forward, elbows on knees and face between hands, did not perceive this convulsion of nature.

"If blood counts for anything," said she, "the son has perhaps the same brutish instincts. A nice prospect for my girl--to suffer--to die--and to be superseded. The man's second wife was in her grave but three weeks when he had taken a third. I am told he is a great, rough, bullying man. No wonder the poor souls died. The son is a tremendous great fellow, too. Oh! blood will tell every time," she exclaimed. "M. A. Saterlee, the cattle man--do you know him?"

"Yep!" Saterlee managed, with an effort that would have moved a ton.

"I am going to appeal to her," said the lady. "I have been a good mother to her. I have suffered for her. And she must--she shall--listen to me."

"If I can help in any way," said Saterlee, somewhat grimly, "you can count on me.... Not," he said a little later, "that I'm in entire sympathy with your views, Ma'am.... Now, if you'd said this man Saterlee had _divorced_ three wives...."

The lady started. And in her turn suffered from a torrential rush of blood to the face. Saterlee perceived it through her spread fingers, and was pleased.

"If you had said that this man," he went on, "had tired of his first wife and had divorced her, or been divorced by her, because his desire was to another woman, then I would go your antipathy for him, Ma'am. But I understand he buried a wife, and took another, and so on. There is a difference. Because God Almighty Himself says in one of His books that man was not meant to live alone. Mebbe, Ma'am, the agony of losing a faithful and tender companion is what sets a man--some men--to looking for a successor. Mebbe the more a man loved his dead wife the quicker is he driven to find a living woman that he can love. But for people who can't cling together until death--and death alone part 'em--for such people, Ma'am, I don't give a ding."

"And you are wrong," said the lady, who, although nettled by the applicability of his remarks to her own case, had recovered her composure. "Let us say that a good woman marries a man, and that he dies--not the _death_--but dies to her. Tires of her, carries his love to another, and all that. Isn't he as dead, even if she loved him, as if he had really died? He is dead to her--buried--men don't come back. Well, maybe the more she loved that man the quicker she is to get the service read over him--that's divorce--and find another whom she can trust and love. Suppose that happens to her twice. The cases would seem identical, sir, I think. Except that I could understand divorcing a man who had become intolerable to me; but I could never, never fancy myself marrying again--if my husband, in the course of nature, had died still loving me, still faithful to me. So you see the cases are not identical. And that only remarriage after divorce is defensible."

"I take your point," said Saterlee. She had spoken warmly and vehemently, with an honest ring in her voice. "I have never thought of it along those lines. See that furrow across the road--that's where a snake has crossed. But I may as well tell you, Ma'am, that I myself have buried more than one wife. And yet when I size myself up to myself I don't seem a regular hell-hound."

"If we are to be on an honest footing," said the lady, "I must tell you that I have divorced more than one husband, and yet when I size myself up, as you call it, I do not seem to myself a lost woman. It's true that I act for my living--"

"I know," he interrupted, "you are Mrs. Kimbal. But I thought I knew more about you than I seem to. I'm Saterlee. And my business at Carcasonne House is the same as yours."

She was silent for a moment. And then:

"Well," she said, "here we are. And that's lucky in a way. We both seem to want the same thing--that is, to keep our children from marrying each other. We can talk the matter over and decide how to do it."

"We can talk it over anyway, as you say," said Saterlee. "But--" and he fished in his pocket and brought out his son's letter and gave it to her. She read it in the waning light.

"But," he repeated gently, "that don't read like a letter that a brute of a son would write to a brute of a father; now, does it?"

She did not answer. But she opened her purse and took out a carefully and minutely folded sheet of note-paper.

"That's my Dolly's letter to me," she said, "and it doesn't sound like--" her voice broke. He took the letter from her and read it.

"No, it doesn't," he said. And he said it roughly, because nothing brought rough speech out of the man so surely as tears--when they were in his own eyes.

"Well," said Mrs. Kimbal with a sigh, "let's talk."

"No," said Saterlee, "let's think."

IV

They could hear from far ahead a sound as of roaring waters.

"That," said Saterlee dryly, "will be Gila River. Mebbe we'll have to think about getting across that first. It's a river now, by the sound of it, if it never was before."

"Fortunately it's not dark yet," said Mrs. Kimbal.

"The last time I had trouble with a river," said Saterlee, "was when my first wife died. That was the American River in flood. I had to cross it to get a doctor. We'd gone prospectin'--just the old woman and me--more for a lark than profit."

"Yes?" said Mrs. Kimbal sympathetically.

"She took sick in an hour," he went on. "From what I've heard since, I guess it was appendicitis. Anyway, I rode off for help, hell for leather, and when I come to the river the whole thing was roaring and foaming like a waterfall. My horse, and he was a good one, couldn't make it. But I did. And when I come to it on the return trip with the doctor, he gave one look and folded his arms. 'Mark,' he said, 'I'm no boaster, but my life is not without value. I think it's my duty not to attempt this crossing.' 'Jim,' I said, 'if you don't your soul will be scotched. Don't you know it? Folks'll point at you as the doctor that didn't dare.' 'It's not the daring, Mark,' he says, 'it's wanting to be sure that I make the right choice.' I says: 'She was in terrible pain, Jim. Many a time she's done you a good turn; some you know of, some you don't.' That fetched him. He caught up his bridle and drove his spurs into his horse, and was swept down-stream like a leaf. I rode along the bank to help if I could. But he got across on a long diagonal--horse and all. I waved to him to go on and not mind about me. And he rode off at the gallop. But I was too heavy, I guess. I lost my second horse in that flood, and had to foot it into camp. I was too late. Pain had made her unconscious, and she was dead. But before givin' in she'd wrote me a letter." He broke off short. "And there's Gila River," he said.

"I hoped you were going to tell me what your poor wife said in her letter," said Mrs. Kimbal.

"Oh, Ma'am," he said, hesitated, cleared his throat, and became routed and confused.

"If you'd rather not--" said Mrs. Kimbal.

"It isn't that," he said. "It would seem like bragging."

"Surely not," she said.

Saterlee, with his eyes on the broad, brown flood which they were approaching, repeated like a lesson:

"'Mark--I'm dying. I want it to do good, not harm. Jenny always thought the world of you. You'll be lonely when I'm gone. I don't want you to be lonely. You gave me peace on earth. And you can't be happy unless you've got a woman to pet and pamper. That's your nature--'"

He paused.

"That was all," he said, and wiped his forehead with the palm of his hand. "It just stopped there."

"I'm glad you told me," said Mrs. Kimbal gently. "It will be a lesson to me not to spring to conclusions, and not to make up my mind about things I'm not familiar with."

When they came to where the road disappeared under the swift unbroken brown of Gila River, the old horse paused of her own accord, and, turning her bony and scarred head a half revolution, stared almost rudely at the occupants of the buggy.

"It all depends," said Saterlee, "how deep the water runs over the road, and whether we can keep to the road. You see, it comes out higher up than it goes in. Can you swim, Ma'am?"

Mrs. Kimbal admitted that, in clothes made to the purpose, and in very shallow water, she was not without proficiency.

"Would you rather we turned back?" he asked.

"I feel sure you'll get me over," said she.

"Then," said Saterlee, "let's put the hood down. In case we do capsize, we don't want to get caught under it."

Saterlee on his side, and Mrs. Kimbal, not without exclamations of annoyance, on hers, broke the toggle-joints that held the dilapidated hood in place, and thrust it backward and down. At once the air seemed to circulate with greater freshness.

For some moments Saterlee considered the river, up-stream, down-stream, and across, knitting his brows to see better, for the light was failing by leaps and bounds. Then, in an embarrassed voice:

"I've _got_ to do it," he said. "It's only right."

"What?" said Mrs. Kimbal.

"I feel sure," he said, "that under the circumstances you'll make every allowance, Ma'am."