CHAPTER VIII
THE COUNTY ATTORNEY
"I too am going to Wind City," said a pleasant voice at her side. "Youwill let me help you with your things, will you not?"
The slender girl standing before the ticket window, stuffing change intoher coin purse, turned quickly.
"Why, Mr. Gordon," she said, holding out a small hand with frankpleasure. "How very nice! Thank you, will you take my rain-coat? It hasbeen such a bother. I would bring it right in the face of UncleHammond's objections. He said it never rained out this way. But I surelyhave suffered a plenty for my waywardness. Don't you think so?"
"It behooves a tenderfoot like you to sit and diligently learn of suchexperienced and toughened old-timers as we are, rather than flaunt youruntried ideas in our faces," responded Gordon, with a smile thattransformed the keen gray eyes of this man of much labor, much loftyambition, and much sorrow, so that they seemed for the moment strangelyyoung, laughing, untroubled; as clear of taint of evil knowledge as thesource of a stream leaping joyously into the sunlight from some mountainsolitude. It was a revelation to Louise.
"I will try to be a good and diligent seeker after knowledge of thisstrange land of yours," she answered, with a little laugh half ofembarrassment, half of enjoyment of this play of nonsense, and leadingthe way to her suit-case and Mary outside. "When I make mistakes, willyou tell me about them? Down East, you know, our feet travel in theancient, prescribed circles of our forefathers, and they are apt to gosomewhat uncertainly if thrust into new paths."
And this laughing, clever girl had cried with homesickness! Well, nowonder. The worst of it was, she could never hope to be acclimated. Shewas not--their kind. Sooner or later she must go back to God's country.
To her surprise, Gordon, though he laughed softly for a moment, answeredrather gravely.
"If my somewhat niggardly fate should grant me that good fortune, that Imay do something for you, I ask that you be not afraid to trust to myhelp. It would not be half-hearted--I assure you."
She looked up at him gratefully. His shoulders, slightly stooped,betokening the grind at college and the burden-bearing in later years,instead of suggesting any inherent weakness in the man, rather inspiredher with an intuitive faith in their quiet, unswerving, uttertrustworthiness.
"Thank you," she said, simply. "I am so glad they did not hurt you muchthat day in the court-room. We worried--Mary and I."
"Thank you. There was not the least danger. They were merely ventingtheir spite on me. They would not have dared more."
There is always a crowd at the Velpen station for outgoing or incomingtrains. This meeting of trains is one of the dissipations of itspeople--and an eminently respectable dissipation. It was early--theeastbound leaves at something past eight--yet there were many people onthe platform who did not seem to be going anywhere. They were after suchstray worms as always fell to the lot of the proverbial early bird. Theparticular worm in question that morning was the new girl courtreporter, homeward bound. Many were making the excuse of mailing belatedletters. Mary was standing guard over the suit-case and umbrella nearthe last car. She seemed strangely alone and aloof standing there, thegravity of the silent prairie a palpable atmosphere about her.
"There's my brakeman," said Louise, when she and Gordon had found a seatnear the rear. Mary had gone and a brakeman had swung onto the last caras it glided past the platform, and came down the aisle with a grin ofrecognition for his "little white lamb."
"How nice it all seems, just as if I had been gone months instead ofdays and was coming home again. It would be funny if I should behomesick for the range when I get to Wind City, wouldn't it?"
"Let us pray assiduously that it may be so," answered Gordon, with oneof his rare smiles. He busied himself a moment in stowing away herbelongings to the best advantage. "It gets in one's blood,--how or when,one never knows."
They rode in silence for a while.
"Tell me about your big fight," said Louise, presently. The road-bed wasfairly good, and they were spinning along on a down grade. He must needsbend closer to hear her.
She was good to look at, fair and sweet, and it had been weary yearssince women had come close to Gordon's life. In the old college days,before this hard, disappointing, unequal fight against the dominantforces of greed, against tolerance of might overcoming right, had begunto sap his vitality, he had gone too deeply into his studies to havemuch time left for the gayeties and gallantries of the social side inuniversity life. He had not been popular with women. They did not knowhim. Yet, though dubbed a "dig" by his fellow-collegians, the men likedhim. They liked him for his trustworthiness, admired him for his ruggedhonesty, desired his friendship for the inspiration of his high ideals.
The memory of these friendships with men had been an ever-present sourceof strength and comfort to him in these later years of his busy life.Yet of late he had felt himself growing calloused and tired. Theenthusiasm of his younger manhood was falling from him somewhat, and hehad been but six years out of the university. But it was all sohopeless, so bitterly futile, this moral fight of one man to stay themind-bewildering and heart-sickening ceaseless round of wheels of opencrime and official chicanery. Was the river bridged? And what of thestraw? His name was a joke in the cattle country, a joke to horse thief,a joke to sheriff. Its synonym was impotency among the law-abiders whowere yet political cowards. What was the use? What could a man do--oneman, when a fair jury was a dream, when ballots were so folded that theclerk, drawing, might know which to select in order to obtain a jurythat would stand pat with the cattle rustlers? Much brain and brawn hadbeen thrown away in the unequal struggle. Let it pass. Was there anyfurther use?
Then a woman came to him in his dark hour. His was a stubborn andfighting blood, a blood that would never cry "enough" till it ceased toflow. Yet what a comforting thing it was that this woman, Louise, shouldbe beside him, this woman who knew and who understood. For when shelifted those tender gray eyes and asked him of his big fight, he knewshe understood. There was no need of explanation, of apology, for allthe failure of all these years. A warm gratitude swept across his heart.And she was so neat and sweet and fair, unspoiled by constant contactwith, and intimate knowledge of, the life of the under world; rather wasshe touched to a wonderful sympathy of understanding. It was good toknow such a woman; it would be better to be a friend of such a woman; itwould be best of all to love such a woman--if one dared.
"What shall I talk about, Miss Dale? It is all very prosaic anduninteresting, I'm afraid; shockingly primitive, glaringly new."
"I breakfasted with a stanch friend of yours this morning," answeredLouise, somewhat irrelevantly. She had a feeling--a woman's feeling--thatthis earnest, hard-working, reserved man would never blurt out thingsabout himself with the bland self-centredness of most men. She must useall her woman's wit to draw him out. She did not know yet that he wasstarved for sympathy--for understanding. She could not know yet that twoaffinities had drifted through space--near together. A feathery zephyr,blowing where it listed, might widen the space between to an infinity ofdistance so that they might never know how nearly they had once met; orit might, as its whim dictated, blow them together so that for weal orfor woe they would know each the other.
"Mrs. Higgins, at the Bon Ami," she continued, smiling. "I was so hungrywhen we got to Velpen, though I had eaten a tremendous breakfast at theLazy S. But five o'clock is an unholy hour at which to eat one'sbreakfast, isn't it, and I just couldn't help getting hungry all overagain. So I persuaded Mary to stop for another cup of coffee. It isridiculous the way I eat in your country."
"It is a good country," he said, soberly.
"It must be--if you can say so."
"Because I have failed, shall I cry out that law cannot be enforced inKemah County? Sometimes--may it be soon--there will come a man big enoughto make the law triumphant. He will not be I."
He was still smarting from his many set-backs. He had worked hard andhad accomplished nothing. At the last term of court, thou
gh many caseswere tried, he had not secured one conviction.
"We shall see," said Louise, softly. Her look, straight into his eyes,was a glint of sunlight in dark places. Then she laughed.
"Mrs. Higgins said to me: 'Jimmie Mac hain't got the sense he was bornwith. His little, dried-up brain 'd rattle 'round in a mustard seed andhe's gettin' shet o' that little so fast it makes my head swim.' She wastelling about times when he hadn't acted just fair to you. I amglad--from all I hear--that this was taken out of his hands."
"I can count my friends, the real ones, on one hand, I'm afraid," saidGordon, with a good-humored smile; "and Mrs. Higgins surely is thethumb."
"I am glad you smiled," said Louise. "That would have sounded so bitterif you had not."
"I couldn't help smiling. You--you have such a way, Miss Dale."
It was blunt but it rang true.
"It is true, though, about my friends. If I could convict--Jesse Black,for instance,--a million friends would call me blessed. But I can't do italone. They will not do it; they will not help me do it; they despise mebecause I can't do it, and swear at me because I try to do it--and thereyou have the whole situation in a nutshell, Miss Dale."
The sun struck across her face. He reached over and lowered the blind.
"Thank you. But it is ''vantage in' now, is it not? You will get justicebefore Uncle Hammond."
Unconsciously his shoulders straightened.
"Yes, Miss Dale, it is ''vantage in.' One of two things will come topass. I shall send Jesse Black over or--" he paused. His eyes, unseeing,were fixed on the gliding landscape as it appeared in rectangular spotsthrough the window in front of them.
"Yes. Or--" prompted Louise, softly.
"Never mind. It is of no consequence," he said, abruptly. "No fear ofJudge Dale. Juries are my Waterloo."
"Is it, then, such a nest of cowards?" cried Louise, intense scorn inher clear voice.
"Yes," deliberately. "Men are afraid of retaliation--those who are notactually blood-guilty, as you might say. And who can say who is and whois not? But he will be sent over this time. Paul Langford is on histrail. Give me two men like Langford and that anachronism--an honest manwest of the river--Williston, and you can have the rest, sheriff andall."
"Mr. Williston--he has been unfortunate, has he not? He is such agentleman, and a scholar, surely."
"Surely. He is one of the finest fellows I know. A man of the mostsensitive honor. If such a thing can be, I should say he is too honest,for his own good. A man can be, you know. There is nothing in the worldthat cannot be overdone."
She looked at him earnestly. His eyes did not shift. She was satisfied.
"Your work belies your words," she said, quietly.
Dust and cinders drifted in between the slats of the closed blind.Putting her handkerchief to her lips, Louise looked at the dark streakson it with reproach.
"Your South Dakota dirt is so--black," she said, whimsically.
"Better black than yellow," he retorted. "It looks cleaner, now, doesn'tit?"
"Maybe you think my home a fit dwelling place for John Chinaman," poutedLouise.
"Yes--if that will persuade you that South Dakota is infinitely better.Are you open to conviction?"
"Never! I should die if I had to stay here."
"You will be going back--soon?"
"Some day, sure! Soon? Maybe. Oh, I wish I could. That part of me whichis like Uncle Hammond says, 'Stay.' But that other part of me which islike the rest of us, says, 'What's the use? Go back to your kind. You'rehappier there. Why should you want to be different? What does it allamount to?' I am afraid I shall be weak enough and foolish enough to goback and--stay."
There was a stir in the forward part of the car. A man, hitherto sittingquietly by the side of an alert wiry little fellow who sat next theaisle, had attempted to bolt the car by springing over the empty seat infront of him and making a dash for the door. It was daring, but in vain.His companion, as agile as he, had seized him and forced him again intohis place before the rest of the passengers fully understood that theattempt had really been made.
"Is he crazy? Are they taking him to Yankton?" asked Louise, the prettycolor all gone from her face. "Did he think to jump off the train?"
"That's John Yellow Wolf, a young half-breed. He's wanted up in theHills for cattle-rustling--United States Court case. That's Johnson withhim, Deputy United States Marshal."
"Poor fellow," said Louise, pityingly.
"Don't waste your sympathy on such as he. They are degenerates--many ofthese half-breeds. They will swear to anything. They inherit all theevils of the two races. Good never mixes. Yellow Wolf would swearhimself into everlasting torment for a pint of whiskey. You see my causeof complaint? But never think, Miss Dale, that these poor chaps ofhalf-breeds, who are hardly responsible, are the only ones who arewilling to swear to damnable lies." There was a tang of bitterness inhis voice. "Perjury, Miss Dale, perjury through fear or bribery orself-interest, God knows what, it is there I must break, I suppose,until the day of judgment, unless--I run away."
Louise, through all the working of his smart and sting, felt the quietreserve strength of this man beside her, and, with a quick rush oflonging to do her part, her woman's part of comforting and healing, sheput her hand, small, ungloved, on his rough coat sleeve.
"Is that what you meant a while ago? But you don't mean it, do you? Itis bitter and you do not mean it. Tell me that you do not mean it, Mr.Gordon, please," she said, impulsively.
Smothering a wild impulse to keep the hand where it had lain such abrief, palpitating while, Gordon remained silent. God only knows whathuman longing he crushed down, what intense discouragement, what sickdesire to lay down his thankless task and flee to the uttermost parts ofthe world to be away from the crying need he yet could not still. Thenhe answered simply, "I did not mean it, Miss Dale."
And then there did not seem to be anything to say between them for along while. The half-breed had settled down with stolid indifference.People had resumed their newspapers and magazines and day dreams afterthe fleeting excitement. It was very warm. Louise tried to create alittle breeze by flicking her somewhat begrimed handkerchief in front ofher face. Gordon took a newspaper from his pocket, folded it and fannedher gently. He was not used to the little graces of life, perhaps, buthe did this well. An honest man and a kindly never goes far wrong in anydirection.
"You must not think, Miss Dale," he said, seriously, "that it is all badup here. I am only selfish. I have been harping on my own little cornerof wickedness all the while. It is a good land. It will be better beforelong."
"When?" asked Louise.
"When we convict Jesse Black and when our Indian neighbors get overtheir mania for divorce," he answered, laughing softly.
Louise laughed merrily and so the journey ended as it had begun, with alaugh and a jest.
In the Judge's runabout, Louise held out her hand.
"I'm almost homesick," she cried, smiling.