The Freebooters of the Wilderness Part 29

The Senator drew the finest of the roses from the jar. "It's a matter of taste, perhaps, Miss Eleanor; but I prefer this to a whole jarful of scrubs."

"Then you are not working for democracy. It's just as Mrs. Williams says, all you foreign multimillionaires are subverting our Nation by working for old fas.h.i.+oned despotism in disguise; sacrificing the many to the few."

"Oh, does Mrs. Williams say that?" asked Moyese reflectively, pus.h.i.+ng back from the desk and clasping his hands round one knee. "That may be; republicanism doesn't necessarily mean letting the blockheads rule!

It may mean giving equal opportunity for the fit men to come to the top and rule. Did you come in to talk over these things with me, Miss Eleanor? I must make a convert of you; it would win over Wayland and Williams and your father."

"No, I didn't. I came in here by mistake. The operator told me I'd find a public telephone across the road; and I wasn't noticing where I was going, and I came in here; but all the way down, I had been thinking of you, Senator Moyese. I kept thinking if you could only be made to see the New Day that is dawning, perhaps you would meet it half way. I rode in the driver's seat coming down; and he told me how he lost his arm; Senator, think of the hero in him?"

"And you thought there might be some of the hero in me, too?" Moyese laughed, the noiseless genial laugh creasing his chin and his white vest.

"While you laugh, you are letting your rose wither."

He handed the rose to her. "Yes, I know that fellow. I was in the Kootenay when he lost his arm, torn out all b.l.o.o.d.y right from the shoulder socket; had to pry the cogs up to get him out. They collected a purse of a thousand for him; but he wouldn't take a cent: handed it over to the hospital. Something in that fellow bigger than self kind of popped out and surprised himself."

She noticed him looking at the wall clock as he talked, but not being a business woman did not know what that meant.

"There's something bigger than self with us all, Senator; and we have to work for it."

"My dear child, do you think you need to tell an old stager that?" He was kicking the creases out of his trousers. This time, she could not mistake the signal, and felt her womanish idealism of mining for the hidden vein of heroism both childish and cheapening. She rose and placed the flower back on the desk.

"There's something bigger than you or me, my dear," he went on, "something for which every man worth his salt must work and fight, and which a woman does not understand."

"And that is?"

"His party," said Moyese.

"But Senator, there is something bigger than party, and if a man works against That, he'll injure his party."

"And that is?"

"His Nation," said the girl.

Moyese gave her a quick sharp look that was not unkindly. In fact, Eleanor could read that it was lonely, irritated, isolated.

"My dear," he said, coming round where she stood, "we differ on fundamentals. The whole nation to-day is divided on fundamentals. I'm no mealy mouth to curse plutocracy in order to please the mob.

Plutocracy fills the workman's dinner pail and keeps the mills going and opens the mines and builds the railroads. Mobocracy, your grubby corn cob and trashy roses, that, what does it do? Mouthe and mouthe and try to pull down what is above it! It will have to be fought out!

No? It will not be another French Revolution! _Our bullets are ballots, nowadays_; and the American people get exactly the form of Government which they want. If they want another form, it remains with them to fight for it. The umpire of all is fact--Miss Eleanor; and the facts of each side will have to be fought out; the better man will win; be sure of that! _The facts that are facts not fictions will win, with ballots for bullets_. For my part, I'll not dodge the issue; and I hope you'll not think me any the less of the hero for that?"

He had extended his hand as he talked, and to her surprise, she found herself taking it when with a wave of revulsion, the memory of the Ridge and the Rim Rocks came back.

"And government is a mere game of politics?" she said. "And politics resolves itself into brute force; and a murder more or less doesn't matter? Fordie, I suppose, would be cla.s.sed as one of the scrubs sacrificed for this perfection of party?"

His hand dropped hers as if she had struck him.

"You did not know that you were overheard? 'See that no harm comes to the boy.' You did not mean Fordie to be murdered; but they were to crowd the sheep over 'to beat h.e.l.l,' 'the sheep were to go it blind'--my father's and Mr. Williams' property was to be sacrificed to build up the fortune of the cattle barons: they too, I suppose, are scrubs sacrificed among the many for the wealth of the one, who happens to be yourself. You broke the law; but because you did not order Fordie's murder, you think the blood guiltiness from that broken law does not rest upon you. You say it must all be fought out. You force the fight--"

He raised his hand to stop her. She remembered afterwards how ashy white and aged his face became. He walked to the door and opened it.

She pa.s.sed out. So that was to what her womanish mining for the vein of the ideal heroism had led. She had been politely shown out. It was as Wayland had said: there was no middle course; and it was also as the Senator had said, it must be fought out, and the bullets were to be ballots.

The Senator slammed his door shut and snapped the yale lock. Then he noticed the rose she had left, and tossed it in the spittoon.

"Thank G.o.d," he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed fervently as he sank back in the swing chair, "_Thank G.o.d women are not in politics. There is always something to be thankful for_."

Then, an idea seemed to strike him. He rang the telephone with fury, and it didn't improve his temper to hear the saucy little central informing her elbow mate that "that ol' fellah wuz burnin' the wire up alive."

"Is that 'The Herald'? Brydges there? That you, Brydges? Listen, the night you were up on the Ridge, have you any perfect proof that Wayland didn't go down when you were asleep? Eh? You turned in at ten; and you found him still stamping about at twelve? Is that it? What? No?

Don't be a damphool, _cut that out_. Of course, he didn't go down to the Ranch House. Cut that whole scandal thing out. There's nothing in it; but I think we can locate our missing knight errant. Understand?

He's got to be smashed? What? _You had printed the scandal story before you ever came in to me at all_? Dictated it right in to the typo machines? In the 'Independent'? Oh, well, I'm glad it didn't go in the 'City Herald'? But it did go in; one evening paper?" Then the wrath of the strong man broke bounds. If he had been a stage villain the curtain drop would have fallen on a red faced gentleman pounding the desk, tearing at the telephone, hurling his chair about the office and generally, as the saucy little central remarked, "eating the wire up alive."

When Brydges' chief indulged in explosives that necessitated the repair of furniture the next day, the handy man always stood strictly and silently at attention. He knew the meaning of the stage thunder: it was the trick of the Indian medicine man, who fires guns to bring down rain. Bat knew that the fulminations were of a piece with all the other orders to do and not to do, an effort to get results while diverting the thunderbolt from the rain maker's head; for by one of those strange contingencies that Shakespeare defines as an opportunity of evil, when the handy man had gone to the 'Herald,' the news editor chanced to be out. Bat crossed to the 'Independent's' office. It lacked but half an hour of the time to lock up the press, and on condition that the story should be "a scoop," Bat was sent out to the composing room to dictate straight to the printer, standing over the linotype machine.

What was "the story" that he dictated? If you know where to look, you can see its prototype seven times a week. It was written jocularly; oh, it was exceedingly funny with all sorts of veiled references to naughtiness that couldn't be printed, pretty naughtiness, you understand, the kind you wink at, as was to be expected from a little beauty, a brunette, chic, etc. (I forget how many French words Bat tucked in: he had to look 'em up in the French-English appendix to Webster's Dictionary as the proof came off the galley), the well known daughter of the richest sheep rancher in the Valley. "The story" was headed: "Pretty Scandal in Peaceful Valley." Bat played "the human interest" feature for all it was worth; also the trick of suspended interest. It began by informing the public that a pretty scandal was disturbing a certain Valley not a hundred miles from the Rim Rocks, the essential details of which could not be given, would probably _never_ be printed, for obvious reasons. Then followed a solid paragraph of nonsense verse inserted as prose; about a Ranger-man, Ranger-man, running away, 'Cause pa-pah, dear pa-pah comes home for to-day; But his Lincoln green coatie the Ranger forgot; And pa-pah, dear pa-pah came home raging hot; The Ranger-man, Ranger-man was still on the run, For pa-pah, dear pa-pah was out with a gun, He'd heaved up his war club and jangled his spear, And swore by my halidom what doth that coat here, etc., etc. Any school boy could have trolled off yards of the same drivelling cleverness; and Eleanor's innocent telephone call was, of course, lugged in.

There followed a garbled account of poor Calamity's errant days among the miners of the Black Hills. The account had no reference to her heroism in the early mining days, when she roved in man's attire over the hills to rescue wounded miners from the Sioux. It set forth only her blazoning sins; evidently on the a.s.sumption that carrion is preferable to meat. And then tucked ingeniously into this account was veiled mention of a rich sheepman, too well known to need naming, who was evidently making reparation for the errors of his youth by according to the mother as good treatment as the daughter under the same roof. Not a name was mentioned except Calamity's. I trust it is obvious to you that it was not libelous, because it was without malice.

In fact, if you want to know the ear marks of a handy man's "story,"

look out for the smart gentlemen in veiled references without any facts which can be transfixed by either a pin or a handspike. When you find the innuendo without the handhold of fact, lick your lips if you are keen on carrion; for I promise that you have come on a morsel.

Bat did even better than the clever story dictated straight to the typo in the composing room. Always in the West, there flit in and out what we Westerners used to call "floaters," gentlemen (and ladies) who come in on a pullman car and go out on a pullman car and sometimes venture as far away from safety as a hotel rotunda, then syndicate their impressions of the West, in the East, and gravely correct twenty year Westerners with twenty minute impressions. I don't believe on the whole, as Westerners, we like them very much; but obviously, one doesn't kill a mosquito with a hammer.

Bat caught such a floater on the delayed transcontinental express. He was seeing the West through a car window. The East will not see the jocularity of that fact. The West will, though it may smile with a twist. Bat's floater was working for a Chicago boomster, who had issued a magazine to boom Western real estate, suburban lots seven miles from a flat car, which was all there was of the city. For exactly fifteen dollars (when the floater's impressions came out, I made exact inquiries as to what Bat had paid him; and it seemed to me that floater sold himself very cheap) the travelling impressionist took over Bat's story of "the Pretty Scandal in Peaceful Valley" and rehashed it with the name MacDonald given as Macdonel, and syndicated the scandal against the Forest Service throughout the East.

The transcontinental express had made up lost time and came roaring in just as the stage rattled up to the platform. MacDonald and Williams stepped off the observation car. Eleanor shook hands.

"You know about the sheep?" she asked.

"Yes, we have your letter," answered MacDonald. "That's why we stayed so long buying grazing ground in the Upper Pa.s.s."

"Here, boy." He bought an evening paper; and helped Eleanor inside the stage. Then he mounted to the top with Williams. There were only three other occupants in the stage, the lady of the lavender silks, the gold teeth, and a workman, sodden drunk and drowsy, in the upper corner. The lady of the lavender silks had a complexion that looked as if it had been dipped in a fountain of perennial youth. She was leaning over the evening paper which the undertaker plumes had evidently shown her. The heat had not improved Eleanor's stiff linen collar and the dust had certainly not added to the style of her kakhi motor coat. It was not until afterwards she remembered how both the heads flew apart from the evening paper the moment she entered the stage.

"Have you had a pleasant day shopping, my dear?" It was the lavender silk with the hard mouth actually breaking in a smile. It was the "my dear" that struck Eleanor's ear as odd. The manner said plainly as words could say "You weren't before; but you _are_ now."

"Oh, it was rather hot," answered Eleanor quietly.

"Y're on the wrong soide. Y're in the sun. If y'll sit over b'side off me, my dear gurl--"

Eleanor nearly exploded. 'Girl' was the limit: 'lady' would have been worse; 'woman' was good enough for her; but, 'gurl.' It was the manner, the proprietary manner, you are one of us _now_: what had happened? She did not answer. She raised her eye lashes and looked the speaker over from the undertaker's plumes and the gold teeth and the ash colored V of skin to the clock-work stockings and high heeled slippers. Then, the stage was stopping violently and her father appeared on the rear steps at the door. She had never seen him look so. His eyes were blazing. It was not until afterwards she remembered how the lavender silks had crushed the evening paper all up and sat upon it.

"There is a little girl up on the seat with the driver. You'll find it pleasanter there going up the Valley."

She remembered afterwards, while her father gave her a hand up the front wheel, a voice inside the stage exclaimed: "Say, thought they wuz goin' to be fireworks. If Dan'd read that in th' paper 'bout me, he'd a gone on awful."

"Oh, no, he's a thoroughbred all right, if it is part Indian."

Then her father and Williams had gone down inside the stage; and she was left with the driver and a diminutive little bit of humanity, that looked as if it had escaped from one of the rag shops of Shanty Town.

She wore a tawdry thing on her head with bright carmine ostrich plumes that had lost their curl in the rain. A red plush cape was round her shoulders; and Eleanor could hardly believe her eyes--she had not seen them since she went through the East End of London--they were copper toed boots.

"M' name is Meestress Leezie O'Finnigan. What's y'rs?" demanded the little old face.