Under Handicap Part 24

Lonesome Pete, his spurred boots s.h.i.+fting uneasily, put on his hat, noticed immediately that Conniston still held his in his hand, s.n.a.t.c.hed it off again, spun it about upon a big forefinger, and grinned redly.

"I sure would, Miss Jocelyn," he declared with great emphasis.

Miss Jocelyn turned back to lock the school-house door, and then came down the steps and into the road.

"I'll go git my hoss an' walk along," Lonesome Pete said, and hurried around to the back of the house.

"Are you going my way, Mr. Conniston?"

Conniston said that he was, and swung down, walking at her side and leading his horse.

"If you really _do_ care to come to see me," Jocelyn said, quickly, before the cowboy had rejoined them, "you may call this evening."

Conniston thanked her, and, not to seem rude, said that he would drop in after he and Tommy Garton had finished their work. Jocelyn smiled at him brightly.

"You may come early, if you like. I am sure that you will have a whole lot of things to tell me about the progress you and papa are making with the ditch. I'm _so_ interested in the work, Mr. Conniston."

Pete had taken up his horse's dragging reins and led him into the street. Jocelyn, her chin a trifle lifted, her air more than a trifle coquettish as she smiled at Conniston, pretended not to see her red-headed adorer. Walking between the two men, she even tilted her parasol so that it did no slightest good in the world in the matter of protecting her from the sun, but served very effectively in shutting out Lonesome Pete. Conniston laughed and talked lightly with her, vastly amused at the situation and the discomfiture upon her ardent lover's expressive face. And so, with Pete trudging along in silence, unnoticed, they came to the office and stopped, Jocelyn and Conniston still talking to each other, Lonesome Pete tying and untying knots in his bridle-reins.

"Can't you give up enough of your precious time to walk on home with me? I have some icy cold lemonade waiting for me," she tempted.

"I'm sorry. I'd like to, but I've got a lot of work to get over with Garton--"

Only three or four doors from the office was the little cottage which he had helped Argyl to prepare for her father. Even while he was making his excuses he saw the door open, and Argyl herself, lithe and trim in her gray riding-habit, step out upon the tiny porch.

"I beg pardon," he broke off, suddenly. "I--Will you excuse me?"

And, jerking his horse's reins so that the animal started up after him at a trot, he strode down the street, his hat off, his face lifted eagerly to Argyl's. A moment later he was holding her hand in his, oblivious of Jocelyn, Pete, Valley City, everything in the world except the girl with the big gray eyes, the girl whom he had seen through his s.h.i.+fting day-dreams.

When the cowboy and the schoolmistress pa.s.sed him Lonesome Pete was talking once more and she was being very gracious to him, but Conniston had no eye for such trifles. Jocelyn nodded a bit stiffly to Argyl, and, smiling at Conniston, cried gaily, "You won't forget, Mr.

Conniston!"

But he had already forgotten. He had not hoped to see Argyl for many days yet, perhaps many weeks, and the unexpected sight of her thrilled through him, driving all thoughts of Jocelyn out of his mind. And when in a few minutes he was forced to remember that he had business with Garton he left reluctantly and with a promise to have dinner at six o'clock with her and her father.

Tommy Garton he found as cheerful as a cricket and heartily glad to see him. Billy Jordan had looked out as Jocelyn and her two escorts came by, and now was back at his typewriter, pounding the keys for dear life, the ticking and clicking of his machine keeping time to "Yankee Doodle," which he was whistling softly. He, too, shook hands, but his cheerfulness was of a grade noticeably inferior to Garton's.

And immediately he went back to his machine and his rhythmical pounding.

Conniston was of a mind to get the business of the day done with before six. The first part of his errand took up the greater part of an hour. Then Garton reported upon the other matter which Truxton had wanted ascertained. There was water enough to last four days.

Provisions were holding out well, but soon there would be a need for fresh supplies of sugar, flour, and jerked beef. There was enough of canned goods at the general store to last for a month, a fresh s.h.i.+pment having been recently received--two big wagon-loads from Crawfordsville.

"I expect Mr. Crawford to drop in on us some time before dark," Garton said, as he put away carefully into a drawer the papers he had taken from it during the consultation. "Miss Argyl is already here. Stopped in a minute to let us know that the Old Man is coming."

"Yes, I know. I saw her a minute just before I came in."

They chatted for a while longer, until Conniston saw by his watch that it was six o'clock. Then he got up and reached for his hat.

"You'll spend the night with me, Conniston," Tommy Garton offered.

"I've got plenty of bedding; a man doesn't suffer for covers these nights. Drop in as soon as you and Billy get through supper. I think that I can beat you a game of crib."

"Much obliged, Garton. But I may not run in for an hour or so. Miss Crawford has asked me to eat with them to-night."

"Oh." There was a great lack of expression in Garton's monosyllable, but as he swung about upon his stool, bending over the box of cigarettes which he swept up, Conniston thought that he saw a little twitch as of pain about the sensitive lips. Not understanding, feeling at once that he would like to say something and not knowing what to say, he went slowly to the door. As he was going out Garton called to him, his voice and face alike as cheerful as they had been throughout the afternoon.

"I say, Conniston. Remember me to Miss Argyl, will you? She's a glorious girl. I never saw her match. She's got the same capability for doing big things that her father has. I said the other day that he was the whole brain and brawn of this war for reclamation. I ought to have been kicked. Do you know that the whole project, from its inception, has been as much hers as his? Why, that girl has ridden over every foot of this valley, knows it like a book. Dam Number Three, that auxiliary dam, is her idea. And a rattling good idea, too.

The men call it 'Miss Argyl's Dam.' Better brush up on your engineering before you talk reclamation with her, old man. She's read all the books I've got. A glorious girl, Conniston."

Conniston came back into the room.

"See here, Garton," he said, gently. "Why don't you come along. She told me that she wanted you, that she had asked you and--"

Garton waved an interrupting hand, smiling quickly. But Conniston saw that his face looked tired.

CHAPTER XV

At Conniston's knock Argyl's voice from somewhere in the back of the cottage called "Come in!" He opened the door, went through the cozy sitting-room, which was scarcely larger than the fire-place at the range-house, and at a second invitation found his way into the rear room. There an oil-stove was shooting up its yellow flames about a couple of stew-pans, and there Argyl herself, in blue gingham ap.r.o.n, her sleeves rolled up on her plump, white arms, was completing preparations for the evening meal. She turned to nod to Conniston and then back to her cooking.

"You'll find a chair in the corner," she told him, as he stopped in the doorway, looking amusedly at her. "That is, of course, if you care to call on the cook? Otherwise you will find cigars and a last month's paper in the sitting-room."

"There isn't any otherwise," he laughed back at her. And after a moment, in which she was very busy over the stove and he very content to stand and watch her: "We're even now. Last time we were here I was the hired man and tacked down carpets for you. Now I'm the guest of the family, if you please, and you're the cook."

"You can have two cupfuls of water to wash your hands and one for your face. You'll find the barrel and basin upon the back porch. And don't throw the water away! I'll save it for you to use the next time you come."

"Thank you. But I washed over at Garton's. He lets me have two cupfuls for my face. And now I'm going to help you. What can I do?"

"Nothing. If you wanted to work, why did you wait until the last minute? Unless you know how to set a table?"

"I can set anything from an eight-day clock to a hen," he a.s.sured her, gravely. "Where's Mr. Crawford? Has he come yet?"

"No. I expect him any minute. But we won't wait for him. It's against the law in the Crawford home to wait meals for anybody."

Under her direction he found the dishes in a cupboard built into the walls, knives, forks, spoons, and napkins in drawers below, and journeying many times from kitchen to dining-room, stopping after each trip to stand and watch his hostess in her preparations for dinner, he at length had the table set. And then he insisted upon helping play waiter with her until she informed him that he was positively r.e.t.a.r.ding matters. Whereupon he made a cigarette and sat upon the kitchen table and merely watched.

For many days Conniston had longed to see Mr. Crawford, to talk with him concerning the big work. Now, as he and Argyl sat down together, his one wish was that Mr. Crawford be delayed indefinitely. As he looked across the table, with its white cloth, its few cheap dishes, its simple fare, he was conscious of a deep content. He helped Argyl to the _piece de resistance_--it consisted of dried beef, potatoes, onions, and carrots all stewed together; she pa.s.sed to him the biscuits which she had just made; they drank each other's health and success to the Great Work in light, cooled claret made doubly refres.h.i.+ng with a dash of lemon; and they dined ten times as merrily as they would have dined at Sherry's.

He told her of Tommy Garton, and suddenly surprised in her a phase of nature which he had never seen before. Her eyes filled with a quick, soft sympathy, a sympathy almost motherly.

"Poor little Tommy," she said, gently. "He laughs at himself and calls himself 'half a man,' while he's greater than any two men he comes in contact with once in a year. I call Tommy my cathedral--which sounds foolish, I know, but which isn't! Do you know the feeling you get when you steal all alone into one of those great, empty, silent churches, where it is always a dim twilight? Not that Tommy is as somber and stately as a great cathedral," she smiled. "Just the opposite, I know.

But his sunny nature, his unruffled cheerfulness affect me like a sermon. When I allow myself to descend into the depths and see how Tommy manages it, I feel as if I ought to be spanked. I think," she ended, "that I have pretty well mixed things up, haven't I? But you understand what I mean?"

"I understand. And since we have drunk to the Great Work, shall we drink to a Great Soul who is a vital part of it? I don't know how we'd manage without Tommy Garton."

They touched gla.s.ses gravely and drank to a man who, as they sat looking out upon life through long, glorious vistas, dawn-flushed, lay alone upon his cot, his face buried in his arms.

They finished their meal, cleared away the dishes together, and still Mr. Crawford had not come. Then Conniston dragged two of the chairs out to the front porch, took a cigar from the jar where it had been kept moist with half an apple, and they went out to enjoy the cool freshness of the evening. The sun had sunk out of sight, the mood of the desert had changed. All of the dull gray monotone was gone. All the length of the long, low western horizon the dross of the garish day was being trans.m.u.ted by the alchemy of the sunset into red and yellow gold, molten and ever flowing, as though spilled from some great retort to run sluggishly in a gleaming band about the earth.