Peak and Prairie Part 29

"No, Harry, I couldn't!"

It had made him so angry that he hardly knew how deep his hurt was.

"You have no right to say no!" he had heard himself say.

He could not remember whether that was immediately, or after an interval of discussion. She had stood up and turned away, not deigning to reply.

And then the memory of that talk at the ball had struck him like a blow.

"Wait, Dorothy! You must wait!" he had cried, aware that his imperative words clutched her like a detaining hand. Then, while his breath came fast, almost chokingly, he had said: "Tell me, Dorothy, is it because you don't call me _a man_ that you won't have me?"

The angry challenge in his voice hardened her.

"I don't know anything about how much of a man you are, Harry Wakefield," she had declared, with freezing indifference. "I only know you are not the man for me."

That had been practically the end of it. They had got through the day very creditably he believed, and the next morning they had departed on their several ways.

Wakefield had read law like mad for a week, and then he had started for Colorado. He had a favorite cousin out there whose husband was making a fortune in Lame Gulch stocks, and he thought that even prosaic fortune-hunting in a new world would be better than the gnawing chagrin that monopolized things in the old. Better be active than pa.s.sive, on any terms. By the time he was well on his westward way, the sting of that refusal had yielded somewhat, and he began to take courage again.

Perhaps when he had made a fortune! "It takes a man to do that," she had said. Well, he had four times the money to start with that d.i.c.k Dayton had had, and look, what chances there were!

Once fairly launched in the stirring, out-of-door Colorado life, his spirits had so far recovered their tone that he could afford to be magnanimous. Accordingly he wrote the following letter to Dorothy:

"DEAR DOROTHY,

"You were right; I wasn't half good enough for you. No fellow is, as far as that goes! Don't you let them fool you on that score! It makes me mad when I think about it. You always knew the worst of me, but you don't really know the first thing about any other man.

I'm coming back next year to try again. Do give me the chance, Dorothy! Remember, I don't tell you you could make anything you like of me--that's the rubbish the rest will talk. I'm going to make something of myself first! And if I don't do it in a year, I am ready to work seven years,--or seventy,--or seventy-seven years; if you'll only have me in the end! That would have to be in Heaven, though, wouldn't it? Well, it would come to the same thing in the end! It would be Heaven for me, wherever it was!"

Wakefield had the habit of saying to Dorothy whatever came into his head; and so he had written his letter without any thought of effect.

But the answer he got was so carefully worded that he could make nothing of it. At the end of three non-committal pages she wrote:

"I ought not to wish you good luck, for Papa says if you have it it will be your ruin. I did not suppose that circ.u.mstances could ruin anybody,--anybody that had any backbone, I mean. But I do wish you good luck all the same, and if you're the kind of person to be ruined by it, why, I'm sorry for you!"

There was something in that letter, non-committal as it was, that gave Wakefield the impression that a correspondence would be no furtherance to his interests. He did not write again, and he only knew, from his sister f.a.n.n.y, that Dorothy was a greater favorite than ever that season; a fact from which he could gather little encouragement. He had flung himself like a piece of driftwood into the whirl of speculation; he had lost more thousands than he cared to think about, the bulk of his patrimony in fact, and his last chance was gone of making the fortune that was to have been the winning of Dorothy. "It takes a man to do that!" she had said.

Well, that was the end of it! As far as he was concerned, Dorothy Ray had ceased to exist; the past had ceased to exist, the pleasant past, with its deceitful mists and bewildering sunbeams. Things out here were crude, but they were real! He got on his feet and turned about once more. Between Mt. Was.h.i.+ngton and the range was a fertile ranch; broad fields of vivid alfalfa, big barns, pastures dotted with cattle; a line of light-green cottonwoods ran along the borders of the creek. What was that about the wilderness blossoming like the rose? He turned again and looked toward the barren hillocks. Even they, dead and inhospitable as they appeared at a little distance, afforded nourishment for cactus and painter's-brush, p.r.i.c.kly poppy and hardy vetches. Dorothy Ray might do as she pleased,--his fortune might go where it would! That need not be the end of all things. Life, to be sure, might seem a little like a game of chess after the loss of the Queen! Pretty tough work it was likely to be to save the game, but none the less worth while for all that. He wondered what his next move would be,--and meanwhile, before recommencing the game, why not seize the most obvious outlet for his newly roused energies, by tearing down the hill at a break-neck gallop and clearing the wire fence at a bound!

"Took you for a jack-rabbit!" said a gruff voice close at hand, as he landed on his two feet by the dusty roadside.

"Not a bad thing to be," Wakefield panted, falling in step with the speaker, who was walking toward the town at a brisk pace.

"Not unless the dogs are round," the stranger demurred.

"Dogs! A jack-rabbit would never know how game he was, if it wasn't for the dogs!"

"Any on your track?" asked the man with a grin. "Looked like it when you come walluping down the mounting!"

"A whole pack of them," Wakefield answered. "Didn't you see anything of them?"

"Can't say I did."

"You're not so smart as you look, then;" and they went jogging on like comrades of a year's standing.

The new acquaintance appeared to be a man of sixty or thereabouts. A crowbar and shovel which he carried over his shoulder seemed a part of his rough laborer's costume. He had a shrewd, good sort of face, and a Yankee tw.a.n.g to his speech.

"You carry those things as easy as a walking-stick," Wakefield observed, ready to reciprocate in point of compliments. "What do you use them for?"

"Ben mendin' the bit o' _codderoy_ down yonder," was the answer.

"Is that your trade?"

"No, not partic'larly. I make a trade of most anything I kin work at.

Happened to be out of a job last week, so I took up with this."

"Got through with it?"

"Yes; stopped off to-day. Got done just in time. They start in on the road next week, 'n they've took me on."

"What road's that?"

"The new branch in."

"Oh! In to Lame Gulch. I heard they were going to start in on that."

"Yes; the 'Rocky Mounting' are doin' it. They say there'll be trains runnin' in from the Divide inside of six months."

Wakefield looked sceptical; he had heard that sort of talk before.

"Do you like railroad work?" he asked.

"Not so well's this. I like my own job better, only 'taint so _stayin'_.

Might 've had another month's work, on the road to the canon over there; but that would ha' ben the end on 't. So I'm goin' to throw up that job this afternoon."

"What's wanted on the canon road?"

"Wal, it wants widenin', an' it wants bracin' up here 'n there, 'n there's a power of big stuns to be weeded out. A reel purty job it's goin' to be, too, in there by the runnin' water, among the _fars_ 'n the birds 'n the squirrels."

"I suppose you could hardly have managed that all by yourself?"

"Oh, yes! It's an easy job."

"And you think you could have done it with just your two hands and a shovel and a crowbar?"

"Wal, yes,--'n a pinch o' powder now and then, 'n somethin' to drill a hole with,--an' a little nat'ral gumption."

Wakefield liked the sound of it all uncommonly well. For a man who had come to a rough place in his own road,--a jumping-off place he had once thought it might prove to be,--would it not be rather a pleasant thing, to smooth off a road for the general public? It would be a stroke in the game, at least, and that was his main concern just now. Such a good, downright, genuine sort of work too! He had an idea that if he could once get his grip on a crowbar, and feel a big rock come off its bottom at his instigation, he should have a stirring of self-respect. After all, of all that he had lost, that was perhaps the most important thing to get back.

Just as he had arrived at this sensible conclusion his companion came to a halt.

"Here's my shanty; where's yours?" he asked.