LITMIR.BIZ

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the following circumstance thereof happenin’. One day something in his harness giv’ way—and he recollects seein’ a boot sunnin’ itself back in the road ’bout a quartah of a mile. An’ he figgahs he’ll borry a strip of leather off the boot to mend his harness. Back he goes and finds it has a kind of loaded feelin’. So my friend investigates—and I be blanked if there wasn’t a foot and leg inside of it.”

      Miss Carmichael had always exercised a super-feminine self-restraint in the case of casual mice, and it served her in the present instance. Instead of screaming, she said, after the suppression of a gasp or two:

      “Thank you so much, but I won’t detain you any longer. Your information makes Lost Trail even more interesting than I had expected.”

      Besides, Miss Carmichael had a faint suspicion that this might be a preconcerted plan to terrify the “lady tenderfoot,” and she prided herself on being equal to the situation. The time at her disposal before the stage would embark on that unknown sea of prairies she spent in the delectable pastime of shopping. The financial and social interests of the town seemed to converge in Hugous & Co.’s “trading store,” where Miss Carmichael invested in an extra package of needles for the mere excitement of being one of the shoppers, though her aunt Adelaide had stocked the little plaid-silk work-bag to repletion with every variety of needle known to woman. She pricked up her ears, meanwhile, at some of the purchases made by the cow-boys for their camp-larders—devilled ham, sardines, canned tomatoes heading the list as prime favorites. Did these strapping border lads live by the fruit of the tin alone? Apparently yes, with the sophisticated accompaniment of soda biscuit, to judge by the quantity of baking-powder they invested in—literally pounds of it. Men in any other condition of life would have died of slow poisoning as the result of it.

      There were other customers at Hugous’ that morning besides the spurred and booted cow-puncher and his despised compeer, the sheep-herder. That restless emigrant class, whose origin, as a class, lay in the community of its own uncertain schemes of fortune; the West, with her splendid, lavish promises, called them from their thriftless farms in the South and their gray cabins in New England. They began their journeying towards the land of promise long before the Indians had ever seen the shrieking “fire-wagon.” All day they would toil over the infinitude of prairie, the sun that hid nightly behind that maddeningly elusive vanishing-point, the horizon, their only guide. But the makeshifts of the wagon life were not without charm. They began to wander in quest of they knew not precisely what, and from these vague beginnings there had sprung into existence that nomadic population that was once such a feature of the far West, but is now going the way of the Indians and the cow-boys.

      This breathing-space in the long journey had for them the stimulus of a holiday-making. They bought their sides of bacon and their pounds of coffee as merrily as if they were playing a game of forfeits, the women fingering the calico they did not want for the joy of pricing and making shoppers’ talk.

      The scene had a scriptural flavor that not even the blue overalls of the men nor the calico gowns of the women could altogether eliminate. Their wagons, bulging with household goods and trailing with kitchen utensils secured by bits of rope, were drawn up in front of the trading-store. From a pump, at some little distance, the pilgrims filled their stone water-bottles, for the wise traveller does not trust to the chance springs of the desert. Baskets of chickens were strapped to many of the wagons, but whether the unhappy fowls were designed to supply fresh eggs and an occasional fricassée, or were taken for the pleasure of their company, there was no means of determining short of impertinent cross-questioning. Sometimes a cow, and invariably a dog, formed one of the family party, and an edifying esprit de corps seemed to dwell among them all.

      Lone Tooth Hank, in his capacity of man about town, stood on the steps of Hugous’ watching the preparations; and, seeing Miss Carmichael, approached with the air of an old and tried family friend.

      “Do I obsehve yu regyarding oweh ‘settleahs,’ called settleahs ’cause they nevah settle?” Hank laughed gently, as one who has made a joke meet for ladies. “I’ve known whole famblies to bohn an’ raise right in one of them wagons; and tuhn out a mighty fine, endurin’ lot, too, this hyeh prospectin’ round afteh somethin’ they wouldn’t reco’nize if they met. Gits to be a habit same as drink. They couldn’t live in a house same as humans, not if yu filled their gyarden with nuggets an’ their well with apple-jack.”

      Miss Carmichael looked attentive but said nothing. In truth, she was more afraid of Hank, his obvious gallantry, and his grewsome tales of boots with legs in them than she was of the unknown terrors of Lost Trail.

      “I believe that is my stage,” she said, as a red conveyance not unlike a circus wagon halted at some little distance from the trading-store. And as she spoke she saw four of her companions of the breakfast-table heading towards the stage, each with a piece of her precious luggage. Mary Carmichael was precipitated in a sudden panic; she had heard tales of the pranks of these playful Western squires—a little gun-play to induce the terrified tenderfoot to put a little more spirit into his Highland fling, “by request.” She remembered their merrymaking with Simpson at breakfast. What did they intend to do with her belongings? And as she remembered the little plaid sewing-bag that Aunt Adelaide had made for her—surreptitiously drying her tears in the mean time—when she remembered that bag and the possibility of its being submitted to ignominy, she could have cried or done murder, she wasn’t sure which.

      “Well, ’pon my wohd, heah ah the boys with yo’ baggage. How time du fly!”

      “Oh!” she gasped, “what are they going to do with it?”

      “Place it on the stage, awaitin’ yo’ ohdahs.” And to her expression of infinite relief—“Yo’ didn’t think any disrepec’ would be shown the baggage of a lady honorin’ this hyeh metropolis with her presence?”

      She thanked the knights of the lariat the more warmly for her unjust suspicions. They stowed away the luggage with the deft capacity of men who have returned to the primitive art of using their hands. She climbed beside the driver on the box of the stage. Lone Tooth Hank and the cow-punchers chivalrously raised their sombreros with a simultaneous spontaneity that suggested a flight of rockets. The driver cracked his whip and turned the horses’ heads towards the billowing sea of foot-hills, and the last cable that bound Mary Carmichael to civilization was cut.

      III.

       LEANDER AND HIS LADY

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      The only stage passenger besides Miss Carmichael was a fat lady, whose entire luggage seemed to consist of luncheon—pasteboard boxes of sandwiches, baskets of fruit, napkins of cake. These she began to dispose of, before the stage had fairly started, with an industry almost automatic, continuing faithful to her post as long as the supplies lasted. Then she dozed, sleeping the sleep of the just and those who keep their mouths open. From time to time the stage-driver invoked his team in cabalistic words, and each time the horses toiled forward with fresh energy; but progress became a mockery in that ocean of space, their driving seemed as futile as the sport of children who crack a whip and play at stage-coach with a couple of chairs; the mountains still mocked in the distance.

      A flat, unbroken sweep of country, a tangle of straggling sage-brush, a glimpse of foot-hills in the distance, was the outlook mile after mile. The day grew pitilessly hot. Clouds of alkaline dust swept aimlessly over the desert or whirled into spirals till lost in space. From horizon to horizon the sky was one cloudless span of blue that paled as it dipped earthward. Mary Carmichael dozed and wakened, but the prospect was always the same—the red stage crawling over the wilderness, making no evident progress, and always the sun, the sage-brush, and the silence.

      It was all so overwhelmingly different from the peaceful atmosphere of things at home. The mellow Virginia country, with its winding, red roads, wealth of woodland, and its grave old houses that were the more haughtily aloof for the poverty that gnawed at their vitals. This wilderness was so gaunt, so parched; she closed her eyes and thought of a bit of landscape at home.

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