"Was you aimin" to sell Whetstone and go on the train, Duke?"
"No, I"m not goin" to sell him yet a while."
The Duke was not a talkative man on any occasion, and now he sat in silence watching the cook kneading out a batch of bread, his thoughts a thousand miles away.
Where, indeed, would the journey that he was shaping in his intention that minute carry him? Somewhere along the railroad between there and Puget Sound the beckoning lady had left the train; somewhere on that long road between mountain and sea she was waiting for him to come.
Taterleg stood his loaves in the sun to rise for the oven, making a considerable rattling about the stove as he put in the fire. A silence fell.
Lambert was waiting for his horse to rest a few hours, and, waiting, he sent his dreams ahead of him where his feet could not follow save by weary roads and slow.
Between Misery and the end of that railroad at the western sea there were many villages, a few cities. A pa.s.senger might alight from the Chicago flier at any of them, and be absorbed in the vastness like a drop of water in the desert plain. How was he to know where she had left the train, or whither she had turned afterward, or journeyed, or where she lodged now? It seemed beyond finding out. a.s.suredly it was a task too great for the life of youth, so evanescent in the score of time, even though so long and heavy to those impatient dreamers who draw themselves onward by its golden chain to the cold, harsh facts of age.
It was a foolish quest, a hopeless one. So reason said. Romance and youth, and the longing that he could not define, rose to confute this sober argument, flushed and eager, violet scent blowing before.
Who could tell? and perhaps; rash speculations, faint promises. The world was not so broad that two might never meet in it whose ways had touched for one heart-throb and sundered again in a sigh. All his life he had been hearing that it was a small place, after all was said.
Perhaps, and who can tell? And so, galloping onward in the free leash of his ardent dreams.
"When was you aimin" to start, Duke?" Taterleg inquired, after a silence so long that Lambert had forgotten he was there.
"In about another hour."
"I wasn"t tryin" to hurry you off, Duke. My reason for askin" you was because I thought maybe I might be able to go along with you a piece of the way, if you don"t object to my kind of company."
"Why, you"re not goin" to jump the job, are you?"
"Yes, I"ve been thinkin" it over, and I"ve made up my mind to draw my time tonight. If you"ll put off goin" till mornin", I"ll start with you. We can travel together till our roads branch, anyhow."
"I"ll be glad to wait for you, old feller. I didn"t know--which way----"
"Wyoming," said Taterleg, sighing. "It"s come back on me ag"in."
"Well, a feller has to rove and ramble, I guess."
Taterleg sighed, looking off westward with dreamy eyes. "Yes, if he"s got a girl pullin" on his heart," said he.
The Duke started as if he had been accused, his secret read, his soul laid bare; he felt the blood burn in his face, and mount to his eyes like a drift of smoke. But Taterleg was unconscious of this sudden embarra.s.sment, this flash of panic for the thing which the Duke believed lay so deep in his heart no man could ever find it out and laugh at it or make gay over the scented romance. Taterleg was still looking off in a general direction that was westward, a little south of west.
"She"s in Wyoming," said Taterleg; "a lady I used to rush out in Great Bend, Kansas, a long time ago."
"Oh," said the Duke, relieved and interested. "How long ago was that?"
"Over four years," sighed Taterleg, as if it might have been a quarter of a century.
"Not so very long, Taterleg."
"Yes, but a lot of fellers can court a girl in four years, Duke."
The Duke thought it over a spell. "Yes, I reckon they can," he allowed.
"Don"t she ever write to you?"
"I guess I"m more to blame than she is on that, Duke. She _did_ write, but I was kind of sour and dropped her. It"s hard to git away from, though; it"s a-comin" over me ag"in. I might "a" been married and settled down with that girl now, me and her a-runnin" a oyster parlor in some good little railroad town, if it hadn"t "a" been for a Welshman name of Elwood. He was a stonecutter, that Elwood feller was, Duke, workin" on bridge "butments on the Santa Fe. That feller told her I was married and had four children; he come between us and bust us up."
"Wasn"t he onery!" said the Duke, feelingly.
"I was chef in the hotel where that girl worked waitin" table, drawin"
down good money, and savin" it, too. But that derned Welshman got around her and she growed cold. When she left Great Bend she went to Wyoming to take a job--Lander was the town she wrote from, I can put my finger on it in the map with my eyes shut. I met her when she was leavin" for the depot, draggin" along with her grip and no Welshman in a mile of her to give her a hand. I went up and tipped my hat, but I never smiled, Duke, for I was sour over the way that girl she"d treated me. I just took hold of that grip and carried it to the depot for her and tipped my hat to her once more. "You"re a gentleman, whatever they say of you, Mr.
Wilson," she said."
"_She_ did?"
"She did, Duke. "You"re a gentleman, Mr. Wilson, whatever they say of you," she said. Them was her words, Duke. "Farewell to _you_," I said, distant and high-mighty, for I was hurt, Duke--I was hurt right down to the bone."
"I bet you was, old feller."
""Farewell to _you_," I says, and the tears come in her eyes, and she says to me--wipin" "em on a han"kerchief I give her, nothing any Welshman ever done for her, and you can bank on that Duke--she says to me: "I"ll always think of you as a gentleman, Mr. Wilson." I wasn"t onto what that Welshman told her then; I didn"t know the straight of it till she wrote and told me after she got to Wyoming."
"It was too bad, old feller."
"Wasn"t it h.e.l.l? I was so sore when she wrote, the way she"d believed that little sawed-off snorter with rock dust in his hair, I never answered that letter for a long time. Well, I got another letter from her about a year after that. She was still in the same place, doin"
well. Her name was Nettie Morrison."
"Maybe it is yet, Taterleg."
"Maybe. I"ve been a-thinkin" I"d go out there and look her up, and if she ain"t married, me and her we might let bygones _be_ bygones and hitch. I could open a oyster parlor out there on the dough I"ve saved up; I"d dish "em up and she"d wait on the table and take in the money.
We"d do well, Duke."
"I _bet_ you would."
"I got the last letter she wrote--I"ll let you see it, Duke."
Taterleg made a rummaging in the chuck wagon, coming out presently with the letter. He stood contemplating it with tender eye.
"Some writer, ain"t she, Duke?"
"She sure is a fine writer, Taterleg--writes like a schoolma"am."
"She can talk like one, too. See--"Lander, Wyo." It"s a little town about as big as my hat, from the looks of it on the map, standin" away off up there alone. I could go to it with my eyes shut, straight as a bee."
"Why don"t you write to her, Taterleg?" The Duke could scarcely keep back a smile, so diverting he found this affair of the Welshman, the waitress, and the cook. More comedy than romance, he thought, Taterleg on one side of the fence, that girl on the other.
"I"ve been a-squarin" off to write," Taterleg replied, "but I don"t seem to git the time." He opened his vest to put the letter away close to his heart, it seemed, that it might remind him of his intention and square him quite around to the task. But there was no pocket on the side covering his heart. Taterleg put the letter next his lung as the nearest approach to that sentimental portion of his anatomy, and sighed long and loud as he b.u.t.toned his garment.
"You said you"d put off goin" till mornin", Duke?"
"Sure I will."
"I"ll throw my things in a sack and be ready to hit the breeze with you after breakfast. I can write back to the boss for my time."