"Kunkel--Augusta Kunkel."
"Oh, German?"
The girl nodded.
"Well, Miss Kunkel"--she suppressed a smile--"tell me your troubles and perhaps you"ll feel better."
More tears was the girl"s reply.
"Look here"--there was impatience in her voice--"there"s no man worth bawling over."
"But--but----" wept the girl, "he said he"d marry me!"
"Isn"t he going to?"
"I don"t know--he"s going away in a few days and he won"t talk any more about it. He"s waltzed every waltz to-night with Essie Tisdale and has not danced once with me."
"So? And who"s Essie Tisdale?"
"She"s the waitress here."
"Downstairs? In this hotel?"
Augusta Kunkel nodded.
"I don"t blame him," Dr. Harpe replied bluntly, "I saw her at supper.
She"s a peach!"
"She"s the belle of Crowheart," admitted the girl reluctantly.
"And who is _he_? What"s _his name_?"
The girl hesitated but as though yielding to a stronger will than her own, she whimpered:
"Symes--Andy P. Symes."
"Why don"t you let Andy P. Symes go if he wants to? He isn"t the only man in Crowheart, is he?"
"But he promised!" The girl wrung her hands convulsively. "He promised _sure_!"
A look of quick suspicion flashed across Dr. Harpe"s face.
"He _promised_--oh, I _see_!"
She arose and closed the door.
The interview was interrupted by a bounding step upon the stairs and a little tap upon the door, and when it was opened the belle of Crowheart stood flushed and radiant on the threshold.
"We want you to come down," she said in her vivacious, friendly voice.
"It must be lonely for you up here, and Mr. Symes--he"s giving the dance, you know--he sent me up to ask you." She caught sight of the girl"s tear-stained face and stepped quickly into the room. "Why, Gussie." She laid her arm about her shoulder. "What"s the matter?"
Augusta Kunkel drew away with frank hostility in her brown eyes and answered:
"Nothing"s the matter--I"m tired, that"s all."
Though she flushed at the rebuff, she murmured gently: "I"m sorry, Gussie." Turning to Dr. Harpe, she urged persuasively:
"Please come down. We"re having the best time _ever_!"
Dr. Harpe hesitated, for she thought of Alice Freoff, but the violin was shrieking enticingly and the voice of the master of ceremonies in alluring command floated up the stairway:
"Choose your partners for a waltz, gents!"
She jerked her head at Augusta Kunkel.
"Come along--don"t sit up here and mope."
Andy P. Symes, waiting in the hall below, was a little puzzled by the intentness of the newcomer"s gaze as she descended the stairs, but at the bottom he extended a huge hand:
"I"m glad you decided to join us, Miss----"
"Harpe--Doctor Emma Harpe."
"Oh," surprised amus.e.m.e.nt was in his tone, "you"ve come to settle among us, perhaps? Permit me to welcome you, Dr. Harpe. We are to be congratulated. Our nearest physician is sixty miles away, so you will have the field to yourself. You should prosper. Do you come from the East?"
She looked him in the eyes.
"St. Louis."
"Take your pardners for the waltz, gents!"
Andy P. Symes held out his arms in smiling invitation while the news flashed round the room that the newcomer with the cold, immobile face, the peculiar pallor of which contrasted strongly with their own sun-blistered skins, was a "lady-doctor" who had come to live in Crowheart.
The abandon, the freedom of it all, appealed strongly to Dr. Harpe. The atmosphere was congenial, and when the waltz was done she asked that she might be allowed to sit quietly for a time since she found herself more fatigued by her long journey than she had realized; but, in truth, she desired to familiarize herself with the character of the people among whom her future work lay.
A noisy, heterogeneous gathering it was, boisterous without vulgarity, free without familiarity. There were no covert glances of dislike or envy, no shrugs of disdain, no whispered innuendoes. The social lines which breed these things did not exist. Every man considered his neighbor and his neighbor"s wife as good as himself and his genuine liking was in his frank glance, his hearty tones, his beaming, friendly smile. Men and women looked at each other clear-eyed and straight.
The piercing "yips" of cowboys meant nothing but an excess of spirits.
The stamping of feet, the shouts and laughter were indicative only of effervescent youth seeking an outlet. Most were young, all were full of life and hope, and the world was far away, that world where clothes and money matter.
The scene was typical of a new town in the frontier West. The old settlers and the new mingled gaily. The old timers with their indifferent dress, their vernacular and free manners of the mountains and ranges brushed elbows with the more modern folk of the poor and the middle cla.s.s of the Middle West. They were uninteresting and mediocre, these newcomers, yet the sort who thrive astonishingly upon new soil, who become prosperous and self-important in an atmosphere of equality.
There were, too, educated failures from the East and--people who had blundered. But all alike to-night, irrespective of pasts or presents or futures, were bent upon enjoying themselves to their capacities.
Callous-handed ranchers and their faded wives promenaded arm in arm.
Sheep-herders and cow-punchers pa.s.sed in the figures of the dance eyeing each other in mutual antipathy. The neat "hand-me-downs" of grocery clerks contrasted with the copper-riveted overalls of shy and silent prospectors from the hills who stood against the walls envying their dapper ease. A remittance man from Devonshire whose ancestral halls had sheltered an hundred knights danced with Faro Nell, who gambled for a living, while the station agent"s attenuated daughter palpitated in the arms of a husky stage-driver. Mr. Percy Parrott, the sprightly cashier of the new bank, swung the new milliner from South Dakota. Sylva.n.u.s Starr, the gifted editor of the Crowheart _Courier_, schottisched with Mrs. "Hank" Terriberry, while his no less gifted wife swayed in the arms of the local barber, and his two lovely daughters, "Pearline" and "Planchette," tripped it respectively with the "barkeep" of the White Elephant Saloon and a Minneapolis shoe-drummer. In the centre of the floor the new plasterer and his wife moved through the figures of the French minuet with the stiff-kneed grace of two self-conscious giraffes, while Mrs. Percy Parrott, a long-limbed lady with a big, white, Hereford-like face, capered with "Tinhorn Frank," the oily, dark, craftily observant proprietor of the "Walla Walla Restaurant and Saloon." Mr. Abe Tutts, of the Flour and Feed Store, skimmed the floor with the darting ease of a water-spider dragging beside him his far less active wife, a belligerent-appearing and somewhat hard-featured lady several years his senior.
But the long, crowded dining-room held two central figures, one of which was Andy P. Symes, and the other was Essie Tisdale, the little waitress of the Terriberry House and the belle of Crowheart.
Symes moved among his guests with the air of a man who found amus.e.m.e.nt in mingling with those he deemed his inferiors even while patently bidding for their admiration and regard. His height and breadth of shoulder made him conspicuous even in this gathering of tall men. His finely shaped head was well set but in contrast his utterly inconsequential nose came as something of a shock. His face was florid and genial and he had a word for the most obscure.