Dubois"s self-conscious, ingratiating smile did not fade because she drew her arched eyebrows together in a slight frown. It took more than an unwelcoming face to divert the obstinate old Frenchman from any purpose firmly fixed in his mind.
"Ha--I am ver" glad to find you alone, Mees Teesdale, I lak have leetle talk with you." There was a purposeful look behind his set smile of agreeableness.
She shrank from him a little as he came close to her, but he appeared not to notice the movement, and went on--
"I hear you are in trouble--eh? I hear you get fire from ze hotel?"
Again the girl"s face took on its new look of bitterness. That was the way in which they were expressing it, spreading the news throughout the town. They were losing no time--her friends.
""Fired" is the word when a biscuit-shooter is dismissed," she returned coldly.
"I hear you get lef" by that loafer, too. I tole you, mam"selle, that fellow Van Lennop no good. I know that kind, I see that kind before, Mees Teesdale. Lak every pretty girl an" have good time, then "pouf!--zat is all!"
She turned upon him hotly, her face a mixture of humiliation and angry resentment.
"You can"t criticise him to me, Mr. Dubois! I won"t listen. If I have been fool enough to misunderstand his kindness that"s my fault, not his."
Dubois"s eyes became suddenly inscrutable. After a moment"s silence he said quietly--
"You love heem, I think. Zat iss too bad for you. What you do now, Mees Teesdale? Where you go?"
He saw that her clasped hands tightened at the question, though she replied calmly--
"I don"t know, not yet."
"Perhaps you marry me, mam"selle? I ask you once--I haf not change my mind."
She stared at him with a kind of terror in her eyes.
Was _this_ her way out! Was this the place that somewhere in the world she had declared defiantly was meant for her? Was it the purpose of the Fates to crowd her down and out--until she was glad to fill it--a punishment for her ambitions--for daring to believe she was intended for some other life than this?
Upon that previous occasion when the old Frenchman had made her the offer of marriage which had seemed so grotesque and impossible at the time, he had a.s.serted in his pique, "You might be glad to marry old Edouard Dubois some day," and she had turned her back upon him in light contempt--now she was, not glad, she could never be that, but grateful.
"But I--don"t love you." Her voice sounded strained and hoa.r.s.e.
"Zat question I did not ask you--I ask you will you marry me?" He did not wait for an answer, but went on persuasively, yet stating the bald and hopeless facts that seemed so crushing to her youth and inexperience. "You have no parent--no home, Mees Teesdale; you have no money and not so many friend in Crowheart. You marry me and all is change. You have good home and many friends, because," he chuckled shrewdly, "when I die you have thirty thousand sheep. Plenty sheep, plenty friends, my girl. How you like be the richest woman in this big county, mam"selle?"
The girl was listening, that was something; and she was thinking hard.
Money! how they all harped upon it!--when she had thought the most important thing in the world was love. Even Ogden Van Lennop she remembered had called it the great essential and now she saw that old Edouard Dubois who had lived for seventy years regarded it in a wholly reverent light.
"When you marry me you have no more worry, no more trouble, no more tears."
Her lips moved; she was repeating to herself--
"No more worry, no more trouble, no more tears."
She was bewildered with the problems which confronted her, frightened by the overwhelming odds against her, tired of thinking, sick to death of the humiliation of her position. She stopped the guttural, wheedling voice with a quick, vehement gesture.
"Give me time to think--give me until to-morrow morning."
"What time to-morrow morning?"
"At ten o"clock,"--there was desperation in her face--"at ten to-morrow I will tell you "yes" or "no.""
She was clutching at a straw, clinging to a faint hope which had not entirely deserted her: she might yet get a letter from Van Lennop, just a line to let her know that he cared enough to send it; and if it came, a single sentence, she knew well enough what her answer to Dubois would be.
"Until to-morrow." The old Frenchman bowed low in clumsy and unaccustomed politeness, but gloating satisfaction shone from his deep-set eyes, small and hard as two gray marbles.
XX
AN UNFORTUNATE AFFAIR
Billy Duncan was in a bad way, so it was reported to the men upon the works, and the men to show their sympathy and liking for the fair-haired, happy-go-lucky Billy Duncan made up a purse of $90 and sent it to him by Dan Treu, the big deputy-sheriff, who also was Billy Duncan"s friend.
"It"ll buy fruit for the kid, something to read, and a special nurse if he needs one," they told the deputy and they gave the money with the warmest of good wishes.
Dan Treu took their gift to the hospital, and Billy Duncan burst into tears when he saw him.
"Oh, come, come! Buck up, Billy, you"re goin" to pull through all right."
"Dan! Dan! Take me out of here--take me away! Quick!"
The deputy looked his surprise.
"What"s the matter, Billy? What"s wrong?"
"Everything"s wrong, Dan, everything!" His voice was shrill in his weakness. "I"m goin" to croak if you don"t get me out of here!"
Dan Treu bent over him and patted his shoulder as he would have comforted a child.
"There, there, don"t talk like that, Billy. You"re not goin" to croak.
You"re a little down in the mouth, that"s all." He glanced around the tiny room. "It looks clean and comfortable here; you"re lucky to have a place like this to go to and Doc"s a blamed good fellow. She"ll pull you through."
"But she ain"t, Dan--she ain"t anything that we thought. Lay here sick if you want to find her out. She thinks we don"t count, us fellows on the works, and Lamb"s no better, only he"s more sneakin"--he hasn"t her gall." He searched the deputy"s face for a moment then cried pitifully, "You don"t believe me, Dan. You think I"m sore about something and stretchin" the truth. It"s so, Dan--I tell you they left me here the night I was brought in until the next forenoon without touchin" my arm.
They"ve never half cleaned the hole out. It"s swelled to the shoulder and little pieces of my shirt keep sloughing out. Any cowpuncher with a jack-knife could do a better job than they have done. They don"t know how, Dan, and what"s worse they don"t care!"
He reached for the deputy"s hand and clung to it as he begged again--
"My G.o.d! Dan, won"t you believe me and get me out of here? Honest, honest, I"m goin" to die if you don"t!"
In his growing excitement the boy"s voice rose to a penetrating pitch and it brought Lamb quickly from the office in the front. He looked disconcerted for an instant when he saw the deputy, for he had not known of his presence in the hospital. Glancing from one to the other he read something of the situation in Billy Duncan"s excited face and Dan Treu"s puzzled look. Stepping back from the doorway he beckoned the deputy into the hall.
"I guess he was talkin" wild, wasn"t he?" He walked out of the sick boy"s hearing. "Kickin", wasn"t he?"