Under Handicap.
by Jackson Gregory.
CHAPTER I
Outside there was shimmering heat and dry, thirsty sand, miles upon miles of it flashing by in a gray, barren blur. A flat, arid, monotonous land, vast, threatening, waterless, treeless. Its immensity awed, its bleakness depressed. Man"s work here seemed but to accentuate the puny insignificance of man. Man had come upon the desert and had gone, leaving only a line of telegraph-poles with their glistening wires, two gleaming parallel rails of burning steel to mark his pa.s.sing.
The thundering Overland Limited, rushing onward like a frightened thing, screamed its terror over the desert whose majesty did not even permit of its catching up the shriek of the panting engine to fling it back in echoes. The desert ignored, and before and behind the onrushing train the deep serenity of the waste places was undisturbed.
Within the train the desert was nothing. Man"s work defied the heat and the sand and the sullen frown outside. Here in the Pullman smoking-car were luxury, comfort, and companionship. Behind drawn shades were the whir of electric fans, an ebon-faced porter in snowy linen, the clink of ice in long, misted gla.s.ses, the cool fragrance of crushed mint. Even the fat man in shirt-sleeves reading the Denver _Times_, alternately drawing upon his fat cigar and sipping the gla.s.s of beer at his elbow, was not distressing to look upon. The four men busy over their daily game of solo might have been at ease in their own club.
At one end of the long car two young men dawdled in languid comfort, their bodies sprawling loosely in two big, soft arm-chairs, a tray with a couple of half-emptied high-ball gla.s.ses upon the table between them. They had created an atmosphere of their own about them, an atmosphere const.i.tuted of the blue haze from cigarettes mingled with trivial talk. The immensity outside might have bored them, so their shade was drawn low. For a moment one of the two men lifted a corner of it. He peered out, only to drop it with a disgusted sigh and return to his high-ball.
He was slender, young, pale-eyed, pale-haired, white-handed, anemic-looking. He was patently of the sort which considers such a thing as carelessness in the matter of a crease in one"s trousers a crime of crimes. His tie, adjusted with a precision which was a science, was of a pale lavender. His socks were silk and of the same color. His eyes were as near a pale lavender as they were near any color.
"The devilish stupid sameness of this country gets on a man"s nerves."
He put his disgust into drawling words. "Suppose it"s like this all the way to "Frisco?"
His companion, stretching his legs a bit farther under the table, made no answer.
"I said something then," the lavender young gentleman said, peevishly.
"What"s the matter with you, Greek?"
Greek took his arms down from the back of his chair where he had clasped his hands behind his head, and finished his own high-ball.
Nature in the beginning of things for him had been more kind than to his petulant friend. He was scarcely more than a boy--twenty-five, perhaps, from the looks of him--but physically a big man. He might have weighed a hundred and eighty pounds, and he was maybe an inch over six feet. But evidently where nature had left off there had been n.o.body to go on save the tailor. His gray suit was faultlessly correct, his linen immaculate, his hose silken and of a brilliant, dazzling blue. His face was fine, even handsome, but indicating about as much purpose as did his faultlessly correct shoes. There was an extreme, unruffled good humor in his eyes and about his mouth, and with it all as much determination of character as is commonly put into the rosy face of a wax doll.
"Seeing that you have made the same remark seventeen times since breakfast," Greek replied, when he had set his empty gla.s.s back upon the tray, "I didn"t know that an answer was needed."
"Well, it"s so," the pale youth maintained, irritably.
Greek nodded wearily and selected a cigarette from a silver monogrammed case. The cigarettes themselves were monogrammed, each one bearing a delicately executed _W. C._ His companion reached out a shapely hand for the case, at the same time regarding his empty gla.s.s.
"Suppose we have another, eh?"
Again Greek nodded. The lavender young man reached the b.u.t.ton, and a bell tinkled in the little buffet at the far end of the car. The negro lazily polishing a gla.s.s put it down, glanced at the indicator, and hastened to put gla.s.ses and bottles upon a tray.
"The same, suh?" he asked, coming to the table and addressing Greek.
It was the pale young man who a.s.sured him that it was to be the same, but it was Greek who threw a dollar bill upon the tray.
"Thank you, suh. Thank you." The negro bobbed as he made the proper change--and returned it to his own pocket.
Greek appeared not to have seen him or heard. He poured his own drink and shoved the bottles toward his friend, who helped himself with skilful celerity.
"Suppose the old gent will hold out long this time, Greek?" came the query, after a swallow of the whisky and seltzer, a shrewd look in the pale eyes.
Greek laughed carelessly.
"I guess we"ll have time to see a good deal of San Francis...o...b..fore he caves in. The old man put what he had to say in words of one syllable.
But we won"t worry about that until we get there."
"Did he sh.e.l.l out at all?"
"He didn"t quite give me carte blanche," retorted Greek, grinning. "A ticket to ride as far as I wanted to, and five hundred in the long green. And it"s going rather fast, Roger, my boy."
"And my tickets came out of the five hundred?"
Greek nodded.
"It"s devilish the way my luck"s gone lately," grumbled Roger. "I don"t know when I can ever pay--"
Greek put up his hand swiftly.
"You don"t pay at all," he said, emphatically. "This is my treat. It was mighty decent of you to drop everything and come along with me into this d----d exile. And," he finished, easily, "I"ll have more money than I"ll know what to do with when the old man gets soft-hearted again."
"He"s d----d hard on you, Greek. He"s got more--"
"Oh, I don"t know." Greek laughed again. "He"s a good sort, and we get along first rate together. Only he"s got some infernally uncomfortable ideas about a man going to work and doing something for himself in this little old vale of tears. He shaves himself five times out of six, and I"ve seen him black his own boots!" He chuckled amusedly.
"Just to show people he can, you know."
Roger shook his head and applied himself to his gla.s.s, failing to see the humor of the thing. And while the bigger man continued to muse with twinkling eyes over the idiosyncrasies of an enormously wealthy but at the same time enormously hard-headed father, with old-fashioned ideas of the dignity of labor, Roger sat frowning into his gla.s.s.
The silence, into which the click of the rails below had entered so persistently as to become a part of it rather than to disturb it, was broken at last by the clamorous screaming of the engine. The train was slackening its speed. Greek flipped up the shade and looked out.
"Another one of those toy villages," he called over his shoulder. "Who in the devil would want to get off here?"
Roger sank a trifle deeper into his chair, indicating no interest. The fat man had dropped his newspaper to the floor and was leaning out the window.
"Great country, ain"t it?" he called to Greek.
"Yes, it certainly _ain"t_! What gets me is, why do people live in a place like this? Are they all crazy?"
The train now was jerking and b.u.mping to a standstill. Sixty yards away was a little, bluish-gray frame building, by far the most pretentious of the clutter of shacks, flaunting the legend, "Prairie City." Beyond the station was the to-be-expected general store and post-office. A bit farther on a saloon. Beyond that another, and then straggling at intervals a dozen rough, rambling, one-storied board houses. For miles in all directions the desert stretched dry and barren. The faces of women and children peered out of windows, the forms of roughly garbed men lounged in the doorways of the store and the saloons. All the denizens of Prairie City manifested a mild interest in the arrival of Number 1.
"I guess you called the turn," sputtered the fat man. "Here come the crazy folks now!"
A cloud of dust swirling higher and higher in the still air, the clatter of hoofs, and two horses swept around the farthest house, carrying their riders at breakneck speed into the one and only street.
At first Greek took it to be a race, and then he thought it a runaway.
As it was the first interesting incident since Grand Central Station had dropped out of sight four days ago, he craned his neck to watch.
The two riders were half-way down the street now, a tall bay forging steadily ahead of a little Mexican mustang until ten feet or more intervened between the two horses. The train jerked; the Wells Fargo man, with his truck alongside the express-car far ahead, yelled something to the man who had taken his packages aboard.
"The bay wins," grinned the fat man. "It looks--Gad! It"s a woman!"
Greek saw that it was a woman in khaki riding-habit, and that the spurs she wore were gnawing into her horse"s flanks. He began to take a sudden, stronger interest. He leaned farther out, hardly realizing that he had called to the conductor to hold the train a moment. For it was at last clear that these were not mad people, but merely a couple of the dwellers of the desert anxious to catch Number 1. But the conductor had waved his orders and was swinging upon the slowly moving steps. From the windows of the train a score of heads were thrust out, a score of voices raised in shouting encouragement. And down to the tracks the woman and the man behind her rushed, their horses" feet seeming never to touch the ground.
A b.u.mp, a jar, a jerk, and the Limited was drawing slowly away from the station. The woman was barely fifty yards away. As she lifted her head Greek saw her face for the first time. And, having seen her ride, he pursed his lips into a low whistle of amazement.