CHAPTER II
Hopedale
The sun, shining through the tiny window panes, awakened Nan the next morning, and its brightness seemed a good omen. It thrilled her; she gave a squirm of contentment upon the hard pillows of the best bed in the best room of the Palace Hotel.
She never had awakened in a room in the least like it, and the noseless water-pitcher, the faded ingrain carpet, the pine chair repaired with baling wire, the hotel hair-brush chained safely to the wall, all were novelties which evoked from Nan a girlish giggle of amusement.
She was alive to the finger-tips with eager interest and anticipation, and she sprang out with an animation which she had not felt, in months.
At the lowered window she filled her lungs with the sweet, piñon-scented air, and began to sing bubbling notes without a tune like those of the water-ousel in early spring.
She dressed quickly and stepped into the sunshine-flooded court of the one-story dobe hotel. It was to her romantic, youthful mind, like stepping into a new life in another world which was to be as interesting as the development of chapters in a book, with a dénouement which none could guess.
If Nan was interested in Hopedale, Hopedale reciprocated with a fervency which was little short of feverish. On the surface there was nothing to indicate the quivering curiosity of its inhabitants, and Nan could not know when she passed through the office on her way to the dining-room, that each casual lounger was a human interrogation point.
Nothing feminine in the least resembling Nan ever had appeared in Hopedale, and her social status, her excuse for being there, had been argued pro and con far into the night.
One of three reasons accounted for the few American women who came to this straggling adobe village fifty miles from the terminus of a branch railroad, and these reasons were, namely—relatives in the vicinity, deluded notions concerning Hopedale as a fertile field for canvassing for something, or the quite frank purpose of a temporary sojourn at Doña Marianna's dance-hall.
The dining-room, which was empty when she entered, began to fill with suspicious rapidity, and the landlord, with a diamond shirt-stud glittering in his rumpled bosom, appeared in the doorway and looked hard from one late-comer to the other.
"Looks like you all overslept yourself this mornin',"' he said, significantly.
To a man, the boarders cast furtive glances at Nan and grinned sheepishly.
"That cyanide what you passes over the bar makes a man sleep as if he was dead," came the retort finally from a rash youth at whom every one stared for daring to raise his voice above a whisper.
"Ling," shouted the landlord, "quit your millin' around and git here with this lady's grub." He spoke to a panic-stricken Chinaman. Then, clearing his throat and inhaling a breath which placed a strain upon his shirt-studs, he inquired:
"What might I call your name. Miss? My name is Poth—Fritz Poth."
Taken somewhat aback. Nan hesitated, then, raising her smiling eyes to the landlord's expectant face, she replied:
"Galbraith—Miss Galbraith."
Mr. Poth promptly scraped one toe around the other heel in a low bow and said heartily:
"Proud to know you, ma'am, and welcome to our city!"
The landlord's ease and unexpected knowledge of social forms filled his guests with surprise and envy. Not content with his triumph, Mr. Poth waved a jeweled hand toward a gray-bearded, mild-looking man at the end of the long table and continued:
"I'll make you acquainted with 'Old Man' Fitzpatrick."
"Old Man" Fitzpatrick had just bitten off a sizable piece of bread, and there was one agonized second in which he was undecided whether to remove it or to risk strangulation and swallow it whole.
There was a general feeling of relief when he compromised by thrusting it into his cheek, where, though protruding like a squirrel's pouch, it enabled him to articulate.
"How air you?" he inquired affably while a bright red rose above his beard and spread over his forehead.
"Like t'make you acquainted with 'Sour-Dough Sam'." Again the landlord waved his jeweled hand.
In response, a red-haired man sprang like a shot from his chair and executed a bow in imitation of Mr. Poth's.
"Much obliged to meet you," he said heartily; then, turning upon Mr. Poth he demanded fiercely:
"What you introducin' me as 'Sour-Dough Sam' for? Maybe you think I ain't got no reg'lar name?"
The landlord returned calmly:
"Never heerd of none."
"McCaffrey's my name—McCaffrey—and don't you forget it!"
Mr. McCaffrey sat down hard, breathing heavily, and jerked at his plate, which had stuck to the red tablecloth. He used considerable energy, thereby making a kind of tent of the tablecloth which upset the pitcher of well-watered condensed milk.
"Serves you right, Mr. Caffrey," said the landlord with elaborate sarcasm, "for gittin' on the prod about nothin'!"
He returned to the bar in obvious disgust at the result of his efforts to promote sociability among his guests.
When Nan had breakfasted, Mr. Poth indicated a bench which he had placed in the shade of a wide-spreading cottonwood-tree that grew in front of the hotel.
"Thought you might like to set out and sun yourself," suggested Mr. Poth, and Nan thanked him as she sat down and leaned her back against the tree, quite unconscious of the eyes at every window in the vicinity.
Humming contentedly as she kept time to the rhythm with the toe of one small, perfectly shod foot, she did not hear Mr. McCaffrey scuffling noisily in the doorway behind her.
His efforts to attract her attention proving futile, he strained himself in a cough of great violence, and then affected a start of surprise when she turned and commented sympathetically upon his cold.
His cough ceased immediately and he stepped down briskly and seated himself beside her.
"That feller 'Sour-Dough's' gall must 'a' broke and run all over him," said the barber enviously as he left a lathered customer in the chair and walked to the door where he wiped his razor on the door-jamb and listened to the conversation with an interest which he made no effort to conceal.
"Went up in the range last week and forgot my blankets," explained Mr. McCaffrey. "Slept 'longside a rock all night and near froze. Rasseled a silver-tip about two years ago—he near et me—and I can't stand up ag'in' things like I onct could."
"He's talkin' personal about himself," reported the barber in a loud whisper over his shoulder.
Nan's eyes opened.
"You fought a bear?"
"Yep." Mr. McCaffrey's tone was casual and disinterested. He felt he was losing valuable time. "Aim to stay in this country long?"
"I can't say yet."
"Waitin' f'r relatives to come and git you, I reckon?" ventured Mr. McCaffrey.
"No. I have no relatives or acquaintances here."
"Well, well," said Mr. McCaffrey commiseratingly, "that's too bad."
After a proper pause he ventured again, while the barber elongated his neck something like a foot over the sidewalk to catch her answer.
"Canvassin', I suppose?"
"What?"
"Peddlin'—a sellin' of ha'r-ile, 'Liniment fer Man and Beast,' 'A Hundred Ch'ice Selections,' 'Hist'ry of the World' for five dollars down?"
Nan kept her face sober with difficulty.
"Oh, no, nothing like that."
"Must say," declared Mr. McCaffrey gallantly, "you don't look like ary book-agent what ever buncoed me."
The barber turned his head so far over his shoulder that he appeared to be performing the impossible feat of looking at the back of his neck as he reported to the restless customer in the chair:
"He ain't makin' no headway at all."
"You say you don't aim to make much of a stay?" inquired Mr. McCaffrey, affecting a large yawn of nonchalance.
"My plans are very indefinite."
"Well, well." His voice vibrated with sympathy, though Mr. McCaffrey was merely sparring for time.
There really seemed no alternative but to believe that her presence was due to the third reason which accounted for strange young women in Hopedale, yet everything about Nan forbade the familiar inquiry as to whether she was "headed for Doña Marianna's place."
Mr. McCaffrey could not remember when he had felt himself so baffled, so puzzled, so utterly at sea as he now found himself by her non-committal answers.
He had an uneasy feeling, too, that he had not been nearly so subtle as he had intended. A mischievous sparkle in Nan's eyes gave rise to the thought, and his large ears reddened perceptibly as the impression grew.
"My skin 'll crack wide open if you leave this here soap-suds on it much longer," came plaintively from the barber-chair.
"It's the uncommon feelin' of water on you face what hurts you," retorted the barber as he left the doorway with reluctance and began making reckless slashes at his victim's neck in a fashion which threatened his Adam's apple.
The loungers dangling their legs from the high platform in front of the general merchandise store across the street, who had focused their attention with disconcerting steadiness upon Mr. McCaffrey from the time he had seated himself beside Nan, began to grow restless as half an hour passed and he made no motion of leaving.
Any intelligent person could learn a lady's business in half that time, and it looked to them as though "Sour-Dough" was maliciously prolonging their suspense.
So they beckoned him, slyly at first, then more openly as they saw he meant to ignore their signs. It was Nan who finally called his attention to their signals.
"They seem to want you," she suggested.
"It's nothin' very pressin'," Mr. McCaffrey answered sourly. "Waitin' is their reg'lar business."
He felt piqued, outwitted. If it could be said that Mr. McCaffrey had an occupation it was that of collecting and gratuitously distributing news. He was the Associated Press of Hopedale, and whosoever fell a victim to his adroit questioning was apt to give up the inmost secrets of his soul.
"Ain't your pumps workin' good, 'Sour-Dough'?" came from across the street.
Mr. McCaffrey felt it unwise to ignore their importunities longer lest they embarrass him by some loud personal allusion, so he arose in leisurely fashion and said in a voice which he hoped would carry across the street:
"Well, s'long. Miss Galbraith—I'll see you later."
He looked coldly into the row of eager faces and demanded:
"Ain't you fellers no manners?"
"Who is she? Where did she come from? Where's she goin'?"
"What do you take me for?" Mr. McCaffrey inquired haughtily. "Do you think I'd set down and ask a strange lady a lot of private questions about herself? Maybe you don't know it, but I been well raised."
"You got turned down, I see" said "O1d Man" Fitzpatrick with composure.
"Think so?" Mr. McCaffrey laughed sarcastically. "Maybe I did ha, ha! Say," indignantly, "don't you old Grannies know me well enough to know I wouldn't vi'late no lady's confidence—high or low? But," relenting a little, "I don't mind goin' so fur as to say she ain't canvassin'."
"Shoo, now"—"Old Man" Fitzpatrick's voice was full of mock disappointment—"I was aimin' to buy four bits' worth of her complexion perperation what would leave my skin just like a baby's."
By mid-day Nan had become one of the most fascinating mysteries which it had ever devolved upon the sidewalk Solons to solve.
It was Saturday and pay-day in the adjoining mining camps, so Nan spent nearly the entire morning on the bench watching the picturesque stream of life flowing through the main street of the town.
Mexicans from the placers jogged in on their half-starved horses; cowboys from distant ranges came whooping in with a clatter of hoofs and a whirl of dust; footsore prospectors turned their pack-burros loose in the streets and made a bee-line for the nearest bar, and later the men in overalls from the ore-mills came to swell the Saturday night throng.
Mr. Poth hung a conspicuous sign on the outside of his hotel which read:
REGULAR MEAL - - - - .75 REGULAR GORGE- - - -$1.50
But the event of the day to Nan occurred at noon while Mr. Poth was ringing his dinner-bell in the middle of the street that all Hopedale might know his meals were ready on schedule time.
A girl on horseback, with a man riding beside her, turned the corner sharply at a brisk gallop. Their horses shied, reared, cavorted at the noise of the clanging bell. But the faces of their riders did not change expression; they appeared not even to be aware of the plunging of their horses.
The girl was dressed in divided skirts of faded black calico, and her shirt-waist parted company with her skirt-band untidily. Her gaudy, flowered hat was awry and Nan gave her only a passing glance. Her eyes remained upon the man who rode by her side.
He sat his horse with the cowboy's careless grace, half slouching over the horn of his Gallup saddle, his broad shoulders swaying with the motion of the horse, while the confidence of physical strength showed in every line and movement.
He had a square jaw, a straight mouth, and level blue eyes framed in the blackest of lashes. He had pushed his wide-brimmed hat carelessly to the back of his head, and a forehead as white as a woman's showed in curious contrast above his tanned face.
A certain keenness of expression, of comprehension, of the habit of concentration which a trained mind gives, was lacking, but his face denoted frankness and honesty to a marked degree.
His flannel shirt, the silk handkerchief knotted loosely about his neck, the fringed leather chaps showing service, the high, carved leather cuffs, made up a picturesque ensemble, and a strange flutter of excitement crept over Nan as their eyes met.
He turned in his saddle after they had passed and continued to look at her in a stare which, though steady and long, had nothing of impertinence in it, while Nan with rising color suddenly realized that she had returned it as frankly.
The girl in the faded skirt and gaudy hat looked neither at Nan nor at the bystanders who lined the street. She seemed to have eyes only for the man who rode beside her.
"Who is that?"
"Edith Blakely from over to the Longhorn bosque. A looker, ain't she?"
"She rides well,—and the man?"
"Why, that's Ben Evans; foreman of the L. X. outfit."
"Ben Evans." Once more she felt that curious thrill of excitement and wondered at it, while simultaneously from some obscure niche in her brain there came the recollection of her brother's gibe—
"I suppose you'll find your affinity out West—in 'chaps'."