To saddle two horses when the night has grown black and to lead them, unobserved, so short a distance as two hundred yards or so seems a simple thing; and for two healthy young people with full use of their wits and their legs to steal quietly away to where those horses are waiting would seem quite as simple. At the same time, to prevent the successful accomplishment of these things is not difficult, if one but fully understands the designs of the fugitives.
Hawley Hotel did a flourishing business that night. The two long tables in the dining room, usually not more than half filled by those who hungered and were not over-nice concerning the food they ate, were twice filled to overflowing. Mrs. Hawley and the “breed” girl held hasty consultations in the kitchen over the supply, and never was there such a rattling of dishes hurriedly cleansed for the next comer.
Kent managed to find a chair at the first table, and eyed the landlady unobtrusively. But Fred De Garmo sat down opposite, and his eyes were bright and watchful, so that there seemed no possible way of delivering a message undetected--until, indeed, Mrs. Hawley in desperation resorted to strategy, and urged Kent unnecessarily to take another slice of bacon.
“Have some more--it's side!” she hissed in his ear, and watched anxiously his face.
“All right,” said Kent, and speared a slice with his fork, although his plate was already well supplied with bacon. Then, glancing up, he detected Fred in a thoughtful stare which seemed evenly divided between the landlady and himself. Kent was conscious of a passing, mental discomfort, which he put aside as foolish, because De Garmo could not possibly know what Mrs. Hawley meant. To ease his mind still further he glared insolently at Fred, and then at Polycarp Jenks te-heeing a few chairs away. After that he finished as quickly as possible without exciting remark, and went his way.
He had not, however, been two minutes in the office before De Garmo entered. From that time on through the whole evening Fred was never far distant; wherever he went, Kent could not shake him off though De Garmo never seemed to pay any attention to him, and his presence was always apparently accidental.
“I reckon I'll have to lick that son of a gun yet,” sighed Kent, when a glance at the round clock in the hotel office told him that in just twenty minutes it would strike nine; and not a move made toward getting those horses saddled and out to the stockyards.
There was much talk of the wedding, which had taken place quietly in the parlor at the appointed hour, but not a man mentioned a charivari. There were many who wished openly that Fleetwood would come out and be sociable about it, but not a hint that they intended to take measures to bring him among them. He had caused a box of cigars to be placed upon the bar of every saloon in town, where men might help themselves at his expense. Evidently he had considered that with the cigars his social obligations were canceled. They smoked the cigars, and, with the same breath, gossiped of him and his affairs.
At just fourteen minutes to nine Kent went out, and, without any attempt at concealment, hurried to the Hawley stables. Half a minute behind him trailed De Garmo, also without subterfuge.
Half an hour later the bridal couple stole away from the rear of the hotel, and, keeping to the shadows, went stumbling over the uneven ground to the stockyards.
“Here's the tie pile,” Fleetwood announced, in an undertone, when they reached the place. “You stay here, Val, and I'll look farther along the fence; maybe the horses are down there.”
Valeria did not reply, but stood very straight and dignified in the shadow of the huge pile of rotting railroad ties. He was gone but a moment, and came anxiously back to her.
“They're not here,” he said, in a low voice. “Don't worry, dear. He'll come--I know Kent Burnett.”
“Are you sure?” queried Val sweetly. “From what I have seen of the gentleman, your high estimate of him seems quite unauthorized. Aside from escorting me to the hotel, he has been anything but reliable. Instead of telling you that I was here, or telling me that you were sick, he went straight into a saloon and forgot all about us both. You know that. If he were your friend, why should he immediately begin carousing, instead of--”
“He didn't,” Fleetwood defended weakly.
“No? Then perhaps you can explain his behavior. Why didn't he tell me you were sick? Why didn't he tell you I came on that train? Can you tell me that, Manley?”
Manley, for a very good reason, could not; so he put his arms around her and tried to coax her into good humor.
“Sweetheart, let's not quarrel so soon--why, we're only two hours married! I want you to be happy, and if you'll only be brave and--”
“Brave!” Mrs. Fleetwood laughed rather contemptuously, for a bride. “Please to understand, Manley, that I'm not frightened in the least. It's you and that horrid cowboy--I don't see why we need run away, like criminals. Those men don't intend to murder us, do they?” Her mood softened a little, and she squeezed his arm between her hands. “You dear old silly, I'm not blaming you. With your head in such a state, you can't think things out properly, and you let that cowboy influence you against your better judgment. You're afraid I might be annoyed--but, really, Manley, this silly idea of running away annoys me much more than all the noise those fellows could possibly make. Indeed, I don't think I would mind--it would give me a glimpse of the real West; and, perhaps, if they grew too boisterous, and I spoke to them and asked them not to be quite so rough--and, really, they only mean it as a sort of welcome, in their crude way. We could invite some of the nicest in to have cake and coffee--or maybe we might get some ice cream somewhere--and it might turn out a very pleasant little affair. I don't mind meeting them, Manley. The worst of them can't be as bad as that--but, of course, if he's your friend, I suppose I oughtn't to speak too freely my opinion of him!”
Fleetwood held her closely, patted her cheek absently, and tried to think of some effective argument.
“They'll be drunk, sweetheart,” he told her, after a silence.
“I don't think so,” she returned firmly. “I have been watching the street all the evening. I saw any number of men passing back and forth, and I didn't see one who staggered. And they were all very quiet, considering their rough ways, which one must expect. Why, Manley, you always wrote about these Western men being such fine fellows, and so generous and big-hearted, under their rough exterior. Your letters were full of it--and how chivalrous they all are toward nice women.”
She laid her head coaxingly against his shoulder. “Let's go back, Manley. I--want to see a charivari, dear. It will be fun. I want to write all about it to the girls. They'll be perfectly wild with envy.” She struggled with her conventional upbringing. “And even if some of them are slightly under the influence--of liquor, we needn't meet them. You needn't introduce those at all, and I'm sure they will understand.”
“Don't be silly, Val!” Fleetwood did not mean to be rude, but a faint glimmer of her romantic viewpoint--a viewpoint gained chiefly from current fiction and the stage--came to him and contrasted rather brutally with the reality. He did not know how to make her understand, without incriminating himself. His letters had been rather idealistic, he admitted to himself. They had been written unthinkingly, because he wanted her to like this big land; naturally he had not been too baldly truthful in picturing the place and the people. He had passed lightly over their faults and thrown the limelight on their virtues; and so he had aided unwittingly the stage and the fiction she had read, in giving her a false impression.
Offended at his words and his tone, she drew away from him and glanced wistfully back toward the town, as if she meditated a haughty return to the hotel. She ended by seating herself upon a projecting tie.
“Oh, very well, my lord,” she retorted, “I shall try and not be silly, but merely idiotic, as you would have me. You and your friend!” She was very angry, but she was perfectly well-bred, she hoped. “If I might venture a word,” she began again ironically, “it seems to me that your friend has been playing a practical joke upon you. He evidently has no intention of bringing any fleet steeds to us. No doubt he is at this moment laughing with his dissolute companions, because we are sitting out here in the dark like two silly chickens!”
“I think he's coming now,” Manley said rather stiffly. “Of course, I don't ask you to like him; but he's putting himself to a good deal of trouble for us, and--”
“Wasted effort, so far as I am concerned,” Valeria put in, with a chirpy accent which was exasperating, even to a bridegroom very much in love with his bride.
In the darkness that muffled the land, save where the yellow flare of lamps in the little town made a misty brightness, came the click of shod hoofs. Another moment and a man, mounted upon a white horse, loomed indistinct before them, seeming to take substance from the night. Behind him trailed another horse, and for the first time in her life Valeria heard the soft, whispering creak of saddle leather, the faint clank of spur chains, and the whir of a horse mouthing the “cricket” in his bit. Even in her anger, she was conscious of an answering tingle of blood, because this was life in the raw--life such as she had dreamed of in the tight swaddlings of a smug civilization, and had longed for intensely.
Kent swung down close beside them, his form indistinct but purposeful. “I'm late, I guess,” he remarked, turning to Fleetwood. “Fred got next, somehow, and--I was detained.”
“Where is he?” asked Manley, going up and laying a questioning hand upon the horse, by that means fully recognizing it as Kent's own.
“In the oats box,” said Kent laconically. He turned to the girl. “I couldn't get the sidesaddle,” he explained apologetically. “I looked where Mrs. Hawley said it was, but I couldn't find it--and I didn't have much time. You'll have to ride a stock saddle.”
Valeria drew back a step. “You mean--a man's saddle?” Her voice was carefully polite.
“Why, yes.” And he added: “The horse is dead gentle--and a sidesaddle's no good, anyhow. You'll like this better.” He spoke, as was evident, purely from a man's viewpoint.
That viewpoint Mrs. Fleetwood refused to share. “Oh, I couldn't ride a man's saddle,” she protested, still politely, and one could imagine how her lips were pursed. “Indeed, I'm not sure that I care to leave town at all.” To her the declaration did not seem unreasonable or abrupt but she felt that Kent was very much shocked. She saw him turn his head and look back toward the town, as if he half expected a pursuit.
“I don't reckon the oats box will hold Fred very long,” he observed meditatively. He added reminiscently to Manley: “I had a deuce of a time getting the cover down and fastened.”
“I'm very sorry,” said Valeria, with sweet dignity, “that you gave yourself so much trouble--”
“I'm kinda sorry myself,” Kent agreed mildly, and Valeria blushed hotly, and was glad he could not see.
“Come, Val--you can ride this saddle, all right. All the girls out here--”
“I did not come West to imitate all the girls. Indeed, I could never think of such a thing. I couldn't possibly--really, Manley! And, you know, it does seem so childish of us to run away--”
Kent moved restlessly, and felt to see if the cinch was tight.
Fleetwood took her coaxingly by the arm. “Come, sweetheart, don't be stubborn. You know--”
“Well, really! If it's a question of obstinacy--You see, I look at the matter in this way: You believe that you are doing what is best for my sake; I don't agree with you--and it does seem as if I should be permitted to judge what I desire.” Then her dignity and her sweet calm went down before a flash of real, unpolished temper. “You two can take those nasty horses and ride clear to Dakota, if you want to. I'm going back to the hotel. And I'm going to tell somebody to let that poor fellow out of that box. I think you're acting perfectly horrid, both of you, when I don't want to go!” She actually started back toward the scattered points of light.
She did not, however, get so faraway that she failed to hear Kent's “Well, I'll be damned!” uttered in a tone of intense disgust.
“I don't care,” she assured herself, because of the thrill of compunction caused by that one forcible sentence. She had never before in her life heard a man really swear. It affected her very much as would the accidental touch of an electric battery. She walked on slowly, stumbling a little and trying to hear what it was they were saying.
Then Kent passed her, loping back to the town, the led horse shaking his saddle so that it rattled the stirrups like castanets as he galloped. “I don't care,” she told herself again very emphatically, because she was quite sure that she did care--or that she would care if only she permitted herself to be so foolish. Manley overtook her then, and drew her hand under his arm to lead her. But he seemed quite sullen, and would not say a word all the way back.
