Lonesome Land by B. M. Bower (life changing books to read .TXT) 📗

“Fleetwood was detained. You were expecting to—you're the lady he was expecting, aren't you?”

She had been looking questioningly at her violin box and two trunks standing on their ends farther down the platform, and she smiled vaguely without glancing at him.

“Yes. I hope he isn't sick, or—”

“I'll take you over to the hotel, and go tell him you're here,” he volunteered, somewhat curtly, and picked up her bag.

“Oh, thank you.” This time her eyes grazed his face inattentively. She followed him down the rough steps of planking and up an extremely dusty road—one could scarcely call it a street—to an uninviting building with crooked windows and a high, false front of unpainted boards.

The young fellow opened a sagging door, let her pass into a narrow hallway, and from there into a stuffy, hopelessly conventional fifth-rate parlor, handed her the bag, and departed with another tilt of the hat which placed it at a different angle. The sentence meant for farewell she did not catch, for she was staring at a wooden-faced portrait upon an easel, the portrait of a man with a drooping mustache, and porky cheeks, and dead-looking eyes.

“And I expected bearskin rugs, and antlers on the walls, and big fireplaces!” she remarked aloud, and sighed. Then she turned and pulled aside a coarse curtain of dusty, machine-made lace, and looked after her guide. He was just disappearing into a saloon across the street, and she dropped the curtain precipitately, as if she were ashamed of spying. “Oh, well—I've heard all cowboys are more or less intemperate,” she excused, again aloud.

She sat down upon an atrocious red plush chair, and wrinkled her nose spitefully at the porky-cheeked portrait. “I suppose you're the proprietor,” she accused, “or else the proprietor's son. I wish you wouldn't squint like that. If I have to stop here longer than ten minutes, I shall certainly turn you face to the wall.” Whereupon, with another grimace, she turned her back upon it and looked out of the window. Then she stood up impatiently, looked at her watch, and sat down again upon the red plush chair.

“He didn't tell me whether Manley is sick,” she said suddenly, with some resentment. “He was awfully abrupt in his manner. Oh, you—” She rose, picked up an old newspaper from the marble-topped table with uncertain legs, and spread it ungently over the portrait upon the easel. Then she went to the window and looked out again. “I feel perfectly sure that cowboy went and got drunk immediately,” she complained, drumming pettishly upon the glass. “And I don't suppose he told Manley at all.”

The cowboy was innocent of the charge, however, and he was doing his energetic best to tell Manley. He had gone straight through the saloon and into the small room behind, where a man lay sprawled upon a bed in one corner. He was asleep, and his clothes were wrinkled as if he had lain there long. His head rested upon his folded arms, and he was snoring loudly. The young fellow went up and took him roughly by the shoulder.

“Here! I thought I told you to straighten up,” he cried disgustedly. “Come alive! The train's come and gone, and your girl's waiting for you over to the hotel. D' you hear?”

“Uh-huh!” The man opened one eye, grunted, and closed it again.

The other yanked him half off the bed, and swore. This brought both eyes open, glassy with whisky and sleep. He sat wobbling upon the edge of the bed, staring stupidly.

“Can't you get anything through you?” his tormentor exclaimed. “You want your girl to find out you're drunk? You got the license in your pocket. You're supposed to get spliced this evening—and look at you!” He turned and went out to the bartender.

“Why didn't you pour that coffee into him, like I told you?” he demanded. “We've got to get him steady on his pins somehow!”

The bartender was sprawled half over the bar, apathetically reading the sporting news of a torn Sunday edition of an Eastern paper. He looked up from under his eyebrows and grunted.

“How you going to pour coffee down a man that lays flat on his belly and won't open his mouth?” he inquired, in an injured tone. “Sleep's all he needs, anyway. He'll be all right by morning.”

The other snorted dissent. “He'll be all right by dark—or he'll feel a whole lot worse,” he promised grimly. “Dig up some ice. And a good jolt of bromo, if you've got it—and a towel or two.”

The bartender wearily pushed the paper to one side, reached languidly under the bar, and laid hold of a round blue bottle. Yawning uninterestedly, he poured a double portion of the white crystals into a glass, half filled another under the faucet of the water cooler, and held them out.

“Dump that into him, then,” he advised. “It'll help some, if you get it down. What's the sweat to get him married off to-day? Won't the girl wait?”

“I never asked her. You pound up some ice and bring it in, will you?” The volunteer nurse kicked open the door into the little room and went in, hastily pouring the bromo seltzer from one glass to the other to keep it from foaming out of all bounds. His patient was still sitting upon the edge of the bed where he had left him, slumped forward with his head in his hands. He looked up stupidly, his eyes bloodshot and swollen of lid.

“'S the train come in yet?” he asked thickly. “'S you, is it, Kent?”

“The train's come, and your girl is waiting for you at the hotel. Here, throw this into you—and for God's sake, brace up! You make me tired. Drink her down quick—the foam's good for you. Here, you take the stuff in the bottom, too. Got it? Take off your coat, so I can get at you. You don't look much like getting married, and that's no josh.”

Fleetwood shook his head with drunken gravity, and groaned. “I ought to be killed. Drunk to-day!” He sagged forward again, and seemed disposed to shed tears. “She'll never forgive me; she—”

Kent jerked him to his feet peremptorily. “Aw, look here! I'm trying to sober you up. You've got to do your part—see? Here's some ice in a towel—you get it on your head. Open up your shirt, so I can bathe your chest. Don't do any good to blubber around about it. Your girl can't hear you, and Jim and I ain't sympathetic. Set down in this chair, where we can get at you.” He enforced his command with some vigor, and Fleetwood groaned again. But he shed no more tears, and he grew momentarily more lucid, as the treatment took effect.

The tears were being shed in the stuffy little hotel parlor. The young woman looked often at her watch, went into the hallway, and opened the outer door several times, meditating a search of the town, and drew back always with a timid fluttering of heart because it was all so crude and strange, and the saloons so numerous and terrifying in their very bald simplicity.

She was worried about Manley, and she wished that cowboy would come out of the