The Cow Puncher - Robert J. C. Stead (best reads .TXT) 📗

work of any kind is hard to get. I find I can't keep going that way."

Merton looked with dreamy eyes through the office window, while Dave was turning over the hopelessness of his position, and inwardly cursing a system which made such conditions possible. Society protects the physically weak from the physically strong; the physical highwayman usually gets his deserts; but the mental highwayman preys upon the weak and the inexperienced and the unorganized, and Society votes him a good citizen and a success.

"I had a plan," Merton continued, half-apologetically, as though his plan did him little credit; "I had a plan, but it can't be worked out. I have been trying to raise a little money on my lots, but the mortgage people just look at me."

"What is your plan?" said Dave, kindly. "Any plan, no matter how bad, is always better than no plan."

"I thought," said Merton, timidly,—"I thought if I could build a little shack on the lots I could live there with the boy and we could raise a very fine garden. The soil is very fertile, and at least we should not starve. And the gardening would be good for me, and I could perhaps keep some chickens, and work out at odd jobs as well. But it takes money to build even a very small shack."

"How much money?" demanded Dave.

"If I had a hundred dollars——"

"Bring your title to me to-morrow; to me, personally, you understand. I'll advance you five hundred dollars."

Merton sprang up, and there was more enthusiasm in his eyes than had seemed possible "You will? But I don't need that much——"

"Then use the surplus to live on."

So the Merton affair was straightened away in a manner which left Dave more at peace with his conscience. But another event, much more dramatic and far-reaching in its effects upon his life, was already ripe for the enacting.

Business conditions had necessitated unwonted economy in the office affairs of Conward & Elden, as a result of which many old employees had been laid off, and others had been replaced by cheaper and less experienced labour. Stenographers who had been receiving a hundred dollars a month could not readily bring themselves to accept fifty, and some of them had to make way for new girls, fresh from the business colleges. Such a new girl was Gladys Wardin; pretty, likeable, inexperienced. Her country home had offered no answer to her ambitions, and she had come to the city with the most dangerous equipment a young woman can carry—an attractive face and an unsophisticated confidence in the goodness of humanity. Conward had been responsible for her position in the office, and Dave had given little thought to her, except to note that she was a willing worker and of comely appearance.

Returning to the office one Saturday evening Dave found Miss Wardin making up a bundle of paper, pencils, and carbon paper. She was evidently in high spirits, and he smilingly asked if she intended working at home over Sunday.

"Oh, didn't Mr. Conward tell you?" she answered, as though surprised that the good news had been kept a secret. "He is going to spend a day or two at one of the mountain hotels, and I am to go along to do his correspondence. Isn't it just lovely? I have so wanted to go to the mountains, but never felt that I could afford it. And now I can combine business with pleasure."

The smile died out of Dave's eyes, and his face became more set and stern than she had ever seen it. "Why, what's the matter, Mr. Elden?" she exclaimed. "Is anything wrong?"

He found it hard to meet her frank, unsuspecting eyes; hard to draw back the curtains of the world so much that those eyes would never again be quite so frank and unsuspecting.… "Miss Wardin," he said, "did Conward tell you that?"

"What? About going to the mountains? Of course. He said he was taking some work with him, and he wondered if I would mind going along to do it, and he would pay the expenses, and—and——"

There was a quick hard catch in her voice, and she seized Elden's arm violently. Her eyes were big and round; her pretty face had gone suddenly white.

"Oh, Mr. Elden, you don't think—you don't think that I—that he—you wouldn't believe that?"

"I think you are absolutely innocent," he said, gravely, "but—it's the innocent thing that gets caught." Suddenly, even in that tense moment, his mind leaped over the gulf of years to the night when he had said to Irene Hardy, "I don't know nothin' about the justice of God. All I know is the crittur 'at can't run gets caught." It was so of Irene's pet; it was so of poor, tubercular Merton; it was to be so of pretty Gladys Wardin——

But the girl had broken into violent tears. "Whatever shall I do—what can I do?" she moaned. "Oh, why didn't somebody tell me? What can I do——"

He let her passion run on for a few minutes, and then he sought, as gently as he could, to win her back to some composure. "Some one has told you," he said,—"in time. You don't have to go. Don't be afraid of anything Conward may do. I will settle this score with him."

She controlled herself, but when she spoke again her voice had fear and shame in it. "I—I hate to tell you, Mr. Elden, but I must tell you—I—I took—I let him give me some money—to buy things—he said maybe I was short of money, and I would want to buy some new clothes—and he would pay me extra, in advance—and he gave me fifty dollars—and—and—I've spent it!"

Elden swung on his heel and paced the length of the office in quick, sharp strides. When he returned to where Miss Wardin stood, wrapped about in her misery, his fists were clenched and the veins stood out on the back of his hands. "Scoundrel," he muttered, "scoundrel. And I have been tied to him. I have let him blind me; I have let him set the standards; I have let him weigh the coal. Well, now I know him." There was a menace in his last words that frightened even Gladys Wardin, well though she knew the menace was not to her, but ranged in her defence.

"Here," he said, taking some bills from his pocket. "You must tell him you can't go—tell him you won't go; you must return his money; I will lend you what you need. Don't be afraid; I will go with you——"

"But I can't take your money, either, Mr. Elden," she protested. "I can't stay here any longer; I will have no job, and I can't pay you back. You see I can't take it even from you. What a fool I was! For a few clothes——"

"You will continue to work—for me," he said.

She shook her head. "No. I can't. I can't work anywhere near him."

"You won't need to. The firm of Conward & Elden will be dissolved at once. I have always felt that there was something false in Conward—something that wouldn't stand test. I thought it was in his business life; and yet that didn't quite seem to give the answer. Now I know."

There was the sound of a key in the street door, and Conward entered.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Conward paused as he entered the room. He had evidently not expected to find Elden there, but after a moment of hesitation he nodded cordially to his partner.

"Almost ready, Miss Wardin?" he asked, cheerily. "Our train goes in——" He took his watch from his pocket and consulted it.

Dave's eyes were fixed on the girl. He wondered whether, in this testing moment, she would fight for herself or lean weakly on him as her protector. Her answer reassured him.

"It makes no difference when it goes, Mr. Conward. I'm not going on it." Her voice trembled nervously, but there was no weakness in it.

The money which Dave had given her was still crumpled in her hand. She advanced to where Conward stood vaguely trying to sense the situation, and held the bills before him. "Here is your money, Mr. Conward," she said.

"Why, what does this mean?"

"Here is your money. Will you take it please?"

"No, I won't take it, until you explain——"

She opened her fingers, and the bills fell to the floor. "All right," she said.

Conward's eyes had shifted to Dave. "You are at the bottom of this, Elden," he said. "What does it mean?"

"It means, Conward," Dave answered, and there was steel in his voice—"it means that after all these years I have discovered what a cur you are—just in time to baulk you, at least in this instance."

Conward flushed, but he maintained an attitude of composure. "You've been drinking, Dave," he said. "I meant no harm to Miss Wardin."

"Don't make me call you a liar as well as a cur."

The word cut through Conward's mask of composure. "Now by God I won't take that from any man," he shouted, and with a swing of his arms threw his coat over his shoulders. Dave made no motion, and Conward slowly brought his coat back to position.

"I was right," said Dave, calmly. "I knew you wouldn't fight. You think more of your skin than you do of your honour. Well—it's better worth protection."

"If this girl were not here," Conward protested. "I will not fight——"

"Oh, I will leave," said Miss Wardin, with alacrity. "And I hope he soaks you well," she shot back, as the door closed behind her. But by this time Conward had assumed a superior attitude. "Dave," he said, "I won't fight over a quarrel of this kind. But remember, there are some things in which no man allows another to interfere. Least of all such a man as you. There are ways of getting back, and I'll get back."

"Why such a man as me? I know I haven't been much of a moralist in business matters—I've been in the wrong company for that—but I draw the line——"

"Oh, you're fine stuff, all right. What would your friend Miss Hardy think if I told her all I know?"

"You know nothing that could affect Miss Hardy's opinion——"

"No?"

"No, you don't. You're not bluffing a tenderfoot now. I call you. If you've any cards—play them."

"It's too bad your memory is so poor," Conward sneered. "Why were your lights off that night I passed your car? Oh, I guess you remember. What will Miss Hardy think of that?"

For a moment Dave was unable to follow Conward's thought. Then his mind reached back to that night he drove into the country with Bert Morrison, when on the brow of a hill he switched off his lights that they might the better admire the majesty of the heavens. That Conward should place an evil interpretation upon that incident was a thing so monstrous, so altogether beyond argument, that Dave fell back upon the basic human method reserved for such occasions. His fist leapt forward, and Conward crumpled up before it.

Conward lay stunned for a few minutes; then with returning consciousness, he tried to sit up. Dave helped him to a chair. Blood flowed down his face, and, as he began to realize what had occurred, it was joined with tears of pain, rage, humiliation.

"You got that one on me, Elden," he said, after awhile. "But it was a coward's blow. You hit me when I wasn't looking. Very well. Two can play at that game. I'll hit you when you're not looking … where you don't expect it … where you can't hit back. You interfere with me—you strike me—you that I took out of a thirty-dollar-a-week job and made you all you are. I did it, Dave; gave you the money to start with, coached you all the way. And you hit me … when I wasn't looking." He spoke disjointedly; his throat was choked with mortification and self-pity. "Very well. I know the stake you're playing for. And—I'm going to spoil it."

He turned his swollen, bloody face