"Undoubtedly that can be arranged, Mr. Toomey."

It was obvious that the Boosters Club shared its president's opinion. Each quivered with an eagerness to get at Toomey which was not unlike that of a race horse fretting to be first over the starting line. They crowded around him when the meeting was ended, offering their congratulations and their stock to him, but taking care to avoid any mention of the various sums that he owed each and all.

As for Toomey, it was like the old days when his appearance upon the streets of Prouty was an event, when they called him "Mister" and touched their hat-brims to him, when he could get a hearing without blocking the exit.

He left the Boosters Club with his pulses bounding with pride and importance. He had "come back"—as a man must who has imagination and initiative. They could "watch his smoke," could Prouty.

There was not a member present who did not reach his home panting, to shake his wife out of her slumbers to tell her that, at last, Toomey had "got into something."



CHAPTER XXV

THE CHINOOK

Emblazoned on the front page of the Omaha paper upon which Mr. Pantin relied to keep him abreast of the times was the announcement that both mutton and wool had touched highwater mark in the history of the sheep-raising industry.

Mr. Pantin moved into the bow window where the light was better and read the article carefully. The Australian embargo, dust-storms in the steppes of Russia, rumors of war, all had contributed to send prices soaring. When he had concluded, he took the stub of a pencil from his waistcoat pocket and made a computation in neat figures upon the margin. As he eyed the total his mouth puckered in a whistle which changed gradually to a grin of satisfaction.

"You can't keep a squirrel down in a timbered country," Mr. Pantin chuckled aloud, ambiguously.

A pleased smile still rested upon his face when Mrs. Pantin entered.

"Priscilla, will you do me a favor?"

"Abram," reproachfully, "have I ever failed you? What is it?"

"The next time you have something going on here I want you to invite Kate Prentice."

Mrs. Pantin recoiled.

"What!"

"Don't squawk like that!" said Mr. Pantin, irritably. "You do it often, and it's an annoying mannerism."

"Do you quite realize what you are asking?" his wife demanded.

"Perfectly," replied Mr. Pantin, calmly. "I've passed the stage when I talk to make conversation."

"But think how she's been criticised!"

Mr. Pantin got up impatiently.

"Oh, you virtuous dames—"

Mrs. Pantin's thin lips went shut like a rat-trap.

"Abram, are you twitting me?"

Mr. Pantin ignored the accusation, and observed astutely:

"I presume you've done your share of talking, and that's why—"

"She is impossible, and what you ask is impossible," Mrs. Pantin declared firmly.

"It's not often that I ask a favor of you, Prissy." His tone was conciliatory.

Mrs. Pantin met him half way and her voice was softer as she answered:

"I appreciate that, Abram, but there are a few of us who must keep up the bars against such persons. Society—"

"Rats!" ejaculated Mr. Pantin coarsely.

The hand which she had laid tenderly upon his shoulder was withdrawn as if it harbored a hornet.

"I don't understand this at all—not at all," she said, icily. "However," very distinctly, "it is not necessary that I should, for I shall not do it." She folded her arms as she confronted him.

Mr. Pantin was silent so long that she thought the battle was over, and purred at him:

"You can realize how I feel about it, can't you, darling?"

"No, by George, I can't! And I'm not going to either." He slapped the table with Henry Van Dyke in ooze leather for emphasis. "I want Kate Prentice invited here the next time she's in town. If you don't do as I ask, Priscilla, you shan't go a step—not a step—to Keokuk this winter."

"Is that an ultimatum?" Mrs. Pantin demanded.

Mr. Pantin gave a quick furtive look over either shoulder, then declared with emphatic gusto:

"I mean every damn word of it!"

Mrs. Pantin stood speechless, thinking rapidly. There was nothing for it evidently but to play her trump card, which never yet had failed her. She wasted no breath in further argument, but threw herself full-length on the davenport and had hysterics.

Only a few times in their married life had Mr. Pantin risen on his hind legs, speaking figuratively, and defied her. In the beginning, before he was well housebroken, he was careless in the matter of cleaning his soles on the scraper, and had been obstinate on the question of changing his shirt on Wednesdays, holding that once a week was enough for a person not engaged in manual labor. Mrs. Pantin had won out on each issue, but it had not been an easy victory. Mr. Pantin had been docile so long now that she had expected no further trouble with him, therefore this outbreak was so unlooked for that her fit was almost genuine.

Having hurled his thunderbolt, Mr. Pantin stood above his wife regarding her imperturbably as she lay with her face buried in a sofa pillow. Unmoved, he even felt a certain interest in the rise and fall of her shoulder blades as she sobbed. Actually, she seemed to breathe with them—"like the gills of a fish," he thought heartlessly—and wondered how long she could keep it up.

"It's no use having this tantrum, Prissy," he said inexorably.

Tantrum! The final insult. Mrs. Pantin squealed with rage and gnawed the corner of the leather pillow.

"You might as well come out of it," he admonished further. "You'll only make your eyes red and give yourself a headache."

"You're a brute, Abram Pantin, and I wish I'd never seen you!"

Mr. Pantin suppressed the reply that the wish was mutual. Instead, he picked up the leather button which flew on the floor when Mrs. Pantin doubled her fist and smote the davenport.

"I doubt very much if she'd come, even if you ask her," said Pantin. It was a stroke of genius.

"Not come!" The eye which Mrs. Pantin exposed regarded Mr. Pantin scornfully. "Not come? Why, she'd be tickled to pieces."

But of that Mr. Pantin continued to have his own opinion.

Mrs. Pantin sat up and winked rapidly in her indignation.

"She's made if I take her up, and the woman isn't so stupid as not to know it, is she?"

"She may not see it from that angle," dryly. "At any rate, you'll be pleasing me greatly by asking her."

Mrs. Pantin looked at her husband fixedly:

"Why this deep interest, Abram?"

Flattered by the implied accusation, Mr. Pantin, however, resisted the temptation to make Mrs. Pantin jealous, and answered truthfully:

"I admire her greatly. She deserves recognition and will get it. If you are a wise woman you'll swallow your prejudices and be the first to admit it."

Mrs. Pantin raised both eyebrows—her own and the one she put on mornings—incredulously.

"She's the kind that would win out anywhere," he added, with conviction.

Mrs. Pantin stared at him absently, while the tears on her lashes dried to smudges. She murmured finally:

"I could have pineapple with mayonnaise dressing."

To conceal a smile, Mr. Pantin stooped for his paper.

"Or would you have lettuce with roquefort cheese dressing, Abram?"

"You know much more about such things than I do—your luncheons are always perfect, Prissy. Who do you think of inviting to meet her?"

Mrs. Pantin considered. Then her eyes sparkled with malice, "I'll begin with Mrs. Toomey."

* * * * *

In the office of the Grit, Hiram Butefish was reading the proof of his editorial that pointed out the many advantages Prouty enjoyed over its rival in the next county.

There was no more perfect spot on the footstool for the rearing of children, Mr. Butefish declared editorially. Fresh air, pure water, and a moral atmosphere—wherein it differed, he hinted, from its neighbor. There Vice rampant and innocent Youth met on every corner, while the curse of the Demon Rum was destroying its manhood.

Mr. Butefish laid down the proof-sheet, sighed deeply, and quite unconsciously moistened his lips.

He was for Reform, certainly, but the thought would intrude that when Vice moved on to greener fields it took with it much of the zest of living. In the days when a man could get drunk as he liked and as often as he liked without fear of criticism, sure of being laid away tenderly by tolerant friends, instead of, as now,—being snaked, scuffling, to the calaboose by the constable—

The arrival of the mail with its exchanges interrupted thoughts flowing in a dangerous channel.

The soaring price of wool, featured in the headlines, caught his attention instantly, since, naturally, anything that pertained to the sheep industry was of interest to the community. Mr. Butefish used his scissors freely and opined that the next issue of the Grit would be a corker. Then an idea came to him. Why not make it a sheep number exclusively? Give all the wool-growers in the vicinity a write-up. Great! He'd do it. Mr. Butefish enumerated them on his fingers. When he came to Kate Prentice, he hesitated. Would Prouty stand for it—the eulogy he contemplated? In a small paper one had to consider local prejudices—besides, she was not a subscriber.

While Mr. Butefish debated, a spirit of rebellion rose within him. Ever since he had established the paper he had been a worm, and what had it got him? It had got him in debt to the point of bankruptcy—that's what it had got him—and he was good and sick of it! He was tired of grovelling—nauseated with catering to a public that paid in rutabagas and elk meat that was "spoilin' on 'em." He hadn't started in right—that was half the trouble. If he had dug into their pasts and blackmailed 'em, they'd be eating out of his hand, instead of pounding on the desk in front of him if he transposed their initials. He would have been a power in the country in place of having to drag his hat brim to 'em, lest they take out their advertisement of a setting of eggs or a Plymouth Rock rooster.

He'd show 'em, by gorry! He'd show 'em! Mr. Butefish jabbed his pen into the potato he used as a penwiper, instead of the ink, in his fury. He wrote with the rapidity of inspiration, and words came which he had not known were in his vocabulary as he extolled Kate and her achievements. Emotion welled within him until his collar choked him, so he removed it, while the pen spread with the force he put into the actual writing. And when he had finished, he walked the floor reading the editorial, his voice vibrating, tingling with his own eloquence. The article snorted defiance. Mr. Butefish tacitly waved the bright flag of personal freedom in the face of Public Opinion. He bellowed his liberty, as it were, over Kate's shoulder. He strode, he swaggered—he had not known such a glorious feeling of independence since he left off plumbing. And he could go back to it if he had to! Mr. Butefish stopped in the middle of the floor and showed his teeth at an invisible audience of advertisers and subscribers.

The article came out exactly as written. Reflection did not temper Mr. Butefish's attitude with caution. The bruised worm not only had turned, but rolled clean over.

The following week, Kate rode into Prouty in ignorance of the flattering tribute which the editor had paid her. Coming at a leisurely gait down Main Street she looked as usual in pitiless scrutiny at the signs which told of the collapse of the town's prosperity. She saw without compassion the graying hair, the tired eyes of anxiety, the lines of brooding and despondency deepening in faces she remembered as carefree and hopeful, the look of resignation that comes to the weaklings who have lost their grip, the emptiness of burned-out passion, the weary languor of repeated failure—she saw it all through the eyes of her relentless hatred.

But to-day there was a something different which, in her extreme sensitiveness, she was quick to see and feel. There was a new expression in the eyes of the passersby with whom she exchanged glances. Eyes which for years had stared at her with impudence, indifference, or ostentatious blankness now held a sort of friendly inquiry, something conciliatory, which told her they would have spoken had they not been met by the immobile mask of imperturbability that she wore in Prouty.

"Why the chinook?" Kate asked herself ironically.

The warm wave met her everywhere and she continued to wonder, though it did not melt the ice about her heart that was of many years' accumulation.

Kate had sold her wool, finally, through a commission house, and at an advance over the price at which she had held it when Bowers had advised her to accept the buyer's offer. She expected the draft in the three weeks' accumulation of mail for which she had come to Prouty. When the mail was handed out to her, she looked in astonishment at the amount of it. At first glance, there appeared to be only a little less than a bushel. The postmaster, who had forgotten Bowers's instructions, grinned knowingly as he passed out photographs and sweet-scented, pink-tinted envelopes addressed to the sheepherder in feminine writing.

"So he had done it!" Kate mused as she crowded them all into the leather mail sack which bulged to the point of refusing to buckle. The letter she expected was among the rest, and, as she looked at the draft it contained, a smile that had meant not only gratification but exultation lurked at the corners of her mouth. She led her horse to the bank and tied it. Mr. Wentz came nimbly forward to the receiving teller's window as she entered, and flashed his eloquent eyes at her.

"You're quite a stranger!" he greeted her tritely, and added, "But we've been reading about you."

Kate looked her surprise.

"In the Grit—haven't you seen it? A great boost! Butefish really writes vurry, vurry well when he puts his mind to it."

This explained the warmer temperature, she thought sardonically, but said merely:

"I haven't seen the paper." Then changing the subject: "I've decided to increase the size of my account with you, Mr. Wentz. I'll leave this draft on open deposit, though it may be considerable time before I need it." She passed it to him carelessly.

Since leaving the laundry, where he had been as temperamental as he liked, and taken it out on the wringer, Mr. Wentz had endeavored to train himself to conceal his feelings, and imagined he had succeeded. But now the wild impulse he felt to crawl through the aperture and embrace Kate told him otherwise.

Kate watched the play of emotions over his face in deep satisfaction. There was no need of words to express his gratitude—which was mostly relief.

"I appreciate this, Miss Prentice, I do indeed. I am glad that you do not hold it against us because upon a time we were not able to accommodate you."

"A bank must abide by its rules, I presume," she replied noncommittally.

"Exactly! A bank must protect its customers at all hazards."

"And the directors."

Mr. Wentz colored. Did she mean anything in particular? He wondered. He continued to speculate after her departure. It was a random shot, he decided. If it had been otherwise she scarcely would be giving him her business now, especially to the extent of this deposit—which he was needing—well, nobody but Mr. Wentz knew exactly how much.

There was a quizzical smile upon Kate's face as she passed down the steps of the bank and turned up the street on another errand. She was walking with her eyes bent upon the sidewalk, thinking hard, when her way was blocked by Mrs. Abram Pantin extending a high supine hand with the charming cordiality which distinguished her best social manner. Mrs. Pantin slipped her manner on and off, as the occasion warranted, as she did her kitchen apron.

The suddenness of the meeting surprised Kate into a look of astonishment.

"This is Miss Prentice, isn't it?"

"That's the general impression," Kate answered.

Mrs. Pantin registered vivacity by winking rapidly and twittering in a pert birdlike fashion:

"I've so much wanted to know you!"

The reply that there always had been ample opportunity seemed superfluous, so Kate said nothing.

"I've been reading about you, you know, and I want to tell you how proud we all are of you and of what you have accomplished. This is Woman's Day, isn't it?"

Since she seemed not to expect an answer, Kate made none and Mrs. Pantin continued:

"I've been wanting to see you that I might ask you to come to me—say next Thursday?"

Mrs. Pantin's manner was tinged with patronage.

Kate's silence deceived her. She imagined that Kate was awed and tongue-tied in her presence. The woman was, as Prissy had assured Abram, "tickled to pieces."

In the meanwhile, interested observers of the meeting were saying to each other cynically:

"Nothing succeeds like success, does it?"

This time, apparently, Mrs. Pantin expected an answer, so Kate asked bluntly:

"What for?"

"Luncheon. At one—we are very old-fashioned. I want you to meet some of our best ladies—Mrs. Sudds—Mrs. Neifkins—Mrs. Toomey—and others."

As she enumerated the guests on her fingers the tip of Mrs. Pantin's pink tongue darted in and out with the rapierlike movement of an ant-eater.

Kate's face hardened and she replied curtly:

"I already have had that doubtful pleasure upon an occasion, which you should remember."

Mrs. Pantin flushed. Disconcerted for a moment, she collected herself, and instead of protesting ignorance of her meaning, as she was tempted, she said candidly:

"We must let bygones be bygones, Miss Prentice, and be friends. We are older now, and wiser, aren't we?"

Kate clasped her hands behind her, a mannerism with which offending herders were familiar, and regarded Mrs. Pantin steadily.

"Older but not wiser, apparently, else you would have known better than to suggest the possibility of friendship between us. You are a poor judge of human nature, and conceited past my understanding, to imagine that it is a matter which is entirely optional with you." With the slow one-sided smile of irony which her face sometimes wore, she bowed slightly. Then, "You will excuse me?" and passed on.



CHAPTER XXVI

TAKING HER MEDICINE

The moon was up when Kate got in from town, for she had not hurried. There was no one there to greet her except the sheep dog that ran out barking. She unsaddled, turned the horse in the corral, and picked up the mail sack heavy with Bowers's missives.

She had not eaten since noon, but she was not hungry, and she went to her wagon immediately. Opening the door she stood there for a moment. The stillness appalled her. How could such a small space give forth such a sense of big emptiness, she wondered. Everything was empty—her life, her arms, and, for the moment, even her ambitions. Unexpectedly the thought overwhelmed her.

Throwing down the mail sack and tossing her hat upon it, she sank on the side bench where she folded her arms on the edge of the bunk and buried her face in them. For a long time she remained so, motionless, in the silence that seemed to crush her.

When Kate arose finally it was as if she were lifting a burden. Undressing slowly, she lay down on the bunk and looked out through the window at the white world swimming in moonlight. Ordinarily, she shut her eyes to moonlight, it had a way of stirring up emotions which had no place in her scheme of life. It always made her think of Disston, of the light in his eyes when he had looked at her, of the feeling of his arms about her, of his lips on hers when he had kissed her. At such times it filled her with a longing for him which was a kind of sweet torture that unnerved her and made the goal for which she strove of infinitesimal importance.

But that was one of the tricks of moonlight, she told herself angrily, to dwarf the things which counted, and with its false glamour give a fictitious value to those which in reality were but impediments. To-night the arguments were hollow as echoes. It was like telling herself, she thought, that she was going to sleep when she knew she was not. She yearned for Disston with all the intensity of her strong nature, and her efforts to conquer the longing seemed only to increase it.

"God!" She sat up suddenly and struck her breast as though the blow might somehow stop the pain there, and asked herself fiercely: "Must I live forever with this heartache? Isn't there some peace? Some way of dulling it until my heart stops beating?" She stretched out her arms and her voice broke with the sob that choked her as she cried miserably:

"Oh, Hughie! Hughie! I love you, and I can't help it!"

She felt herself stifling in the wagon and flung aside the covering. Thrusting her bare feet into moccasins and slipping on a sweater, she stepped into the white world that had the still emptiness of space.

The sheep dog got up from under the wagon and stood in front of her with a look of inquiry, but she gave no heed to him; instead, after a moment's indecision, she walked swiftly to the hillside where a shaft of marble shone in the moonlight. The sheep dog was at her heels, and when she crawled beneath the wire that fenced the spot where Mormon Joe had turned to dust, it followed.

Mormon Joe was only a name, a memory, but he had loved her unselfishly and truly. Kate clasped her arms about the shaft and laid her cheek against it as if in some way she might draw consolation from it. But its coldness chilled her. Then, with her face upturned in supplication, as though his soul might be somewhere in the infinite space above her, she cried aloud in her anguish as she had in another and different kind of crisis:

"Uncle Joe, I'm lost! I don't know which way to go—there's no signboard to direct me. Please, please, if you can, come back and help me—please—help Katie Prentice!"

The sheep dog with his head on his paws watched her gravely. In the corral below there was the sound of stirring horses; otherwise only silence answered her. No light, no help came to her. Her hands dropped gradually to her sides. It was always so—in the end she was thrown back upon herself. Nothing came to her save by her own efforts. There were no miracles performed for Kate Prentice. A sullen defiance filled her. If this was all life had for her she could stand it; she could go on as usual taking her medicine with as little fuss as possible. That's all life seemed to be—taking the medicine the Fates doled out in one form or another. To live bravely, to die with all the courage one could muster, were the principal things anyhow. She got up from her knees by the sunken grave slowly and stood erect once more, holding her chin high in self-sufficient arrogance. She would take the best out of life as it offered and be done with ideals that ended in emotional hysteria like this present experience. Life was a compromise anyhow. If she couldn't have the substance, she would have the shadow. If she couldn't have friendships given her, she'd buy imitations that would answer. If love and romance were not for her, she'd accept the expedient that offered and be satisfied!

Bowers was not due at headquarters for several days, so as soon as Kate found the leisure she set out to take his mail to him, anticipating with some enjoyment his confusion when he saw the extent of it. She came across him out in the hills, engaged in some occupation which so absorbed him that he did not hear her until she was all but upon him.

"Oh, hello!" His face lighted up in pleased surprise when he saw her. "I was jest skinnin' out a rattlesnake for you."

"Were you, Bowers?" She looked at him oddly. "You are always doing something nice for me, aren't you?"

"This is the purtiest rattler I've seen this season," he declared with enthusiasm. "Look at the markin' on him. I thought it ud show up kind of nifty laid around the cantle of your saddle. A rattlesnake skin shore makes a purty trimmin', to my notion. Don't know what he was doin' out of his hole so late in the season. He was so chilled I got him easy—an old feller—nine rattles and a button."

Kate got off her horse and sat down to watch him while Bowers enumerated the possibilities of snake skins as decorations.

"I brought your mail to you," she said when he had finished.—"Letters."

"Now who could be writin' to me?" he demanded in feigned innocence.

"I'm curious myself, since there's a bushel," she answered dryly.

Bowers looked up at the bulging mail sack and colored furiously. Then he blurted out in desperate candor:

"I ain't honest, but I won't lie—I been advertisin'."

"What for?"

The perspiration broke out on Bowers's forehead.

"I thought I'd git married, if anybody that looked good to me would have me."

"You're not happy, Bowers?" she asked gently.

"I ain't sufferin', but I ain't livin' in what you'd call no seventh heaven."

Kate smiled at the grim irony of his tone.

"It's not up to much, this life of ours out here," she agreed in a low voice.

"Nothin' to look forward to—nothin' to look back to," he said bitterly.

"I understand," Kate nodded.

"I never had as much home life as a coyote," he continued with rebellion in his tone. "A coyote does git a den and a family around him every spring." And he added shortly, "I'm lonesome."

They sat in a long silence, Kate with her hands clasped about a knee and looking off at the mountain. She turned to him after a while:

"Do you like me, Bowers?"

"I shore do."

Then she asked with quiet deliberation:

"Well enough to—marry me?"

Bowers looked at her, speechless. He managed finally:

"Are you joshin'?"

"No."

A prairie dog rose up in front of them and chattered. They both stared at him. Bowers reached over and took her gloved fingers between his two palms—in the same fashion a loyal subject might have touched his queen's hand.

"That's a great thing you said to me, Miss Kate. I never expected any such honor ever to come to me. I'd crawl through cut glass and cactus for you. I guess you know it, too, but anything like that would be a mistake, Miss Kate. I ain't in your class."

"My class!" bitterly. "What is my class? I'm in one by myself—I don't belong anywhere." She paused a moment, then went on: "We needn't pretend to love each other—we're not hypocrites, but we understand each other, our interests are the same, we are good friends, at least, and in the experiment there might be something better than our present existence."

"I want to see you happy," he replied slowly. "I haven't any other wish, and, right or wrong, I'll do anything you say, but I'm as shore as we're settin' here that you'll never find it with me. I thought—I hoped that Disston feller—"

She interrupted sharply:

"Don't, Bowers, don't!"

Understanding grew in his troubled eyes as he looked at her quivering chin and mouth.

"So that was it!" he reflected.

Thick volumes of smoke rolled up from the engine attached to the mixed train that stood on the side-track which paralleled the shipping corrals at Prouty, to sink again in the heavy atmosphere presaging a storm. The clouds were leaden and sagged with the weight of snow about to fall.

Teeters's cattle bawled in the three front cars and the remaining "double deckers" were being loaded with Kate Prentice's sheep. She had followed her early judgment in cutting down the number of her sheep for a hard winter and, in consequence, the engine had steam up to haul the longest stock train that had ever pulled out of Prouty.

Bowers and his helpers were crowding the sheep up the runway into the last car when Kate rode up. She looked with pride at the mass of broad woolly backs as she sat with her arms folded on the saddle horn and thought to herself that if there were any better range sheep going into Omaha she would like to see them. She had made no mistake when she had graded up her herds with Rambouillets.

Bowers saw her and left the chute.

"Teeters is sick," he announced, coming up.

Kate's face grew troubled. She and Teeters had shipped together ever since they had had anything to ship, for it had been mutually advantageous in many ways; but particularly to herself, since he looked after her interests and saved her the necessity of making the trip to the market herself.

"Somethin' he's et," Bowers vouchsafed. "The doctor says it's pantomime pizenin', or some sech name—anyhow, he's plenty sick."

"Where is he?"

Bowers nodded across the flat where they had been holding the sheep while waiting for their cars.

Kate swung her horse about and galloped for the tent where Teeters lay groaning in his blankets on the ground.

Teeters was ill indeed—a glance told her that—and there was not the remotest chance that he would be able to leave with the train.

"I guess I'll be all right by the time they're ready to pull out," he groaned.

Kate made her decision quickly.

"I'll go myself. You're too sick. You get to the hotel and go to bed."

Teeters protested through a paroxysm of pain:

"You can't do that, Miss Kate. It's a tedious dirty trip in the caboose."

"I can't help it. I've too much at stake to take a chance. There's a big storm coming and I've got to get these sheep through in good shape. Don't worry about me and take care of yourself."

The engine whistled a preliminary warning as Kate dropped the tent flap and swung back on her horse. Calling to Bowers to have the train held until she returned, she galloped to the Prouty House and ran up the stairs to her room, where she thrust her few articles in the flour sack that she tied on the back of her saddle when it was necessary to remain over night in town.

The last frightened sheep had been urged up the chute and the door was closed when she threw her belongings on the platform of the caboose and informed Bowers that she was going along. He too protested, but her mind was made up.

"We're going to run into a storm, and if we're sidetracked I want to be along. It's not pleasant, but it has to be done."

It was useless to argue when Kate used that tone, so Bowers had to content himself with thinking that he would make her as comfortable as circumstances would allow.

Kate stood in the doorway with her flour sack in her hand looking at Prouty as the brakes relaxed and the wheels began to grind. It was not exactly the way in which she had pictured her first trip into the world, but, with a cynical smile, it was as near the realization as her dreams ever were.

Kate had not ridden more than a hundred miles on a train in her life, and her knowledge of cities was still gathered from books and magazines. As she had become more self-centered and absorbed in her work, her interest in the "outside" gradually had died. She told herself indifferently that there was time enough to gratify her curiosity.

She sighed as she watched the town fade and then a snowflake, featherlike and moist, swirled under the projecting roof and melted on her cheek, to recall her to herself. She swung out over the step and looked to the east where the clouds hung sagging with their weight. Yes, it was well that she had come.

Behind the plate-glass window of the Security State Bank its president stood with his hands thrust deep in his trousers' pockets watching the long train as, with much belching of smoke, it climbed the slight grade. There were moments when Mr. Wentz cursed the Fate that had promoted him from his washing machine, and this was one of them.

Neifkins, hunched in a leather chair in the banker's office, had an obstinate look on his sunburned face.

"I'd give about half I'm worth if that was your stock goin' out," said Wentz, as he reseated himself at his desk.

Neifkins grunted.

"I heard you the first time you said that." The stubborn look on his face increased. "When I'm ready to ship, I'll ship. I know what I'm about—ME."

Wentz did not look impressed by the boast.

Neifkins added in a surly tone:

"I don't need no petticoat to show me how to handle sheep."

Wentz answered with a shrug:

"Looks to me like you might follow a worse lead. She's contracted for all the hay in sight and shoved the price on what's left up to sixteen dollars in the stack. What you goin' to do if you have to feed?"

"I won't have to feed; I'll take my chance on that. It's goin' to be an open winter," confidently.

"It's startin' in like it," Wentz replied dryly, as he glanced through the window where the falling snowflakes all but obscured the opposite side of the street. Then, emphatically: "I tell you, Neifkins, you Old Timers take too big risks."

"I suppose," the sheepman sneered, "you'd recommend my gettin' loaded up with a few hundred tons of hay I won't need."

"I'd recommend anything that would make you safe." Wentz lowered his voice, which vibrated with earnestness as he leaned forward in his chair: "Do you know what it means if a storm catches you and you have a big loss? It means that only a miracle will keep this bank from goin' on the rocks. We're hangin' on by our eyelashes now, waiting for the payment of your first big note to give us a chance to get our breath. I have the ague every time I see a hard-boiled hat comin' down the street, thinkin' it's a bank examiner. You know as well as I do that you've borrowed to the amount of your stock, and way beyond the ten per cent limit of the capital stock which we as a national bank are allowed to loan an individual—that it's a serious offense if we're found out."

"If I don't," Neifkins replied insolently, "it ain't because you haven't told me often enough."

"But you don't seem to realize the position we're in. If you did, you'd play safe and ship. It's true enough that you might make more by holding on, but it's just as true that a big storm could wipe you out." His voice sank still lower and trembled as he confessed: "It's the honest God's truth that any two dozen of our largest depositors could close our doors to-day. I beg of you, Neifkins, to ship as soon as you can get cars."

Neifkins squared his thick shoulders in the chair.

"Look here—I don't allow no man to tell me how to run my business! When that note comes due I'll be ready to meet it, so there's no need of you gettin' cold feet as reg'lar as a cloud comes up." He arose. "This storm ain't goin' to last. May be a lot of snow will fall, but it won't lay."

Neifkins' sanguine predictions were not fulfilled, for the next day the sagging wires broke and Neifkins floundered through snow to his knees on his way down town. It lay three feet deep on the level and was still falling as though it could not stop. Every road and trail was obliterated. All the surrounding country was a white trackless waste and Prouty with its roofs groaning under their weight looked like a diamond-dusted picture on a Christmas card.

There was less resonance in Neifkins' jubilant tone when he stamped into the bank and declared that it was a record-breaker of a snow fall.

Wentz asked sullenly, as he paced the floor: "How about the sheep, if this keeps up?"

"I got herders that know what to do—that's what I pay 'em for."

"Knowing what to do won't help much, with the snow too deep for the sheep to paw, and a two-days' drive from hay, even if you could get through." There was the maximum of exasperation in the president's voice.

Neifkins replied stubbornly: "I've pulled through fifty storms like this and never had no big loss yet."

"But you've never had so much at stake. You've got us to consider—"

"Don't you fret!" Neifkins interrupted impatiently. "You've worried until you're all worked up over somethin' that hasn't happened and ain't goin' to."

With this assurance, which left no comfort in its wake, Neifkins went out where the first icy blast of the predicted blizzard lifted his hat and whisked it down the street.

The wind completed what the heavy snow had failed to do. Telephone and telegraph poles lay prone for a quarter of a mile at a stretch. It piled in drifts the snow already fallen and brought more. The blizzard enveloped Prouty until it required something more than normal courage to venture out of doors. It was the courage of desperation which ultimately sent Neifkins out in an attempt to get hay to his sheep. There was small resemblance between the optimist who had assured Wentz so confidently that everything would be all right and the perspiring and all but exhausted Neifkins who wallowed in snow to his arm-pits in an effort to break trail for the four-horse team whose driver was displaying increasing reluctance to go on with the load of baled hay stalled some mile and a half from town.

"We might as well quit," the driver called with a kind of desperate decision in his tone as he made to lay down the reins. "I can't afford to pull the life out of my horses like I got to do to make even a third of the way to-day."

Dismayed by his threat to go back, Neifkins begged:

"Don't quit me like this. I got six thousand sheep that'll starve if we don't git this hay through."

The driver hesitated. Reluctantly he picked up the lines:

"I'll give it another go, but I'm sure it's no use. The horses have pulled every pound that's in 'em, and now this wheeler's discouraged and startin' to balk. Besides, if anybody asks you, the road is gettin' no better fast."

The latter prediction in particular was correct, and their progress during the next hour could be measured in feet. The sweat trickled down the horses' necks and legs, their thick winter coats lay slick to their sides, and their breath came labored from their heaving chests. Two and sometimes three out of the four were down at a time.

The fight was too unequal; to pit their pygmean strength longer against the drifts and the fury of the elements was useless. Even Neifkins finally was convinced of that, and was about to admit as much when, without warning, wagon, driver and horses went over a cut-bank, where the animals lay on their backs, a kicking tangled mass.

It was the end. For a second Neifkins stood staring, overwhelmed with the realization that he was worse off by a good many thousand dollars than when he had come into the country—that he was wiped out—broke—and that the thin ice upon which the Security State Bank had been skating would now let it through.



CHAPTER XXVII

THE SHEEP QUEEN

The long mixed train crawling into the stockyards at Omaha, with its ice-encased wheels, its fringe of icicles pendant from the eaves, and snow from the wind-swept plains of western Nebraska piled on the roofs, looked like an Arctic Special.

Kate stood on the rear platform of the swaying caboose looking with wearied unkindled eyes at the myriad lights of the first city she had ever seen. Those eyes were dark-circled with fatigue, her face streaked with soft coal soot, while the wrinkled riding skirt in which she had slept was soiled and torn. Her fleece-lined canvas coat was buttoned to the throat, and she leaned negligently against the rail, watching from under the broad brim of her Stetson the twinkling lights increase.

It had been Kate's intention when she left Prouty to catch a fast passenger train and meet her sheep at a feeding station a few miles outside of Omaha, but the violence of the storm had changed her plans and she had remained to spend many tedious hours waiting on side-tracks, and this, together with the work of unloading to feed and water, and insufficient sleep, had brought her as near exhaustion as she ever had found herself.

There was no eagerness in the sheep woman's face, only the impersonal curiosity of a spectator at a display in which he had no part. She accepted as a matter of course the fact that she would be here, as she was at home, an outsider, an alien.

Kate saw nothing interesting or unusual in what she had done—it was all in the day's work. She was merely one of innumerable stock raisers bringing the results of months and years of patient effort to the great stock market of the west. As she looked listlessly at the dark silhouette of tanks and towers, skyscrapers and gable roofs, at countless threads of smoke going straight up in the still air from the great hive of industry and life, she wondered at her apathy, at the fact that there was no anticipation in her mind.

Her face darkened. Had Prouty, along with other things, robbed her of the capacity for enjoyment? Had it crushed out of her the last remnant of the spirit of youth? Was she old, already hopelessly old at heart?

Her feeling toward the town gradually had crystallized into a cold animus, silent and unwavering, but now, as she suddenly whirled about and looked into the red winter sunset where, back there, beyond the Beyond, Prouty lay, a wave of hatred surged over her, to make her tingle to the finger tips.

Usually Prouty was personified in her mind as a hulking coward, bullying the weak, fawning upon the strong, with no guiding principle in life save self-interest, but to-night, as she visualized it across the intervening miles, snow-bound, wind-swept, desolate, it was in the guise of a shivering pauper, miserable in his present, fearful of his future.

Her grip tightened on the rail of the swaying caboose and all the envenomed bitterness of her nature was in her choking voice as she said between her teeth:

"Curse you and curse you and curse you! I hate you! You've robbed me of the happiness that belonged to my youth. You've destroyed my faith in human kind. Whatever of sweetness there was in my nature you have turned to gall. When my Day comes I'll strike you without mercy—I'll beat you to the earth if it's in my power!"

It was fully night before they were able to get right-of-way into the yards, and Kate drew a deep breath of relief when the grinding wheels finally stopped. She and Bowers swung down together from the high step to the cinder path which lay between their own cars and a train of cattle bawling on a parallel track. As they stumbled along in the darkness toward the engine they heard brisk footsteps coming from that direction.

"Low bridge!" Bowers warned jocularly as they drew close.

In stepping aside to avoid Bowers the pedestrian bumped into Kate.

"I beg your pardon!" The voice was pleasant—deep.

Kate murmured a commonplace.

At the instant a brakeman hung out from the handrail of a car of the cattle train and swung his lantern. Instinctively Kate and the man with whom she had collided looked at each other in the arc of light. In their haste they had scarcely slackened their steps, and it was only a second's glimpse that each had of the other's face, but it was long enough to give to each a sense of bewildered surprise. The look they had exchanged was the look one man gives to another—level, fearless—for there never was anything of coquetry in Kate's gaze, and the impression she had received was of poise, patience and worldly wisdom tinged with a sadness in which there was no bitterness.

The man walked on a pace, stopped and swung about abruptly. Evidently he could see nothing in the darkness—he could hear only the retreating footsteps on the cinder path. Then suddenly, aloud, sharply, out of his bewilderment he cried:

"By God! That woman looks like me!"

Kate and Bowers walked on without comment upon the incident, but when they had reached the yard, Bowers detached himself from Kate's side and made a rush to the nearest light where, turning his back with a secretive air, he took from the inner pocket of his inside coat the worn and yellowed photograph that Mullendore had recognized in Bowers's wagon. He looked at it long and hard.

Kate was too engrossed in directing and helping with the work of unloading, counting the sheep that had smothered, looking after those that had been injured in transit, feeding, watering, to be conscious of the attention she attracted among the helpers and others in the yards.

There had been "sheep queens" in the stockyards before—raucous-voiced, domineering, sexless, inflated to absurdity by their success—but none with Kate's personal attractiveness and her utter lack of self-consciousness. As she walked about on the long platform beside the pens, tall, straight, picturesque, with her free movements, her wide gestures when she used her hands, together with her quiet air of authority, she was the most typical and interesting figure that had come out of the far west for a long time.

When the last thing was done that required her personal attention, Kate went to a nearby hotel recommended by one of the employees of the stockyard. It was third-rate and shabby, unpretentious even in its prime, but it looked imposing to Kate, who never had seen anything better than the Prouty House.

The loose tiling clacked as she walked across the office to the clerk's desk. That person eyed her dubiously as she laid the flour sack containing her belongings on the counter and registered. He saw in Kate only a woman peculiarly dressed, with a tanned and not too clean face, dishevelled hair, weary-eyed, and alone at a late hour. He missed altogether the indefinable atmosphere of character and substantiality which a more discerning and experienced person would have recognized at once.

"Baggage?" curtly, as she returned him the pen.

She indicated the grimy flour sack.

A supercilious eyebrow went up.

"You'll have to pay in advance. Six bits."

Kate reddened.

"Is that customary, or because you don't like my looks?"

Taking umbrage at the asperity of her tone, he replied impudently:

"Well—I don't know you from a crow, do I?"

Kate's eyes flashed.

"You will before I leave Omaha."

He laughed incredulously as he took a key from the rack.

Kate followed him up the dirty stairway through a dingy hall to a still dingier room in the back of the house. Long and narrow, it looked like a kalsomined cave illumined by a lightning bug in a bottle when he turned the electric switch. She was too tired, however, to be critical and in her utter weariness lost consciousness as soon as her head touched the pillow and slept dreamlessly until the dawn came feebly through the coarse lace curtain that, stiff and gray with dust, hung at the one window of the room.

She rubbed her eyes and looked in bewilderment at the unfamiliar surroundings. Then she remembered, and the trip with all its attendant circumstances came back. She speculated as to the probable amount the sheep had shrunken on the way, how they would compare with other consignments in the yards, whether the market conditions were favorable or otherwise, what the commission agents whom she had known through correspondence for many years would be like.

Her experience with the night clerk came to mind and her frown at the recollection of his insolence changed to a puzzled look as she thought of her retort. Whatever had prompted her to make the empty boast that he would know her before she left Omaha? It was as unlike her as anything she could imagine, but it had seemed to say itself.

She had a subconscious feeling that there was still something else of which she wished to think before getting up, and as she searched her mind it flashed upon her—the stranger who had bumped into her in the dark. Of course, that was it! She heard his pleasant voice plainly and saw his face with great distinctness as revealed by the brakeman's light. While she recalled his features individually—his eyes, his mouth, his chin, and the meaning they conveyed, his manner with its mixture of friendliness and reserve, she mechanically rubbed her forehead with her finger tips as though the action might assist in catching some elusive memory that was just beyond her reach. Her brows knit in perplexity and she murmured finally:

"He didn't seem a stranger, somehow—and yet—he was, of course. It would not be possible for me ever to forget a man like that. It seemed as if—" there was bewilderment in her face as she laid her hand upon her heart—"as if, somehow, I knew him here."

Kate's belief that no better sheep of their class than hers would be found in the stockyards was justified by subsequent events. Her shipment not only "topped the market," but she received for her yearling lambs fourteen dollars and sixty-five cents a head—the highest paid since the Civil War. This high rate was due not only to European disturbances, but to the quality and condition of the sheep; and, therefore, apart from the attention which she naturally would have attracted, she was, as the owner, an object of interest in the yards as well as in the stock exchange offices and the bank.

Basking in the reflected sunshine of his employer's success, Bowers came as near strutting as was possible for one of his retiring temperament.

Kate was finding a new experience in her meeting with the members of the firm to which she had consigned her sheep, and others with whom her business brought her in contact about the crowded Exchange. These prosperous, clean-cut men, alert, incisive of speech and thought, were an unfamiliar type. Their undisguised approbation, their respect, their eagerness to be kind brought a new sensation to Kate, who had grown up and lived in an atmosphere of prejudice. There were moments when the tears were absurdly close to her eyes.

Aside from the circumstances which in any event would have attracted more than a little attention to Kate, the extent of the recognition and the courtesy extended to her was a personal triumph. Her simplicity and good sense, her reserve, together with a kind of timid, questioning friendliness, her unconsciousness of being in any way unusual, made her an instantaneous and complete success with those she met the following day, and a celebrity in the yards.

Her business was finished within a few hours and when she made her adieu, Kate looked for Bowers to tell him that she was leaving for Prouty on a night train, presuming that he would wish to do likewise. But Bowers appeared to have vanished as entirely as though he had been shanghaied and was a hundred miles at sea. It was singular that he had not first learned her plans before leaving the stockyards.

The omission hurt Kate, for they had talked much of what they would do and see when they reached Omaha. Bowers, with his superior knowledge of city life, was to show her about; they were to dine together in one of the best restaurants, to see a play and look in the shops. Kate never had been on a street car or in a "machine," so she had counted on him to pilot her from South Omaha to the city proper. Disappointed and hurt by Bowers's neglect, she wandered aimlessly about the streets in the vicinity of her hotel, stopping occasionally to look at the cheap wares displayed in the windows of the small shops of South Omaha.

The hurrying passersby slackened their steps to stare at her in candid interest, and she wondered if it were possible that her conspicuousness had anything to do with Bowers's mysterious disappearance. It seemed an ungenerous thought, but how else account for it, knowing as she did that he had no friends, no business in Omaha, and in the past there never had been a time when he had not preferred her society to that of everyone else?

The elation consequent upon her day of triumph gradually oozed out, to be replaced by the sense of dreariness that comes from being alone in a crowd. Then, too, she had a feeling of contempt for herself for the swift dreams of something different aroused by the day's events. Optimism had come to be synonymous with weakness to Kate. Now, as she stared indifferently at a display of tawdry blouses, she was asking herself if she had not yet learned her lesson, but that upon the strength of a little ephemeral happiness she must needs begin and build air castles again.

The waning day was cloudy, the crossings deep with slush, the pavements damp, and the chill of her wet soles made her shiver, adding the last touch to her forlornness and the depression which Bowers's desertion had induced. She dreaded returning to her cheerless room, but she could not walk the streets indefinitely, so she bought a magazine to read until it was time to dine alone in some one of the neighborhood's cheap restaurants. The night clerk was already on duty and through the fly-specked plate-glass window of the office saw her coming. Dashing from behind the desk, he skated recklessly across the tiles to open the door.

"Say—you're all right!" His tone was emphatic and sincere.

Kate eyed him without enthusiasm.

"Why didn't you tell me?" he demanded.

"Tell you what?"

He held up the afternoon newspaper that he had in his hand.

Kate's own face looked back at her from the front page and her name in the headlines met her astonished eyes. The picture, which had been made from a snapshot, was excellent, and the text was a highly colored recital of her achievements obtained from Bowers.

The clerk's tone conveyed his admiration as he confessed:

"Looks like you knew what you was talkin' about when you said I'd know who you was before you left Omaha."

Sitting on the edge of her bed Kate read the article again, but her first feeling of elation did not return. With her hands clasped about one knee, in her characteristic attitude, she stared at a festoon of dusty cobwebs hanging from the ceiling, and there gradually crept over her a feeling of lassitude.

She had established a record price with the best trainload of range sheep that ever had come into the stockyards; she had been accepted as an equal in achievement and intelligence by every one of the worthwhile men with whom she had come in contact; and as a climax to the day's events she was proclaimed a successful woman in the public prints. Yet, in the silence of the cheerless room, she was cognizant of the fact that nothing inside of her was changed thereby. There remained in her heart the same dreary emptiness.

Two tears slipped slowly down her cheeks. She brushed them away with the back of her hand, looked at her watch, and got up. She had no appetite, but ordering food in a restaurant would help the time to pass. After rubbing such mud as she could from her boots, she smoothed her hair before the mirror and put on her hat. The sheep woman was the cynosure of the respectful gaze of many eyes as she came down the stairs.

Outside all the world was going home with eager, hurrying feet and she paused, looking indifferently up and down the street. The nearest restaurant was not inviting, but it answered well enough. After a few mouthfuls, Kate crumpled the paper napkin, paid her bill, and walked dispiritedly back to the hotel.

More often than not, the momentous happenings in life come without warning, and with no stage-setting to enhance the dramatic effect. Certainly there was nothing in the announcement of the now too friendly clerk that "she had a visitor who looked like new money," to prognosticate that once Kate had crossed the threshold of the red-plush parlor, her life would never be the same again.

It was Bowers, of course—she thought—Bowers come too late to take her to the restaurant whose delectable "grub" was one of his boasted memories of Omaha. Her conclusion was correct that Bowers was there, wearing his new clothes like a disguise, his eyes shining with eagerness. But it was not Bowers that Kate saw in the dim light as she stepped through the doorway—it was the man who at intervals had been strongly in her thoughts all day, for whom she had unconsciously kept a lookout, impelled by an inexplicable desire to see him again and remove that perplexing, haunting sense of having seen him somewhere before.

Kate felt herself trembling when the man arose from the sofa facing the door. As if by divination she recognized some impending event of importance to herself. He was no casual caller brought by idle curiosity, she was sure of that.

There was in his eyes a tremendous hope, and a yearning tenderness in his face which seemed to draw her into his arms. It required an effort of will to remain passive as he approached.

Without explanation or apology, he put his hand under her chin and raised it with all gentleness, studying meanwhile every lineament of her face.

Kate watched the light of conviction grow in his eyes. Then she felt an arm about her shoulder and herself being drawn close against her father's heart as he exclaimed brokenly:

"My baby-girl, grown up! My Kate!"



CHAPTER XXVIII

THE SURPRISE OF MR. WENTZ'S LIFE

After an absence from Prouty of several weeks, Kate stepped off the train alone one afternoon and furnished the town with the liveliest sensation of its kind that it had known since the Toomeys had gone "on East."

Through the cooperation of the telephone and of breathless ladies dashing across lots and from house to house, the town, by night, had a detailed description of the clothes which had altered Kate's appearance beyond belief.

Mrs. Abram Pantin expressed the opinion that Kate's Alaskan-seal coat which, in reality, represented the price of a goodly band of sheep, was merely native muskrat rather skilfully dyed.

This verdict rendered before the Thursday afternoon session of the Y. A. K.'s, which had gathered to hear a paper by Mrs. Sudds upon the Ming Dynasty, afforded its members immense relief. Their fears, too, that the smart ear-rings Kate wore might be real pearls were assuaged by Mrs. Neifkins, who declared she had seen their counterpart in Butte for seventy-five cents.

But the fact had soaked into the average citizen that Kate had "arrived."

Among those who admitted this was Mrs. Toomey, who lingered at the breakfast table the morning after Kate's return, thinking of many things while she absently clinked her spoon against the edge of her cup. Jap had just left after an animated argument as to whether policy demanded the entertainment at dinner of the barber and his wife, who contemplated buying a sewing machine of a make for which Toomey was now the agent. Recalling the time when they had refused invitations right and left because there was no one in Prouty whom they had cared to know, a smile of bitterness came to her lips. Since then, she had eaten the pie of humbleness to the last crumb. She had become a self-acknowledged toady, a spineless sycophant, and for what? For the privilege of being invited to teas, bridge whists, of being sure of a place in the local social life.

This morning she was doubting the wisdom of her choice. Kate's sincere unswerving friendship might have been compensation enough for the anguish of being "left out." Yet she could not exactly blame herself, for who could have foreseen that things would turn out like this? It was not remorse that Mrs. Toomey felt, but regret for not arraying herself on the side which ultimately would have brought her the most benefits.

Mrs. Toomey never had been able to gather anything from Kate's expression upon the few occasions that they had met since the girl had called her a "Judas Iscariot" and left the house, but she recalled that at each later encounter she had experienced the same sense of uneasiness.

Was the feeling due to a guilty conscience, she asked herself, or was an implacable hatred that was biding its time, concealed by Kate's enigmatic face?

Mrs. Toomey concluded that this theory was farfetched—that it was not human nature to retain resentment for even a real wrong through such a lapse of years. Time took the keen edge off of everything, including the bitterest enemy. And yet, in spite of this comforting reassurance, there remained an inexplicable feeling of disquietude when she thought of the woman to whom she had proved an ingrate and a cowardly friend.

While Mrs. Toomey's mind was thus engrossingly occupied, Jasper was having his own troubles in the Security State Bank.

Stimulated by three cups of strong coffee, Toomey had left the house full of hustle and hope—a state which was apt to continue until about eleven o'clock when the effect wore off, and then he might be expected home with another iridescent bubble punctured, and himself gloomy to the point of suicide.

To-day Toomey's feet as a means of locomotion seemed all too slow as he covered the distance intervening between his home and the bank. His black eyes were brilliant with caffeine and the excitement attendant upon a large and highly satisfactory idea which had come to him in the night.

Having obtained a hearing, he rolled a cigarette with tremulous fingers while he unfolded his plan to Mr. Wentz. The banker listened with equanimity as he sat on the back of his neck with his fingers interlaced across his smart bottle-green waistcoat. Wentz's lack of enthusiasm only increased Toomey's eagerness. He leaned forward and declared with all vehemence:

"Look at the territory I could cover, if I had an automobile! With a sideline of fruit trees, I can get an order of some kind out of every family in the northern part of the state. It's a cinch, Wentz. I'm giving you a chance to make a good loan that you can't afford to let pass."

Mr. Wentz yawned with marked weariness.

"What's a bank for if not to encourage legitimate enterprises in the community upon which it depends for its business? There isn't a flaw in this proposition, Wentz! Can you show me one?"

"It's perfect from your side," Wentz agreed, "but where would we get off if every family in the northern part of the state didn't happen to need fruit trees or a sewing machine? We'd have a worn automobile on our hands and another of your familiar signatures on our already too large collection of promissory notes. Can't see it, Jap."

Disappointment as well as Wentz's words stung Toomey more deeply than he had been touched for a long time. A rush of blood dyed his sallow face as he grabbed his hat and started for the door. Opening it partly, he turned and flung a retort over his shoulder.

"I'll tell you what I think, Vermin!" Mr. Wentz winced. This perversion of his name had darkened his childhood days and he never had outgrown his antipathy to it. "I think," Toomey went on, "that you're shaky as the devil—that Neifkins' big loss put such a crimp in you that an honest bank examiner could close your doors! I'll bet my hat against a white chip that even a boys'-size 'run' could shut your little two by twice bank up tight as a drum!"

It was a random shot, but the president's face showed that it went home. He gathered himself immediately, but not before Kate who, on coming in brushed shoulders with the departing Toomey, had heard the speech and noted its effect.

So Neifkins had had a big loss! She grasped the full significance of it at once and exultation filled her heart.

Wentz looked at the "Sheep Queen" hard as she advanced. Astonishment and admiration were in his eyes when he recognized her at last. It was beyond belief that a mere matter of clothes could effect such a transformation as this. She looked the last word in feminine elegance. Filled with the wonder of it, he forgot for a moment the specter which had been his sleeping and waking companion for some weeks past and which had confronted him with the substance of reality at Toomey's taunt.

The banker went to meet Kate with an outstretched hand.

"You've been gone a long time; I've been wondering when we'd see you back."

"I've been east," she replied, casually.

"The trip's did wonders for you. You look—well, bloomin' isn't hardly strong enough. Miss Prentice, I want you to meet my wife—you must."

"Thanks—so much." A certain dryness momentarily disconcerted Mr. Wentz.

With a shade of chagrin Mr. Wentz returned to his desk, telling himself inelegantly that she was "feeling her oats."

Kate filled out a check in a deliberate and careful way and passed it in to the cashier, who had been noting the details of her appearance with unqualified interest. Her eyes had an increased brilliancy and there was a faint flush on her cheeks, but otherwise there was nothing in her impassive face to show how fast her heart was beating as she waited in the silence to learn if the blow she meant to strike had been well-timed or not.

She was not kept long in suspense. The swift consternation which made the cashier's color fade when he grasped the fact that the check was for the full amount of her deposit told her all she wished to know. The shadow of her enigmatic smile rested on her lips.

She was curiously aware of every sound—the ticking of the flat clock against the wall, the scratching of Wentz's pen, the steps of passersby on the sidewalk—as she waited for what seemed an unconscionable time for the cashier to speak. Panic was in his eyes when he finally raised them from the check. He stood uncertainly for a moment, then turned and walked quickly to the president's desk.

Wentz read it without lifting his head as it lay before him. He continued to stare at it as though he had been stunned, while Kate with her eyes fixed upon his face thrummed lightly on the counter with her finger tips. He had pictured something like this a thousand times, yet now that it actually had come he seemed as little prepared to meet it as if it were a crushing and complete surprise.

He lifted his head as though with an effort.

"Will you step here, please?" His voice sounded thick.

The cashier quickly withdrew while Wentz arose slowly and opened the gate.

As Kate sank slowly into the depths of a leather covered chair, the much-discussed coat, a fitting garment for a princess, with its ample cut and voluminous unstinted hem, swirled gracefully about her feet. Her gloves, her close-fitting hat with its well-adjusted veil drawn over her carefully-dressed hair—everything, to the smallest detail of the subdued elegance of her toilette—suggested not only discriminating taste but unlimited means with which to indulge it.

The Sheep Queen toyed idly with a gold mesh-bag suspended by a chain about her neck, and her face was sphinx-like as she waited for Wentz to speak.

The check fluttered as the banker picked it up at last and held it between his two trembling hands.

"Is it necessary, Miss Prentice, that you have this money at once?"

Kate replied evenly:

"No—I can't say that. Why?"

He hesitated and the color swept hotly over his face.

"It will be an accommodation to us if you will wait a few days."

"In what way?"

Her calmness reassured him and he replied with a little less constraint:

"This is a large sum for a small bank, and I don't mind telling you confidentially that the payment of this check will leave us a little—er—short."

Kate raised her beautifully arched eyebrows and questioned:

"Yes?"

Wentz drew a deep breath of relief.

"You see, I inferred that you would be leaving this with us for a considerable length of time and, anyway, I was sure that you would be considerate if it was not quite—not quite convenient to pay the full amount at once."

"What made you think that?" she asked softly.

"Oh, our friendly relations, and all that," he replied more easily.

"Aren't you taking a great deal for granted, Mr. Wentz?"

The timbre of her voice—the deadly coldness of it—made him start. He had the sensation of an icicle being drawn slowly the length of his back.

"Why, I—I don't know," he stammered. "Am I?"

"Do you recall any reason, as you look back, why I should grant this favor that you ask?"

Mr. Wentz distinctly squirmed.

"N-no."

"Quite the contrary, if you'll recollect."

"I hope," with a deprecatory gesture of his white hand, "you are not laying that up against us, Miss Prentice? Surely you can understand that a bank must protect itself."

Kate's eyes which had been violet were gray now.

"But not to the extent that you did when you tried to put the screws on me for Neifkins' benefit. With every means at your command you endeavored to take advantage of my necessity. And yet"—she gripped the fat arms of the leather chair as she threw off her mask of impassivity and cried in a voice that was hoarse with the emotion with which she shook—"that's not the real reason that I'm going to close your doors, that I'm going to wreck you and your bank and give the finishing blow to this already bankrupt town! It's for a woman's reason that I am going to take my revenge.

"You weren't content to make a pauper of me. No, you couldn't be satisfied with that, but you must hurt my woman's pride—you must cut me to the quick with your studied insolence, the disrespect of your eyes, your manner, your tone, your speech, every time that business brought me here!

"You couldn't resist the temptation to hit me when I was down. It was so easy, and there was so little chance of being hit back. Besides, it gave you an agreeable feeling of importance, after having been so long ignored or patronized yourself. That's why, Mr. Wentz," the words sounded sibilant through her shut teeth, "you're going to honor my check to-day—now—or suspend."

Wentz listened dumbfounded. The slight question which once had been in his mind as to whether or not she harbored resentment had long since been removed by her continued patronage and her even courtesy. He never had dreamed of such a vindictive, deep-rooted animosity as this.

When he could speak he half started from his chair and cried sharply:

"Miss Prentice! Kate! You won't do that!"

"Won't I?" Her short laugh was hard as with a nervous movement she got up, and walking behind it, laid her folded arms on the back of the big leather chair. "Do you think I've been planning and working to this end all these years to weaken at your first outcry? To watch you squirm is a part of the reward I promised myself, Mr. Wentz."

He thrust out a supplicating hand:

"Give us time—just a little time—that's all I ask! We'll tide over somehow if you'll—"

Kate interrupted bitterly:

"There's a familiar ring to that. My own words exactly, if you will recollect—and you sneered in my face." She looked at him with narrowed eyes and her voice was flint: "The time you'll get is the time it will require for me to go before a notary and swear that your bank is insolvent—twenty minutes—a half hour at most."

"For God's sake—" His face was chalky when he sprang out of his chair as though to stop her forcibly when she laid her hand upon the gate. "Isn't there some other way—some concession that we can make?"

Wentz did not breathe, in the tense moment that she seemed to hesitate.

"Yes," she flashed, "there is one way to save your bank; turn over to me your and Neifkins' stock, which will give me the control."

Wentz stood mute.

She demanded imperiously:

"Yes or no?"

"You—you would retain me as president?" he asked, heavily.

Her answer came with the decisive snap of a rapid fire gun.

"Certainly not. You demonstrated your unfitness to occupy a position of such responsibility when you allowed yourself to be influenced by a man of Neifkins' stripe, to say nothing of the lack of knowledge of human nature which you have shown in your dealings with me.

"The man who enabled me to block your game when you thought you had me down and out—not through any particular kindness of heart or chivalry, but because he had the gift of insight into character—the discernment to recognize a safe loan—will take your place. Abram Pantin, if he wants it, will be this bank's next president."

Wentz looked his amazement.

So that was the source from which her money had come! The bank's ancient enemy had taken what any other man in Prouty would have considered an extremely long chance. Wentz never had blamed himself, but this news made him wince. Pantin—the fox—rather anyone else! A rebellious expression came over the man's face. With Abram Pantin in his chair his humiliation would be complete.

"I won't do it!" he blurted.

"Then you'll suspend. I don't bluff. There isn't a plea you can make, or a single argument, that will have any weight. There's but this one way to save your reputation and your bank. Do you quite realize what failure means, coming at this time? It means the finishing touch to a nearly bankrupt town. It means that the temper of your depositors will be such that you're liable to be lynched, when they learn that you might have kept the bank open and did not. Think twice, Mr. Wentz."

"God, but you're cold-blooded!" He groped for the chair and sat down.

"You pay me a compliment," she answered, mockingly. "I take it you consent?"

He muttered sullenly:

"There's nothin' else. Yes."



CHAPTER XXIX

TOOMEY DISTINGUISHES HIMSELF

It had not been possible for Prentiss to go with Kate to Prouty but he had promised to come as soon as he could arrange his affairs. This had required something like two weeks, and in the interim the excitement attendant upon Kate's return had simmered down. She had not been in Prouty since, but Prentiss, having notified her of the day of his arrival, was now awaiting her appearance with an impatience that evidenced itself in the frequency with which he looked at his watch.

As Prentiss stood at the window of the Prouty House looking down Main Street, his face wore a smile that was at once amused and kindly.

So this was Kate's environment, or a part of it—where she had grown to womanhood. The very pavements seemed invested with a kind of sacredness because they had known the imprint of her feet.

It was little short of idolatry—this man's love for his daughter—representing as it did all the pent-up affection of his life, and as he had poured that out prodigally so he had lavished his wealth upon her, laughing in keen enjoyment at her dismayed protests.

"Why, girl, you don't understand at all! What is money for, if not to spend on some one you love?"

The weeks they had spent together had been a wonderful experience for himself as well as for Kate. There were times when he still could not quite realize that this astonishing young woman was his own flesh and blood.

With the experience and intelligent comprehension of a man, she yet was one of the most innately feminine women he had ever known—in her tastes, her small vanities, her quick and comprehensive sympathies; while her appreciation of all that was fine and good, whether in human conduct, the arts, or dress, was a constant marvel. Her childish enjoyment of the most ordinary pleasures was a constant delight and he found his greatest happiness in planning some new entertainment, receiving his reward in watching her expression.

But there was one thing about Kate that puzzled Prentiss, and troubled him a bit: he had observed that while she talked freely of her mother and the Sand Coulee Roadhouse, of Mullendore and the crisis which had sent her to Mormon Joe, of the tragedy of his death, of her subsequent life on the ranch, of her ups-and-downs with the sheep, of anything that she thought would be of interest to him, of her inner self she had nothing to say—of friends, of love affairs—and he could not believe but that that a woman of her unmistakable charm must have had a few. Furthermore, he found that any attempt to draw her out met a reserve that was like a stone wall—just so far he got into her life and not a step beyond.

She reminded him, sometimes—and he could not have said why—of a spirited horse that has been abused—alert for blows, ready to defend itself, suspicious of kindness until its confidence has been won.

Kate had expanded and bloomed in the new atmosphere like a flower whose growth has been retarded by poor soil and contracted space. Her lips had taken on a smiling upward curve that gave a new expression to her face, and now her frequent laugh was spontaneous and contagious. Her humor was of the western flavor—droll exaggeration—a little grim, while in her unexpected turns of speech, Prentiss found a constant source of entertainment.

He had told her of the Toomeys and the circumstances in which they had met; also of the letter endeavoring to interest him in the irrigation project.

"Do you know them?" he had asked, and she had replied merely, "Somewhat."

When questioned as to the merits of the project, she had answered evasively, "Of my own knowledge I know nothing." But he could not fail to observe the sudden stillness which fell upon her, the inscrutability of expression which dropped like a mask over her animated face. The name of Prouty alone was sufficient to bring this change, as if at the sound of the word a habit of reserve asserted itself.

Prentiss thought of it much, but contented himself with believing that all in good time he would have his daughter's entire confidence.

The afternoon train had been extraordinarily late, bringing him in long after dark, so the news of the arrival of this stranger of undoubted importance had not been widely disseminated as yet. In any event, it had not reached Toomey, who banged the door violently behind him as he strode into the office of the hotel. His brow was dark and it did not belie his mood. He was indignant, and with reason enough, for he had just learned that he had dined the barber futilely, since the ingrate had purchased elsewhere a sewing machine of a rival make.

As Toomey was about to take his accustomed seat, his glance chanced to light upon Prentiss's distinguished back.

He stopped abruptly, staring in a surprise which passed swiftly from incredulity to joy. "The 'Live One!' Prentiss, at last!"

If he had followed his impulse, Toomey would have cast himself headlong upon the newcomer's prosperous bosom, for a conventional handshake seemed inadequate to express the rapture that sent him to Prentiss's side in a rush.

"Mr. Prentiss, as I live! Why didn't you let me know?" It did not for a moment occur to Toomey that Prentiss was in Prouty for any other purpose than to see him.

Roused from a slight reverie, Prentiss turned and responded vaguely:

"Why, how are you Mr.—er—"

"Toomey," supplied that person, taken somewhat aback.

"Ah, to be sure!" with instant cordiality. "And your wife?"

"She will be delighted to learn you are here. I wish you had come direct to us."

The reply that he was going to his daughter's ranch was on his tongue's end, but something checked it—the recollection perhaps of the singular change which had come over Kate's face at the mention of the Toomeys' name; instead, he expressed his appreciation of the proffered hospitality and courteously refused.

Glad of the diversion while he was obliged to wait, Prentiss sat down in one of the chairs Toomey drew out and listened with more or less attention while he launched forth upon the subject of the project which would bring manifold returns upon the original investment if it was handled right—the inference being that he was the man to see to that.

It was the psychological moment to buy up the outstanding stock. The finances of the town and its citizens were at the lowest ebb—on the verge of collapse, in fact, if something did not turn up. Furthermore—he imparted the information in a voice lowered to a confidential pitch—he had it from a reliable source that the bank itself had been caught in a pinch and had been obliged to transfer its stock to a depositor to save itself.

Toomey expatiated upon the merits of the proposition and the subsequent opportunities if it went through, until a feverish spot burned on either cheek-bone. And the burden of his refrain was that never since Noah came out of the ark, "the sole survivor," and all the world his oyster, as it were, had there been such a chance to "glom" everything in sight for a song.

If Prentiss's eyes twinkled occasionally, Toomey was too intent upon presenting his case in the strongest possible light to notice it; nor did he desist until Prentiss displayed signs of restlessness. Then, not to crowd his luck, he let the subject drop and sought to entertain him with a running fire of humorous comments upon the passersby.

Toomey excelled at this, forgetting, as is frequently the case, that no one of those whom he lampooned was as fitting a subject for ridicule as himself.

During a pause he observed:

"By the way, there's a woman of your name living about here."

"So I've heard."

"No connection, of course—different spelling, but not apt to be in any case." There was a covert sneer in his voice.

"How's that?" casually.

"She—" with a shrug—"well, she isn't up to much."

Prentiss stirred slightly.

"No?"

Toomey detected interest and lowered his voice.

"In fact, she's no good."

Prentiss sat quite still—the stillness of a man who takes a shock in that way.

"They call her the 'Sheep Queen,' but we Old Timers know her as 'Mormon Joe's Kate.' She shipped a while back, and just come home all dolled up. Made a little money, no doubt, but any pinhead could do that, the way prices are. She'll never get 'in,' though."

"'In' where?"

"In society. For a little burg," with pride, "you'd be surprised to know how exclusive they are here." The speech showed what, among other things, the years in Prouty had done to Toomey.

A half-inch of cigar burned to ashes between Prentiss's finger-tips before he spoke.

"So—the Sheep Queen is ostracized?"

"Well—rather!" with unctuous emphasis. "My wife tried to take her up—but she couldn't make it stick. Found it would hurt us in our business, socially, and all that."

Prentiss raised his cigar to his lips and looked at Toomey through slightly narrowed lids which might or might not be due to smoke as he asked:

"Just what was her offense?"

Toomey laughed.

"It would be hard to say as to that. She came here under a cloud, and has been under one ever since. She has no antecedents, no blood, and even in a town like Prouty such things count. Her mother was Jezebel of the Sand Coulee, a notorious roadhouse in the southern part of the state; her father was God-knows-who—some freighter or sheepherder, most like."

"Interesting—quite. Go on."

Toomey did not note the constraint in Prentiss's voice and proceeded with gusto:

"She followed off a fellow called Mormon Joe, and trailed in here in overalls behind the little band of ewes that gave them their start. He took up a homestead back in the hills and they lived on about as near nothing as anybody could, and live at all—like a couple of white Indians sleeping in tents and eating out of a frying pan.

"A chap that was visiting me one summer brought her to a dance here at the Prouty House—did it on a bet that he hadn't sand enough. She came downstairs looking like a Christmas tree. Everybody gave her the frosty mitt and they had to leave."

Prentiss watched a smoke ring rise before he asked:

"Why did they do that?"

"So she wouldn't make the same mistake again."

Toomey laughed, and added:

"They took a 'fall' out of her every time they could after that. There was something about her that invited it," he added reflectively, "the way she held her head up, as if she defied them to do their worst, and," chuckling, "they did."

Prentiss thrust a forefinger inside his collar and gave it a tug as though it choked.

"This Mormon Joe—what became of him?"

The gleeful light went out of Toomey's face.

"He was killed in a shack down here."

"How?"

"A trap-gun."

"By whom?"

Toomey recrossed his long legs and sought a new position for his hands with the quick erratic movements of nervousness. He hesitated, then replied:

"They suspected her."

"Why?"

"She was the only one to benefit."

"There was no proof?"

"No."

"What do you think?"

Toomey deliberated a moment:

"I believe her innocent, myself," he finally replied.

"So she grew up out there in the hills without any friends or social life," Prentiss commented, musingly.

"There was always a camptender and a sheepherder or two about," Toomey answered with slurring significance.

Prentiss brushed the ashes from his cigar.

"And Prouty had no sympathy with her in her loneliness, but considered her a legitimate target—somebody that everybody 'took a fall out of,' you say?"

There was a quality in his voice now which made Toomey glance at the man quickly, but it was so elusive, so faint, that he could not be certain; and reassured by his impassive face he went on:

"Why shouldn't they? What would anybody waste sympathy on her kind for?" His thin lips curled contemptuously.