________________________________________________
_ "Our cattle were all played out," Saxon was saying, "and winter
was so near that we couldn't dare try to cross the Great American
Desert, so our train stopped in Salt Lake City that winter. The
Mormons hadn't got bad yet, and they were good to us."
"You talk as though you were there," Bert commented.
"My mother was," Saxon answered proudly. "She was nine years old
that winter."
They were seated around the table in the kitchen of the little
Pine Street cottage, making a cold lunch of sandwiches, tamales,
and bottled beer. It being Sunday, the four were free from work,
and they had come early, to work harder than on any week day,
washing walls and windows, scrubbing floors, laying carpets and
linoleum, hanging curtains, setting up the stove, putting the
kitchen utensils and dishes away, and placing the furniture.
"Go on with the story, Saxon," Mary begged. "I'm just dyin' to
hear. And Bert, you just shut up and listen."
"Well, that winter was when Del Hancock showed up. He was
Kentucky born, but he'd been in the West for years. He was a
scout, like Kit Carson, and he knew him well. Many's a time Kit
Carson and he slept under the same blankets. They were together
to California and Oregon with General Fremont. Well, Del Hancock
was passing on his way through Salt Lake, going I don't know
where to raise a company of Rocky Mountain trappers to go after
beaver some new place he knew about. Ha was a handsome man. He
wore his hair long like in pictures, and had a silk sash around
his waist he'd learned to wear in California from the Spanish,
and two revolvers in his belt. Any woman 'd fall in love with him
first sight. Well, he saw Sadie, who was my mother's oldest
sister, and I guess she looked good to him, for he stopped right
there in Salt Lake and didn't go a step. He was a great Indian
fighter, too, and I heard my Aunt Villa say, when I was a little
girl, that he had the blackest, brightest eyes, and that the way
he looked was like an eagle. He'd fought duels, too, the way they
did in those days, and he wasn't afraid of anything.
"Sadie was a beauty, and she flirted with him and drove him
crazy. Maybe she wasn't sure of her own mind, I don't know. But I
do know that she didn't give in as easy as I did to Billy.
Finally, he couldn't stand it any more. Ha rode up that night on
horseback, wild as could be. 'Sadie,' he said, 'if you don't
promise to marry me to-morrow, I'll shoot myself to-night right
back of the corral.' And he'd have done it, too, and Sadie knew
it, and said she would. Didn't they make love fast in those
days?"
"Oh, I don't know," Mary sniffed. "A week after you first laid
eyes on Billy you was engaged. Did Billy say he was going to
shoot himself back of the laundry if you turned him down?"
"I didn't give him a chance," Saxon confessed. "Anyway Del
Hancock and Aunt Sadie got married next day. And they were very
happy afterward, only she died. And after that he was killed,
with General Custer and all the rest, by the Indians. He was an
old man by then, but I guess he got his share of Indians before
they got him. Men like him always died fighting, and they took
their dead with them. I used to know Al Stanley when I was a
little girl. He was a gambler, but he was game. A railroad man
shot him in the back when he was sitting at a table. That shot
killed him, too. He died in about two seconds. But before he died
he'd pulled his gun and put three bullets into the man that
killed him."
"I don't like fightin'," Mary protested. "It makes me nervous.
Bert gives me the willies the way he's always lookin' for
trouble. There ain't no sense in it."
"And I wouldn't give a snap of my fingers for a man without
fighting spirit," Saxon answered. "why, we wouldn't be here
to-day if it wasn't for the fighting spirit of our people before
us."
"You've got the real goods of a fighter in Billy," Bert assured
her; "a yard long and a yard wide and genuine A Number One,
long-fleeced wool. Billy's a Mohegan with a scalp-lock, that's
what he is. And when he gets his mad up it's a case of get out
from under or something will fall on you--hard."
"Just like that," Mary added.
Billy, who had taken no part in the conversation, got up, glanced
into the bedroom off the kitchen, went into the parlor and the
bedroom off the parlor, then returned and stood gazing with
puzzled brows into the kitchen bedroom.
"What's eatin' you, old man," Bert queried. "You look as though
you'd lost something or was markin' a three-way ticket. What you
got on your chest? Cough it up."
"Why, I'm just thinkin' where in Sam Hill's the bed an' stuff for
the back bedroom."
"There isn't any," Saxon explained. "We didn't order any."
"Then I'll see about it to-morrow."
"What d'ye want another bed for?" asked Bert. "Ain't one bed
enough for the two of you?"
"You shut up, Bert!" Mary cried. "Don't get raw."
"Whoa, Mary!" Bert grinned. "Back up. You're in the wrong stall
as usual."
"We don't need that room," Saxon was saying to Billy. "And so I
didn't plan any furniture. That money went to buy better carpets
and a better stove."
Billy came over to her, lifted her from the chair, and seated
himself with her on his knees.
"That's right, little girl. I'm glad you did. The best for us
every time. And to-morrow night I want you to run up with me to
Salinger's an' pick out a good bedroom set an' carpet for that
room. And it must be good. Nothin' snide."
"It will cost fifty dollars," she objected.
"That's right," he nodded. "Make it cost fifty dollars and not a
cent less. We're goin' to have the best. And what's the good of
an empty room? It'd make the house look cheap. Why, I go around
now, seein' this little nest just as it grows an' softens, day by
day, from the day we paid the cash money down an' nailed the
keys. Why, almost every moment I'm drivin' the horses, all day
long, I just keep on seein' this nest. And when we're married,
I'll go on seein' it. And I want to see it complete. If that
room'd he bare-floored an' empty, I'd see nothin' but it and its
bare floor all day long. I'd be cheated. The house'd be a lie.
Look at them curtains you put up in it, Saxon. That's to make
believe to the neighbors that it's furnished. Saxon, them
curtains are lyin' about that room, makin' a noise for every one
to hear that that room's furnished. Nitsky for us. I'm goin' to
see that them curtains tell the truth."
"You might rent it," Bert suggested. "You're close to the
railroad yards, and it's only two blocks to a restaurant."
"Not on your life. I ain't marryin' Saxon to take in lodgers. If
I can't take care of her, d'ye know what I'll do ? Go down to
Long Wharf, say 'Here goes nothin',' an' jump into the bay with a
stone tied to my neck. Ain't I right, Saxon?"
It was contrary to her prudent judgment, but it fanned her pride.
She threw her arms around her lover's neck, and said, ere she
kissed him:
"You're the boss, Billy. What you say goes, and always will go."
"Listen to that!" Bert gibed to Mary. "That's the stuff. Saxon's
onto her job."
"I guess we'll talk things over together first before ever I do
anything," Billy was saying to Saxon.
"Listen to that," Mary triumphed. "You bet the man that marries
me'll have to talk things over first."
"Billy's only givin' her hot air," Bert plagued. "They all do it
before they're married."
Mary sniffed contemptuously.
"I'll bet Saxon leads him around by the nose. And I'm goin' to
say, loud an' strong, that I'll lead the man around by the nose
that marries me."
"Not if you love him," Saxon interposed.
"All the more reason," Mary pursued.
Bert assumed an expression and attitude of mournful dejection.
"Now you see why me an' Mary don't get married," he said. "I'm
some big Indian myself, an' I'll be everlastingly jiggerooed if I
put up for a wigwam I can't be boss of."
"And I'm no squaw," Mary retaliated, "an' I wouldn't marry a big
buck Indian if all the rest of the men in the world was dead."
"Well this big buck Indian ain't asked you yet."
"He knows what he'd get if he did."
"And after that maybe he'll think twice before he does ask you."
Saxon, intent on diverting the conversation into pleasanter
channels, clapped her hands as if with sudden recollection.
"Oh! I forgot! I want to show you something." From her purse she
drew a slender ring of plain gold and passed it around. "My
mother's wedding ring. I've worn it around my neck always, like a
locket. I cried for it so in the orphan asylum that the matron
gave it back for me to wear. And now, just to think, after next
Tuesday I'll be wearing it on my finger. Look, Billy, see the
engraving on the inside."
"C to D, 1879," he read.
"Carlton to Daisy--Carlton was my father's first name. And now,
Billy, you've got to get it engraved for you and me."
Mary was all eagerness and delight.
"Oh, it's fine," she cried. "W to S, 1907."
Billy considered a moment.
"No, that wouldn't be right, because I'm not giving it to Saxon."
"I'll tell you what," Saxon said. "W and S."
"Nope." Billy shook his head. "S and W, because you come first
with me."
"If I come first with you, you come first with us. Billy, dear, I
insist on W and S."
"You see," Mary said to Bert. "Having her own way and leading him
by the nose already."
Saxon acknowledged the sting.
"Anyway you want, Billy," she surrendered. His arms tightened
about her.
"We'll talk it over first, I guess." _
Read next: BOOK I: CHAPTER XIV
Read previous: BOOK I: CHAPTER XII
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