Читать книгу Scarlett of the Mounted - Marguerite Merington - Страница 6

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THE PICTURE GIRL

"Let your light so shine——" At this cue the much-converted Ikey passed Gumboot Annie's frying-pan about among the men. Instead of organ-voluntary, or tenor solo, such as obtains during the offertory in conventional places of worship, the Bully, at his own request, rose to make a few appropriate remarks. "I ain't convarted," he frankly announced. "Heaven ain't in it with a hot old hell of a whoop-up time in this here life, d'ye see? Even if ye hang fer it! But say, parson, you're all right. You're a sure square proposition! Boys, the collection goes, d'ye see?"

"You betcherlife!" with cordial emphasis acquiesced the boys, even as the orthodox respond Amen, while pouring gold-dust from their pokes into the frying-pan.

"Oh, I don't despair of you, Nicholas! I shall yet see you a pillar of the church!" The minister now was mingling with his congregation, shaking hands, hearty if not invariably spotless, right and left. "Thank you, lads, thank you! This will go toward the maintenance of a hospital, where you shall be cared for when disabled by accident, or laid up with a er—touch of—ahem!—scurvy."

"Booze," corrected Bully Nick, scorning the well-meant euphemism.

After a second, informal benediction from Maclane, Barney, considering that the execution of justice temporal had been waived quite long enough in favor of things pertaining to the soul, tapped Nick on the shoulder with cheerful authority. "Now, me man, put your best fut forward and step prattily to jail! The rest av yez"—he looked round on the group with impartial invitation—"can accompany us on giniral lack av principles!"

"Oh, but say—the stage is a-comin' in," remonstrated Bill, as the tooting of a distant horn echoed musically among the mountain passes. "There's like to be ladies aboard her. Can't we wait for to look upon the ladies?"

The suggestion obviously was popular, even to the extent of suggesting mutiny if not complied with, and Barney himself had some difficulty in delaying his consent in order to add value to it before permitting his mug to relax into a grin. "As a man in line av promotion to be nominated an officer and a gintleman, 'tis no less than me duty."

"Boys, boys!" Mops, who had been reconnoitering, ran back, breathless and excited. "There's gals aboard!"

"The hell thar is!" exclaimed the boys, delighted, and meaning no disrespect.

"A hull outfit o' gals," expatiated Mops. "And one, perched up by the driver, jest the swellest, jim-dandiest little female proposition you ever seen in all your life! Say, I wisht I hadn't left my dress-suit in cold storage!"

"Any one lend me a comb?" Any one being unable to oblige him, Bill ran a corkscrew through his curly hair. "Well, anyway, my face is clean!"

"All ye can see av it, for the dhirt that's on it," Barney encouraged him.

The horn blew a gay fanfare; the driver's whip cracked with more than wonted smartness; the bells on its four horses jingled merrily as the cumbersome old stage rattled into Lost Shoe Creek, and drew up before Gumboot Annie's hostelry to an enthusiastic ovation of hurrahs, cap-tossings, and gun-firings from the male populace.

A handsome girl, wearing her modish clothes with a too conscious effect of style, from her place on the box bowed pleased acknowledgments in all directions for the cheering, but at the volley of shots gave a little startled cry, which was taken up in louder note by her companions.

Doffing his hat, Parson Maclane came forward, with a reassuring smile. "Only a Klondike welcome, young ladies," he explained.

"That's what!" the men confirmed him. "A Klondike welcome!"

"How quite too utterly charming!" exclaimed the young lady. "Girls! Sarah!" she appealed to the others of the party. "Aren't they too dear and picturesque for anything!" That "they" were human beings and not part of the brilliant panorama seemed hardly to occur to her.

A score of pairs of rough but willing hands stretched up to help the speaker from her high throne, but the honor fell to Scarlett, or rather was appropriated by that masterful young man as, putting the other aspirants aside, he lifted her over the wheel and swung her lightly to the ground. Without waiting for her thanks he returned to his wood-chopping with a sense of one of life's minor miracles upon him. "By St. Bridget!" he was thinking, "but that's my picture-girl!"

When all the passengers had alighted safely the boys pushed their leader to the front. "Speech! Speech! Bully Nick!" they insisted. "Speech!"

"Take my hat off fer me," in an undertone commanded the champion shot and orator. When one of his lieutenants had hastened to comply, the Bully stood forth and cleared his throat. "Ladies, in the name of the district—and never mind jest at these presents what name the district bears—I regret I can't give ye the glad hand, through bein' a-wearin' of th' Government bracelets."

"The Government bracelets," repeated the beautiful young lady, puzzled, under cover of the guffaws with which his followers received Nick's initial witticism.

"Mary, love——" She appealed to the tallest of the girls who stood about her. "You are up in political economy?"

"I think he must mean some official decoration," glibly prompted Mary.

"That's it," corroborated Nick, unashamed, amid the shame-faced laughter of his followers. "Official decoration fer proficiency in gun-play!" He held up his handcuffed hands.

"Oh!" The girl and her companions recoiled instinctively.

"My dears!" The minister stepped into the breach. "I assure you, Nicholas here has the warmest heart, though at times he is a trifle—er—impulsive."

"Aye!" Nick nodded. "Impulsive, under the influence of bad liquor. Shot a chap recent when drunk, me and him alike. Not but what he desarved it all right, though the blamed Government won't see it in that light. But never mind them little personal details. Let me present the boys. Step up, lads. This here is Mops, our masher. Only hez ter look at a mess of pertatoes to rejuce 'em. Tuk a prize once at a beauty show, there bein' no other contestants, and the judge havin' been struck blind."

"Oh, stop yer joshin'!" growled Mops, as, with a red face, he nearly lost his balance in a bow.

"And Bill. Bill's our dude," explained the Bully. "Won't use nothin' but fashion-plates ter patch his breeches. Now, Bill, don't turn yer back on the ladies, else they'll see that what I say is true. And this here solemn guy is Sandy, who keeps everything that comes his way, except the Commandments, and takes whatever he can lay hands on, except a joke." A few more introductions having been achieved in the same style, "Well, well, I guess we're a rough, tough lot," concluded Nick.

"Nature's noblemen, my dear," interpolated the minister. "The dearest souls, except for an occasional regrettable—ahem——"

"Spree!" shouted the Bully. "But that, take it all in all, is a good sign. When bedrock's too smooth you won't find gold. Gawd knows we're tough—but when women comes among us—good women——" He broke off to pass a ragged sleeve across his eyes and gulp. "They're welcome as pay-dirt, and honored as queens."

"That's what! You betcherlife!" emphatically assented the throng.

"Thank you! thank you!" replied the beautiful young lady. "I must introduce myself. I come from New York. My name is Evelyn Durant——"

"'Rah, 'rah, for Evelyn!" shouted Mops, to his own surprise and the general admiration.

"And these young friends of mine"—Miss Durant indicated the six plainly dressed little maids who were drinking in these wonderful happenings, like children in a fairy dream—"their names are Mary, Ruth, Ethel, Kate, Effie and Gertrude, They have come with me for a holiday from the institution where they live. They are orphans."

A round of cheers was thereupon called for, for Mary, Ruth, Ethel, Kate, Effie and Gertrude, and clinched with Barney's flattering assertion, "An' sure this is the idayal asoilum for thim, and may they prosper and multiply galeor, for divvle a family in the disthrict can brag av an orphan of its own at all, more shame to us!"

"And this," Evelyn tapped a stout, middle-aged woman kindly on the shoulder, "is my faithful maid, Sarah."

Sarah having been duly cheered, "Sarah is nae bonny, but she micht be sonsy and of a savin' disposeetion," commended Sandy, cautiously, for which encomium, however, he was only rewarded by an angry shake of Sarah's stout umbrella, with a counsel to keep his cheek to himself or she'd know the reason why.

These graceful amenities concluded, "We have come all this way to visit my father," explained Miss Durant. "But it is far harder to find him than I should have expected, considering how well known he is. But I'm sure you can help me."

"Sure!" cried her hearers. "You betcher-boots on that!"

"And who may be your dad, lady?" inquired one. "Some crackerjack swell capitalist, I reckon."

At this, a gaunt, elderly man, who had kept in the background, leaning against a tree, and taking no part in the proceedings, shifted his position, uneasily.

"Well," said the young lady, with a conscious laugh, and the condescension of one who might boast descent from Santa Claus, "I suppose every one in these parts is familiar with the name of Matthew Durant."

"Matthew Durant!" The owner of the name did not claim it, and Scarlett and Barney, who, of the onlookers, alone could have identified him, recognizing the tragedy that was being enacted before them, also were silent. Meanwhile the prospectors, after scratching perplexed heads and ransacking memories in vain, denied all knowledge of the man.

"Maybe he warks his proposeetion as a company, leddy," suggested Sandy.

"Oh, dear, no!" Miss Durant flouted the notion. "My father is It!"

The man leaning against the Douglas spruce, his ragged cap drawn down over his eyes, groaned slightly, and turning away, looked toward the distant mountains, while overhead a bird trilled blithely.

"Let me see if I can describe him," his daughter was saying, in her sweet, assured young voice. "He is tall, erect——"

Durant's bowed shoulders bowed themselves still lower.

"He is clean-shaven——"

Durant felt his unkempt beard.

"He always dresses in the height of fashion. He's quite a dude, I tell him."

Durant laughed outright.

"And I think him extremely handsome!"

"Sure; judging by his darter!" cried Mops, gallantly. "Oh, I don't mean that!" he hastened to add, fearful of having been too free.

"Oh, but I don't mind your meaning it," laughed Evelyn. "But come, if you've never met my father surely you all know his mine—the wonderful Rainbow Mine."

There was a pregnant pause, and then the Bully spoke, slowly, impressively. "I never knowed an out-an'-out prospector that didn't own the wonderfullest mine goin'—only waiting fer a triflin' circumstance like capital ter come along from the East and open it up and put it on a payin' basis. Why, every man Jack of us owns a placer claim, or hydraulicking concession, a silver or a copper mountain or a glut of gold or summat that entitles him to be It. Why, this here little beggar," he jerked his head toward Bill, "he claims he owns an antimony proposition that if developed ull make J. Peerpunt Morgan take a back seat and Hetty Green look like thirty cents——"

"No 'if' about it. You betcherlife it will!" cried Bill, with warmth.

"Aye!" The Bully nodded his head, condoningly. "And Sandy here claims ter have an option on a——"

"A copper proposeetion, pure boanite," elucidated Sandy.

"Aye! Something that's a-goin' ter make Clark of Montana bust with envy some day," assented Nick, "and knock Newhouse of Salt Lake City inter a cocked hat. Why, tho' by nacher conservative an' shrinking I myself am calkilatin' on stackin' up the chips—I mean the books, ag'in Andy Carnegie, and pourin' oil on the troubled waters of John D. Rockefeller's poverty, unless he's run in fust! Take my word fer it, missy, every man within range of them bright eyes of yourn is a millionaire—ter-morrer! A stun-broke millionaire!"

"But, you see, my father is a millionaire to-day," explained Miss Durant, with amused tolerance. "A multi-millionaire."

Nick shrugged his shoulders. "Lucky father!"

"Why, that's his camp name," Evelyn exclaimed. "Lucky! He has often told me. Surely you all know Lucky?"