Under Handicap Read online

  CHAPTER VIII

  Day followed day in an endless round of range duties, and two weekshad passed since Greek Conniston began work for the Half Moon outfit.He admitted to himself over many a solitary pipeful of cheap tobaccothat Miss Argyl Crawford had been the reason for his coming out intothe wilderness. And he asked himself what good his coming had done. Hehad not so much as caught a fleeting glimpse of her since her fatherhad engaged him to go to work at thirty dollars a month. He did noteven know that she was still on the range, that she had not gone toCrawfordsville, where her father had a house, where he owned theelectric-lighting plant, the water system, and a general merchandisestore, and where both father and daughter spent many weeks each year.

  The range-house, although but a few hundred yards distant from thebunk-house, might as well have been in the next county. News from itseldom filtered to the men's sleeping-quarters. The foreman, Brayleynow, Bat Truxton before him, reported frequently to Mr. Crawford athis office in the big building, took orders from him there, advisedwith him. The other men went there only when they were sent for, andthat was not more than half a dozen times yearly, when that many.

  Conniston knew that Hapgood had stayed with the Crawfords two or threedays, resting up, as he overheard Brayley say with a fine scorn, andthat then he had gone on into Crawfordsville. Conniston supposed thatby now he had borrowed money and, if not again in New York, was on hisway thither. Of all else of the doings in the big house he was asignorant as though he had never crossed the desert lands between theHalf Moon and Indian Creek.

  Conniston most of all men working for Mr. Crawford felt that he couldnot go to the house. He had come to these people as an equal, as oneof their own station in life, even from a plane a bit higher thantheirs. When he had gone to work he had not thought that he was to beput upon the same footing as every ignorant laborer who drew his payfrom the owner of the Half Moon. He had thought that it would be alark, that he would come to the house and laugh with the girl over hisdays of rubbing elbows with thirty-dollar-a-month men. That he wouldbe, in a way, a guest.

  Now it was evident that they had forgotten him, that if they thoughtof Conniston it was merely to remember that he was one of the commonoutfit. And Conniston's pride told him that if they chose to ignorehim, to look down upon him, to shut him out of their world socially,he could do equally as well without them. Which was all very well, butwhich did not in the least hinder him from dreaming dreams inhabitedsolely by a slender, lithe, graceful girl with big gray eyes like dawnskies in springtime.

  The two weeks had not been wasted. He had learned something, and hehad made a friend. The friend was Lonesome Pete. Night after night,with a dogged perseverance which neither towering barriers in the wayof unbelievably long words nor the bantering ridicule of his fellowscould affect, the red-headed man sat at the table in the bunk-houseunder the swinging-lamp and conned "Macbeth." Upon long rides acrossthe range he carried "Macbeth" in his hand, a diminutive andunsatisfactory dictionary in his hip-pocket.

  One day Conniston and Lonesome Pete were riding together upon somerange errand. Lonesome Pete was particularly interested in his study,and Conniston asked him the question he had been upon the verge ofasking many times.

  "How does it happen, Pete," he said, carelessly, "that you're gettingso interested in an education here of late?"

  Pete did not answer with his usual alacrity. Conniston, looking athim, about to repeat the question, thinking that it had been lost inthe thud of their horses' hoofs, was considerably amazed to see thecowboy's face go as flaming a red as his hair.

  "Look here, Con," Pete said, finally, his tone half belligerent, whilehis eyes, usually so frank, refused to meet Conniston's amused regard,"what I do an' why I do it ain't any other jasper's concern, is it?"

  "Certainly not," answered Conniston, promptly. "Certainly not mine. Ididn't go to frolic into your personal business, Pete."

  "I mean other jaspers, not you, Con," Pete continued, after they hadgalloped on for a moment in silence. "You been helpin' me so's I don'tknow how I'd 'a' made such fas' improvement without you. It's likethis: here I am, gittin' along first-rate, maybe, like the res' of theboys, workin' steady, an' a few good hard iron dollars put away in asock. An' all the time with no more eddication than a wall-eyed,year-ol' steer. An' some day, in case I might creep a ways off'n therange, I ain't no more fit to herd with real folks than that samesteer is."

  "You're figuring, then, on leaving the range? On going to a city tolive? To cut something of a dash in society? Is that it, Pete?"

  Again Pete blushed.

  "Git out, Con! You're joshin'! But what I says is so, an' you know itas well's I do. Now, it's goin' on three months I'm down inRattlesnake Valley, where the Ol' Man's stringin' his chips on makin'a big play. He's goin' to make a town down in that sand-pile or bust atug; I ain't sayin' which right now. Anyway, he's already got a schooldown there, an' they make the kids go. I figgered it out, seein' asthem little freckle-nosed sons o' guns could learn readin' an' writin'an' such-like, by gravy, I could do it too!"

  The explanation was so simple, and Lonesome Pete had such difficultyin making his halting words come, and had such a way of refusing tolook at Conniston, that the latter began to suspect the truth.

  "How about the teacher, Pete?" he asked, quietly, innocently. "Theyhave a real fine teacher, I suppose? Man or--woman?"

  "Nuther! She's a lady! An' she's that smart as would make a manwonder! In case there's anything as that same Miss Jocelyn Truxtondon't know, I ain't wise to it none."

  "And--pretty?"

  Lonesome Pete's joyous grin was like a beam of summer sunlight.

  "They ain't none han'somer as ever wasted her time ridin' herd on abunch of dirty-faced brats. Say, Con," a bit doubtfully, "I wouldn'tmind showin' you--you ain't goin' to blow it off to the boys, areyou?"

  Conniston swore himself to secrecy and watched Lonesome Pete withtwinkling eyes as the cowboy put his hand deep into the inside pocketof his vest--the left pocket. First he removed the safety-pin withwhich the top edges of the pocket were held securely together. Then hebrought out a bit of cardboard wrapped carefully in a wonderfullyclean red handkerchief. Whipping the handkerchief from the cardboard,he held out to Conniston's gaze the picture it concealed.

  "That's her, Con. An' I'll leave it to you if she ain't in theblue-ribbon class, huh?"

  She was pretty, decidedly pretty. Very dark, evidently young, her facerounded, her mouth laughing, her eyes soft and big. And withal it wasa doll-like prettiness, a prettiness which was a trifle too consciousof itself; there was a bit too much pose, too much studied effect.Conniston thought that the girl's two chief characteristics were soclose under the smiling surface that he could not help seeing them,and that they were, first, vanity; second, weakness.

  "So that's Jocelyn Truxton, is it?" He handed the picture back toLonesome Pete, who, with a long, worshipful glance at it, restored itin its wrapping to his vest pocket. "Not the daughter of Bat Truxton?"

  "You wouldn't think it to look at her after seein' him, would you?"

  Never having seen either of them, Conniston remained non-committal.

  "Mrs. Bat Truxton was a Boston, Mass., girl, an' I reckon as how MissJocelyn takes after her."

  So there had sprung up between the two men a strange sort offriendship, a strange sort of intimacy. For even when he came to havea strong liking for Lonesome Pete, Conniston could never for a secondlook upon this illiterate, uncouth cowboy as an equal, could notrefrain from feeling toward him an amused and tolerant contempt. Ifpalmy days ever came again, he was used to thinking, he would find aplace for the red-headed man in his retinue of hired men. He couldhave an easy job at a good salary gardening about the Adirondackcountry home, or perhaps he might grow into a fair chauffeur.

  Gradually Conniston had learned how to ride the wild devils theycalled broken saddle-horses as a cowman should, and without pullingleather. With Lonesome Pete a patient tutor, he was even beginning tolearn how to throw a rope
without entangling his own person and hisown horse in it, and how to make it obey him and drop over the hornsof a running steer. These things came slowly and with manydiscouraging failures. But they served as a stimulant and anencouragement to the man who taught him and whom he taught.

  When he had been with the outfit for three weeks Conniston began tofeel confident that he could perform the part of the day's work whichwas allotted to him. His muscles had begun to harden so that they nolonger ached and throbbed day and night.

  Then one morning he saw Argyl Crawford. He had begun of late to tellhimself that he had invested her in his imagination with a charm whichwas not hers; that after the studied neglect that he had sustained ather hands and at her father's hands he was going to forget all abouther. And now, as she came unexpectedly out of the circle of trees,pausing upon a little grassy knoll just where his idle eyes wereresting, where the early sun found her out, making her a thing oflight against the dull-green background, Conniston caught his breathand told himself that she was in reality the queen of this land ofenchantment.

  She came out of the forest as a mountain Naiad might have done, herbeauty a glorious, wonderful thing, her grace the free, lithe,unconscious grace of the wild things of this country of hers,swift-footed, firm-footed, and, it seemed to the man who watched her,with a sort of shyness which belongs to the creature of the woodlands.As she paused, her hands at her sides, her head lifted with tip-tiltedchin, unconscious that any one saw her, not seeing the man whosquatted by the spring below the bunk-house, he felt vaguely as thoughhe were looking upon a nymph who, if he so much as moved, would turnswiftly and flash away from him into the depths of her shadowy forest.

  Having no desire to be seen just then, Conniston sat very still. Theother boys were breakfasting within the bunk-house. He had hurriedwith his meal, and now was washing a pair of socks. He had no wish tohave her see him doing this sort of work. He moved slightly so thatthe little clump of willows near the spring stood like a screenbetween them.

  He remembered suddenly that he had not had a shave for four days.

  Rawhide Jones, Toothy, and Brayley came out of the bunk-housetogether. They all saw her and as one man lifted their broad-brimmedhats. She called to Brayley, and as the others went down to the stablehe walked, lurching, to her. Conniston could not hear what she wassaying, but Brayley's heavier voice came to him distinctly. The girlwas asking something, and Brayley after a moment's thought agreed toher request. She turned, smiling at him and thanking him, and wentback through the trees toward the house. The big foreman came back tothe bunk-house. Conniston, his socks washed and now dripping, turnedaway from the stream and came to the clothes-line running from thecorner of the low building to a tree sixty feet away.

  "Hey, you, Conniston," Brayley called to him. "You're jest the man I'mlookin' for. Saddle Dandy for Miss Argyl an' take him up to the housefor her. An' take your own hoss along. She wants you to go with her."

  Conniston flushed up, suddenly rebellious. He had not gone to work tobe a lacky to Miss Argyl. He had no desire to lead her horse up to thehouse for her that she might swing into her saddle, leaving him tofollow her at due and respectful distance like a groom. Why had shesingled him out from the others to go with her, to play the part ofthe menial at her orders? Was it simply so that she, a Crawford, thedaughter of a man who for all that Conniston knew to the contrary hadnever been out of this little corner of the West and was in thebeginning a nobody, might say in the future that she had been servedby a Conniston, by the son of William Conniston, of WallStreet--boasting of it? If she crooked her finger must he run to doher bidding because her father was taking advantage of his temporaryexile to have him work for him at a dollar a day?

  "Well?" snapped Brayley, as Conniston stood frowning, making noanswer, "Did you think I said she wanted you to-morrow?"

  For a moment Conniston hesitated. Then, scarcely knowing why he didit, he turned upon his heel and went to hang out his wet socks. Stillmaking no reply to Brayley, he got his hat and strode off to thestable.

  Ten minutes later he rode through the circle of trees and to the frontof the house, leading Miss Argyl's pony. Miss Crawford, in khakiriding-habit, gray gauntlets, and wide, gray hat, already booted andspurred for her ride, was waiting upon the front steps. As she sawConniston ride up she nodded gaily to him with a merry "Good morning,"and ran lightly down the steps to meet him. He answered her a bitstiffly--with dignity, he would have said--and swung down from hissaddle to help her to mount. But before he could come to her side shehad mounted, and sat watching him as he again got into his saddle. Hesaw a vast amusement in her eyes as they omitted no detail of hisappearance, missing neither the stubby growth upon cheek and chin, northe unbuttoned vest with Durham tag and strings protruding, nor thenot over-clean chaps, nor the gun at his belt. And when her eyesrested at last upon his they were smiling, and his stubbornly graveand vacant.

  "You are going to ride with me?" she asked, quickly.

  He inclined his head.

  "Orders from Brayley," he said, quietly.

  "Oh!" And then, flicking her horse across the flank with her quirt,she turned away from the house and down the roadway which led by thepond and along which Conniston had come that day when he first saw theHalf Moon. And Conniston, ten paces behind her, erect, sober-faced,followed her like a well-trained groom.

  For a mile they rode at a swift gallop, the girl in front not so muchas turning her head to see if he were following, their way leadingalong the bank of Indian Creek and through the gloomy half-light whichsifted down through the mesh of branches of the big trees reachinghigh overhead. Then she left the road for a narrow trail which woundthrough trees and bushes down into the creek-bed and across it, comingout through the trees upon the dry grass-covered plain to the east.And now again she rode at a swinging gallop, and he followed her. Heknew that twenty miles ahead of them was Rattlesnake Valley. He beganto wonder if that were where she was going.

  Suddenly she jerked in her horse and sat waiting for him. AndConniston, grown stubbornly determined that if she wanted him she mustcall to him, stopped his own horse at a respectful distance behindher. She turned her head and looked at him wonderingly.

  "What is it, Mr. Conniston? What makes you act so strangely? Don't youwant to ride with me?"

  He touched his hat with mock solemnity.

  "I did not know that you wanted me to. I imagined that the hired man'splace--"

  "Oh, nonsense!" she broke in, impatiently. And with a swift smilewhich was so faint, so elusive that it was gone before he could besure that he had not imagined it, "I thought that you were going--thatwe were going to be friends."

  "That was ages ago," he retorted, bitterly. "Ages before I turned intoa dollar-a-day laborer. Before I went to work for your father, MissCrawford."

  "And that is nonsense. A man does a man's work, honorable work withhis two hands, and makes his own money, much or little. The mostindependent men in the world, Mr. Conniston, are men like Brayley andToothy and Rawhide Jones and the rest. Are you not as good a man asthese, as independent, as free to do as you like, as they are?"

  "Am I as good a man!" He laughed shortly. "Conceit, no doubt, MissCrawford, but none the less I really do fancy that a Conniston is asgood as the sort of men I have been herding with here of late!"

  She seemed not to notice his sarcasm, although his tones rang with it.

  "Your going to work for father--I think it was brave of you. If itmakes any difference at all it will be because you make it do so. Ishould be glad to have you ride with me as a companion if you wish."

  She pricked her horse with her spur and rode on. And Conniston, aftera brief moment of hesitation in which he began to see that he had beenacting rather foolishly, galloped up to her side.

  "I am afraid I have been boorish, Miss Crawford. You must forgive me."

  "In three weeks you have learned a great deal, but there is still agreat deal which you do not seem to have assimilated."

  "I have learned--" Ther
e was a question in his unfinished sentence.

  "You have learned to ride as a man must who is to do his day's work oftwelve, maybe fifteen, hours in the saddle. Surely that is something.You have learned to rope a steer on the dead run. You have learned torope your own horse, to throw him while you saddle him, and to ridehim when he gets up. You have learned to work."

  He stared at her in surprise.

  "How do you know what I have been doing?"

  She laughed, a happy gurgle of a laugh which made a man want to laughwith her without knowing the cause of her merriment.

  "Lonesome Pete has brought me news, and Toothy, and even your friendBrayley! Do you know," mischief lurking in the depths of her eyesabove the assumed gravity of her face, "I think that the boys areactually beginning to approve of you."

  "Flattering, I must say!"

  "I think that it is."

  "Even," he cried, incredulously, wondering if she could jest soearnestly--"even by such men as Toothy and Rawhide Jones and therest?"

  She looked at him steadily, frowning a little bit.

  "I don't know why you should speak of them so contemptuously. If, onthe one hand, they have had no great social advantages, on the otherhand have they not at least made men out of themselves?"

  "I had hardly looked upon them in that light," he answered, withsomething of the sneer still in his voice. "I had looked upon themrather as I had supposed you were ready to consider me, as machines ofthe type which ladies and gentlemen have to wait upon them, to do theunskilled labor for them, as common laborers."

  "Common laborers! I hate that word. They are men, aren't they? Theyare stanch friends and good enemies. They are true to their own lawsand to their conceptions of right and wrong. And they are strong andself-reliant and free and independent."

  "And still they are ignorant, unrefined, coarse. Not your equals, MissCrawford, and, I thank God, not mine!"

  "Not yours? Are you sure?"

  "You are serious--or are you making fun of me?"

  "I am very serious." There was no mistaking that when he looked intoher eyes.

  "They are the sons of Smith and Jones and Brown," he replied slowly."Smith and Jones and Brown before them were uneducated, ignorant,living lives with low horizons, seeing nothing, knowing nothing of thegreater world beyond their ken. They were a degree higher than thehorses which they mastered, the cattle which they drove to market. Andnow their sons, inheriting the limited natures of their sires, havegrown like weeds in the environment in which fate put them, with noknowledge of the other things. I think that it is answer enough when Isay that I am the son of William Conniston."

  He did not mean to boast. He merely stated a simple fact simply. Andthe scorn leaping up in her eyes, ringing in her clear voice as sheanswered him, startled him.

  "We know a man by his hands, not by his name!" she cried, her faceflushing with her eagerness. "Our admiration, our respect is alwaysfor the man who does things, not for the man whose father did them forhim. And now, because men like Lonesome Pete and Brayley and the restof the boys live a life which knows nothing of your world, you sneerat them!"

  "I'll admit," he granted, although stung by her hot words, "that thepoor devils have hardly had a fair chance. They are handicapped--"

  "Handicapped!" Her scorn was a fine thing, leaping out at him, cuttinginto his words. "Can't you see who it is that is handicapped in thegreat race here--here in the West? Here where there is a fight goingon every day, every night of the year, a battle royal of man againstmother earth? And the man who fights here successfully a winningfight, not stopping to ask at what odds, must be endowed with a greatstrength, a rugged physical and moral constitution, self-reliance, atrue, deep insight into the natures of other men. Those things myfather has. So has Bat Truxton, so has Brayley, so, for that matter,has Lonesome Pete."

  He had never seen her so tense, so vehement, so warmly impulsivebefore. Nor so radiantly beautiful.

  "Do you know," she was running on, swiftly, "how it happened that youwere selected to ride with me to-day?"

  "No. At first I thought merely because you wanted to humiliate me. NowI am beginning to believe that you sent for me to instruct me incertain matters relative to the brotherhood of man!"

  "And you were not right at first, and are not right now. I askedBrayley to let me have a man to help me with something I have to doover in the valley, and he said he would send you. Do you guess why?"

  "No. It was a kindness from Brayley, and I am not in the habit ofexpecting kindnesses from him."

  "Then I will tell you. He sent you because you are the only man he hasworking under him whom he could spare. _Because he needs all the goodmen!_"

  Conniston felt his face go red. He tried to laugh at what she said, toshow her that it mattered little to him what a man of Brayley's typesaid or thought. And he was angry with himself because he knew that itdid matter. Biting back the words which first sprang to his lips, hetried to say, lightly:

  "I'm afraid that I shall have to lick Brayley for that."

  "Lick him!" Again she laughed her disdain. "Why didn't you do it thatfirst night in the bunk-house? Unless," she challenged, "in spite ofall your blue blood and white hands and father's name, Brayley is thebetter man!"

  "What do you know of that?" His voice was harsh, his question acommand for an answer. "Who told you?"

  "I knew there was trouble. I asked about it. Brayley told me."

  He made no answer. There was nothing for him to say. She had Brayley'saccount of the fight, she believed it, and Conniston would not let herknow that he cared enough to give his own version.

  "I have not meant to be unkind, Mr. Conniston," she said, after amoment. A new note had crept into her voice with what sounded likesympathy. He did not look toward her. "And, after all, it is none ofmy concern how you think, how you carry yourself. But I did want youto realize just what that great handicap is. You said on that day whenyou first came to the Half Moon that you were going to make yourselfmy friend, didn't you? Do you mind if I talk to you now like a friend?You may call me presumptuous if you like. No doubt I am. As a friend Ihave a right to be meddlesome, haven't I?" She smiled at him asbrightly as if she had never said or thought the things which she hadflung at him a moment ago. "To begin with, then, I think that you havedeep down in some corner of your being a strength which might do greatthings, that nature intended you to be a man, a great, big, splendidman!"

  "Thanks," murmured Conniston, dryly. "I don't know what I have done todeserve--"

  "Nothing! You have done nothing! That is just it. Oh, you see, when Istart to meddle I do it very thoroughly! It is not what you have done butwhat you might do. And I was going to tell you what the real handicap is.It is not the being-without-things, without advantages, which hasrestricted the fuller growth of such men as Bat Truxton and Brayley. Itis something very different from that--essentially different. It is thebeing-raised-a-rich-man's-son! It is the being-born-something instead ofthe being-obliged-to-make-oneself-something!"

  "Theoretically, Miss Crawford, I suppose that you are right. Buttheory is only theory, you know. Frankly, would not a man be a fool towork when there is no need for it? Would not a man be a fool to eschewthe pleasures of life when fortune is ready to spill them into his lapfor him? Does not the rich man's son get a great deal more out of thegame than the poor devil who spends his life punching cows at thirtydollars a month? Even if I began to take myself seriously at this latehour and to take life as a serious sort of thing, too; even if Itucked in and fell in love with my work"--he shuddered for herbenefit--"what good would it do me? If I turned out to be the bestrider, the best shot, the best roper of steers, what then?"

  "My father," she answered, simply, "like every other man who does bigthings on a big scale, is always looking for good men, for foremen,for men like Bat Truxton, like Brayley, and for men who must do workfor which such men as Brayley are unfit--men who have got an educationand have retained their strength of manhood through it. You couldgrow; you could
step from one position to another, you could yourselfbe a strong man, a big man, a man like my father, like your father.Don't you see? You could be that sort of a man, a real man, a man'sman, instead of being the sort of man who is sent upon a girl's errandbecause none of the other men can be spared. You have done the naturalthing heretofore; the fault has not been yours. You have merely beenunfortunate in being too fortunate. But now, don't you see, it isdifferent. Now you are being submitted to the test. Why, even yourfriend, Roger Hapgood--"

  "Leave out the _friend_ part. What about him?"

  "He is taking hold. He is shaking off the listlessness which has clungto him ever since he was born. Father learned from him that he hadstudied law in college and got him a place with Mr. Winston inCrawfordsville. And he is working, working hard, and making good!"

  "You seem to know everything, Miss Crawford."

  "Oh, this is so simple. Mr. Winston is father's lawyer. Mr. Hapgoodhas ridden back to the Half Moon several times upon business for thefirm."

  Conniston frowned, little pleased. The Half Moon range-house, then,was open to Hapgood as a friend, as an equal. It was closed to GreekConniston as a day-laborer! And he knew well enough why Hapgood wasstaying, why he was working so hard. He had not forgotten thepale-eyed man's appreciation of the girl--and of her father's wealth.He knew that Roger Hapgood was working for much more than his monthlystipend, for much more than the love of the law.

  He whirled suddenly toward the girl, surprising her in her scrutiny ofhis frowning face.

  "Why do you care what I do?" he cried, almost fiercely. "Why do youtell me to go ahead, to do something? What difference does it make toyou? Will you tell me?"

  She returned his look steadily, answered steadily, not hesitating.

  "Because it seemed to me a shame for a man like you to be a pawn in agame all of his life while he might be playing the game himself,directing the pawns."

  "And there is no other interest?"

  "A friend's interest. For," smiling at him, "I believed what you saidwhen you told me that we were going to be friends."

  "We are." He spoke slowly, thoughtfully. "You have talked very plainlyto me to-day, and I can do no more and no less than to thank you. Youhave told me several things. Some of them are true. I don't know thatI agree with the others. You have a way of looking at life, at theworld, which is new to me. I must think it all over. I shall know howto think, what to do, to-morrow."

  She looked at him questioningly.

  "For to-morrow I shall have decided. And then I shall ask for my timeand quit, or--"

  "Or--?" she asked, quickly.

  "Or I shall tie into my work in earnest. I wonder which it will be?"

  "I don't wonder at all!" she cried, softly, her eyes very bright. "Andto-morrow evening will you come up to the house and tell me what youhave decided?"

  "I think," he answered her, quietly, "that I have already decided. ButI shall not tell you until to-morrow evening."