Lonesome Land | Page 2

hair and yellow-brown eyes to match, was going to
marry Manley--she had forgotten his other name, though the young
woman had mentioned it--and would live on a ranch, a cattle ranch. She
smiled with somewhat wistful sympathy, and hoped the young woman
would be happy; and the young woman waved her hand, with the glove
only half pulled on, toward the shadow-dappled prairie and the
willow-fringed creek, and the hills beyond.
"Happy!" she echoed joyously. "Could one be anything else, in such a
country? And then--you don't know Manley, you see. It's horribly bad
form, and undignified and all that, to prate of one's private affairs, but I
just can't help bubbling over. I'm not looking for heaven, and I expect
to have plenty of bumpy places in the trail--trail is anything that you
travel over, out here; Manley has coached me faithfully--but I'm going
to be happy. My mind is quite made up. Well, good-by--I'm so glad you
happened to be on this train, and I wish I might meet you again. Isn't it
a funny little depot? Oh, yes--thank you! I almost forgot that umbrella,
and I might need it. Yes, I'll write to you--I should hate to drop out of
your mind completely. Address me Mrs. Manley Fleetwood, Hope,
Montana. Good-by--I wish--"
She trailed off down the aisle with eyes shining, in the wake of the
grinning porter. She hurried down the steps, glanced hastily along the
platform, up at the car window where the faded little school teacher
was smiling wearily down at her, waved her hand, threw a dainty little
kiss, nodded a gay farewell, smiled vaguely at the conductor, who had

been respectfully pleasant to her--and then she was looking at the rear
platform of the receding train mechanically, not yet quite realizing why
it was that her heart went heavy so suddenly. She turned then and
looked about her in a surprised, inquiring fashion. Manley, it would
seem, was not at hand to welcome her. She had expected his face to be
the first she looked upon in that town, but she tried not to be greatly
perturbed at his absence; so many things may detain one.
At that moment a young fellow, whose clothes emphatically
proclaimed him a cowboy, came diffidently up to her, tilted his hat
backward an inch or so, and left it that way, thereby unconsciously
giving himself an air of candor which should have been reassuring.
"Fleetwood was detained. You were expecting to--you're the lady he
was expecting, aren't you?"
She had been looking questioningly at her violin box and two trunks
standing on their ends farther down the platform, and she smiled
vaguely without glancing at him.
"Yes. I hope he isn't sick, or--"
"I'll take you over to the hotel, and go tell him you're here," he
volunteered, somewhat curtly, and picked up her bag.
"Oh, thank you." This time her eyes grazed his face inattentively. She
followed him down the rough steps of planking and up an extremely
dusty road--one could scarcely call it a street--to an uninviting building
with crooked windows and a high, false front of unpainted boards.
The young fellow opened a sagging door, let her pass into a narrow
hallway, and from there into a stuffy, hopelessly conventional fifth-rate
parlor, handed her the bag, and departed with another tilt of the hat
which placed it at a different angle. The sentence meant for farewell
she did not catch, for she was staring at a wooden-faced portrait upon
an easel, the portrait of a man with a drooping mustache, and porky
cheeks, and dead-looking eyes.

"And I expected bearskin rugs, and antlers on the walls, and big
fireplaces!" she remarked aloud, and sighed. Then she turned and
pulled aside a coarse curtain of dusty, machine-made lace, and looked
after her guide. He was just disappearing into a saloon across the street,
and she dropped the curtain precipitately, as if she were ashamed of
spying. "Oh, well--I've heard all cowboys are more or less
intemperate," she excused, again aloud.
She sat down upon an atrocious red plush chair, and wrinkled her nose
spitefully at the porky-cheeked portrait. "I suppose you're the
proprietor," she accused, "or else the proprietor's son. I wish you
wouldn't squint like that. If I have to stop here longer than ten minutes,
I shall certainly turn you face to the wall." Whereupon, with another
grimace, she turned her back upon it and looked out of the window.
Then she stood up impatiently, looked at her watch, and sat down again
upon the red plush chair.
"He didn't tell me whether Manley is sick," she said suddenly, with
some resentment. "He was awfully abrupt in his manner. Oh, you--"
She rose, picked up an old newspaper from the marble-topped table
with uncertain