LITERARY MATERIAL

Connie wanted to see something out of the ordinary. What was the use of coming to the wild and woolly if one never saw anything wilder than a movie of New York society life, or woollier than miles of properly garbed motorists driving under the guidance of blue-coated policemen as safely and sanely as could be done in Chicago.

It was Julia who came to the rescue. She discovered, on a neighbor's porch, and with admirable socialistic tendencies appropriated, a glaring poster, with slim-legged horses balancing themselves in the air, not at all inconveniencing their sunburned riders in varicolored silk shirts.

"Look at the horses jump over the moon," she exulted, kissing a scarlet shirt in rapture.

Upon investigation it turned out to be an irresistible advertis.e.m.e.nt of the annual Frontier Days, at Fort Morgan. Carol explained the pictures to Julia, while Connie looked over her shoulder.

"Do they do all it says?" she asked.

Carol did not know. She had never attended any Frontier Days, but she imagined they were even more wonderful than the quite impossible poster. Carol's early determination to adore the Westland had become fixed habit at last. It was capable of any miracles, to her.

"How far is it up there?" pursued Connie, for Connie had a very inartistic way of sticking to her subject.

"I do not know. About a hundred miles, I believe."

"A nice drive for the Harmer," said Connie thoughtfully. "How are the roads?"

"I do not know, but I think all the roads are good in Colorado.

Certainly no road is impa.s.sable for a Harmer Six with you at the wheel."

"I have a notion to drive up and see them," said Connie. "Literary material, you know."

"I want to see the horsies fly, too," cried Julia quickly.

Carol thought it might do David good, and David was sure Carol needed a vacation. They would think it over.

Connie immediately went down-town and returned with a road guide, and her arm full of literature about frontier days in general. Then it was practically settled. A little distance of a hundred miles, a splendid car, a driver like Connie! It was nothing. And Carol was so excited getting ready for their first outing in the years of David's illness, that she forgot his medicine three times in succession, and David maliciously refused to remind her.

They all talked at once, and agreed that it was very silly and dangerous and unwise, but insisted it was the most alluring, appealing madness in the world. David, for over three years limited to the orderly, methodical, unstimulating confines of a screened porch, felt quite the old-time throbbing of his pulse and quickening of his blood.

Even the doctor waxed enthusiastic. He looked into David's tired face and said:

"I think it will do him good. It can not do him harm."

In the excitement of getting ready for something unusual, he developed an unnatural strength and simply could not be kept in bed at all. He slept soundly, ate heartily, and looked forward to the trip in the car so anxiously that to the girls it was really pitiful.

Then came a glorious day in September when the Harmer Six stood early at their door, the lunch basket, and suit-cases were carefully arranged, and they were off,--off in the beautiful Harmer,--off to the country,--to the mountains and canyons,--to climb one of the sunny slopes that had beckoned to them so enticingly. Almost they held their breath at first, afraid the first creak of the car would waken them from the unbelievable dream.

Always as they climbed a long hill, Carol reminded them that they were climbing a sunny slope that would lead to a city of gold at the top, a city where everything was happy and bright, and there was no sickness, no sorrow, no want. And looking ahead to the spires of a little village, nestling cloudy and blue on the plains, she vowed it was a golden city, and they leaned forward to catch the first sparkle of the diamond-studded streets. And when they reached the city itself, little, ugly, sordid,--a city of gold, perhaps, to those who had made a fortune there, but not by any means a golden city of dreams to the Arcady travelers,--Carol shook herself and said it was a mistake, she meant the next one.

Rooms had been engaged in advance at the Bijou, on the ground floor, for the sake of David's softened muscles, and they reached the town ahead of the regular Frontier Day crowds, allowing themselves plenty of time to get rested and to see the whole thing start.

Julia frolicked on the wide velvety lawn with all the dogs and cats and children that could be drawn from the surrounding neighborhood. David sat on the porch in a big chair, enjoying the soft breezes sweeping down over the plains, looking through half closed lids out upon the quiet shaded street. Carol crouched excitedly in another chair beside him, squeezing his hand to call attention to every sunburned picturesque son of the plains that galloped down that way. But Connie, with the l.u.s.tful eyes of a fortune-hunter walked up and down the corridors, peering here and peeking there, listening avidly to every unaccustomed word that was spoken,--getting material.

Quickly the hotels were filled to capacity, and overflowed to cots in the hall, rugs on the porches, and piles of straw in the stables. The street so quietly peaceful on Sunday, by Wednesday was a throbbing thoroughfare, with autos, wagons and horses whirling by in clouds of dust The main street, a block away, was a noisy, active, flourishing, carnival city, with fortune-tellers, two-headed dogs, snake-charmers, minstrels and all the other street-fair habitues in full possession. A dance platform was erected on a prominent corner, and bands were brought in from all the neighboring towns on the plains.

Connie was convinced she could get enough material to last a lifetime.

No detective was hotter on the scent of a trail than she. Never two cowboys met in a secluded corner in the lobby to divide their hardly earned coins, but Connie sauntered slowly by, catching every word, noting the size of every coin that changed possession. No gaily garbed horseman could signal to a girl of his admiration, but Connie caught the motion first, and was taking mental notes for future coinage. They were not people to her, just material. She loved them, she reveled in them, she dreamed of them, just as a collector of curios gloats over the treasures he ama.s.ses. She cla.s.sified them in a literary note-book for her own use, and kept them on file for instant reference.

When they went to the fair-grounds, early, in order to secure a comfortable seat for David where he should not miss one twist of a rider's supple body, they were as delighted as children truanting from school. It was the most exhilarating thing in the world,--this clever little trick on the sleeping porch and the white cot, on egg-nogs and beef juice and b.u.t.termilk. No wonder their faces tingled with excitement and their eyes sparkled with delight.

Connie was surprised that the girls were pretty, really pretty, with pink and white skin and polished finger nails, those girls in the silk blouses and khaki shirts, those girls with the wide sombrero and the iron muscles, who rode the bucking horses, and raced around the track, and did a thousand other appalling things that pink-skinned, shiny-nailed girls were not wont to do back home. They stayed at the Bijou, a whole crowd of them, and Connie never let them out of her sight until they closed their bedroom doors for the night. They talked in brief broken sentences, rather curtly, but their voices were quiet and low, and they weren't half as slangy as cowgirls, by every literary precedent, ought to be. They were not like Connie, of course, tall and slim, with the fine exalted face, with soft pink palms and soft round arms. And their striking saddle costumes were not half as curious to Fort Morgan as Connie's lacy waists, and her tailored skirts, and her frilly little silk gowns. But they were more curious to Connie.

She tried to picture herself in a sombrero like that, with gauntlets on her hands, and with a fringed leather skirt that reached to her knees, and with a scarlet silk blouse and a yellow silk belt,--and even her distinctly literary imagination could not compa.s.s such a miracle. But she was sure if she ever could rig herself up like that, she would look like a dream, and she really envied the cowgirls, who leaped head first from the saddle but always landed right side up.

People of another world, well, yes. But there are ways of getting together.

Connie talked very little that first afternoon. She watched the people around her, and listened as they discussed the points of the horses, the cowgirls and the jockeys with equal impartiality. She heard their bets, their guttural grunts of disapproval with the judges' decisions, their roars of satisfaction when the right horse won. She watched the cowgirls, walking unconcernedly about the ring, flapping their riding-whips against their leather boots. She watched the lithe-limbed cowboys slouching not ungracefully around the nervous ponies, waving their hats in greeting to their friends, calling loud jests to their fellows in the cowboy band. How strange they were, how startlingly human, and yet how thousand-miles removed.

Connie rebelled against it. They were folks. And so was Connie. The thousand miles was a barrier, an injustice. In order to handle literary material, she must get within touching distance of it. All those notes she had collected so painstakingly were cold, inanimate.

In order to write of folks she must touch them, feel them, must know they lived and breathed as she did. Why couldn't she get at them,--folks, plain folks, and so was she. A slow fury rose up in her, and she watched the great events Of the afternoon with resentful eyes.

Even when a man not entered for racing, swung over the railing into the center field, and scrambled upon the bare back of King Devil, the wild horse of the plains which had never yielded to man's bridling hand, and was tossed and dragged and jerked and twisted, until it seemed there could be no life left in him, yet who finally pulled the horse almost by brute force into submission, while the spectators went wild, and Julia screamed, and Carol sank breathless and white into her seat, and David stood on the bench and yelled until Carol pulled him down,--even then Connie could not get the feeling. She wanted to write these people, to put them on paper, and she couldn't, because they were not people to her, they were just "Good points."

Afterward, when they slowly made their way to the car, and drove home to the Bijou again, Connie was still silent. She saw David comfortably settled in the big chair on the sunny corner of the porch, with Carol beside him and Julia romping on the lawn. Then she walked up and down in front of the hotel. Finally she came back to the corner of the porch.

"David," she said impetuously, "I've got to speak to one of them myself." She waved a hand vaguely in the direction of the fair-grounds.

"One of them?" echoed David.

"Yes, one of those riders. I want to see if they can make me feel anything. I want to find out if they are anything like other folks."

David looked up suddenly, and a smile came to his eyes. Connie turned quickly, and there, not two feet from her, stood "One of them," the man who had ridden King Devil. His sombrero was pushed back on his head, and his hair clung damply to his brown forehead. His lean face was cynical, sneering. He carried a whip and spurs in one hand, the other rested on the bulging hip of his khaki riding trousers.

Connie stared, fascinated, into the thin, brown, sneering face.

"How do you do?" he said mockingly. "Isn't it charming weather?"

Connie still looked directly into his eyes. Somehow she felt that back of the sneer, back of the resentment, there lay a little hurt that she should have spoken so, cla.s.sed him with fine horses and cattle, him and his kind. Connie would make amends, a daughter of the parsonage might not do ungracious things like that.

"I beg your pardon," she said, sweetly, unsmilingly, "I did not mean to be rude. But the riders did fascinate me. I am spellbound. I only wished to see if the charm would hold. I have not been in the West before this." She held out her hand, slender, white, appealing.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "I beg your pardon," she said, sweetly, unsmilingly, "I did not mean to be rude."]

The man looked at her curiously in turn, then he jerked off his sombrero and took her hand in his. There was the contact, soft white skin of the city, hard brown hand of the mountain plains, and human blood is swift to leap in response to an unwonted touch.

Connie drew her hand away quickly, but his eyes still held hers.

"Let me beg your pardon instead," he said. "Of course you did not mean it the way it sounded. None of my business, anyhow."

"Come on, Prince," called a man from the road, curbing his impatient horse. But "Prince" waved him away without turning.

This was a wonderful girl.

"I--I write stories," Connie explained hurriedly, to get away from that searching clasp of glances. "I wanted some literary material, and I seemed so far away from everything. I thought I needed the personal touch, you know."

"Anything I can tell you?" he offered feverishly. "I know all about range and ranch life. I can tell you anything you want to know."

"Really? And will you do it? You know writers have just got to get material. It is absolutely necessary. And I am running very short of ideas, I have been loafing."