THE SHEEP QUEEN

The long mixed train crawling into the stockyards at Omaha, with its ice-encased wheels, its fringe of icicles pendant from the eaves, and snow from the wind-swept plains of western Nebraska piled on the roofs, looked like an Arctic Special.

Kate stood on the rear platform of the swaying caboose looking with wearied unkindled eyes at the myriad lights of the first city she had ever seen. Those eyes were dark-circled with fatigue, her face streaked with soft coal soot, while the wrinkled riding skirt in which she had slept was soiled and torn. Her fleece-lined canvas coat was b.u.t.toned to the throat, and she leaned negligently against the rail, watching from under the broad brim of her Stetson the twinkling lights increase.

It had been Kate's intention when she left Prouty to catch a fast pa.s.senger train and meet her sheep at a feeding station a few miles outside of Omaha, but the violence of the storm had changed her plans and she had remained to spend many tedious hours waiting on side-tracks, and this, together with the work of unloading to feed and water, and insufficient sleep, had brought her as near exhaustion as she ever had found herself.

There was no eagerness in the sheep woman's face, only the impersonal curiosity of a spectator at a display in which he had no part. She accepted as a matter of course the fact that she would be here, as she was at home, an outsider, an alien.

Kate saw nothing interesting or unusual in what she had done--it was all in the day's work. She was merely one of innumerable stock raisers bringing the results of months and years of patient effort to the great stock market of the west. As she looked listlessly at the dark silhouette of tanks and towers, skysc.r.a.pers and gable roofs, at countless threads of smoke going straight up in the still air from the great hive of industry and life, she wondered at her apathy, at the fact that there was no antic.i.p.ation in her mind.

Her face darkened. Had Prouty, along with other things, robbed her of the capacity for enjoyment? Had it crushed out of her the last remnant of the spirit of youth? Was she old, already hopelessly old at heart?

Her feeling toward the town gradually had crystallized into a cold animus, silent and unwavering, but now, as she suddenly whirled about and looked into the red winter sunset where, back there, beyond the Beyond, Prouty lay, a wave of hatred surged over her, to make her tingle to the finger tips.

Usually Prouty was personified in her mind as a hulking coward, bullying the weak, fawning upon the strong, with no guiding principle in life save self-interest, but to-night, as she visualized it across the intervening miles, snow-bound, wind-swept, desolate, it was in the guise of a shivering pauper, miserable in his present, fearful of his future.

Her grip tightened on the rail of the swaying caboose and all the envenomed bitterness of her nature was in her choking voice as she said between her teeth:

"Curse you and curse you and curse you! I hate you! You've robbed me of the happiness that belonged to my youth. You've destroyed my faith in human kind. Whatever of sweetness there was in my nature you have turned to gall. When my Day comes I'll strike you without mercy--I'll beat you to the earth if it's in my power!"

It was fully night before they were able to get right-of-way into the yards, and Kate drew a deep breath of relief when the grinding wheels finally stopped. She and Bowers swung down together from the high step to the cinder path which lay between their own cars and a train of cattle bawling on a parallel track. As they stumbled along in the darkness toward the engine they heard brisk footsteps coming from that direction.

"Low bridge!" Bowers warned jocularly as they drew close.

In stepping aside to avoid Bowers the pedestrian b.u.mped into Kate.

"I beg your pardon!" The voice was pleasant--deep.

Kate murmured a commonplace.

At the instant a brakeman hung out from the handrail of a car of the cattle train and swung his lantern. Instinctively Kate and the man with whom she had collided looked at each other in the arc of light. In their haste they had scarcely slackened their steps, and it was only a second's glimpse that each had of the other's face, but it was long enough to give to each a sense of bewildered surprise. The look they had exchanged was the look one man gives to another--level, fearless--for there never was anything of coquetry in Kate's gaze, and the impression she had received was of poise, patience and worldly wisdom tinged with a sadness in which there was no bitterness.

The man walked on a pace, stopped and swung about abruptly. Evidently he could see nothing in the darkness--he could hear only the retreating footsteps on the cinder path. Then suddenly, aloud, sharply, out of his bewilderment he cried:

"By G.o.d! That woman looks like me!"

Kate and Bowers walked on without comment upon the incident, but when they had reached the yard, Bowers detached himself from Kate's side and made a rush to the nearest light where, turning his back with a secretive air, he took from the inner pocket of his inside coat the worn and yellowed photograph that Mullendore had recognized in Bowers's wagon. He looked at it long and hard.

Kate was too engrossed in directing and helping with the work of unloading, counting the sheep that had smothered, looking after those that had been injured in transit, feeding, watering, to be conscious of the attention she attracted among the helpers and others in the yards.

There had been "sheep queens" in the stockyards before--raucous-voiced, domineering, s.e.xless, inflated to absurdity by their success--but none with Kate's personal attractiveness and her utter lack of self-consciousness. As she walked about on the long platform beside the pens, tall, straight, picturesque, with her free movements, her wide gestures when she used her hands, together with her quiet air of authority, she was the most typical and interesting figure that had come out of the far west for a long time.

When the last thing was done that required her personal attention, Kate went to a nearby hotel recommended by one of the employees of the stockyard. It was third-rate and shabby, unpretentious even in its prime, but it looked imposing to Kate, who never had seen anything better than the Prouty House.

The loose tiling clacked as she walked across the office to the clerk's desk. That person eyed her dubiously as she laid the flour sack containing her belongings on the counter and registered. He saw in Kate only a woman peculiarly dressed, with a tanned and not too clean face, dishevelled hair, weary-eyed, and alone at a late hour. He missed altogether the indefinable atmosphere of character and substantiality which a more discerning and experienced person would have recognized at once.

"Baggage?" curtly, as she returned him the pen.

She indicated the grimy flour sack.

A supercilious eyebrow went up.

"You'll have to pay in advance. Six bits."

Kate reddened.

"Is that customary, or because you don't like my looks?"

Taking umbrage at the asperity of her tone, he replied impudently:

"Well--I don't know you from a crow, do I?"

Kate's eyes flashed.

"You will before I leave Omaha."

He laughed incredulously as he took a key from the rack.

Kate followed him up the dirty stairway through a dingy hall to a still dingier room in the back of the house. Long and narrow, it looked like a kalsomined cave illumined by a lightning bug in a bottle when he turned the electric switch. She was too tired, however, to be critical and in her utter weariness lost consciousness as soon as her head touched the pillow and slept dreamlessly until the dawn came feebly through the coa.r.s.e lace curtain that, stiff and gray with dust, hung at the one window of the room.

She rubbed her eyes and looked in bewilderment at the unfamiliar surroundings. Then she remembered, and the trip with all its attendant circ.u.mstances came back. She speculated as to the probable amount the sheep had shrunken on the way, how they would compare with other consignments in the yards, whether the market conditions were favorable or otherwise, what the commission agents whom she had known through correspondence for many years would be like.

Her experience with the night clerk came to mind and her frown at the recollection of his insolence changed to a puzzled look as she thought of her retort. Whatever had prompted her to make the empty boast that he would know her before she left Omaha? It was as unlike her as anything she could imagine, but it had seemed to say itself.

She had a subconscious feeling that there was still something else of which she wished to think before getting up, and as she searched her mind it flashed upon her--the stranger who had b.u.mped into her in the dark. Of course, that was it! She heard his pleasant voice plainly and saw his face with great distinctness as revealed by the brakeman's light. While she recalled his features individually--his eyes, his mouth, his chin, and the meaning they conveyed, his manner with its mixture of friendliness and reserve, she mechanically rubbed her forehead with her finger tips as though the action might a.s.sist in catching some elusive memory that was just beyond her reach. Her brows knit in perplexity and she murmured finally:

"He didn't seem a stranger, somehow--and yet--he was, of course. It would not be possible for me ever to forget a man like that. It seemed as if--" there was bewilderment in her face as she laid her hand upon her heart--"as if, somehow, I knew him here."

Kate's belief that no better sheep of their cla.s.s than hers would be found in the stockyards was justified by subsequent events. Her shipment not only "topped the market," but she received for her yearling lambs fourteen dollars and sixty-five cents a head--the highest paid since the Civil War. This high rate was due not only to European disturbances, but to the quality and condition of the sheep; and, therefore, apart from the attention which she naturally would have attracted, she was, as the owner, an object of interest in the yards as well as in the stock exchange offices and the bank.

Basking in the reflected sunshine of his employer's success, Bowers came as near strutting as was possible for one of his retiring temperament.

Kate was finding a new experience in her meeting with the members of the firm to which she had consigned her sheep, and others with whom her business brought her in contact about the crowded Exchange. These prosperous, clean-cut men, alert, incisive of speech and thought, were an unfamiliar type. Their undisguised approbation, their respect, their eagerness to be kind brought a new sensation to Kate, who had grown up and lived in an atmosphere of prejudice. There were moments when the tears were absurdly close to her eyes.

Aside from the circ.u.mstances which in any event would have attracted more than a little attention to Kate, the extent of the recognition and the courtesy extended to her was a personal triumph. Her simplicity and good sense, her reserve, together with a kind of timid, questioning friendliness, her unconsciousness of being in any way unusual, made her an instantaneous and complete success with those she met the following day, and a celebrity in the yards.

Her business was finished within a few hours and when she made her adieu, Kate looked for Bowers to tell him that she was leaving for Prouty on a night train, presuming that he would wish to do likewise.

But Bowers appeared to have vanished as entirely as though he had been shanghaied and was a hundred miles at sea. It was singular that he had not first learned her plans before leaving the stockyards.

The omission hurt Kate, for they had talked much of what they would do and see when they reached Omaha. Bowers, with his superior knowledge of city life, was to show her about; they were to dine together in one of the best restaurants, to see a play and look in the shops. Kate never had been on a street car or in a "machine," so she had counted on him to pilot her from South Omaha to the city proper. Disappointed and hurt by Bowers's neglect, she wandered aimlessly about the streets in the vicinity of her hotel, stopping occasionally to look at the cheap wares displayed in the windows of the small shops of South Omaha.

The hurrying pa.s.sersby slackened their steps to stare at her in candid interest, and she wondered if it were possible that her conspicuousness had anything to do with Bowers's mysterious disappearance. It seemed an ungenerous thought, but how else account for it, knowing as she did that he had no friends, no business in Omaha, and in the past there never had been a time when he had not preferred her society to that of everyone else?

The elation consequent upon her day of triumph gradually oozed out, to be replaced by the sense of dreariness that comes from being alone in a crowd. Then, too, she had a feeling of contempt for herself for the swift dreams of something different aroused by the day's events.

Optimism had come to be synonymous with weakness to Kate. Now, as she stared indifferently at a display of tawdry blouses, she was asking herself if she had not yet learned her lesson, but that upon the strength of a little ephemeral happiness she must needs begin and build air castles again.