If signs and omens meant anything at all, Eve Marsham and Will Henderson were about to embark on a happy and prosperous married life.

So said the women of Barnriff on the day fixed for the wedding. The feminine heart of Barnriff was a superst.i.tious organ. It loved and hugged to itself its belief in forebodings and portents. It never failed to find the promise of disaster or good-fortune in the trivialities of its daily life. It was so saturated with superst.i.tion that, on the morning of the wedding, every woman in the place was on the lookout for some recognized sign, and, finding none, probably invented one.

And the excitement of it all. The single-minded, wholesome delight in the thought of this wedding was as refreshing as the crisp breezes of a first bright spring day. To a woman they reveled in the thought. It was the first wedding actually to take place in the village for over seven years. Everybody marrying during that period had elected to seek the consummation of their happiness elsewhere. And as a consequence of this enthusiasm, there was a surplus of help in getting the meeting-room suitably clad for the occasion, and the preparations for the "sociable" and dance which were to follow the ceremony.

Was there ever such a day in Barnriff? the women asked each other.

None of them remembered one. Then look at the day itself. True it was the height of summer; but then who had not seen miserable weather in summer? Look at the sun gleaming out of a perfect azure.

Mrs. Crombie, a florid dame of adequate size, if of doubtful dignity to fill her position as spouse of Barnriff's first citizen, dragged Mrs. Horsley, the lay preacher's wife, through the door of the Mission Room, in which, with the others, they were both working at the decorations, to view the sky.

"Look at it, my dear!" she cried enthusiastically. "Was there ever a better omen for the poor dear? Not a cloud _anywhere_. Not one. And it's deep blue, too; none of your steel blues, or one of them fady blues running to white. Say, ain't she lucky? Now, when Crombie took me the heavens was just pouring. Everybody said 'Tears' prompt enough, and with reason. That's what _they_ said. But me and Crombie has never shed a tear; no, not one. We've just laffed our way clear through to this day, we have. Well, I won't say Crombie does a heap of laffing, but you'll take my meaning."

And Carrie Horsley took it. She would have agreed to anything so long as she could get a chance to empty her reservoirs of enthusiasm into the Barnriff sea.

"You sure are a lucky woman, Kate. Maybe the rain wasn't an omen for you at all. Maybe it was for the folks that _didn't_ marry on that day. You see, it's easy reading these things wrong. Now I never read omens wrong, an' the one I see this morning when I was bathin' my little Sammy boy was dead sure. You see, I got to bathe him every morning for his spots, which is a heap better now. And I'm real glad, for Abe has got them spots on his mind. He guessed it was my blood out of order. Said I needed sulphur in my tea. I kicked at that, an'

said he'd need to drink it, too. An', as he allowed he'd given up tea on account of his digestion, nothing come of it. Of course I knew Sammy boy's spots was on'y a teething rash, but men is so queer; spechully if the child's the first, and a boy. Now what----"

"And the omen, dear?" inquired Mrs. Crombie, who had all a woman's interest in babies, but was just then ensnared in the net of superst.i.tion which held all Barnriff.

"The omen? Oh, yes, I was coming to that. You see, as I said I can read them, an' this is one that never fails, never. I've _proved it_.

When you prove an omen, stick to it, I says--and it pays. Now, this morning I set my stockings on the wrong--ahem--legs, and not one, but _both_ of them was inside out. There's bad luck, as you might say. And folks say that to escape it you must keep 'em that ways all day. But I changed 'em! Yes, mam, I changed 'em right in the face of misfortune, as you might say. And why? you ask. Because I've done it before, and nothing come of it. And how did I change 'em? you ask. Why, I stood to my knees in Sammy's bath water, an' then told Abe I'd got my feet wet bathing him. He says change 'em right away, Carrie, he says, and, him being my man, why I just changed 'em, seein' I swore to obey him at the altar."

"Very wise," observed Kate Crombie, sapiently. "But this omen for Eve----?"

"To be sure. I was just coming to it. Well, it wasn't much, as you might say, but I've proved it before. It come when I was ladling out Abe's cereal--he always has a cereal for breakfast. He says it eases his tubes when he preaches for the minister--well, it come as I was ladling out his cereal; it was oatmeal porridge, Scotch--something come over me, an' my arm shook. It was most unusual. Well, some of the cereal dropped right on to the floor. Kate Crombie, that porridge dropped, an' when I looked there was a ring on the floor, a ring, my dear. A wedding-ring of porridge, as you might say. Did I call Abe's attention to it? I says, 'Abe,' I says, 'look!' He looked. And not getting my meaning proper, he says, 'Call the dog an' let him lick it up!' With that I says, 'Abe, ain't you got eyes?' And he being slow in some things guessed he had. Then seeing I was put about some, he says, 'Carrie,' he says, 'what d'ye mean?' I see he was all of a quiver then, and feeling kind of sorry for his ignorance I just shrugged at him. 'Marriage bed!' says I. 'And,' I says, feeling he hadn't quite got it, 'in Barnriff.' If that wasn't Eve's good luck, why, I ask you."

"And when you were bathing----"

"Oh, that--that was another," Carrie replied hastily. "I'll tell you----"

But Kate heard herself called away at that moment, and hurried back into the hall. Her genius for administration was the ruling power in the work of decoration, and the enthusiasm of the helpers needed her controlling hand to get the work done by noon, which was the time fixed for the wedding.

But omen was the talk everywhere; it was impossible to avoid it. Every soul in the place had her omen. Jane Restless had a magpie. That very morning the bird had stolen a leaden plummet belonging to Restless and carried it to her cage, where she promptly set to work to hatch it out. And she fought when Zac went to take it away. She made such a racket when it was gone that Jane was sorry, and picked out a small chicken's egg and put it into the bird's cage. "And, my dears," she concluded triumphantly, "the langwidge that bird used trying to cover up all that egg was simply awful. What about that for luck? A magpie sittin' on a wedding-day!"

But, perhaps, of the whole list of omens that happened that morning, Pretty Wilkes, the baker's wife, held the greatest interest for them all. She was a woman whose austerity was renowned in the village, and Wilkes was generally considered something of a hero. Her man had won seventy dollars at poker the previous night, and had got very drunk in the process. And being well aware of the vagaries of his wife's sense of conjugal honor, had, with a desperate drunken cunning, bestowed it over night in the coal-box, well knowing that it was one of his many domestic pleasures to have the honor of lighting the cook-stove for his spouse every morning. "And would you believe it, girls?" she cried ecstatically. "If it hadn't have been Eve's wedding-day, and I'd got to bake cakes for the sociable, and so had to be up at three this very morning, while he was still dreaming he was a whiskey trust or some other drunken delusion, I'd sure never have seen that wad nor touched five cents of it, he's that close. Say, girls," she beamed, "I never said a word to Jake for getting soused, not a word. And I let him sleep right on, an' when he woke to light fires, and start baking, I just give him a real elegant breakfast with cream in his coffee, an'

asked him if he'd like a bottle of rye for his head. But say, I never see him shovel coal harder in my life than he did in that coal-box after breakfast. I'd like to gamble he's still shovelin' it."

It certainly was a gala day in Barnriff. The festivity had even penetrated to the veins of Silas Rocket, and possessed him of an atmosphere which "let him in" to the extent of three rounds of drinks to the boys before eleven o'clock. The men for the most part took a long time with their morning ablutions. But the effect was really impressive and quite worth the extra trouble. The result so lightened up the dingy village, that some of them, one realized, had considerable pretensions to good looks. And a further curious thing about this cleansing process was that it affected their att.i.tude toward each other. Their talk became less familiar, a wave of something almost like politeness set in. It suggested a clean starched shirt just home from the laundry. They walked about without their customary slouch, and each man radiated an atmosphere of conscious rect.i.tude that became almost importance. Peter Blunt, talking to Doc Crombie, said he'd never seen so many precise creases in broadcloth since he'd lived in Barnriff.

There was no business to be done that day. Even Smallbones was forced to keep his doors shut, though not without audible protest. He a.s.serted loudly that Congress should be asked to pa.s.s a law preventing marriages taking place in mercantile centres.

No one saw the bride and bridegroom that morning except Peter Blunt and Annie Gay. Annie was acting as Eve's maid for the occasion. She positively refused to let the girl dress herself, and though she could not be her bridesmaid, had expressed her deliberate intention of being her strong support. She and Eve had worked together on the wedding dress, which was of simple white lawn. They had discussed together the trousseau, and made it. They had talked and talked together over the whole thing for two months, and she had handed Eve so much advice out of her store of connubial wisdom, that she was not going to give up her place now.

So it was arranged that Gay was to give Eve away, and Annie was to be ready at the girl's elbow. That was how Annie put it. And no one but herself knew quite what she meant. However, it seemed to be perfectly satisfactory to Eve, and their preparations continued, a whirl of delight to them both.

Peter Blunt was Will's best man. And he found himself left with nothing much to do but smile upon inquirers after the bridegroom on the eventful day. His other duties were wrested from him by anybody and everybody in the place, which was a matter of considerable relief, although he was willing enough. But there was one other duty which could not be s.n.a.t.c.hed from him, and it was one that weighed seriously on his kindly mind. It was the care of the wedding-ring. That, and the fear lest he should not produce it at exactly the right moment, gave him much cause for anxiety. Mrs. Gay had done her duty by him. She had marked the place in the service which he must study. And he had studied earnestly. But as the hour of the wedding approached his nerves tried him, and between fingering the ring in his waistcoat pocket and repeating his "cues" over to himself, he reached a painful condition of mental confusion which bordered closely on a breakdown.

At half-past eleven the village was abustle with people emerging from their houses. It was Gay who sighed as he surveyed the throng. Not a soul but had a broad smile on his or her face. And what with that, and the liberal use of soap, such an atmosphere of health had been arrived at that he pictured in his mind the final winding up of his affairs as an undertaker.

Then came the saunter over to the Mission Room. Everybody sauntered; it was as if they desired to prolong the sensation. Besides, the women required to look about them--at other women--and the men followed in their wake, feeling that in all such affairs they acknowledged the feminine leadership. They felt that somehow they were there only on sufferance, a necessary evil to be pushed into the background, like any other domestic skeleton.

The Mission Room was packed, and the rustle of starched skirts, and the cleanly laundry atmosphere that pervaded the place was wonderfully wholesome. The gathering suggested nothing so much as simple human nature dipped well in the purifying soap-suds of sympathy, rubbed out on the washing board of religious emotion, and ironed and goffered to a proper sheen of wholesome curiosity. They were a.s.sembled there to witness the launching of a sister's bark upon the matrimonial waters, and in each and every woman's mind there were thoughts picturing themselves in a similar position. The married women reflected on past scenes, while the maids among them possibly contemplated the time when that ceremonial would be performed with them as the central interest.

The happiness was not all Eve's, it was probably shared by the majority of the women present. She was the object that conjured their minds from the dull monotony of their daily routine to realms of happy fancy. And the picture was drawn in a setting of Romance, with Love well in the foreground, and the guardian angel of Perfect Happiness hovering over all. No doubt somewhere in the picture a man was skulking, but even in the light of matrimonial experience this was not sufficient to spoil the full enjoyment of those moments.

The bridegroom arrived. Yes, he was certainly good-looking in his new suit from "down East." Dressed as he was he did not belong to Barnriff. He looked what he had been brought up, of an altogether different cla.s.s to the folks gathered in the room.

One or two of the matrons shook their heads. They did not altogether approve of him. He was well enough known for a certain unsteadiness; then, too, there was a boyishness about his look, an irresponsibility which was not general among the hard features of the men they knew.

Most of these thought that Eve was rather throwing herself away. They all believed that she would have done far better to have chosen Jim Thorpe.

Then came the bride, and necks craned and skirts rustled, and audible whisperings were in the air. Annie Gay, following behind, heard and saw, and a thrill of delight brought tears to her sympathetic eyes.

She knew how pretty Eve was. Had she not dressed her? Had she not feasted her eyes on her all the morning? Had she not been a prey to a good honest feminine envy?

And Eve's dress was almost as pretty as herself. There were just a few touches of a delicate pink on the white lawn to match her own warmth of coloring. Her gentle eyes were lowered modestly as she walked through the crowd, but if their pretty brown was hidden from the public gaze her wealth of rich, warm hair was not, and Eve's hair was the delight and envy of every woman in Barnriff. Yes, they were all very, very pleased with her, particularly as she, being a dressmaker with all sorts of possibilities in the way of a wedding-dress within her reach, had elected to wear a dress which any one of them could have afforded, any one of them had possibly worn in her time.

The ceremony proceeded with due solemnity. The minister was all sympathetic unction, and was further a perfect model of dignified patience when Peter Blunt finally scrambled the ring into the bridegroom's hand several lines later than was his "cue," but in time to save himself from utter disgrace. And the end came emotionally, as was only to be expected in such a community. Kate Crombie, being leader of the village society, started it. She promptly laid her head on Jake Wilkes' shoulder and sniveled. Nor was it until he turned his head and fumbled out awkward words of consolation to her, that the reek of stale rye warned her of her mistake, and she promptly came to and looked for her husband to finish it out on.

Annie Gay wept happy tears, and laughed and cried joyously. Jane Restless borrowed her man's bandana and blew her nose like a steam siren, declaring that the heat always gave her catarrh. Carrie Horsley guessed she'd never seen so pretty a bride so elegantly dressed, and wept down the front of Eve's spotless lawn the moment she got near enough. Mrs. Rust sniffed audibly, and hoped she would be happy, but warned her strongly against the tribulations of an ever-increasing family, and finally flopped heavily into a chair calling loudly for brandy.

It was, in Doc Crombie's words, "the old hens who got emotions." It was only the younger women, the spinsters, who laughed and flirted with the men, giggling hysterically at the sallies ever dear at a matrimonial function which flew from lip to lip. But then, as Pretty Wilkes told her particular crony Mrs. Rust later on at the sociable--

"It was the same with us, my dear," she said feelingly. "Speaking personal, before I was married, I'd got the notion, foolish-like, that every man had kind o' got loose out of heaven, an' we women orter set up a gilded cage around 'em, an' feed 'em cookies, an' any other elegant fancy truck we could get our idiot hands on. They was a sort of idol to be bowed an' sc.r.a.ped to. They was the rulers of our destiny, the lords of the earth. But now I'm of the opinion that the best man among 'em couldn't run a low down hog ranch without disgracin' hisself."

It was not till after the ceremony was over, and before the "sociable," which was to precede the bride and bridegroom's departure for Will's shack up in the hills, where she was to spend a fortnight's honeymoon before returning to Barnriff to take up again the work of her dressmaking business, that Peter Blunt had time to think of other things. He was not required in the ordering of the "sociable." The women would look to that.

Before he left the Mission Room, to return to his hut to see that his preparations were complete for Elia to take up his abode with him for the next fortnight--he had finally obtained Eve's consent to this arrangement--he scanned the faces of the a.s.sembled crowd closely. He had seen nothing of Jim Thorpe during the last two months, except on the rare occasions when the foreman of the "AZ's" had visited the saloon. And at these times neither had mentioned Eve's wedding. Now he was anxious to find out if Jim had been amongst the spectators at the wedding, a matter which to his mind was of some importance. It was impossible to ascertain from where he stood, and finally he made his way to the bottom of the hall where the door had been opened and people were beginning to move out. As he reached the back row benches he b.u.mped into the burly Gay.

"Seen Thorpe?" he inquired quickly.

Gay pointed through the door.

"Yonder," he said. "Say, let's get a drink. This dogone marryin'

racket's calc'lated to set a camel dry."

But Peter wanted Thorpe and refused the man's invitation. He was glad Jim had come in for the wedding, and hurried out in pursuit. He caught his man in the act of mounting his broncho.

"Say, Jim!" he exclaimed, as he hastened up.

Nor did he continue as the ranchman turned and faced him. He had never seen quite such an expression on Jim's face before. The dark eyes were fiercely alight, the clean-cut brows were drawn together in an expression that might have indicated either pain or rage. His jaws were hard set. And the pallor of his skin was plainly visible through the rich tanning of his face.

"Well?"

The monosyllable was jerked out through clenched teeth, and had something of defiance in it. Peter fumbled.

"I'm glad you came in," he said, a little helplessly.

The reply he received was a laugh so harsh, so bitter, that the other was startled. It was the laugh of a beaten man who strives vainly to hide his hurt. It was an expression of tense nerves, and told of the agony of a heart laboring under its insufferable burden. It was the sign of a man driven to the extremity of endurance, telling, only too surely, of the thousand and one dangers threatening him. Peter understood, and his own manner steadied into that calm strength which was so much the man's real personality.

"I was just going over to my shack," he said. "You'd best walk your horse over."