Babe hopped. She hopped out of her seat at the wheel and shook Sheila's hand and told her to "jump right in."

"Sit by me on the way home, Sheila." Babe had a tremendous voice. "And leave the old folks to gossip on the back seat. Gee! you're different from what I thought you'd be. Ain't you small, though? You've got no form. Say, Millings will do lots for you. Isn't Pap a character, though?

Weren't you tickled the way he took you up? Your Poppa was a painter, wasn't he? Can you make a picture of me? I've got a steady that would be just wild if you could."

Sheila sat with hands clenched in her shabby m.u.f.f and smiled her moonlight smile. She was giddy with the intoxicating, heady air, with the brilliant sunset light, with Babe's loud cordiality. She wanted desperately to like Babe; she wanted even more desperately to be liked.

She was in an unimaginable panic, now.

Babe was a splendid young animal, handsome and round and rosy, her body crowded into a bright-blue braided, fur-trimmed coat, her face crowded into a tight, much-ornamented veil, her head with heavy chestnut hair, crowded into a cherry-colored, velvet turban round which seemed to be wrapped the tail of some large wild beast. Her hands were ready to burst from yellow buckskin gloves; her feet, with high, thick insteps, from their tight, thin, b.u.t.toned boots, even her legs shone pink and plump below her short skirt, through silk stockings that were threatened at the seams. And the blue of her eyes, the red of her cheeks, the white of her teeth, had the look of being uncontainable, too brilliant and full to stay where they belonged. The whole creature flashed and glowed and distended herself. Her voice was a riot of uncontrolled vitality, and, as though to use up a little of all this superfluous energy, she was violently chewing gum. Except for an occasional slight smacking sound, it did not materially interfere with speech.

"There's Poppa now," she said at last. "Say, Poppa, you two sit in the back, will you? Sheila and I are having a fine time. But, Poppa, you old tin-horn, what did you mean by saying in your wire that she was a husky girl? Why, she's got the build of a sagebrush mosquito! Look-a-here, Sheila." Babe by a miracle got her plump hand in and out of a pocket and handed a telegram to her new friend. "Read that and learn to know Poppa!"

Sylvester laughed rather sheepishly as Sheila read:

Am bringing home artist's A1 picture for The Aura and artist's A1 daughter. Husky girl. Will help Momma.

"Well," said Sylvester apologetically, "she's one of the wiry kind, aren't you, Miss Sheila?"

Sheila was struggling with an attack of hysterical mirth. She nodded and put her m.u.f.f before her mouth to hide an uncontrollable quivering of her lips.

"Momma" had not spoken. Her face was all one even tone of red, her nostrils opened and shut, her lips were tight. Sylvester, however, was in a genial humor. He leaned forward with his arms folded along the back of the front seat and pointed out the beauties of Millings. He showed Sheila the Garage, the Post-Office, and the Trading Company, and suddenly pressing her shoulder with his hand, he cracked out sharply:

"There's The Aura, girl!"

His eyes were again those of the artist and the visionary. They glowed.

Sheila turned her head. They were pa.s.sing the double door of the saloon and went slowly along the front of the hotel.

It stood on that corner where the main business street intersects with the Best Residence Street. Its main entrance opened into the flattened corner of the building where the roof rose to a fantastic facade. For the rest, the hotel was of yellowish-brick, half-surrounded by a wooden porch where at milder seasons of the year in deep wicker chairs men and women were always rocking with the air of people engaged in serious and not unimportant work. At such friendlier seasons, too, by the curb was always a weary-looking Ford car from which grotesquely arrayed "travelers" from near-by towns and cities were descending covered with alkali dust--faces, chiffon veils, spotted silk dresses, high white kid boots, dangling purses and all, their men dust-powdered to a wrinkled sameness of aspect.

At this time of the year the porch was deserted, and the only car in sight was Hudson's own, which wriggled and slipped its way courageously along the rutted, dirty snow.

Around the corner next to the hotel stood Hudson's home. It was a large house of tortured architecture, cupolas and twisted supports and strange, overlapping scallops of wood, painted wavy green, pinkish red and yellow.

Its windows were of every size and shape and appeared in unreasonable, impossible places--opening enormous mouths on tiny balconies with twisted posts and scalloped railings, like embroidery patterns, one on top of the other up to a final absurdity of a bird cage which found room for itself between two cupolas under the roof.

Up the steps of the porch Mrs. Hudson mounted grimly, followed by Babe.

Sylvester stayed to tinker with the car, and Sheila, after a doubtful, tremulous moment, went slowly up the icy path after the two women.

She stumbled a little on the lowest step and, in recovering herself, she happened to turn her head. And so, between two slender aspen trees that grew side by side like white, captive nymphs in Hudson's yard, she saw a mountain-top. The sun had set. There was a crystal, turquoise translucency behind the exquisite snowy peak, which seemed to stand there facing G.o.d, forgetful of the world behind it, remote and reverent and most serene in the light of His glory. And just above where the turquoise faded to pure pale green, a big white star trembled. Sheila's heart stopped in her breast. She stood on the step and drew breath, throwing back her veil. A flush crept up into her face. She felt that she had been traveling all her life toward her meeting with this mountain and this star. She felt radiant and comforted.

"How beautiful!" she whispered.

Sylvester had joined her.

"Finest city in the world!" he said.

CHAPTER IV

MOONSHINE

d.i.c.kie Hudson pushed from him to the full length of his arm the ledger of The Aura Hotel, tilted his chair back from the desk, and, leaning far over to one side, set the needle on a phonograph record, pressed the starter, and absorbed himself in rolling and lighting a cigarette. This accomplished, he put his hands behind his head and, wreathed in aromatic, bluish smoke, gave himself up to complete enjoyment of the music.

It was a song from some popular light opera. A very high soprano and a musical tenor duet, sentimental, humoresque:

"There, dry your eyes, I sympathize Just as a mother would-- Give me your hand, I understand, we're off to slumber land Like a father, like a mother, like a sister, like a brother."

Listening to this melody, d.i.c.kie Hudson's face under the gaslight expressed a rapt and spiritual delight, tender, romantic, melancholy.

He was a slight, undersized youth, very pale, very fair, with the face of a delicate boy. He had large, near-sighted blue eyes in which lurked a wistful, deprecatory smile, a small chin running from wide cheek-bones to a point. His lips were sensitive and undecided, his nose unformed, his hair soft and easily ruffled. There were hard blue marks under the long-lashed eyes, an unhealthy pallor to his cheeks, a slight unsteadiness of his fingers.

d.i.c.kie held a position of minor importance in the hotel, and his pale, innocent face was almost as familiar to its patrons as to those of the saloon next door--more familiar to both than it was to Hudson's "residence." Sometimes for weeks d.i.c.kie did not strain the scant welcome of his "folks." To-night, however, he was resolved to tempt it. After listening to the record, he strolled over to the saloon.

d.i.c.kie was curious. He shared Millings's interest in the "young lady from Noo York." Shyness fought with a sense of adventure, until to-night, a night fully ten nights after Sheila's arrival, the courage he imbibed at the bar of The Aura gave him the necessary impetus. He pulled himself up from his elbow, removed his foot from the rail, straightened his spotted tie, and pushed through the swinging doors out into the night.

It was a moonlit night, as still and pure as an angel of annunciation--a night that carried tall, silver lilies in its hands. Above the small, sleepy town were lifted the circling rim of mountains and the web of blazing stars. Sylvester's son, after a few crunching steps along the icy pavement, stopped with his hand against the wall, and stood, not quite steadily, his face lifted. The whiteness sank through his tainted body and brain to the undefiled child-soul. The stars blazed awfully for d.i.c.kie, and the mountains were awfully white and high, and the air shattered against his spirit like a crystal sword. He stood for an instant as though on a single point of solid earth and looked giddily beyond earthly barriers.

His lips began to move. He was trying to put that mystery, that emotion, into words ... "It's white," he murmured, "and sharp--burning--like--like"--his fancy fumbled--"like the inside of a cold flame." He shook his head. That did not describe the marvelous quality of the night. And yet--if the world had gone up to heaven in a single, streaming point of icy fire and a fellow stood in it, frozen, swept up out of a fellow's body.... Again he shook his head and his eyes were possessed by the wistful, apologetic smile. He wished he were not tormented by this queer need of describing his sensations. He remembered very vividly one of the many occasions when it had roused his father's anger. d.i.c.kie, standing with his hand against the cold bricks of The Aura, smiled with his lips, not happily, but with a certain amus.e.m.e.nt, thinking of how Sylvester's hand had cracked against his cheek and sent all his thoughts flying like broken china. He had been apologizing for his slowness over an errand--something about leaves, it had been--the leaves of those aspens in the yard--he had told his father that they had been little green flames--he had stopped to look at them.

"You d.a.m.n fool!" Sylvester had said as he struck.

"You d.a.m.n fool!" Once, when a stranger asked five-year-old d.i.c.kie his name, he had answered innocently "d.i.c.kie-d.a.m.n-fool!"

"They'll probably put it on my tombstone," d.i.c.kie concluded, and, stung by the cold, he shrank into his coat and stumbled round the corner of the street. The reek of spirits trailed behind him through the purity like a soiled rag.

Number 18 Cottonwood Avenue was brilliantly lighted. Girlie was playing the piano, Babe's voice, "sa.s.sing Poppa," was audible from one end to the other of the empty street. Her laughter slapped the air. d.i.c.kie hesitated. He was afraid of them all--of Sylvester's pensive, small, brown eyes and hard, long hands, of Babe's bodily vigor, of Girlie's mild contemptuous look, of his mother's gloomy, furtive tenderness. d.i.c.kie felt a sort of aching and compa.s.sionate dread of the rough, awkward caress of her big red hand against his cheek. As he hesitated, the door opened--a blaze of light, yellow as old gold, streamed into the blue brilliance of the moon. It was blotted out and a figure came quickly down the steps. It had an air of hurry and escape. A small, slim figure, it came along the path and through the gate; then, after just an instant of hesitation, it turned away from d.i.c.kie and sped up the wide street.

d.i.c.kie named it at once. "That's the girl," he said; and possessed by his curiosity and by the sense of adventure which whiskey had fortified, he began to walk rapidly in the same direction. Out there, where the short street ended, began the steep side of a mesa. The snow on the road that was graded along its front was packed by the runners of freighting sleighs, but it was rough. He could not believe the girl meant to go for a walk alone. And yet, would she be out visiting already, she, a stranger? At the end of the street the small, determined figure did not stop; it went on, a little more slowly, but as decidedly as ever, up the slope. On the hard, frozen crust, her feet made hardly a sound. Above the level top of the white hill, the peak that looked remote from Hudson's yard became immediate. It seemed to peer--to lean forward, bright as a silver helmet against the purple sky. d.i.c.kie could see that "the girl"

walked with her head tilted back as though she were looking at the sky.

Perhaps it was the sheer beauty of the winter night that had brought her out. Following slowly up the hill, he felt a sense of nearness, of warmth; his aching, lifelong loneliness was remotely comforted because a girl, skimming ahead of him, had tilted her chin up so that she could see the stars. She reached the top of the mesa several minutes before he did and disappeared. She was now, he knew, on the edge of a great plateau, in summer covered with the greenish silver of sagebrush, now an unbroken, glittering expanse. He stood still to get his breath and listen to the very light crunch of her steps. He could hear a coyote wailing off there in the foothills, and the rushing noise of the small mountain river that hurled itself down upon Millings, ran through it at frenzied speed, and made for the canon on the other side of the valley. Below him Millings twinkled with a few spa.r.s.e lights, and he could, even from here, distinguish the clatter of Babe's voice. But when he came to the top, Millings dropped away from the reach of his senses. Here was dazzling s.p.a.ce, the amazing presence of the mountains, the pressure of the starry sky. Far off already across the flat, that small, dark figure moved. She had left the road, which ran parallel with the mountain range, and was walking over the hard, sparkling crust. It supported her weight, but d.i.c.kie was not sure that it would do the same for his. He tried it carefully. It held, and he followed the faint track of small feet. It did not occur to him, dazed as he was by the fumes of whiskey and the heady air, that the sight of a man in swift pursuit of her loneliness might frighten Sheila. For some reason he imagined that she would know that he was Sylvester's son, and that he was possessed only by the most sociable and protective impulses.

He was, besides, possessed by a fateful feeling that it was intended that out here in the brilliant night he should meet her and talk to her. The adventurous heart of d.i.c.kie was aflame.

When the hurrying figure stopped and turned quickly, he did not pause, but rather hastened his steps. He saw her lift her m.u.f.f up to her heart, saw her waver, then move resolutely toward him. She came thus two or three steps, when a treacherous pitfall in the snow opened under her frightened feet and she went down almost shoulder deep.

d.i.c.kie ran forward.

Bending over her, he saw her white, heart-shaped face, and its red mouth as startling as a June rose out here in the snow. And he saw, too, the panic of her shining eyes.

"Miss Arundel"--his voice came thin and tender, feeling its way doubtfully as though it was too heavy a reality--"let me help you. You _are_ Miss Arundel, aren't you? I'm d.i.c.kie--d.i.c.kie Hudson, Pap Hudson's son. You hadn't ought to be scared. I saw you coming out alone and took after you. I thought you might find it kind of lonesome up here on the flat at night in all the moonlight--hearing the coyotes and all. And, look-a-here, you might have had a time getting out of the snow. Oncet a fellow breaks through it sure means a floundering time before a fellow pulls himself out--"

She had given him a hand, and he had pulled her up beside him. Her smile of relief seemed very beautiful to d.i.c.kie.

"I came out," she said, "because it looked so wonderful--and I wanted to see--" She stopped, looking at him doubtfully, as though she expected him not to understand, to think her rather mad. But he finished her sentence.

"--To see the mountains, wasn't it?"

"Yes." She was again relieved, almost as much so, it seemed, as at the knowledge of his friendliness. "Especially that big one." She waved her m.u.f.f toward the towering peak. "I never did see such a night! It's like--it's like--" She widened her eyes, as though, by taking into her brain an immense picture of the night, she might find out its likeness.