TILL TAPPING
The loyalty Mollie had cherished to her early ideal of marriage burned low for lack of fuel to feed upon. Her husband had practically deserted her. When he returned to camp it was to bully money out of her or to get some of their small store of belongings to sell. In the intervals she might starve for all he cared.
There came a day when she definitely broke with her past life. She moved into town and opened a small shop where she sold home-cooked food to miners eager to buy her cakes, cookies, pies, and doughnuts. She called her place the Back Home Kitchen, and she did a thriving business. The members of the fire companies patronized the store a great deal, and since they ran to a large extent the political and social life of Virginia City, as they had done in San Francisco a few years earlier, her shop became so much the vogue that she had to employ a Chinese assistant to help with the cooking.
Scot watched the venture but offered no advice. He had, in fact, not spoken to Mollie since the day after the funeral. Vicky had been taken to Carson by Hank Monk on the stage and was writing back badly spelled but enthusiastic letters to her sister. The cards had been re-shuffled, McClintock told himself, and he was no longer sitting in at the game.
Meanwhile, the new camps of Nevada went their humorous, turbulent, and homicidal way. Men grew wild over prospects that never had a chance to become real mines. They worked on croppings, sold and bought feet in a thousand prospects, struck it rich, went stony broke again within the month. They were in bonanza or in borrasca[[8]], and in either case kept their grins working. They lived in brush tents, sack tents, or dugouts, and the hard conditions never disturbed their happy-go-lucky optimism.
[8] The Mexicans used to say that a mine was in bonanza when its production was high, and in borrasca before the vein was struck or after it had pinched out. With the adoption of the terms by Americans, the words took on a more general application. A bonanza was then any highly profitable venture; a borrasca was the reverse.—W. M. R.
They shared their last pot of beans with a stranger and were gaily confident that to-morrow they would strike a pick into the glory hole.
The saving grace of American humour salted all their adventures. The law in particular, when it made its belated appearance, was a merry jest. Those who dispensed it and those who dispensed with it enjoyed the joke alike.
Two women in Carson quarrelled over a cow. One accused the other of milking it secretly. The jury decided that the defendant was guilty of milking the cow in the second degree. A man in Virginia City was haled before the court charged with drunkenness, which in Nevada was held to be a right guaranteed a man by the Constitution. The constable Mike whispered to the justice that the arrested man had one hundred dollars on his person. “Are youse guilty?” the judge demanded. The defendant said he was not. “You know domn well yez are. I fine yez a hundred dollars, fifty for me an’ fifty for Mike,” the Court passed judgment. Sometimes the laugh was on the Court, as in the case of a justice, very hazy as to his powers and duties, who conducted the preliminary hearing of a man charged with murder. He listened to the evidence till he was satisfied, then announced his decision. “I find you guilty and sentence you to be hanged at ten o’clock to-morrow. The constable will bring the prisoner and a rope.”
Even the homicidal mania of those who lived by their wits had its momentary gleams of dreadful humour. Scot drifted into a barber shop one day and found El Dorado Johnnie having his hair curled. The youth in the chair was dressed in new clothes. His boots had been polished. He was shaved and perfumed.
“Going to your wedding, Johnnie?” the faro dealer asked.
“No, sir,” replied the other. “ ‘Farmer’ Peel has give out that he’s gunnin’ for me. If I’m elected as the corpse I want to look nice.”
It turned out that Johnnie’s forethought was wise. “Farmer” Peel shot quicker and straighter than he did. Peel, who had come from Salt Lake with a record of several killings, was arrested for having made a disturbance. He was fined and released on his own recognizance to go and raise the money. “Farmer” Peel sober was a pleasant, mild young fellow who wanted to be at peace with the world, but Peel drunk was a demon. Before he raised the money to pay his fine, he visited several saloons and had a change of heart. Back he went to the court, caught the justice by the beard, and mopped that dignitary all over the floor. Nobody intervened, for the drunken man was dangerous. The justice, released at last, had to be removed to the hospital for repairs. Virginia City merely grinned. Judge or no judge, every man had to play his own hand.
Offences against property were considered more serious than those against life. In some camps hired desperadoes jumped claims. Hold-ups were of frequent occurrence, and every few days a stage robbery was reported. Nevada was too busy developing the newly discovered ore veins to pay much attention to these excrescences from the normal.
In this rough, crude society Mollie moved with as much safety as she could have done in a staid New England village. No ruffian could have molested her without the danger of being lynched. The only man who annoyed her was the one whose name she bore. When he discovered how well she was doing financially Dodson began to hang around the Back Home to bleed its mistress of what she earned.
Mollie was an easy victim. She never had been one to stand up for her own rights. She fought only feebly and without success to protect herself. Every day or two Dodson robbed the till.
He boasted of it to his cronies when he was half seas over. To Scot, who was keeping an eye on him in expectation of just such a possibility, the news was promptly carried. He learned that the man paid his visits to the Back Home in the evening.
Two days later Dodson knocked at the door of the shop and was admitted. He slouched forward to the counter and leered at the girl he had promised to love and protect.
“Come through, old woman.”
“I can’t. There’s just enough for the rent,” she pleaded.
“You’re holdin’ out on me. Tha’s what you’re doin’. I won’t stand it—not a minute.”
His eyes were glazed. He thrust his bullet head forward threateningly. Mollie recognized the signs of the abusive stage of intoxication. Presently he would begin to beat her if she opposed him. But she was desperate. She could not let him take the rent money.
“You can’t have it. That’s all there’s to it. You just can’t have it,” she cried.
Mollie flew to the till as the man came round the counter. She was between him and the money. He tried to thrust her to one side, but the space was narrow. For a few seconds he tugged at her in vain. Then his temper leaped out. He struck her again and again while she tried to shield herself from the blows.
Neither of them heard the door open or saw a man step into the room. Neither of them saw him take the counter in one flying leap. An arm reached out and plucked Dodson from his victim. It hurled him back against the wall, where he struck with great force, hung for a moment, and dropped limply to the floor.
Mollie lifted her eyes to those of Scot McClintock and into the white face came two flaming flowers. For in the eyes that burned down into hers she read that which brought a burst of music into her heart. She had fought against this—oh, how she had schooled herself to deny it! But with his strong arms round her, his heart beating against her own, what was the use of pretending any longer? Her supple body made a little motion of nestling closer. She began to sob quietly.
“He—he——”
Scot brushed her explanation aside. “Forget him. He’s out of your life. It’s you and I now. I kept away. I gave him his chance. I gave you yours to go it alone. That’s ended. I’m going to take care of you now.”
He lifted her flushed face and kissed it.
That kiss stirred to life all the Puritan blood of Mollie, the racial inheritance from a rock-ribbed ancestry. She pushed him from her with all the force of a despairing energy.
“No . . . no . . . no!” she cried, and fled to the room back of the shop.
She was afraid of his passionate tenderness for her, but she was afraid, too, of the deep yearning of her whole being for the love he offered.
In the days that followed Scot McClintock fought the fight of his life. He had always prided himself that he was master of his desires. When he yielded to self-indulgence it was because he chose to follow for a time the path of dalliance. But this keen-edged longing for the woman he loved flooded his being, swept over him like great waves over a bather in the surf. It set him fifty times pacing the floor, to and fro, to and fro. For the first time in his life he learned that he had nerves. There was a passionate urge in him to take what he wanted. He could make her happy in spite of all the tongues that would clack, in spite of cynical smiles and hard unforgiveness on the part of the world.
But could he? Would his love be enough to insure Mollie’s happiness if he overbore her scruples? He knew it would not. There was in her a something fine and flowerlike that blossomed shyly through all the sordid impedimenta of her life. If he snatched at her, as a child does at a rose, the fragrant beauty of her would be crushed and lost.
Yet Scot knew that it was the best of him that wanted her. This was the real thing that had come to him at last. Love had penetrated the folly and waste of his life. Its rapier thrust had pushed through the conceits of manner and dress in which he had wrapped himself. It called to the simple elemental manhood in him.
He knew how his world would take it if he eloped with Mollie. His old father, Alexander McClintock, a Bible-reading Presbyterian of granitic faith, would cast him off with a gesture worthy of the ancient prophets. Hugh would be hurt and shocked, but he would not give him up. Virginia City would be interested but not outraged, for the town had by this time become accustomed to unexpected shifts in marital relations. The legal divorce had not yet reached Nevada, but a simple substitute for it was not infrequent. Many young women who had come from the East by way of the Overland Trail had found the long desert trip destructive of romance and had deserted their rough and weatherworn husbands for more devoted and attractive lovers. In Mollie’s case the camp would find extenuating circumstances. Dodson was a ne’er-do-well of a particularly despicable type. He was a shiftless, wife-beating drunkard. It had not been his fault that Jerry Mulligan had persisted in recovering from the knife thrust in his side. Moreover, Scot was known to be no Lothario. The general verdict would be that it was nobody’s affair but that of the principals. If Dodson felt aggrieved he could always appeal to Judge Colt as a court of last resort.
Yes, but Scot had to think of Mollie herself—of Mollie into whose cheeks he could send the delicate colour flying, whose pulses he could set beating with a burst of music in her heart. The thought of her drenched him with despair. How could he protect her if he remained a stranger in her life? Yet if he broke the code with her he would be saving her from distress only to plunge her into greater trouble.