The Squaw Man: A Novel

by Julie Opp; Edwin Milton Royle

In their private car at the rear Diana, Henry Kerhill, and Diana's cousin, Sir John Applegate, rose from their seats to study the shipping-point for cattle, so novel in its environment, as indeed their entire journey in America had been for the past months. The death of a distant relative on Diana's side, who had left her an unexpected legacy, had enabled her to retrieve to a great extent their cramped fortunes.

Lady Elizabeth had lived only a short time to enjoy the new improved condition of affairs. She died in the year following Jim's departure and vicarious disgrace. During the months previous to her death she had grown grimmer and held herself more aloof. A stroke of paralysis one morning made her bedridden and speechless; a merciful third stroke caused her death within a month after her first attack. She never spoke, and seemed to find no consolation save in Diana's presence. The trip to America for a much-needed change was principally taken, however, on account of Henry, whose nervous condition the medical attendants declared most serious. The two years had made scarcely a perceptible change in Diana; in Sir John none at all. But in Henry an oppressive melancholy was rarely broken by the old flashes. Towards Diana he had faithfully kept his word to Jim. A truce was accepted, and he never ceased in his pathetic endeavors to try to make her happy. If neither could honestly lay claim to a real joy of life, still they had peace and dignity. As he stood near the window, the strong light showed how much thinner and lined was his face. A touch of gray was distinctly visible along his temples and was beginning perceptibly to streak his dark hair.

"My, but it's a corker!" Sir John gasped, as he put his head out of the window and the blinding heat beat down on him. There was a smile from Diana at Sir John's acquired Americanism. More British than the Union-Jack itself, yet he was keen to gain knowledge of the new country, and long conversations with the servile black Sam were enlarging his vocabulary. All three watched with curiosity the ramshackle hostelry, which they could plainly descry from one end of the car.

Diana turned to the men: "Do let us see the place. I've always longed to have a real adventure at a way-place off the beaten tourist track. I'm so tired of the sights that are arranged for one to be shocked at—at so much a head."

They moved to the door, but the intense heat of the day for a moment seemed to dampen their ardor. Then, at Henry's solicitations, Diana was persuaded to wait until he found out from an official the possible length of their stop.

Within the Long Horn saloon the afternoon's heat was apparently not felt by its inmates. It was a roughly hewn, wooden, three-cornered room with an oak beam stretching across it. Over this were thrown saddles and blankets. A bar extended along one side of the room. On the walls were grotesque and crude pictures done in chalk, while other spaces were covered with cheap, highly colored illustrations cut from the papers that reached Maverick. Tables for roulette and faro were placed at set intervals. The floor was covered with a mixture of sand and sawdust, while mounds of wood-dust were heaped near the bar, to be used by the men as cuspidors. It was clean in a certain primitive fashion. The glasses and bar fixtures were not unpleasant. The bartender, Nick, an ex-prize-fighter, took a pride in his "emporium," as he called the saloon, and lavished a loving though crude care on his possessions.

But the place was stained and soiled by the marks of the tragic remnants of humanity that were housed within its walls. Around the gambling-tables on this afternoon were groups of tattered specimens of the various races. Cow-boys at certain tables gave a wholesome, virile note to the place, but the drift-wood of a broken civilization was at this hour in larger proportion than the ranchmen. Among the battered denizens from the world beyond that had strayed into the saloon life was a parson in a frayed frock-coat, who leaned in a neighborly way against the blue shirt of a Chinaman, while a large negro with a face like a black Botticelli angel grinned and gleamed his white teeth in sport with a dago from Monterey. In a chair in a farther corner a tenderfoot lay in a drunken sleep in his soiled evening clothes, which he had donned three nights before to prove to the tormenting habitués of the place, who since then had not allowed him to grow sober, that he was a gentleman.

A half-breed at a faro-table watched with tolerant amusement the antics of those in his game to outwit him. The smell of the sawdust and the human mass of unpleasantness grew stronger as the men played, changed money, and Nick's corks flew and glasses clinked. Over the entire place there hung a curious sense of respectability. Low-muttered oaths were not uncommon, but Nick, sturdy and grim, with his watch-dogs—two large six-shooters—lying on the shelf behind the bar, had a certain straightness of purpose and a crude sense of right and wrong that won respect from the heterogeneous mass of his followers.

The passing of the Limited would have caused a sufficient amount of interest, but its stopping was a momentous occasion. The rude platform outside was only a shipping-point for cattle, not a stopping-place for through or passenger trains. There was a rush of some of the inmates from the room, but to a number of them the game was at its vital point, and Pete's lazy call of "jacks up" quickly chained the attention of the more eager of the players.

But to Nick it meant new trade, and his battered and scarred face grew into one ebullient smile as McSorley, the engineer, in his jumpers, with begrimed face and hands, and Dan, the dapper Pullman conductor of the Overland Limited, entered the saloon. McSorley was mopping his sweating face.