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Up the Gulch
by
“Here’s my card,” he said, very solemnly, as he drew an engraved bit of pasteboard from its leather case. Kate bowed and took it.
“Mr. Peter Roeder,” she read. “I’ve no card,” she said. “My name is Shelly. I’m here for my health, as I told you.” She rose at this point, and held out her hand. “I must thank you once more for your kindness,” she said.
His eyes fastened on hers with an appeal for a less formal word. There was something almost terrible in their silent eloquence.
“I hope we may meet again,” she said.
Mr. Peter Roeder made a very low and awkward bow, and opened the door into the corridor for her.
That evening the major announced that he was obliged to go to Seattle. The journey was not an inviting one; Kate was well placed where she was, and he decided to leave her.
She was well enough now to take longer drives; and she found strange, lonely canyons, wild and beautiful, where yellow waters burst through rocky barriers with roar and fury,–tortuous, terrible places, such as she had never dreamed of. Coming back from one of these drives, two days after her conversation on the piazza with Peter Roeder, she met him riding a massive roan. He sat the animal with that air of perfect unconsciousness which is the attribute of the Western man, and his attire, even to his English stock, was faultless,–faultily faultless.
“I hope you won’t object to havin’ me ride beside you,” he said, wheeling his horse. To tell the truth, Kate did not object. She was a little dull, and had been conscious all the morning of that peculiar physical depression which marks the beginning of a fit of homesickness.
“The wind gits a fine sweep,” said Roeder, after having obtained the permission he desired. “Now in the gulch we either had a dead stagnation, or else the wind was tearin’ up and down like a wild beast.”
Kate did not reply, and they went on together, facing the riotous wind.
“You can’t guess how queer it seems t’ be here,” he said, confidentially. “It seems t’ me as if I had come from some other planet. Thar don’t rightly seem t’ be no place fur me. I tell you what it’s like. It’s as if I’d come down t’ enlist in th’ ranks, an’ found ’em full,–every man marchin’ along in his place, an’ no place left fur me.”
Kate could not find a reply.
“I ain’t a friend,–not a friend! I ain’t complainin’. It ain’t th’ fault of any one–but myself. You don’ know what a durned fool I’ve bin. Someway, up thar in th’ gulch I got t’ seemin’ so sort of important t’ myself, and my makin’ my stake seemed such a big thing, that I thought I had only t’ come down here t’ Helena t’ have folks want t’ know me. I didn’t particular want th’ money because it wus money. But out here you work fur it, jest as you work fur other things in other places,–jest because every one is workin’ fur it, and it’s the man who gets th’ most that beats. It ain’t that they are any more greedy than men anywhere else. My pile’s a pretty good-sized one. An’ it’s likely to be bigger; but no one else seems t’ care. Th’ paper printed some pieces about it. Some of th’ men came round t’ see me; but I saw their game. I said I guessed I’d look further fur my acquaintances. I ain’t spoken to a lady,–not a real lady, you know,–t’ talk with, friendly like, but you, fur–years.”
His face flushed in that sudden way again. They were passing some of those pretentious houses which rise in the midst of Helena’s ragged streets with such an extraneous air, and Kate leaned forward to look at them. The driver, seeing her interest, drew up the horses for a moment.