The Helpers. Lynde Francis

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СКАЧАТЬ forgive you this time," he went on, laughing at Jeffard's discomfiture. "I suppose you had your reasons for dodging, and while it's ten to one they were no good, that leaves one chance in your favor. Have a smoke?"

      Now Jeffard's poverty-pride was fire-new as yet, and though the smell of Bartrow's cigar made him faint with desire, he refused the gift.

      "Haven't quit, have you?" Bartrow demanded.

      "No – yes; that is, I have for the present. I'm not feeling very well this morning."

      "You look it; every inch of it. Let's go around and see what the money people are doing. Maybe that'll chirk you up a bit."

      Jeffard yielded, partly because Bartrow's impetus was always of the irresistible sort, and partly because he could think of no plausible objection on the spur of the moment. Bartrow talked cheerily all the way around to the Mining Exchange, telling of his claims and prospects in Chaffee County, and warming to his subject as only a seasoned Coloradoan can when the talk is of "mineral" and mining. Jeffard, being hungry, and sick with a fierce longing for tobacco, said little, and was duly thankful that Bartrow required no more than a word now and then to keep him going. None the less he watched narrowly for a chance to escape, and was visibly depressed when none offered.

      In the crowded Exchange the poverty-pride began to lose the fine keenness of its edge. The atmosphere of the room was pungent with cigar smoke, and the tobacco craving rose up in its might and smote down Jeffard's self-respect.

      "If you'll excuse me a minute, Dick, I believe I'll go out and get a cigar as a measure of self-defense," he said; and Bartrow supplied his need, as a matter of course. It was a shameful subterfuge, and he loathed himself for having descended to it. Nevertheless, he took the cigar which Bartrow made haste to offer, and lighted it. The first few whiffs made him dizzy, but afterward he was better company for the enthusiast.

      While they were talking, the elderly man with the bit of quartz on his watch-chain came in, and Jeffard inquired if Bartrow knew him.

      "Know Steve Elliott? I should say I do. Everybody knows him, barring now and then a tenderfoot like yourself. Besides being one of the most lovable old infants on top of earth, he's one of Denver's picturesques. That old man has had more ups and downs than any three men in Colorado; and that's saying a good deal."

      "In what way?"

      "Oh, every way. He's a Fifty-niner, to begin with; came across the plains in a bull-train to hunt for mineral. He found it – Steve would find it if anybody could – but some sharp rascal euchred him out of it, and he's been finding it and losing it at regular intervals ever since."

      Jeffard blew a cloud of smoke toward the ceiling, and took in the outward presentment of the pioneer in an appraisive eye-sweep. "This is one of the finding intervals, I take it."

      "Sure. He's on top just now, – rather more so than usual, I believe, – but the 'pioneer's luck' will catch him again some day, and just as likely as not he'll be hustling around for a grub-stake."

      "Man of family?" queried Jeffard.

      "Yes, if a daughter's a family. His wife died in one of the lean years a long time ago. But say, Jeffard, you ought to know the daughter. She's as pretty as a peach, and as bright as a new nickel. She's had her share of the ups and downs, and they've made a queer little medley of her. Trap and tandem and a big house on Capitol Hill one month, and as like as not two rooms in a block and a ride in the street-cars the next. That's about the way Connie Elliott's had it all her life, and it's made her as wide awake as a frosty morning, and as good as a Sister of Charity."

      "I can believe all that," Jeffard admitted, meaning more than he said.

      "Yes, you're safe in believing all the good things you hear about Steve Elliott and his daughter. They're good people. By the way, why can't you come up to the house with me some evening and get acquainted? They've a Philadelphia cousin staying with them now, and you might compare notes on the 'wild and woolly' with her."

      Jeffard had a string of excuses ready, ending with, "Besides, there are particular reasons why I don't wish to meet Miss Elliott just now – reasons that I can't explain."

      "Reasons be hanged! Just you stand still a minute while I go get the old man and introduce you. You'll like him a whole lot."

      Bartrow did his part, but by the time he had pulled Elliott out of the throng in front of the quotation board, Jeffard was two squares away, headed once more for the suburbs. This time he crossed the river and tramped for hours in the Highlands. He told himself he was killing time and keeping out of the way of the luncheon hour; but in reality he was fighting a desperate battle with pride, or self-respect, or whatever it is that makes a man who is not a born vagrant shrink from that species of cannibalism which begins with the eating of one's personal possessions.

      It was an unequal fight at best, since hunger was the besieger, but Jeffard made shift to prolong it until the long day of fasting was drawing to its close. He yielded at last, as needs must when famine drives, but the capitulation was upon conditions, and his heart was soft with repentant kneadings. Since one must eat to live, the pride-quenching thing must come to pass; but the doing of it should be the pivot upon which he would turn back to sanity and industrious thrift. The loss of his small patrimony and the hard-earned savings by which it had been fairly doubled was shrewd upon him, but he told himself that the consequences of his folly must be set over against the experience; that he must be content to begin again at the bottom, as his father had before him, thankful for the youth and strength which made such a beginning possible.

      From the preliminary survey of penitence to plotting out the map of good intentions is an easy stage, and Jeffard beguiled the long tramp townward by building air-castles spacious and many-storied, with the new resolutions for their foundations. But when the sidewalks of the streets were once more under his feet, the pride-quenching necessity urged itself afresh, plying the lash of shame until he was driven to tramp yet other squares before he could attain to the plunging point.

      He was passing the Albany when the climax was reached, and he turned aside to get a light for the carefully economized stump of Bartrow's cigar before setting out to find a pawnshop where his pride might suffer least. At the cigar counter in the rotunda a giant in rough tweeds, with an unshorn beard and the fine bronze of the grazing plains on face and hands, was filling his case with high-priced Cubans from an open box. At sight of Jeffard he dropped the cigar-case and roared out a mighty welcome.

      "Well, I'll be – ! Jeffard, my boy, where under the canopy did you drop from? If I haven't had a search-warrant out for you all day, I'm a liar and the truth has shook me. Been to dinner? – but of course you haven't; or if you have, you are going to eat another with me right now. How've you been? and where in Tophet have you been hiding out?"

      Jeffard smiled. "That's the place – in Tophet and elsewhere; but I haven't been out of town since you were here last."

      "The devil you haven't! Then what did that muley maverick at the hotel mean when he said you were gone?"

      "Gone from the hotel, I guess he meant. I've been 'eating around,' as we used to say back in the Berkshire Hills."

      "Have, eh? Well, you're going to 'eat around' with me to-night, savez? I was just going to swear a few lines and go up and eat by myself. Come on; let's get a move. I've got a train-load of steers on the iron, and I'm due to chase 'em at eight-thirty. But before I forget it, here" – the big man found a compact little wad of bank-notes in his vest pocket and thrust it into Jeffard's hand. "I counted that out the next morning and meant to give it back to you, but the thing got away from me slick and clean."

      "Give СКАЧАТЬ