The ground had been free of snow when they left Cheyenne, the weather mild for the time of year. Hat Creek Station had been the first stop on the northward trek. And they were snowed in.
It was part of his profession to put up a front, and being an Irishman, he did it well.
Actually, there was less than a thousand dollars of his own money in the ironbound box. There was that much more that belonged to the others, and-something that nobody knew but hmfthere was also fifteen thousand dollars in gold that he was taking to Maguire in Butte to build a theatre.
Secretly he admitted to himself that he headed a company of misfits. Janice was no actress.
She was a beautiful girl who should be married to some man of wealth and position. She had spoken to him vaguely of past theatrical successes, but he knew they were the sort of lie the theatre breeds.
What actor or actress was ever strictly honest about past successes or failures? Certainly not Tom Healy. And certainly not that charming old windbag, Doc Guilford.
Janice was not even the type. She was competent, he admitted that, and on the frontier all they demanded was a woman. If she was pretty, so much the better.
Janice had that scarcely definable something that indicates breeding. Tom Healy was Irish, and an Irishman knows a thoroughbred. But like them all, Janice was running from something. Probably only fear of poverty among her own kind.
Doc Guilford was an old fraud. But an amusing fraud with a variety of talents, and he could be funny.
Of them all, Maggie had been the best. Maggie had gone up, partly on talent, partly on beauty. Her mistake was to love the theatre too much, and she stayed with it. Her beauty faded, but she still kept on… and she would always keep on.
How old was Maggie? Fifty? Or nearer sixty? Or only a rough-weather forty-five?
She had rheumatism and she complained about the rough riding of the wagons, but on stage her old tear-jerkers could still reach any crowd she played to.
And in her dramatic roles she was always good.
Of them all, Dodie Saxon was the only one who might be on the way up. She was seventeen, eighteen, or nineteen. Nobody knew, and Dodie was not talking. She was tall and she was well built and she was sexy. She could dance and she could sing, and, moreover, she was a solid citizen. She was a clear-thinking youngster with both feet on the ground, and of them all, she was the only one with a future.
And these we’re the people he was taking off into the middle of a Wyoming winter over a trail he had never seen, into a country where he would be completely out of place.
The only shooting he had ever done was in a shooting gallery, and he had never killed so much as a rabbit or slept out of doors even one night. Until he was eleven he had lived in a thatched but in Ireland, then on a back street in Dublin, and after that he had never been far from a theatre or rooming house. When he had money he ordered meals; when he had no money he starved. But he had never cooked a meal in his life. So it was Alder Gulch or break up the company and turn them loose to sink or swim with little money in a country where none of them belonged. Barker had been a godsend. On his first day at Hat Creek he had met Barker, a strapping big man in a buffalo coat that made him seem even bigger. He had an easygoing, friendly way about him that made a man overlook the sharpness of his eyes. Barker heard Healy inquiring the route to Alder Gulch and Virginia City, in Montana.
“Been over that trail,” he’d said. “Nothing easy about it.” “Could we make it? With the vans?” Barker had glanced through the window at the vans.
“Take money. You’d have to take off the wheels and put “em on sled runners. And you’d have to have drivers who know this country in the winter.” Healy ordered drinks. “We’ve got to make the trip,” he said, “and we can pay.” Barker glanced at the sign on the vans and his voice changed subtly. “Oh? You’re Tom Healy? Of the Healy Shows?” Healy had paid for the drinks with a gold piece.
“If you’re serious,” Barker told him, “I can furnish the drivers.” Nobody else offered any comment. One rough-hewn old man got abruptly to his feet and, after a quick, hard stare at Barker, walked out. Barker knew the country and Barker could get the men. Out of insecurity and doubt came resolution, and the plans went forward. Barker would handle everything. “Just leave it to me,” he told them.
Two drivers appeared. “Reliable,” Barker said.
“They worked for me before.” Wycoff was a stolid Pole with a heavy-featured, stupidlooking face.
He had big, coarse hands and a hard jaw. He was heavy-shouldered and powerful. Art Boyle was a slender man with quick, prying eyes that seemed always to hold some secret, cynical amusement of their own.
Neither man impressed Healy, but Barker assured him he need not worry. Getting teamsters for a northern trip in winter was difficult, and these were good men.
Healy hesitated to ask questions, fearing to show his own ignorance, and equally afraid he would hear something that would make it impossible for him to delude himself any longer. Alder Gulch was the only way out. And why should Barker say it could be done if it was impossible? He knew the country and was willing to go. Nonetheless, a rankling doubt remained. He stared gloomily at the snow-covered window and listened to the rising wind. In the outer room there was boisterous laughter. He listened, feeling doubt uneasy within him. Only the quiet courage of the girl at his side gave him strength. For the first time he began to appreciate his helplessness here, so far from the familiar lights and sounds of cities. He had never seen a map of Wyoming. He had only the vaguest idea of the location of Alder Gulch. He was a fool-a simple-minded, utterly ridiculous…
“I wish he was going with us.” He knew to whom she referred, and the same thought had occurred to him. “Barker doesn’t like him.” “I know. He’s a killer. Maybe an outlaw.” Wind whined under the eaves. Healy got to his feet and walked to the window. “He wouldn’t come, anyway.” “No, I guess not. And trouble follows men like that.” Janice came to him. “Don’t worry, Tom. We’ll make it.” Williams appeared in the door, drying his hands on a bar towel. “Some of the boys.. was he began. Then he stopped. “Well, we were wondering if you folks would put on a show. We’re all snowed in, like. The boys would pay. Take up a collection.” Healy hesitated Why not? They could not leave before morning, anyway. “We’d pay,” Williams insisted. “They suggested it.” “You’ll have to clear one end of the room,” Healy said. He started for the door, glancing back at Janice. She was looking out the window, and looking past her, he could see a man crunching over the snow toward the barn. It was King Mabry.
Tom Healy looked at Janice’s expression and then at Mabry. He had reached the barn and was opening the door, a big, powerful man who knew this discountry and who walked strongly down a way he chose. Healy felt a pang of jealousy. He pulled up short, considering that. Him? Jealous?
With a curiously empty feeling in his stomach he stared at the glowing’stove in the next room.
He was in love. He was in love with Janice Ryan.
HE STOOD ALONE on the outer edge of the crowd that watched the show, a tall, straight man with just a little slope to his shoulders from riding the long trails.
He wore no gun in sight, but his thumbs were hooked in his belt and Janice had the feeling that the butt of a gun was just behind his hand. It would always be there.
The light from the coal-oil lamp on the wall touched his face, turning his cheeks into hollows of darkness and his eyes into shadows. He still wore his hat, shoved back from his face. He looked what he was, hard, tough… and lonely.
The thought came unbidden. He would always know loneliness. The mark of it was on him.
He was a man of violence. No sort of man she would ever have met at home… and no sort of man for her to know. Yet from her childhood she had heard of such men.
Watching from behind the edge of the blanket curtain, Janice remembered stories heard when she was a little girl, stories told by half-admiring men of duels and gun battles; but they had never known such a man as this, who walked in a lost world of his own creation.