his Bonanza properties, and watched the genesis of a six-column
article. At that time they were dined royally in Flossie’s cabin,
on Flossie’s table linen. Likewise there were comings and goings,
and junketings, all perfectly proper, by the way, which caused the
men to say sharp things and the women to be spiteful. Only Mrs.
Eppingwell did not hear. The distant hum of wagging tongues rose
faintly, but she was prone to believe good of people and to close
her ears to evil; so she paid no heed.
Not so with Freda. She had no cause to love men, but, by some
strange alchemy of her nature, her heart went out to women,–to
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women whom she had less cause to love. And her heart went out to
Flossie, even then travelling the Long Trail and facing into the
bitter North to meet a man who might not wait for her. A
shrinking, clinging sort of a girl, Freda pictured her, with weak
mouth and pretty pouting lips, blow-away sun-kissed hair, and eyes
full of the merry shallows and the lesser joys of life. But she
also pictured Flossie, face nose-strapped and frost-rimed,
stumbling wearily behind the dogs. Wherefore she smiled, dancing
one night, upon Floyd Vanderlip.
Few men are so constituted that they may receive the smile of
Freda unmoved; nor among them can Floyd Vanderlip be accounted.
The grace he had found with the model-woman had caused him to re-
measure himself, and by the favor in which he now stood with the
Greek dancer he felt himself doubly a man. There were unknown
qualities and depths in him, evidently, which they perceived. He
did not know exactly what those qualities and depths were, but he
had a hazy idea that they were there somewhere, and of them was
bred a great pride in himself. A man who could force two women
such as these to look upon him a second time, was certainly a most
remarkable man. Some day, when he had the time, he would sit down
and analyze his strength; but now, just now, he would take what
the gods had given him. And a thin little thought began to lift
itself, and he fell to wondering whatever under the sun he had
seen in Flossie, and to regret exceedingly that he had sent for
her. Of course, Freda was out of the running. His dumps were the
richest on Bonanza Creek, and they were many, while he was a man
of responsibility and position. But Loraine Lisznayi–she was
just the woman. Her life had been large; she could do the honors
of his establishment and give tone to his dollars.
But Freda smiled, and continued to smile, till he came to spend
much time with her. When she, too, rode down the street behind
his wolf-dogs, the model-woman found food for thought, and the
next time they were together dazzled him with her princes and
cardinals and personal little anecdotes of courts and kings. She
also showed him dainty missives, superscribed, “My dear Loraine,”
and ended “Most affectionately yours,” and signed by the given
name of a real live queen on a throne. And he marvelled in his
heart that the great woman should deign to waste so much as a
moment upon him. But she played him cleverly, making flattering
contrasts and comparisons between him and the noble phantoms she
drew mainly from her fancy, till he went away dizzy with self-
delight and sorrowing for the world which had been denied him so
long. Freda was a more masterful woman. If she flattered, no one
knew it. Should she stoop, the stoop were unobserved. If a man
felt she thought well of him, so subtly was the feeling conveyed
that he could not for the life of him say why or how. So she
tightened her grip upon Floyd Vanderlip and rode daily behind his
dogs.
And just here is where the mistake occurred. The buzz rose loudly
and more definitely, coupled now with the name of the dancer, and
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Mrs. Eppingwell heard. She, too, thought of Flossie lifting her
moccasined feet through the endless hours, and Floyd Vanderlip was
invited up the hillside to tea, and invited often. This quite
took his breath away, and he became drunken with appreciation of
himself. Never was man so maltreated. His soul had become a
thing for which three women struggled, while a fourth was on the
way to claim it. And three such women!
But Mrs. Eppingwell and the mistake she made. She spoke of the
affair, tentatively, to Sitka Charley, who had sold dogs to the
Greek girl. But no names were mentioned. The nearest approach to
it was when Mrs. Eppingwell said, “This–er–horrid woman,” and
Sitka Charley, with the model-woman strong in his thoughts, had
echoed, “–er–horrid woman.” And he agreed with her, that it was
a wicked thing for a woman to come between a man and the girl he
was to marry. “A mere girl, Charley,” she said, “I am sure she
is. And she is coming into a strange country without a friend
when she gets here. We must do something.” Sitka Charley
promised his help, and went away thinking what a wicked woman this
Loraine Lisznayi must be, also what noble women Mrs. Eppingwell
and Freda were to interest themselves in the welfare of the
unknown Flossie.
Now Mrs. Eppingwell was open as the day. To Sitka Charley, who
took her once past the Hills of Silence, belongs the glory of
having memorialized her clear-searching eyes, her clear-ringing
voice, and her utter downright frankness. Her lips had a way of
stiffening to command, and she was used to coming straight to the
point. Having taken Floyd Vanderlip’s measurement, she did not
dare this with him; but she was not afraid to go down into the
town to Freda. And down she went, in the bright light of day, to
the house of the dancer. She was above silly tongues, as was her
husband, the captain. She wished to see this woman and to speak
with her, nor was she aware of any reason why she should not. So
she stood in the snow at the Greek girl’s door, with the frost at
sixty below, and parleyed with the waiting-maid for a full five
minutes. She had also the pleasure of being turned away from that
door, and of going back up the hill, wroth at heart for the
indignity which had been put upon her. “Who was this woman that
she should refuse to see her?” she asked herself. One would think
it the other way around, and she herself but a dancing girl denied
at the door of the wife of a captain. As it was, she knew, had
Freda come up the hill to her,–no matter what the errand,–she
would have made her welcome at her fire, and they would have sat
there as two women, and talked, merely as two women. She had
overstepped convention and lowered herself, but she had thought it
different with the women down in the town. And she was ashamed
that she had laid herself open to such dishonor, and her thoughts
of Freda were unkind.
Not that Freda deserved this. Mrs. Eppingwell had descended to
meet her who was without caste, while she, strong in the
traditions of her own earlier status, had not permitted it. She
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could worship such a woman, and she would have asked no greater
joy than to have had her into the cabin and sat with her, just sat
with her, for an hour. But her respect for Mrs. Eppingwell, and
her respect for herself, who was beyond respect, had prevented her
doing that which she most desired. Though not quite recovered
from the recent visit of Mrs. McFee, the wife of the minister, who
had descended upon her in a whirlwind of exhortation and
brimstone, she could not imagine what had prompted the present
visit. She was not aware of any particular wrong she had done,
and surely this woman who waited at the door was not concerned
with the welfare of her soul. Why had she come? For all the
curiosity she could not help but feel, she steeled herself in the
pride of those who are without pride, and trembled in the inner
room like a maid on the first caress of a lover. If Mrs.
Eppingwell suffered going up the hill, she too suffered, lying
face downward on the bed, dry-eyed, dry-mouthed, dumb.
Mrs. Eppingwell’s knowledge of human nature was great. She aimed
at universality. She had found it easy to step from the civilized
and contemplate things from the barbaric aspect. She could
comprehend certain primal and analogous characteristics in a
hungry wolf-dog or a starving man, and predicate lines of action
to be pursued by either under like conditions. To her, a woman
was a woman, whether garbed in purple or the rags of the gutter;