Isabel Carleton in the West

Contents

CHAPTER page

I Wind from the Rockies i

II Golden Streets i6

Chapter I

TT was late in the afternoon of a day in early sum- ^ mer, and the through train from St. Paul was drawing near to the station in Helena. Two girls were standing in the vestibule of the Pullman car, peering out across the valley on one side of the train; and on the other side catching glimpses of the town, which was set back at some distance against the foot of a mountain.

The fair-haired girl was evidently a newcomer to this region; she had the look of one who continually adjusts her vision to new scenes. The dark girl with the spirited lift of the head expressed rejoicing at being upon familiar ground.

“It looks — er — smaller than I thought,’’ said Isabel, bracing herself against the wall of the corridor.

“ But you can’t see the town very well from the station,” answered Meta. “ It’s a lot more interesting than it looks from here. I can’t imagine why they built the station so far out.” She smiled at her companion. “ Never mind the town just now.

Look out the other way, and see the Sleeping Giant.”

Isabel bent to the window, and gazed across the valley to where a long range of hills had taken the form of a giant slumbering at ease, the various mountain tops forming the outlines of forehead, nose, chin, and breast.

“ Some sleep he’s takin’, I guess,” chuckled the porter, who was standing at the door. “ I ain’t never seen him move, many times as I’ve been a-past here.”

” Maybe you’ll see him rise up some day,” suggested Meta.

“ Land o’ livin’ ! I hope not.” The porter looked disconcerted, as if he suspected her of speaking seriously.

Just then the conductor came up behind them. “ Well, young ladies, your trip is over,” he said genially. He knew Meta’s father, and had watched over the girls in their two days’ journey as if he had been a discreet and benevolent uncle.

” You’ve helped so much to make it a safe and happy one,” answered Isabel, rather shyly.

” A pleasure.” The conductor smiled gravely. The wheels were grinding as the train came to a stop. ” There’s your father now. Miss Houston,” the conductor added, looking over the shoulders of the two girls.

” Nice old Dad,” Meta murmured, her face flushing with joy. Isabel Carleton’s eyes were upon the attractive well-dressed woman who stood beside Mr. Houston on the station platform.

“ Your mother has on the same lovely hat that she wore in Jefferson,” said Isabel. But in her heart she was thinking, “ How glad I am to see the dear lady I It’s almost as good as seeing my own Mumsey.”

The porter swung himself down the steps, with an incredible number of valises hung upon his person. The train ground itself to a standstill. Passengers began to push out from the corridors to the steps.

There was a burst of greetings, laughter, kisses, and hilarity. Isabel and Meta found themselves upon the platform, being embraced by Mrs. Houston, whose husband was now exchanging some jocose words with the conductor.

“ How good it is to see you ! ” Isabel took hold of Mrs. Houston’s arm. Meta, after a quick kiss on her step-mother’s cheek, had turned to give her father an impetuous caress.

“ It’s splendid that you could come.” Mrs. Houston looked into Isabel’s gray eyes with an affectionate glance. “ You’re both as rosy as dairy-maids. Did you have a good trip? ”

“ Oh, marvelous ! ” The girl’s face lighted. “ I was so interested in everything. And Meta is a handy guide-book in herself.”

They looked around for the others. Mr. Houston was slipping a bill into the expectant black hand of the porter. He now beckoned a red-cap to carry the luggage, and he and Meta came back to where Mrs. Houston and Isabel were standing.

“ Meta says you had a great journey together,” said Mr. Houston cordially to Isabel. “ We’re tremendously glad you could keep her company.”

“ I’m tremendously grateful to have had the opportunity,” Isabel returned. “ I never enjoyed anything more.”

Still talking, the party made their way to the automobile waiting at the end of the platform. “ I’m so glad the cover’s off the car,” exclaimed Meta. “ I want the whole sky to expand in.”

“ I thought you’d have some such feeling,” commented Mr. Houston.

They all climbed into the car; but Meta stayed her father’s hand as he was about to set the machine in motion. “ Wait, Dad,” she said. “ Let Isabel look around.”

Mr. Houston turned, with his hand on the wheel. “ Welcome to our city. Miss Isabel,” he smiled. He was a man of distinguished appearance, with a dark handsome face, and a clipped graying mustache. Meta’s spirited look was like his.

Isabel gave him an appreciative glance. “ I’m just going to stare around as much as I like,” she said. “ There’s no fun in going to a new place, if you have to act as stolid as an Indian.”

“ Trust you to see all there is going,” laughed Meta, who knew Isabel’s eager delight in new landscapes and new experiences.

The flat plain which lay between the city and the Little Belt range was tawny and grayish on the western edge, where the shadows slanted down the mountains. The range itself was glowing with the light which the sunset cast full upon it, giving it an amazing brilliance of crimson and blood-red. The mountains at the north, which were not in the direct line of radiance, showed duller tones of purple and violet and pink.

“ I thought I’d seen sunsets,” Isabel cried, “ but

I believe this is the most glorious I’ve ever run across.”

“ We have them all the time like this,” remarked Meta with a proprietary air.

“ You speak as if you owned them,” teased Mr. Houston. “ You haven’t been here for two years; so we have a larger claim on them than you have.”

“ Well, I never forget them, no matter how long I stay away,” answered Meta, with a fleeting grimace for her father.

Isabel was still looking about, now at the city, huddled against the foot and slope of the mountain; and now at the valley and the ranges beyond. “ Have you soaked in enough?” Mr. Houston spoke quizzically to the guest.

“ Yes,” the girl replied with a sigh. “ I think I’ve had all that I can stand.”

The car moved rapidly through the outskirts of the town, and then down the narrow cut where Main Street ran. “ This is Last Chance Gulch,” Mrs. Houston explained. “ See how it winds up between Mount Helena and Mount Ascension.” Isabel caught a glimpse of varied business buildings which followed the line of what had once been a deep ravine between high hills. “ That’s Chinatown up there,” Mrs. Houston went on. “ It used to be the fine part of the city in the early days, when money flowed like water — or a good deal more freely than water; perhaps I should say as freely as champagne.”

They climbed the hill at the other side of the gulch, passed the big white marble Federal Building; turned, followed a street which ascended toward the mountain, and brought up at last before a huge red brick house, with two odd-looking towers on the front. “ This is our boarding-house — the one that Mr. Houston has always stayed at when he has had business in Helena,” said Mrs. Houston. “ It’s called the Wing House, — not because it has wings, but because a man named Wing built it in the middle-early days of glory.”

“ Do Jonathan and Ah Woo give you as good meals as ever? ” asked Meta, as the car stopped.

“ Your mother thinks they’re all right, and you know she’s fastidious,” said Mr. Houston.

“ Jonathan is a marvel,” Mrs. Houston added, as they all alighted from the automobile.

An elderly colored man in a long-tailed coat came down the steps. “ Here are our young ladies, Jonathan,” Mr. Houston called to him.

The negro blinked and grinned. “ I’m lookin’ at ’em, suh,” he said respectfully. “ Of co’se I remember Miss Meta right well.”

“ Jonathan and I are old friends.” Meta smiled brightly at the cheerful servitor.

He began taking the luggage out of the car, and the party mounted the steps to the long hall, where a steep stairway with a highly ornamented railing vanished into the dusk of the upper regions. At the end of the hall, in the shadow, Isabel caught a glimpse of a little old figure in a red flannel jacket and a flapping dusting-cap.

“ That’s Madam Thatcher,” whispered Meta. “ Oh, dear, she’s gone. I wanted you to see her.”

Isabel had heard of the strange old lady from the South, who had somehow drifted out here, and who was nominally the mistress of the big boarding-house, though in reality it was managed by a devoted darkey and a Chinese cook. The girl craned her neck over the railing of the stairs, in the hope of having another look at Madam Thatcher.

Upstairs, Isabel and Meta found that they were to share a large high-ceilinged room, with the furniture covered with the scrawls and scrolls of the flamboyant period of decoration.

“ I’ve always had this room when I’ve been here,” Meta said, taking a long breath. “ I know that you, with your soulful ideas of art, will think it is terribly ugly. But it’s been a home to me lots of times, when I really didn’t have any.”

“ You’re going to have a real one, now, that your new mother will make for you,” said Isabel; “ and I love this room because you’ve lived in it. What do I care about a few curly-cues? ”

The two young women had hardly freshened themselves after their long trip, before a gong sounded through the house. “ I’m glad to hear it,” Meta cried, giving her nose a hasty dash of powder. “ I’m as hungry as if I’d never had a bite to eat in my life.”

“ I’m hungrier than that,” .Isabel confessed.

They hurried down stairs, into the gloomy dining-room, where vines with dark spreading leaves wandered up the wall-paper, and long velour curtains and lambrequins shaded the windows.

Mr. and Mrs. Houston were already at a small table set for four. From the seat assigned to her, Isabel could see a plot of green grass, where a lawnsprinkler was whirling, and beyond, a house or two and the slope of the mountain side. As she unfolded her serviette, she could not help thinking of the time, only a few weeks before, when these same four people had had dinner at the Park Hotel in Jefferson-in-the-Middle-West, and what a trial the meal had been. Meta had assumed such an icy air toward her step-mother that the others had been almost frozen with embarrassment and concern.

“How much better it is now! ” Isabel thought, looking affectionately from the older woman to the younger. “ And how fortunate Meta is to have such a splendid mother to make a home for her and give her the love that she needs I ”

A young colored boy came and took their orders, under the watchful eye of Jonathan.

“ Jonathan does everything,” Mrs. Houston said presently. “ He buys the food, and keeps the accounts, and looks after the guests and their luggage, and attends to the dining-room, and manages Ah Woo, and watches over Madam Thatcher as if she were a baby. He seems to have a dozen eyes and hands.”

“ He certainly knows how to plan a dinner; and Ah Woo, if that’s his name, knows how to cook,” said Isabel, who was beginning on the excellent meal which the colored boy set before her.

And now the all-important subject was broached. It had been uppermost in the young women’s minds during all the preliminaries. “ Well, we have seen the boys,” said Mr. Houston. “ I suppose I may call them boys, even though they are grown-up young men with work to do in the world.”

“ I suppose you may,” answered Isabel. “ Mrs. Houston told me on the way up that you had seen them. She said they were looking awfully well, though not so tanned as they were likely to look before the summer is over.”

“ When were they here? ” asked Meta.

Over a week ago, wasn’t it, Alice? ” Mr. Houston responded.

“ Yes. There were some letters for you in your room. Didn’t you see them?” Mrs. Houston looked disturbed. “I thought they were from Mr. Burnham and Mr. Fox.”

“ George and Rodney,” Isabel corrected her. “ No, we didn’t see the letters. We were too hungry, I dare say. But they’ll wait.”

She noted that Meta appeared impatient; Isabel made sly record of the fact in a smile at Mrs. Houston.

“ Are they up at the camp now? ” Meta inquired, trying not to appear too eager.

“ Yes, they went up to get everything into shape — workmen’s shacks and so forth,” answered Mr. Houston over his roast duck. “ You know, of course, that they are to put in an experimental dam or weir, as it’s called. It’s to test the quality and characteristics of the stream-flow.”

“ That sounds terribly impressive,” said Isabel, smiling. “ But what is it for?

“ Oh, a hydro-electric apparatus that’s to be installed, — water-turbines and so forth.” Mr. Houston’s tone implied that it was useless to try to explain such things to college girls.

lO

“ They got the letter about the change of plan just before they started from Jefferson,” said Meta.

They were rather taken off their feet.”

“ Rodney told me he was a little surprised, but he didn’t say he was disappointed,” Isabel added.

“ I don’t know that George was, either,” Meta responded. “ He just wasn’t quite prepared for the alteration in their plans.”

“ They’ll come out all right,” commented' Mr. Houston easily. “ It’ll do them good to figure and sweat a little. There have been times when I’ve had to, I can tell you.”

“How soon are we going up to the camp?” Meta could not conceal her eagerness now. Isabel, too, was all agog for the answer.

“ Early next week. Things aren’t quite ready yet. There are some old prospectors’ cabins that we are going to use, and they have to be cleaned and repaired. And of course a good many things have to be sent up. I’ve planned it all pretty completely,” Mr. Houston replied, with an amused glance for the impatience of his listeners.

“ That’s father, all over,” remarked Meta. “ He loves to boss people around; and he’ll even boss boxes and barrels and trunks and suitcases, if he can’t find anything else.”

“ Perhaps you won’t be so scornful of him, when you find how comfortable he’s going to make you, up there in the mountains,” Mr. Houston defended himself.

“ Every few minutes for the last two weeks, he’s been jotting down some absolutely necessary thing,” laughed Mrs. Houston. “ I tell him he will need

Wind from the Rockies il

a dozen army trucks to get all his paraphernalia up there.”

“ Don’t worry,” said pater familias, eating away comfortably. ” I’m sending things on the train to Martaville, and then Sammis, a man I know up there, who used to work for me, will haul them up to the camp. It isn’t far, though it’s a bit of a pull.”

“ I’m dreadfully excited,” Isabel burst out. “ Wasn’t it wonderful that George and Rodney got this chance to come out here, and then that we could all be together, in this magic sort of way? ”

“ It’s mighty fine,” said Meta. “ But of course Dad’s used to managing people’s lives for them,” she went on teasingly. “ He loves to shift ’em around by telegraph.”

“ It must be splendid to do so much for others,” Isabel ventured.

“ That’s nothing,” said Mr. Houston almost gruffly. “ The young men will have to make good, on their own account. Nobody can do that for them.”

Isabel felt rather subdued. There were times when she was a trifle afraid of Mr. Houston, kind as he was. “ Oh, I do hope they will make good! ” she was thinking.

“ It will do you both good to stay here for a few days,” Mr. Houston was changing the subject. “ You need a rest after your trip.”

“ Oh, gracious, father,” scoffed Meta, “ the trip was a rest, after the whirl in Jefferson, — final examinations, and Commencement, and picnics, and parties, and water-fetes, and packing, and making the train. We just settled down and simmered in leisure, when we got safely transferred in St. Paul. We hadn’t had a chance to breathe for weeks and weeks.”

“ Dear me ! Do breathe all you like now,” Mr. Houston replied. “ And anyhow, Isabel ought to see the town.”

“ There isn’t such a desperate lot to see,” said Meta; “ but Isabel is such a tenderfoot that everything seems thrilling to her.”

“ I’m a tenderfoot, too, as far as that is concerned,” put in Mrs. Houston, who feared that Isabel might find the term displeasing. “ Though I’ve lived on the West Coast for a long time. I’ve usually gone to the shore in the summer, instead of to the mountains.”

“ I don’t mind being one, at all, if I have such good company.” Isabel had grown very fond of Mrs. Houston during the few days when the new step-mother and her husband had visited in Jefferson. Those had been painful days, because of Meta’s bitterness about her father’s marriage, and her determination not to be reconciled to the usurper.

“ We became such good friends in Jefferson that we are willing to be martyrs together,” Mrs. Houston said.

“It’s too bad you hurried off so quickly after the play,” Isabel complained. “ You should have stayed to hear the compliments that Meta had on her part in it. She was simply showered with praise, in the newspapers, and everywhere. I suppose she never told you of it in her letters.”

“ I haven’t written any to speak of,” admitted Meta, flushing with pleasure at the mention of her recent successes. “ I’ve depended on telegrams and postal cards to keep up my end of the correspondence.”

” I brought some clippings from the State Journal/^ said Isabel to Mrs. Houston. “ I wanted you to see Meta’s glory actually in print.”

“ I think it was that fluffy yellow dress that she wore that made the impression on the audience,” remarked Mr. Houston, who was tremendously proud of his daughter’s triumph in the college play in which she had taken a leading part. “ The dressmaker ought to have the glorification, don’t you think? ”

“Father! How unkind!” Meta’s pout was not very convincing.

“ She did look lovely,” Isabel agreed, “ and everybody spoke about it.” She was proud of her friend’s beauty and distinction. “ But after all it was Meta’s acting that created the furore.”

“ And I came so near failing! ” cried the amateur actress, with a choke in her voice. “ It gives me the horrors to think of it even now. If you two people ” — she looked gratefully at Mrs. Houston and Isabel— “ hadn’t come to my rescue, I should have gone to pieces entirely, and humiliated myself forever.”

“ Oh, I don’t think that could have happened,” Mrs. Houston returned; “ but it was beautiful that we were able to soothe your nervousness. I feel that you and I just began to get acquainted at that minute; and now we have all summer to renew our acquaintance in,” she added more softly. There was a happy light in her friendly blue eyes.

H

“ It seems queer to make the acquaintance of one’s mother, when one is almost grown up,” faltered Meta, staring absently across the table. She was forgetting to eat, in the absorption of her thoughts.

Mrs. Houston did not reply, but her look of tenderness spoke more than words could have done. The four people were silent as the plates were changed; and their conversation lagged while they ate their dessert.

After they had finished, Meta ran upstairs for the letters, and the others went out and sat on the porch in the dusk, and looked down at the city, now enveloped in deep blue shadows, with the yellow orbs of street lamps shining through. A faint pink reflection still showed on the highest mountain tops. The air had suddenly become cold and bracing, and a keen wind swept the slope.

Isabel felt all at once very far from home, although she was surrounded by friendship and affection. She sat quietly, picturing the later dusk in Jefferson, and the outline of the dome of Main Hall against the sky. And then her mind raced from the college grounds down the leafy streets, to where a white house stood with light streaming from its windows. From the open door came the grave voice of Popsey-Professor, the shrill protests of Celia, who was never ready to go to bed, the coaxing or droll admonitions of Fanny, the “middle” sister; and the gentle tones of Mummy-Carleton.

Isabel felt a lump coming in her throat. Now the distant scene had vanished, and she was on the Wing House porch, with the cold wind of the Rockies stirring her hair and nipping her flesh. She reached for Mrs. Houston’s hand.

“ Homesick? ” breathed the lady, in Isabel’s ear. “No — not with you,” whispered Isabel in return. “ I was in Jefferson for a minute, and it was hard to come back; but I love the adventures that Pm having, and I love the company I’m in — and I know it’s going to be a wonderful summer ! ”

CHAPTER II ^^TTERE’S that clipping from the State Journal

^ said Isabel. It was the morning after the girls’ arrival, and Isabel was unpacking her trunk for her temporary stay in Helena. She and Mrs. Houston were in Meta’s big room, where the sunshine had transformed the ugliness of wall-paper and furnishings.

“ Oh, yes, I want to see it.” Mrs. Houston took the bit of newspaper, and stood reading it, while Isabel looked over her shoulder. The older lady, in her gown of blue linen, nearly the color of her eyes, appeared very young and lovely. Isabel was taller and more slender, with the less settled aspect of youth.

“ It says just the things that one likes to have said.” Isabel was eager and breathless. “ Did you notice that about the ‘ reserve ’ and ‘ dignity ’ ? That’s fine, isn’t it? ”

“ It’s just what we said,” smiled the step-mother. “ Those were the things that we liked best about her acting.”

“ I heard it remarked more than once,” Isabel went on. “ People were really very enthusiastic, and you know a college crowd is likely to be dreadfully critical.”

i6

Mrs. Houston sighed happily. “ It’s such a satisfaction to see Meta do well,” she said. “ She has great possibilities, I think; but she has been in danger of letting mere temperament overrun all her other qualities.”

“ She’ll never be in any actual danger of that again, I’m sure,” remarked Isabel thoughtfully. “ She’s getting a grip on herself.”

“ Thanks to the Carletons,” murmured Mrs. Houston.

“ Oh, no ! Thanks a little to Mumsey ; but not to the rest of us. Meta has a lot of character and good sense herself.”

“Anyhow, I’m glad she’s at Jefferson, and gratified with her success.” Mrs. Houston laid the clipping on the table. “ Now for the clothes you brought.”

“ I don’t know that I need all I have here,” said Isabel with a dubious face, as she began pulling things out of her trunk. “ One always takes too much.”

“ Yes, but one never knows precisely what one will need. Anything that you don’t want to bother with at the camp — the dressier sort of thing — you can leave here in the clothespress. I see that you have some good thick clothing; that’s very sensible. The evenings are cold in the mountains.”

“ I’ve discovered that already,” Isabel returned. “ Here’s this green sweater, — and this heavy serge skirt.”

“ Those are fine. And I do hope you brought some heavy shoes. Girls — even young ladies as old as you — are so foolish about shoes, sometimes.” Mrs. Houston spoke with the wisdom of one whose life had been closely associated with girls of all ages.

“ I think I’m old enough to be sensible,” Isabel responded, “ though you may be sure that Meta and I are not going to act like grown-ups this summer. Look at these, — high and heavy and brown, with low heels.” She held up a stout pair of boots. “ Stubby but smart, I call them.”

“ They’re perfect to wear in camp,” Mrs. Houston conceded.

“ And here are some pumps to rest my feet in, after hikes and climbs; and here are some blouses and a linen skirt or two for warmer days.”

Mrs. Houston was hanging the jersey and the serge skirt in the closet. “ You brought some frilly things, too,” she said. “ I see them peeping out of that tray.”

“ Mother thought that some occasion might arise when I should need them.”

“Indeed, yes; especially if you go on to Seattle with us after our camping expedition is over.”

“ If I do. I know I should love it.” Isabel was taking out a white frock of soft embroidered voile.

“ Ah, that’s the sweet little gown that you wore with the turquoise blue sash on the night of the play,” Mrs. Houston said.

“ The same. My wardrobe is limited. And look. I’m not altogether frivolous. I brought some of my tools along so that I can do some craft work if I get a chance.”

“ A nice industrious idea. I see that you have no notion of wasting your summer.”

“ Not 1. I thought I might do a few things and sell them when I go back. You see how frightfully commercial I’ve grown.” Isabel flushed. “ Well, materials are so expensive, and besides I want to buy some books of instruction, and some books on designing and old jewelry.”

“ Those are high-priced on account of the plates.”

An expression in her companion’s eyes made Isabel protest hastily: “No, you’re not to give them to me. I want to earn them myself.”

Mrs. Houston laughed. “ You’re a mindreader,” she said. “ I was thinking that I’d allow myself the pleasure of buying them for you. But you’re right. It’s ever so much more fun to earn things than to have them given to you.”

“ That’s one reason why you want to keep on with your school, isn’t it? ” asked Isabel sympathetically. She paused with a lace camisole in her hand.

“ One of the chief reasons.” Mrs. Houston took up an embroidered collar, and turned it unthinkingly in her fingers. “ Of course I love the girls and the work, too. Mr. Houston isn’t quite converted yet to the idea of my going on as director of the school, but I’m hoping that he will be, by fall. Men are so strange : he’d like to set me up in a big handsome house, and have me go in for bridge-parties and pink teas, though he despises that sort of thing himself.”

“ It would be horribly dull for you, after being interested in the real things to have to pretend an interest in the frivolous ones.” Isabel tied a bow in the pink ribbon of the camisole.

“ Yes, it would, truly. I don’t think I could stand it. I like a little frivolity and diversion as well as any one, but for a steady diet I’m sure I should find them inexpressibly tiresome.”

“ You wouldn’t be contented not to be doing something for somebody. And oh, while I think of it, I must tell you how delighted Sylvia Calderwood was when I gave her the money from the Fund to pay her expenses during the summer session. You know Harriet Plover gave fifty dollars — it was a real sacrifice for her — and then your check made just what we needed.” Isabel’s eyes shone. The Molly Rarnsay Fund for helping girls through college was one of the important things in her life.

“ I’m very glad that the poor child didn’t have to renounce her diploma for the want of a little money.” Mrs. Houston was speaking of Sylvia Calderwood.

“Just think! It made all the difference in the world to her — the difference between getting her diploma and leaving college without it. She feels so relieved and consoled; she’s like another girl, — not so sad and scared-looking. Isn’t it queer that a little slip of blue paper should have such an influence on a person’s whole career? ”

“ It Isn’t the slip of paper; it’s the thought behind it.” Mrs. Houston put down the embroidered collar, and took up a gray linen skirt which Isabel had thrown over the foot of one of the beds.