A SAGEBRUSH CINDERELLA

CHAPTER I. WHISKERS.

She lay prone upon the floor, kicking her heels together, frowningly intent upon her book. Outside the sky was crimson with the sunset. Inside the room, every corner was filled with the gay fantoms of the age of chivalry. Jac would not raise her head, for if she kept her eyes upon the printed page it seemed to her that the armored knights were trooping about her rooms. A board creaked. That was from the running of some striped page with pointed toes. The wind made a soft rustling. That was the stir of the nodding plumes of the warriors. The pageantry of forgotten kings flowed brightly about her.

“Jac!”

Jacqueline frowned and shrugged her shoulders.

“Jac!”

She raised her head. The dreary board walls of her room looked back at her, empty, barren, a thousand miles and a thousand years from all romance. She closed her book as the door of her room opened and her father stood in the entrance.

“Readin’ again!” said Jim During in infinite disgust. “Go down an’ wait on the table. The cook’s gone an’ got drunk. I’ve give him the run. Hurry up.”

She shied the book into a corner and rose.

“How many here for chow?” she asked.

“Maurice Gordon an’ a lot of others,” said her father. “Start movin’!”

She started. Handsome Maurice Gordon! She had only to close her eyes and there he stood in armor—Sir Maurice de Gordon!

You might have combed the cattle ranges for five hundred miles north, east, south, and west, and never found so fine a figure of a man as Maurice Gordon. Good looks are rather a handicap than a blessing in the mountain desert, but “Maurie” Gordon was notably ready at all times for anything from a dance to a fight, and his reputation was accordingly as high among men as among women.

He made a stir wherever he went, and now as he sat in the dining-room of Jim During’s crossroads hotel, all eyes were upon him. He withstood their critical admiration with the nonchalant good-nature of one who knew that, from his silk bandanna to his fine riding-boots, his outfit represented the beau-ideal of the cow-puncher.

“Where you bound for?” asked the proprietor of the hotel as the supper drew toward its close.

“The dance over to Bridewell,” said Maurie. “Damnation!”

For as he mentioned the dance, Jac, who was bringing him his second cup of coffee, started so violently that a drop of the hot liquid splashed on the back of Maurie’s neck.

“Oh!” she cried, and seized her apron to wipe away the coffee.

“’Scuse me,” growled Maurie, seeing that he had sworn at a woman. “But you took me by surprise.”

With that he stopped the hand which was bearing the soiled apron toward his neck, and produced from his pocket—marvelous to behold!—a handkerchief of stainless white, with which he rubbed away the coffee.

“Jacqueline!” rumbled her father, and his accent made the name far more emphatic than Maurie’s “damnation.”

That was her given title, but to every cow-puncher on the ranges she was known as “Jac” During, who rode, shot, and sometimes swore as well as any man of them all. She was Jacqueline to her father alone, and to him only at such a time as this.

“Well?” she said belligerently, and her eyes fixed on her father as steadily and as angrily as those of a man.

“Your hands was made for feet! Go back to the kitchen. We don’t need you till the boys is through with their coffee. Too bad, Maurie.”

“Nothin’ at all!” said the latter heartily, and waved the matter out of existence.

He might banish Jac from his thoughts with a gesture, but he could not drive away her thoughts of him so easily, it seemed; for she stopped in the shadow of the doorway which led into the kitchen and stared back with big eyes at the cow-puncher.

“Who you takin’ to the dance?” said her father.

“Dolly Maxwell,” said Maurie, naming the prettiest girl in many, many miles.

“That pale-faced—thing!” muttered Jac, relapsing into a feminine vocabulary at this crisis. But she sighed as she turned back into the kitchen.

She threw open the door of the stove so that the light flamed on her red hair, which was tied in a hard knot on top of her head—the quickest, easiest, and unquestionably the most ugly manner of dressing hair. A vast and unreasoning rage made her blood hot.

The anger was partly for her own blunder in spilling the hot coffee. It was even more because of Maurie’s ejaculation. With that one word he had banished the vision of Sir Maurice de Gordon. The plumed helmet had fallen from his head; his bright armor had blown away on a gust of reality. In the fury of her chagrin Jac caught up the poker and raked the grate of the stove loudly. The rattling helped to relieve her as swearing, perhaps, relieves a man. In the midst of the racket she heard a chuckle from the dining-room, and her blood went cold at the thought that some one might understand the deeps of her shame and wrath.

She ran to the door. There she sighed again, but it was relief this time. At least it was not Maurie who laughed. He was deep in conversation with his neighbor. She swept the other faces with a quick glance that halted at a pair of bright, quizzical eyes. Only one man had apparently understood the meaning of her racket at the stove.

“That bum!” said Jac, and turned on her heel.

But something made her stop and look back. Perhaps it was the brightness of those eyes; certainly nothing else could have made her look twice at this fellow. Even among these rough citizens of the mountain desert he was wild and ragged. His shirt was soiled and frayed from elbow to wrist. A bush of black hair was so long that it almost entirely hid his ears, and his face, apparently untouched by a razor for months, was covered by a tremendous growth of whiskers. She could only faintly guess at the features behind that mask.

It was very puzzling, but Jac would not waste time thinking of such a caricature of a man as he of the many whiskers. She turned back into the kitchen and broke off her meditations by kicking a box across the floor.

It smashed against the wall. Jac sat down to think, and stared gloomily straight before her. Her throat swelled and in her heart was that feeling of infinite age which comes upon women at all periods of their life, but most of all during the interim when a girl knows that she is mature and the rest of the world has not yet found it out.

“Why was I made like this?” said Jac miserably.

And from within a still, small voice that was not conscience answered her.

“Aw,” said the voice, “quit kiddin’ yourself!”

“Why,” repeated Jac dolorously, “was I tied to such a face?”

“You might as well be askin’,” said the voice, “how the colors are painted on a pinto.”

“Them colors never rub out.”

“Neither will your face.”

“It’s awful.”

“It is.”

She stood in front of the speckled mirror.

“There’s something wrong with the way I fix my hair,” she muttered.

It was tied so tightly that it pulled up the skin of her forehead and raised her eyebrows to a look of continual plaintiveness.

“There’s certainly something wrong with the way I do my hair!”

“Is that all that’s wrong with your face?” whispered the voice.

“My hair is red,” said Jac.

“Like paint,” said the voice.

“There’s no help?”

“None!”

To escape from this merciless dialogue, Jac went back to her post of vantage. The square shoulders of Maurie Gordon were just disappearing through the outer door. All the others were gone, with the exception of her father, her brother Harry, and the man of many whiskers. The last was hardly to be considered as a human being. She felt practically alone with her family, so she entered the dining-room and sat on the edge of the table swinging her feet.

“Harry,” she said, “d’you see anything the matter with the way I fix my hair?” Her brother glanced at her with unseeing eyes. The man of many whiskers stopped stirring his coffee and glanced up with the keen twinkle which Jac had seen before. She turned her shoulder upon him.

“Throw me your tobacco, pa,” said Harry.

“Did you hear me ask you a question?” said Jac fiercely.

Harry rolled his cigarette before he answered.

“Don’t get so sore you rope an’ tie yourself. What did you say?”

“I asked you if you was goin’ to the dance at Bridewell.”

The stranger chuckled softly.

“Say, what’s eatin’ you, Whiskers?” snapped Jac, but without turning.

“Sure I’m going,” said Harry. “It’s going to be a big bust.”

“What girl are you takin’?”

“Nobody. I’ll find plenty to dance with when I get there.”

Jac blinked her eyes once, twice, and again.

“Why not take me?”

The cigarette fell from Harry’s lips.

“What the—” he began. “Say, Jac, are you sick?”

The ache came in Jac’s throat again. Her face changed color and the freckles across the bridge of her nose stood out with a startling distinctness.

“Don’t I dance good enough, Harry?” He had evidently been bracing himself for a straight-from-the-shoulder retort. At this gentle question he gasped and rose with a look of brotherly concern.

“Jac, if you was a man I’d say you’d been hittin’ the red-eye too much.”

“Oh,” said Jac.

Harry touched her under the chin and tilted back her head. The deep-blue eyes stared miserably up to him.

“What’s the matter with her, pa?” he asked.

“Plain foolishness!” said the latter.

Jac struck the hand from her chin and leaped from the table to her feet.

“Harry,” she said, “if I was a man I’d hang a bunch of fives on your chin!”

The chuckle of the stranger made her whirl.

“Get out, Whiskers,” she commanded, “or I’ll pull a gun an’ give you a free shave.”

The man rose obediently and went from the room to the porch. Harry followed him out and swung into the saddle of his horse. His father delayed an instant.

“Now cut out this talk of goin’ to the dance,” said Jim During. “You stay right here, an’ if any of the boys come in late fix them up some chow. I got to slide over to see old Jones on some—some business.”

“Sure you do,” said Jac scornfully. “I know that kind of business. It comes five in a hand and you draw to it.”

The hair of her father seemed to take on a deeper tinge of red.

“Well?” he said.

“Well?” she replied no less angrily. “If I couldn’t play no better hand of poker than you do, I’d go no farther than solitaire, believe me.”

“Jacqueline!”

“Don’t swear at me!” said Jac. “If you think I ain’t right, just sit down and play a hand with me.”

Her father was so swelled with wrath that he could make no rejoinder. At length he whirled on his heel and strode toward the door, pulling his sombrero down over his eyes.

At the door he turned back and pointed a long, angry arm.

“An’ if I catch you leavin’ this place to-night—” he began.

“Well?”

His face altered and the anger faded from his eyes.

“Jac,” he said gently, “why in hell wasn’t you born a boy?”

He went on out and a moment later his horse clattered down the road.

“Why?” repeated Jac.

CHAPTER II. LAND.

She went out to the porch and stared after the disappearing horseman. When he had quite vanished in the rapidly fading light of the evening she turned back. She stopped. The stranger sat on the edge of the porch whittling a stick.

His black hair bushed out under the brim of his sombrero, and for some reason it stirred the latent wrath in Jac. She went to him and stood with arms akimbo, staring down.

“Too bad,” he said, but did not look up.

“What’s too bad?”

“The red hair.”

It was a long moment before she spoke. “Huh!” she said. “If I was to talk about your hair you’d think I was discussin’ a record crop of hay. If I was to—”

She stopped, for the twinkling eyes were smiling up to her.

“I look like the land of much rain, all right,” said the stranger.

Jac dropped to a cross-legged position with the agility of an Indian and supporting her chin on both hands she stared impudently into the face of the stranger.

“What does the land look like when the forest is gone?”

“It ain’t been surveyed for so long I’ve forgotten.”

He shifted a little to smile more directly into her eyes, and the movement caused her glance to drop to his holster. It was open. With a slow gesture—for no one, not even a woman, makes free with the weapon of another in the mountain desert—she drew the revolver out, looked it over with the keen eye of a connoisseur, glanced down the sights, spun the cylinder, and tried the balance with a deft hand.

“Clean as a whistle,” she said as she restored the revolver. “Some six-gun!” With a new respect she looked the man over from head to foot.

“Maybe under the mask,” she said, “you look almost human.”

“I dunno. Maybe.”

Her eyes wandered far away; came back to him, frowned; wandered off again.

“Can you dance?” she asked conversationally.

He broke into a deep laughter. Jac gathered as if for a spring.

“Go slow, partner,” she drawled. “Maybe I ain’t big, but believe me, I ain’t a house pet.”

“I’d as soon think of fondlin’ a wildcat,” nodded the man.

She hesitated between anger and curiosity, and then glanced around with needless anxiety lest they should not be alone.

“Give it to me straight, pal,” she said. “How bad do I look?”

Her companion looked her over with a critical eye and a judicious frown.

“I dunno,” he said at last. “It’s pretty hard for me to tell. If those freckles was covered up, maybe I could see your face.” As he spoke he edged away, as if ready to spring from the porch when she attacked him.

Instead, she sighed. The other started and looked at her with a new interest.

“How old are you?” he asked sharply.

“Three years more than you think.”

“Sixteen?”

“And three makes nineteen. You’re right the first time. How’d you do it?”

He took off his hat and extended his hand.

“My name is Bill Carrigan,” he said.

Even in the dim light he could guess at the curiosity in her eyes.

“Mine is Jac—Jacqueline During. I’m awfully glad to shake hands with you.”

There was a little pause.

“I suppose Maurie Gordon is nearly at the dance by this time?” he said tentatively.

She nodded. The lump in her throat kept her silent.

“How tall are you?” he asked suddenly.

“Five feet five and a half.”

“What’s your weight?”

“One hundred and twenty. Say, Carrigan, what you drivin’ at?”

He looked away as if making a mental note.

“What size shoes?”

She looked at him with a dark frown, but the twinkle of his eyes was irresistible. She broke into a laugh.

“Look at ’em!”

She extended to his gaze a foot clad in the heavy shoe of a man, cut square across the toe.

“Well, Columbus, what have you discovered?”

“Land,” said Carrigan, and rose.

“You goin’ so soon?” she queried plaintively.

“But I’m coming back,” said Carrigan.

“Coming back?” repeated Jac.

“With bells.”

She watched him swing gracefully into the saddle of a clean-limbed horse and gallop swiftly into the gloom.

“Well, I’ll be—” began Jac.

She checked herself. An instinct which was born with Eve made her raise a hand to pat her hair.

She began again: “I must look like—” Once more she stopped, this time with a sigh. “What words are left?” murmured Jacqueline.

Carrigan pulled his horse up before the barber shop in the little village a mile away. He banged thunderously against the wall of the shanty with his gun-butt.

“What the hell!” roared a voice above.

“Business,” said Carrigan. “Come on down and open your shop.”

A few moments later he sat down in the chair while the barber lighted his lamp. The latter groaned when he saw the face of his customer.

“How much?”

“The price of your best razor,” said Carrigan instantly. “Now start—chop off the heavy timber, saw down the undergrowth, anything to clear the land. And do it on the jump.”

Hair flew—literally. At last the barber stepped back, perspiring, and looked at the lean face before him.

“I feel,” he said, “more as if I’d made a man than shaved him.”

“Maybe you’re right,” said Carrigan, and started on the run for the general merchandise store across the street, the only clothiers within a hundred miles, a place that carried everything from horseshoes to hairpins. The proprietor was locking up the front door.

“What’s your rush, partner?” he asked. “Wait till to-morrow. I got some business to—”

“To-morrow is next year,” said Carrigan. “Start goin’.”

The door opened.

He began shedding orders and old clothes at the same time. The storekeeper, on the run, brought the articles Carrigan demanded.

“More light!” Carrigan said at last.

The proprietor brought a lamp and placed it close to a large mirror, the pride of his place.

Carrigan stalked up to it, and, turning slowly around, viewed his outfit with one long glance.

“All right,” he said. “Now I’m ready to begin buying!”

The proprietor gasped and then rubbed his hands.

“What next?” he asked.

“A beautiful girl.”

The proprietor smiled in sympathy with the somewhat obscure jest.

“A beautiful girl,” repeated Carrigan, “with red hair, weighing a trifle over one hundred and twenty pounds, standing five feet five and a half, and with feet—well, of the right size.”

The proprietor moistened his lips and stepped back. His eyes were very large.

“Start for the ladies’ department.”

The proprietor was baffled, but he led the way.

“Dresses first,” said Carrigan. “Some thing fancy. Best you’ve got. Here! Red—green! green—red!”

He picked out a gown and held it out at arm’s length, a soft, green fabric.

“What size do you want?” asked the proprietor.

“What’s the perfect size for five foot five, eh?”

“Thirty-six.”

“What’s this gown?”

“Thirty-six.”

“How much?”

The proprietor doubled the price.

“Taken,” said Carrigan.

“But maybe the lady ain’t thirty-six, and—”

“You’re right, old-timer. The lady ain’t, but she will be. What’s next? Petticoat?”

“Those are over here.”

“I leave it to you, partner. Something that makes a rustle and a swishing like a light rain on leaves. You know the kind?”

“Taffeta will do that.”

“Then taffeta it is. Now for the kicks. Something light. Slippers, eh?”

“Follow me.”

He set out an array of dancing-shoes.

“What size?” he asked.

“The right size.”

The proprietor made a gesture of despair.

“There ain’t no woman in the world whose feet are the right size.”

“Then we’ll set a record to-night. How big ought they to be for a hundred and twenty pounds?”

“That all depends. If the lady is—”

“The lady ain’t,” repeated Carrigan wearily. “I’m tellin’ you we’re making her here.”

The proprietor wiped his forehead.

“Number four?” he suggested vaguely. “Let’s have a look. Make it something like this.”

He indicated a pair of bronze slippers, but when the storekeeper produced the pair of number fours, Carrigan took one of them in the palm of his brawny hand and stared at it with something between awe and dismay.

“Are these meant for real feet?”

“Yep.”

Carrigan thought of the mighty brogans he had seen on Jac’s feet.

“Do or die,” he said, “she’ll have to wear ’em! What’s next? Stockings?”

“Here they are.”

“These green ones will do the work. And now—”

“Corsets?”

He indicated a model bust clad in a formidable corset.

Carrigan sighed.

“Friend,” he said, “did you ever hear about the days when men wore armor?”

“Yes.”

“When I’m dancin’ with a girl that wears one of them things, I feel as if I had my arms around a man in armor. Anything else?”

A malicious light gleamed in the eyes of the proprietor.

“There’s nothing else except these girdles that a drummer palmed off on me. They’re jest elastic, that’s all. They don’t give a girl no figger.”

“H-m! But they’re a long way from armor-plate. I’ll take one.”

“What size?”

“How do they run? Large, small, and medium?”

“By inches.”

“Make it something extra medium in inches.”

“Most of ’em wish they could wear twenty-one.”

“Twenty-one it is.”

The proprietor grinned.

“But if that’s too small—”

“Friend, what do you do when your cinch is too small for your hoss?”

“Pull.”

“Well?”

The proprietor added the girdle to the heap in mute surrender.

“And now that we’ve got down to the girdle,” he said, “the next thing is—”

“Look here, friend,” said Carrigan, “don’t go too far!”

“Well?”

“Well, fix up the underlining any way you want, but make it the best you’ve got. One thing more. There ain’t enough color in this outfit. Something for her shoulders?”

“A scarf. Right here.”

Carrigan picked out a filmy, orchid-colored tissue.

“Now we’ve reached her face.”

The proprietor groaned.

“Paint?”

“Nope. I don’t want to add anything. I want to make something disappear. Freckles.”

The storekeeper grinned.

“Vanishing cream and then rice powder. That’s the latest hitch.”

CHAPTER III. CINDERELLA.

The bundle which resulted was bulky, but Carrigan sang as he raced back. He drew his horse to a walk as he approached the During hotel, for a light showed dimly from the dining-room; there might be some new arrival in the place.

It was only Jac, however. She sat by the table with her face buried in her arms. He saw one hand lying palm up beside her head. It was small and the fingers tapered.

“I never noticed she was so small,” said Carrigan to himself in a hushed voice.

He stepped closer, softly.

“Jest a kid,” he added.

There was the sound of a controlled sob; her body quivered; and Carrigan knew that she was struggling with some great grief.

“Cinderella!” he called gently and touched her shoulder.

Her head turned. Two marvelously deep-blue eyes shone up to him. Her lower lip was trembling; but when she saw him she stiffened with astonishment.

“What do you want?” she asked.

“A beautiful girl, five feet five and a half, one hundred and twenty pounds.”

“Carrigan!” she stammered. “Is it really you?”

He dropped the bundle to the floor and turned slowly.

“Look me over.”

“Wonderful!”

She had dropped into a chair and sat pigeon-toed, her hands clasped tightly in her lap and her mouth slightly agape.

“Carrigan, how did you do it?”

“Look in that bundle and you’ll see.” He left the room hastily, but before he had gone far he heard a thin, short cry. Happiness and pain are closely akin.

“If she only—” began Carrigan.

He choked.

“If this was only a masked ball,” he said at last, “she might get by. But even then that hair—”

He swore softly again.

“If Maurie turns her down after this—I’ll bust his face wide open.”

He thought of Gordon’s wide shoulders and sighed.

After a time a voice called from the house:

“Carrigan!”

It was a marvelous voice. It was changed as the tone of a violin changes when it passes from the hands of an amateur to those of an artist.

“Is that my name?” said Carrigan, and he walked slowly toward the house.

She stood in the center of the room, with a piece of the wrapping-paper in which the bundle had been done up held before her face.

Carrigan started back until his shoulders touched the wall.

“My God!” he murmured with indescribable awe. “They fit!”

“But—” she said behind the paper.

“Well?”

She lowered the paper. The freckles looked out at him—and the eyes with plaintive brows raised by the hard knot of the hair. At the base of her throat was a line of sharp division. All above was a healthy brown. All below was a dazzling white.

He could not meet the despair of her eyes.

“Well?” she said.

“Well?” said Carrigan.

“I didn’t choose this face,” she explained sadly. “It was wished on me!”

Carrigan sank into a chair and looked upon her as a general looks over a field of battle and calculates the chances of his outnumbered army. His eyes fell to the slender feet in the shining bronze slippers, with the small, round ankles incased in pleasant green.

His heart leaped. His eyes raised and met the freckles. He clenched his hand.

“If it wasn’t for them freckles—”

“Yes?”

“I could see your face.”

Crimson went up her throat with delicate tints, blending the clear white of the breast with the brown of the round neck. He jumped to his feet: he pointed a commanding arm.

“That hair!”

“I know it’s—”

“I don’t care what you know. Untie that knot!”

She obeyed. A red gold flood rippled suddenly almost to her knees.

Carrigan blinked.

“Sit down!”

She dropped to a chair, and Carrigan commenced to work. When a man has to do anything from roping a steer to jerking out a six-gun with the speed of light, he acquires a marvelous dexterity with his hands. Carrigan could almost think with his fingers. They seemed, in fact, to have a separate intelligence.

He gathered up the silken mass. The soft touch thrilled him as if every one of the delicate threads carried a tiny charge of electricity. It was marvelous that such a shining torrent could have been reduced the moment before to that compacted, bright red knot.

Carrigan closed his eyes and summoned up a vision of hair as he had seen it dressed, not on the heads of any of the mountain-desert belles, but in magazine pictures.

With that vision before him he commenced to work, rapidly, surely. It seemed as if the hair, glad to escape from the bondage of that hard knot, fell of its own accord into graceful, waving lines. It curved low across the broad forehead: it gathered at the nape of the neck in a soft knot in the Grecian mode.