Frontier and pioneer life -- Dakota Territory -- Fiction
Craig himself did not appear, either at the reading or the execution.
Instead a dapper city attorney with a sarcastic tongue and an isolated
manner was present to conserve his interests; and, satisfied on that
score, and ere the supply of Havanas in a beautifully embossed leather
case was exhausted, in fact, to quote his own words, "as quickly as a
kind Providence would permit," he vanished into the unknown from whence
he came. Following, on the next train, came a big-voiced, red-bearded
Irishman who proclaimed himself the new foreman and immediately took
possession. Simultaneously there disappeared from the scene the Buffalo
Butte ranch and the brand by which it had been known; and in its place
upon the flank of every live thing controlled, stared forth a C locked
to a C (C-C): the heraldry of the new master, Clayton Craig.
Likewise the long-planned wedding journey had taken place and become a
memory. Into the silent places they went, this new-made man and
wife--and no one was present at the departure to bid them adieu. Back
from the land of nothingness they came--and again no one was at hand to
welcome their return. In but one respect did the accomplishment of that
plan alter from the prearranged; and that one item was the consideration
of time. They did not stay away until winter, as the girl had announced.
Starting in November, they did not complete the month. Nor did they stay
for more than a day in any one spot. Like the curse of the Wandering
Jew, a newborn restlessness in the girl kept calling "On, on." Battle
against it as she might, she was powerless under its dominance. She knew
not from whence had come the change, nor why; but that in the last weeks
she had altered fundamentally, unbelievably, she could not question. The
very first night out, ere they had slept, she had begun to talk of
change on the morrow. The next day it was the same--and the next. When
they were moving the morbid restlessness gradually wore away; for the
time being she became her old careless-happy self; and in sympathy her
companion opened as a flower to the sun. Then would come a pause; and
the morbid, dogging spirit of unrest would close upon her anew. Thus day
by day passed until a week had gone by. Then one morning when camp was
struck, instead of advancing farther, the man had faced back the way
they had come. He made no comment, nor did she. Neither then nor in days
that followed did he once allude to the reason that had caused the
change of plan. When the girl was gay, he was gay likewise. When she
lapsed listlessly into the slough of silence and despond, he went on
precisely as though unconscious of a change. His acting, for acting it
was, even the girl could not but realise at that time, was masterly.
What he was thinking no human being ever knew, no human being could ever
know; for he never gave the semblance of a hint. Probably not since man
and woman began under the sanction of law and of clergy to mate, had
there been such a honeymoon.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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