You Never Know Your Luck: Chapter 10

Chapter 10

"S. O. S."

At breakfast next morning Kitty did not appear. Had it been possible she
would have fled into the far prairie and set up a lonely tabernacle
there; for with the day came a reaction from the courage possessing her
the night before and in the opal wakening of the dawn. When broad
daylight came she felt as though her bones were water and her body a wisp
of straw. She could not bear to meet Shiel Crozier's eyes, and thus it
was she had an early breakfast on the plea that she had ironing to do.
She was not, however, prepared to see Jesse Bulrush drive up with a buggy
after breakfast and take Crozier away. When she did see them at the gate
the impulse came to cry out to Crozier; what to say she did not know, but
still to cry out. The cry on her lips was that which she had seen in the
newspaper the day before, the cry of the shipwrecked seafarers, the
signal of the wireless telegraphy, "S. O. S."--the piteous call, "Save
Our Souls!" It sprang to her lips, but it got no farther except in an
unconscious whisper. On the instant she felt so weak and shaken and
lonely that she wanted to lean upon some one stronger than herself; as
she used to lean against her father, while he sat with one arm round her
studying his railway problems. She had been self-sufficient enough all
her life,--"an independent little bird of freedom," as Crozier had called
her; but she was like a boat tossed on mountainous waves now.

"S. O. S.!--Save Our Souls!"

As though she really had made this poignant call Crozier turned round in
the buggy where he sat with Jesse Bulrush, pale but erect; and, with a
strange instinct, he looked straight to where she was. When he saw her
his face flushed, he could not have told why. Was it that there had
passed to him in his sleep the subconscious knowledge of the kiss which
Kitty had given him; and, after all, had he said "My darling" to her and
not to the wife far away across the seas, as he thought? A strange
feeling, as of secret intimacy, never felt before where Kitty was
concerned, passed through him now, and he was suddenly conscious that
things were not as they had ever been; that the old impersonal
comradeship had vanished. It disturbed, it almost shocked him. Whereupon
he made a valiant effort to recover the old ground, to get out of the new
atmosphere into the old, cheering air.

"Come and say good-bye, won't you?" he called to her.

"S. O. S.--S. O. S.--S. O. S.!" was the cry in her heart, but she called
back to him from her lips, "I can't. I'm too busy. Come back soon,
soldier."

With a wave of the hand he was gone. "Not a care in the world she has,"
Crozier said to Jesse Bulrush. "She's the sunniest creature Heaven ever
made."

"Too skittish for me," responded the other with a sidelong look, for he
had caught a note in Crozier's voice which gave him a sudden suspicion.

"You want the kind you can drive with an oatstraw and a chirp--eh, my
friend?"

"Well, I've got what I want," was the reply. "Neither of us 'll kick over
the traces."

"You are a lucky man," replied Crozier. "You've got a remarkably big
prize in the lottery. She is a fine woman, is Nurse Egan, and I owe her a
great deal. I only hope things turn out so well that I can give her a
good fat wedding-present. But I shan't be able to do anything that's
close to my heart if I can't get the cash for my share in the syndicate."

"Courage, soldier, as Kitty Tynan says," responded Jesse Bulrush
cheerily. "You never know your luck. The cash is waiting for you
somewhere, and it'll turn up, be sure of that."

"I'm not sure of that. I can see as plain as your nose how Bradley and
his clique have blocked me everywhere from getting credit, and I'd give
five years of my life to beat them in their dirty game. If I fail to get
it at Aspen Vale I'm done. But I'll have a try, a good big try. How far
exactly is it? I've never gone by this trail."

Bulrush shook his head reprovingly. "It's too long a journey for you to
take after your knock-out. You're not fit to travel yet. I don't like it
a bit. Lydia said this morning it was a crime against yourself, going off
like this, and--"

"Lydia?--oh yes, pardonnez-moi, m'sieu'! I did not know her name was
Lydia."

"I didn't either till after we were engaged." Crozier stared in blank
amazement. "You didn't know her name till after you were engaged? What
did you call her before that?"

"Why, I called her Nurse." answered the fat lover. "We all called her
that, and it sounded comfortable and homelike and good for every day. It
had a sort of York-shilling confidence, and your life was in her hands
--a first-class you-and-me kind of feeling."

"Why don't you stick to it, then?"

"She doesn't want it. She says it sounds so old, and that I'd be calling
her 'mother' next."

"And won't you?" asked Crozier slyly. "Everything in season," beamed
Jesse, and he shone, and was at once happy and composed. Crozier relapsed
into silence, for he was thinking that the lost years had been barren of
children. He turned to look at the home they had left. It was some
distance away now, but he could see Kitty still at the corner of the
house with a small harvest of laundered linen in her hand.

"She made that fresh bed of boughs for me--ah, but I had a good sleep
last night!" he added aloud. "I feel fit for the fight before me." He
drew himself up and began to nod here and there to people who greeted
him.

In the house behind them at that moment Kitty was saying to her mother,
"Where is he going, mother?"

"To Aspen Vale," was the reply. "If you'd been at breakfast you'd have
heard. He'll be gone two days, perhaps three."

Three days! She regretted now that she had not said to herself, "Courage,
soldier," and gone to say good-bye to him when he called to her. Perhaps
she would not see him again till after the other woman--till after the
wife-came. Then--then the house would be empty; then the house would be
so still. And then John Sibley would come and--

Back to chapter list of: You Never Know Your Luck