Rudyard Kipling - The Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated)

'What?' asked she, lifting her sober eyes and letting them fall upon him.

'My seeing you sometimes. I know you don't like it; but it will help me to look after you. You must see by this time that you need looking after.'

'Oh no.'

'Thank you,' said Tarvin, almost humbly.

'I mean I don't need looking after.'

'But you don't dislike it?'

'It's good of you,' she said impartially.

'Well, then, it will be bad of you not to like it.'

Kate had to smile. 'I guess I like it,' she replied.

'And you will let me come once in a while? You can't think what the rest-house is. Those drummers will kill me yet. And the coolies at the dam are not in my set.'

'Well, since you're here. But you ought not to be here. Do me a real kindness, and go away, Nick.'

'Give me an easier one.'

'But why are you here? You can't show any rational reason.'

'Yes; that's what the British Government says. But I brought my reason along.'

He confessed his longing for something homely and natural and American after a day's work under a heathen and raging sun; and when he put it in this light, Kate responded on another side. She had been brought up with a sense of responsibility for making young men feel at home; and he certainly felt at home when she was able to produce, two or three evenings later, a Topaz paper sent her by her father. Tarvin pounced on it, and turned the flimsy four pages inside out, and then back again.

He smacked his lips. 'Oh, good, good, good!' he murmured relishingly. 'Don't the advertisements look nice? What's the matter with Topaz?' cried he, holding the sheet from him at arm's length, and gazing ravenously up and down its columns. 'Oh, she's all right.' The cooing, musical sing-song in which he uttered this consecrated phrase was worth going a long way to hear. 'Say, we're coming on, aren't we? We're not lagging nor loafing, nor fooling our time away, if we haven't got the Three C.'s yet. We're keeping up with the procession. Hi-yi! look at the "Rustler Rootlets"--just about a stickful! Why, the poor old worm-eaten town is going sound, sound asleep in her old age, isn't she? Think of taking a railroad there! Listen to this:--

"Milo C. Lambert, the owner of 'Lambert's Last Ditch,' has a car-load of good ore on the dump, but, like all the rest of us, don't find it pays to ship without a railroad line nearer than fifteen miles. Milo says Colorado won't be good enough for him after he gets his ore away."

'I should think not. Come to Topaz, Milo! And this:--

"When the Three C.'s comes into the city in the fall we shan't be hearing this talk about hard times. Meantime it's an injustice to the town, which all honest citizens should resent and do their best to put down, to speak of Rustler as taking a back seat to any town of its age in the State. As a matter of fact, Rustler was never more prosperous. With mines which produced last year ore valued at a total of $1,200,000, with six churches of different denominations, with a young but prosperous and growing academy which is destined to take a front rank among American schools, with a record of new buildings erected during the past year equal if not superior to any town in the mountains, and with a population of lively and determined business men, Rustler bids fair in the coming year to be worthy of her name."

'Who said "afraid"? We're not hurt. Hear us whistle. But I'm sorry Heckler let that into his correspondence,' he added, with a momentary frown. 'Some of our Topaz citizens might miss the fun of it, and go over to Rustler to wait for the Three C.'s. Coming in the fall, is it? Oh, dear! Oh, dear, dear, dear! This is the way they amuse themselves while they dangle their legs over Big Chief Mountain and wait for it:--

"Our merchants have responded to the recent good feeling which has pervaded the town since word came that President Mutrie, on his return to Denver, was favourably considering the claims of Rustler. Robbins has his front windows prettily decorated and filled with fancy articles. His store seems to be the most popular for the youngsters who have a nickel or two to spend."

'I should murmur! Won't you like to see the Three C.'s come sailing into Topaz one of these fine mornings, little girl?' asked Tarvin suddenly, as he seated himself on the sofa beside her, and opened out the paper so that she could look over his shoulder.

'Would you like it, Nick?'

'Would I!'

'Then, of course, I should. But I think you will be better off if it doesn't. It will make you too rich. See father.'

'Well, I'd put on the brakes if I found myself getting real rich. I'll stop just after I've passed the Genteel Poverty Station. Isn't it good to see the old heading again--Heckler's name as large as life just under "oldest paper in Divide County," and Heckler's fist sticking out all over a rousing editorial on the prospects of the town? Homelike, isn't it? He's got two columns of new advertising; that shows what the town's doing. And look at the good old "ads." from the Eastern agencies. How they take you back! I never expected to thank Heaven for a Castoria advertisement; did you, Kate? But I swear it makes me feel good all over. I'll read the patent inside if you say much.'

Kate smiled. The paper gave her a little pang of home-sickness too. She had her own feeling for Topaz; but what reached her through the Telegram's lively pages was the picture of her mother sitting in her kitchen in the long afternoons (she had sat in the kitchen so long in the poor and wandering days of the family that she did it now by preference), gazing sadly out at white-topped Big Chief, and wondering what her daughter was doing at that hour. Kate remembered well that afternoon hour in the kitchen when the work was done. She recalled from the section-house days the superannuated rocker, once a parlour chair, which her mother had hung with skins and told off for kitchen service. Kate remembered with starting tears that her mother had always wanted her to sit in it, and how good it had been to see, from her own hassock next the oven, the little mother swallowed up in its deeps. She heard the cat purring under the stove, and the kettle singing; the clock ticked in her ear, and the cracks between the boards in the floor of the hastily built section-house blew the cold prairie air against her heels.

She gazed over Tarvin's, shoulder at the two cuts of Topaz which appeared in every issue of the Telegram--the one representing the town in its first year, the other the town of to-day--and a lump rose in her throat.

'Quite a difference, isn't there?' said Tarvin, following her eye. 'Do you remember where your father's tent used to stand, and the old sectionhouse, just here by the river?' He pointed, and Kate nodded without speaking. 'Those were good days, weren't they? Your father wasn't as rich as he is now, and neither was I; but we were all mighty happy together.'

Kate's thought drifted back to that time, and called up other visions of her mother expending her slight frame in many forms of hard work. The memory of the little characteristic motion with which she would shield with raised hand the worn young-old face when she would be broiling above an open fire, or frying doughnuts, or lifting the stove lid, forced her to gulp down the tears. The simple picture was too clear, even to the light of the fire on the face, and the pink light shining through the frail hand.

'Hello!' said Tarvin, casting his eye up and down the columns, 'they've had to put another team on to keep the streets clean. We had one. Heckler don't forget the climate either. And they are doing well at the Mesa House. That's a good sign. The tourists will all have to stop over at Topaz when the new line comes through, and we have the right hotel. Some towns might think we had a little tourist traffic now. Here's Loomis dining fifty at the Mesa the other day--through express. They've formed a new syndicate to work the Hot Springs. Do you know, I shouldn't wonder if they made a town down there. Heckler's right. It will help Topaz. We don't mind a town that near. It makes a suburb of it.'