The Cup of Trembling, and Other Stories

That one look of Henniker's at Meta, in her strange yet familiar beauty, sitting captive to his spell, went through his flattered senses like the intoxication of strong drink. He did not take his eyes off her again. His face was pale with the complex excitement of a full house that was all one girl and all hushed through joy of him. She sat so close to Callie, his reckless glances might have been meant for either of them; Callie thought at first they were for her, but she did not think so long.

Something followed on the programme at which everybody laughed, but it meant nothing at all to Meta. She thought the supreme moment had come and gone, when a big Zouave in his barbaric reds and blues marched out and took his stand, back from the footlights, between the wings, and began that amazing performance with a rifle which is known as the "Zouave drill."

The dress was less of a disguise than the minstrel's had been, and it was a sterner, manlier transformation. It brought out the fighting look in Henniker. The footlights were lowered, a smoke arose behind the wings, strange lurid colors were cast upon the figure of the soldier magician.

"The stage is burning!" gasped Meta, clutching Collie's arm.

"It's nothing but red fire. You mustn't give yourself away so, Meta; folks will take us for a lot of sagebrushers."

Meta settled back in her place with a fluttering sigh, and poured her soul into this new wonder.

But Henniker was not doing himself justice to-night, his comrades thought. No one present was so critical of him or so proud of him as they. A hundred times he had put himself through this drill before a barrack audience, and it had seemed as if he could not make a break. But to-night his nerve was not good. Once he actually dropped his piece, and a groan escaped the row of uniforms in the gallery. This made him angry; he pulled himself up and did some good work for a moment, and then – "Great Scott! he's lost it again! No, he hasn't. Brace up, man!" The rifle swerves, but Henniker's knee flies up to catch it; the sound of the blow on the bone makes the women shiver; but he has his piece, and sends it savagely whirling, and that miss was his last. His head was like the centre of a spinning top or the hub of a flying wheel. He felt ugly from the pain of his knee, but he made a dogged finish, and only those who had seen him at his best would have said that his drill was a failure.

Henniker knew, if no one else did, what had lost him his grip in the rifle act. His eyes, which should have been glued to his work, had been straying for another and yet one more look at Meta. Where she sat so still was the storm centre of emotion in the house, and when his eyes approached her they caught the nerve shock that shook his whole system and spoiled his fine work. He cared nothing for the success of his piping when he thought of the failure of his drill. The failure had come last, and, with other things, it left its sting.

On the way home to barracks, the boys were all talking, in their free way, about Meta Meadows, – the little broncho, they called her, in allusion to her great mane of hair, – which made Henniker very hot.

He would not own that his knee pained him; he would not have it referred to, and was ready, next day, to join the riders in squad drill, a new feature of which was the hurdles and ditch-jumping and the mounted exercises, in which as usual, Henniker had distinguished himself.

The Reservation is bounded on the south-east side, next the town, by an irrigation ditch, which is crossed by as many little bridges as there are streets that open out upon the common. (All this part of the town is laid out in "additions," and is sparsely built up.) Close to this division line, at right angles with it, are the dry ditches and hurdle embankments over which the stern young corporals put their squads, under the eye of the captain.

Out in the centre of the plain other squads are engaged in the athletics of horsemanship, – a series of problems in action which embraces every sort of emergency a mounted man may encounter in the rush and throng of battle, and the means of instantly meeting it, and of saving his own life or that of a comrade. So much more is made in these days of the individual powers of the man and horse that it is wonderful to see what an exact yet intelligently obedient combination they have become; no less effective in a charge, as so many pounds of live momentum to be hurled on the bayonet points, but much more self-reliant on scout service, or when scattered singly, in defeat, over a wide, strange field of danger.

On the regular afternoons for squad and troop drill, the ditch bank on the town side would be lined with spectators: ladies in light cotton dresses and beflowered hats, small bare-legged boys and muddy dogs, the small boys' sisters dragging bonnetless babies by the hand, and sometimes a tired mother who has come in a hurry to see where her little truants have strayed to, or a cow-boy lounging sideways on his peaked saddle, condescending to look on at the riding of Uncle Sam's boys. The crowd assorts itself as the people do who line the barriers at a bull-fight: those who have parasols, to the shadow; those who have barely a hat, to the sun.

Here, on the field of the gray-green plain, under the glaring tent roof of the desert sky, the national free circus goes on, – to the screaming delight of the small boys, the fear and exultation of the ladies, and the alternate pride and disgust of the officers who have it in charge.

A squad of the boldest riders are jumping, six in line. One can see by the way they come that every man will go over: first the small ditch, hardly a check in the pace; then a rush at the hurdle embankment, the horses' heads very grand and Greek as they rear in a broken line to take it. Their faces are as strong and wild as the faces of the men. Their flanks are slippery with sweat. They clear the hurdles, and stretch out for the wide ditch.

"Keep in line! Don't crowd!" the corporal shouts. They are doing well, he thinks. Over they all go; and the ladies breathe again, and say to each other how much finer this sport is because it is work, and has a purpose in it.

Now the guidon comes, riding alone, and the whole troop is proud of him. The signal flag flashes erect from the trooper's stirrup; the horse is new to it, and fears it as if it were something pursuing him; but in the face of horse and man is the same fixed expression, the sober recklessness that goes straight to the finish. If these do not go over, it will not be for want of the spur in the blood.

Next comes a pale young cavalryman just out of the hospital. He has had a fall at the hurdle week before and strained his back. His captain sees that he is nervous and not yet fit for the work, yet cannot spare him openly. He invents an order, and sends him off to another part of the field where the other squads are manœuvring.

If it is not in the man to go over, it will not be in his horse, though a poor horse may put a good rider to shame; but the measure of every man and every horse is taken by those who have watched them day by day.

The ladies are much concerned for the man who fails, – "so sorry" they are for him, as his horse blunders over the hurdle, and slackens when he ought to go free; and of course he jibs at the wide ditch, and the rider saws on his mouth.

"Give him his head! Where are your spurs, man?" the corporal shouts, and adds something under his breath which cannot be said in the presence of his captain. In they go, floundering, on their knees and noses, horse and man, and the ladies cannot see, for the dust, which of them is on top; but they come to the surface panting, and the man, whose uniform is of the color of the ditch, climbs on again, and the corporal's disgust is heard in his voice as he calls, "Ne-aaxt!"

It need not be said that no corporal ever asked Henniker where were his spurs. To-day the fret in his temper fretted his horse, a young, nervous animal who did not need to know where his rider's heels were quite so often as Henniker's informed him.

"Is that a non-commissioned officer who is off, and his horse scouring away over the plain? What a dire mortification," the ladies say, "and what a consolation to the bunglers!"

No, it is the trumpeter. He was taking the hurdle in a rush of the whole squad; his check-strap broke, and his horse went wild, and slammed himself into another man's horse, and ground his rider's knee against his comrade's carbine. It is Henniker who is down in the dust, cursing the carbine, and cursing his knee, and cursing the mischief generally.

The ladies strolled home through the heat, and said how glorious it was and how awfully real, and how one man got badly hurt; and they described in detail the sight of Henniker limping bareheaded in the sun, holding on to a comrade's shoulder; how his face was a "ghastly brown white," and his eyes were bloodshot, and his black head dun with dust.

"It was the trumpeter who blew so beautifully the other night, – who hurt his knee in the rifle drill," they said. "It was his knee that was hurt to-day. I wonder if it was the same knee?"

It was the same knee, and this time Henniker went to hospital and stayed there; and being no malingerer, his confinement was bitterly irksome and a hurt to his physical pride.

The post surgeon's house is the last one on the line. Then comes the hospital, but lower down the hill. The officer's walk reaches it by a pair of steps that end in a slope of grass. There are moisture and shade where the hospital stands, and a clump of box-elder trees is a boon to the convalescents there. The road between barracks and canteen passes the angle of the whitewashed fence; a wild syringa bush grows on the hospital side, and thrusts its blossoms over the wall. There is a broken board in the fence which the syringa partly hides.

After three o'clock in the afternoon this is the coolest corner of the hospital grounds; and here, on the grass, Henniker was lying, one day of the second week of his confinement.

He had been half asleep when a soft, light thump on the grass aroused him. A stray kitten had crawled through the hole in the fence, and, feeling her way down with her forepaws, had leaped to the ground beside him.

"Hey, pussy!" Henniker welcomed her pleasantly, and then was silent. A hand had followed the kitten through the hole in the fence, – a smooth brown hand no bigger than a child's, but perfect in shape as a woman's. The small fingers moved and curled enticingly.

"Pussy, pussy? Come, pussy!" a soft voice cooed. "Puss, puss, puss? Come, pussy!" The fingers groped about in empty air. "Where are you, pussy?"

Henniker had quietly possessed himself of the kitten, which, moved by these siren tones, began to squirm a little and meekly to "miew." He reached forth his hand and took the small questing one prisoner; then he let the kitten go. There was a brief speechless struggle, quite a useless one.

"Let me go! Who is it? Oh dear!"

Another pull. Plainly, from the tone, this last was feminine profanity.

Silence again, the hand struggling persistently, but in vain. The soft bare arm, working against the fence, became an angry red.

"Softly now. It's only me. Didn't you know I was in hospital, Meta?"

"Is it you, Henniker?"

"Indeed it is. You wouldn't begrudge me a small shake of your hand, after all these days?"

"But you are not in hospital now?"

"That's what I am. I'm not in bed, but I'm going on three legs when I'm going at all. I'm a house-bound man." A heavy sigh from Henniker.

"Haven't you shaken hands enough now, Henniker?" beseechingly from the other side. "I only wanted kitty; please put her through the fence."

"What's your hurry?"

"Have you got her there? Callie left her with me. I mustn't lose her. Please?"

"Has Callie gone away?"

"Why, yes, didn't you know? She has gone to stay with Tim's wife." (Tim Meadows was the eldest, the married son of the family.) "She has a little baby, and they can't get any help, and father wouldn't let mother go down because it's bad for her to be over a cook stove, you know."

"Yes, I know the old lady feels the heat."

"We are quite busy at the house. I came of an errand to the quartermaster-sergeant's, and kitty followed me, and the children chased her. I must go home now," urged Meta. "Really, I did not think you would be so foolish, Henniker. I can't see what fun there is in this!"

"Yes, but Meta, I've made a discovery, – here in your hand."

"In my hand? What is it? Let me see." A violent determined pull, and a sound like a smothered explosion of laughter from Henniker.

"Softly, softly now. You'll hurt yourself, my dear."

"Is my hand dirty? It was the kitten, then; her paws were all over sand."

"Oh, no. Great sign! It's worse than that. It'll not come off."

"I will see what it is!"

"But you can't see unless I was to tell you. I'm a hand reader, did you know it? I can tell your fortune by the lines on your palm. I'm reading them off here just like a book."

"Good gracious! what do you see?"

"Why, it's a most extraordinary thing! Your head line is that mixed up with your heart line, 'pon me word I can't tell which is which. Which is it, Meta? Do you choose your friends with your head entirely, or is it the other way with you, dear?"

"Oh, is that all? I thought you could tell fortunes really. I don't care what I am; I want to know what I'm going to do. Don't you see anything that's going to happen to me?"

"Lots of things. I see something that's going to happen to you right now. I wonder did it ever happen to you before?"

"What is it? When is it coming?"

"It has come. I will put it right here in your hand. But I shall want it back again, remember; and don't be giving it away, now, to anybody else."

A mysterious pause. Meta felt a breath upon her wrist, and a kiss from a mustached lip was pressed into the hollow of her hand.

"Keep that till I ask you for it," said Henniker quite sternly, and closed her hand tight with his own. The hand became an expressive little fist.

"I think you are just as mean and silly as you can be! I'll never believe a word you say again."

"Pussy," remarked Henniker, in a mournful aside, "go ask your mistress will she please forgive me. Tell her I'm not exactly sorry, but I couldn't help it. Faith, I couldn't."

"I'm not her mistress," said Meta.

It was a keen reminder, but Henniker did not seem to feel it much.

"Go tell Meta," he corrected. "Ask her please to forgive me, and I'll take it back, – the kiss, I mean."

"I'm going now," said Meta. "Keep the kitten, if you want her. She isn't mine, anyway."

But now the kitten was softly crowded through the fence by Henniker, and Meta, relenting, gathered her into her arms and carried her home.

It was certainly not his absence from Callie's side that put Henniker in such a bad humor with his confinement. He grew morbid, and fell into treacherous dreaming, and wondered jealously about the other boys, and what they were doing with themselves these summer evenings, while he was loafing on crutches under the hospital trees. He was frankly pining for his freedom before Callie should return. He wanted a few evenings which he need not account for to anybody but himself; and he got his freedom, unhappily, in time to do the mischief of his dream, – to put vain, selfish longings into the simple heart of Meta, and to spoil his own conscience toward his promised wife.

Henniker knew the ways of the Meadows cottage as well as if he had been one of the family. He knew that Meta, having less skill about the house than the older girls, took the part of chore-boy, and fetched and drove away the cows.

It were simple enough to cross her evening track through the pale sagebrush, which betrayed every bit of contrasting color, the colors of Meta's hair-ribbon and her evening frock; it were simple enough, had she been willing to meet him. But Meta had lost confidence in the hero of the household. She had seen Henniker in a new light; and whatever her heart line said, her head line told her that she had best keep a good breadth of sagebrush between herself and that particular pair of broad blue shoulders that moved so fast above it. So as Henniker advanced the girl retreated, obscurely, with shy doublings and turnings, carefully managed not to reveal that she was running away; for that might vex Henniker, and she was still too loyal to the family bond to wish to show her sister's lover an open discourtesy. She did not dream of the possibility of his becoming her own lover, but she thought him capable of going great lengths in his very peculiar method of teasing.

As soon as he understood her tactics Henniker changed his own. Without another glance in her direction he made off for the hills, but not too far from the trail the cows were taking; and choosing a secluded spot, behind a thick-set clump of sage, he took out his rustic pipe and waited, and when he saw her he began to play.

Meta's heart jumped at the first note. She stole along, drinking in the sounds, no one molesting or making her afraid. Ahead of her, as she climbed, the first range of hills cast a glowing reflection in her face; but the hills beyond were darker, cooler, and the blue-black pines stood out against the sky-like trees of a far cloud-country cut off by some aerial gulf from the most venturesome of living feet.

Henniker saw the girl coming, her face alight in the primrose glow, and he threw away all moments but the present. His breath stopped; then he took a deep inspiration, laid his lips to the pipe, and played, softly, subtly, as one who thinks himself alone.

She had discovered him, but she could not drag herself very far away from those sounds. At last she sat down upon the ground, and gave herself up to listening. A springy sagebush supported her as she let herself sink back; one arm was behind her head, to protect it from the prickly shoots.

"Meta," said Henniker, "are you listening? I'm talking to you now."

It was all the same: his voice was like another phrase of music. He went on playing, and Meta did not stir.

Another pause. "Are you there still, Meta? I was lonesome to-night, but you ran away from me. Was that friendly? You like my music; then why don't you like me? Well, here's for you again, ungrateful!" He went on playing.

The cows were wandering wide of the trail, towards the upper valley. Meta began to feel herself constrained, and not in the direction of her duty. She rose, cast her long braids over her shoulder, and moved resolutely away.

Henniker was absorbed in what he was saying to her with his pipe. When he had made a most seductive finish he paused, and spoke. He rose and looked about him. Meta was a long way off, down the valley, walking fast. He bounded after her, and caught her rudely around the waist.

"See here, little girl, I won't be made game of like this! I was playing to you, and you ran off and left me tooting like a fool. Was that right?"

"I had to go; it is getting late. The music was too sweet. It made me feel like I could cry." She lifted her long-lashed eyes swimming in liquid brightness. Henniker caught her hand in his.

"I was playing to you, Meta, as I play to no one else. Does a person steal away and leave another person discoursin' to the empty air? I didn't think you would want to make a fool of me."

Meta drew away her hand and pressed it in silence on her heart. No woman of Anglo-Saxon blood, without a vast amount of training, could have said so much and said it so naturally with a gesture so hackneyed.

Henniker looked at her from under his eyebrows, biting his mustache. He took a few steps away from her, and then came back.

"Meta," he said, in a different voice, "what was that thing you wore around your neck, the other night, at the minstrels, – that filigree gold thing, eh?"

The girl looked up, astonished; then her eyes fell, and she colored angrily. No Indian or dog could hate to be laughed at more than Meta; and she had been so teased about her innocent make-believe necklace! Had the girls been spreading the joke? She had suddenly outgrown the childish good faith that had made it possible for her to deck herself in it, and she wished never to hear the thing mentioned again. She hung her head and would not speak.

Henniker's suspicions were characteristic. Of course a girl like that must have a lover. Her face confessed that he had touched upon a tender spot.

"It was a pretty thing," he said coldly. "I wonder if I could get one like it for Callie?"

"I don't think Callie would wear one even if you gave it to her," Meta answered with spirit.

"I say, won't you tell me which of the boys it is, Meta? – Won't I wear the life out of him, just!" he added to himself.

"Is what?"

"Your best fellah; the one who gave you that."

"There isn't any. It was nothing. I won't tell you what it was! I made it myself, there! It was only 'butter-balls.'"

"Oh, good Lord!" laughed Henniker.

Meta thought he was laughing at her. It was too much! The sweetness of his music was all jangled in her nerves. Tears would come, and then more tears because of the first.

Had Meta been the child of her father, she might have been sitting that night in one of the vine-shaded porches of the houses on the line, with a brace of young lieutenants at her feet, and in her wildest follies with them she would have been protected by all the traditions and safeguards of her class. As she was the child of her mother, instead, she was out on the hills with Henniker. And how should the squaw's daughter know the difference between protection and pursuit?

When Henniker put his arm around her and kissed the tears from her eyes, she would not have changed places with the proudest lady of the line, – captain's wife, lieutenant's sweetheart, or colonel's daughter of them all. Her chief, who blew the trumpet, was as great a man in Meta's eyes as the officer who buckled on his sabre in obedience to the call.

As for Henniker, no girl's head against his breast had ever looked so womanly dear as Meta's; no shut eyelids that he had ever kissed had covered such wild, sweet eyes. He did not think of her at all in words, any more than of the twilight afterglow in which they parted, with its peculiar intensity, its pang of color. He simply felt her; and it was nearest to the poetic passion of any emotion that he had ever known.

That night Meta deceived her foster-mother, and lying awake beside Callie's empty cot, in the room which the two girls shared together, she treacherously prayed that it might be long before her sister's return. The wild white lily had opened, and behold the stain!

It had been a hard summer for Tim Meadows's family, – the second summer on a sagebrush ranch, their small capital all in the ground, the first hay crop ungathered, and the men to board as well as to pay. The boarding was Mrs. Tim's part; yet many a young wife would have thought that she had enough to do with her own family to cook and wash for, and her first baby to take care of.

"You'll get along all right," the older mothers encouraged her. "A summer baby is no trouble at all."

No trouble when the trouble is twenty years behind us, among the joys of the past. But Tim's wife was wondering if she could hold out till cool weather came, when the rush of the farm work would be over, and her "summer baby" would be in short clothes and able to sit alone. The heat in their four-roomed cabin, in the midst of the treeless land, was an ordeal alone. To sleep in the house was impossible; the rooms and the windows were too small to admit enough air. They moved their beds outside, and slept like tramps under the stars; and the broad light awoke them at earliest dawn, and the baby would never sleep till after ten at night, when the dry Plains wind began to fan the face of the weary land. Even Callie, whose part in the work was subsidiary, lost flesh, and the roses in her cheeks turned sallow, in the month she stayed on the ranch; but she would have been ashamed to complain, though she was heartsick for a word from Henniker. He had written to her only once.

It was Mrs. Meadows who thought it high time that Callie should come home. She had found a good woman to take her daughter's place, and arranged the matter of pay herself. Tim had said they could get no help, but his mother knew what that meant; such help as they could afford to pay for was worse than none.