Louisiana Lou. A Western Story

“Dear madam,” it began, “I take my pen in hand to write you something that I sure regrets a whole lot. Which I hope you all bears up under the blow like a game woman, which your late respected husband sure was game that a way. There ain’t much I can say to break the news, ma’am, and I can’t do nothing, being so far away, to show my sympathy. Your husband has done passed over. He was killed by some ornery hound who bushwhacked him somewheres in the hills, and who must have been a bloody killer because Pete, your husband, sure didn’t have no enemies, and there wasn’t no one that had any reason to kill him. He was coming home from the Esmeraldas with his sheep which we was allowing to winter close to the ranch instead of in the desert to see if feeding them would pay and some murdering gunman done up and shot him with a thirty-thirty soft nose, which makes it worse. I’m sending the slug that done it.

“Pete was sure a true-hearted gent, ma’am, and we was all fond of him spite of his being a Basco. If we could have found the murderer we would sure have stretched him a plenty but there wasn’t no clew.

“Pete had found a gold mine, ma’am, and the specimens he had in his war bags was plenty rich as per the sample I am sending you herewith. He tried to tell me where it was but he was too weak when we found him. He said he wanted us to give you half of it if we found it and we sure would do that though it don’t look like we got much chance because he couldn’t tell where it was. The boys have been looking but they haven’t found it yet. If they do you can gamble your last chip they will split it with you or else there will be some more funerals around hereaways. But it ain’t likely they will find it, I got to tell you that so’s you won’t put your hopes on it and be disappointed.

“I am all broke up about Pete, and if there is anything I can do to help don’t you hesitate to let me know. I was fond of Pete, ma’am, and so was my granddaughter, which he made things for her and she sure doted on him. He was a good hombre.”

The letter was signed “I. Brandon.”

De Launay mused a moment. “Is that all?” he asked finally.

“It is all,” said mademoiselle. “But there is a mine, and, especially, there is the man who killed him.”

De Launay looked at the date on the letter. It was October, 1900.

“After nineteen years,” he reminded her, “the chances of finding either the mine or the man are very remote. Perhaps the mine has been found long ago.”

“Monsieur,” replied the girl, and her voice was again metallic and hard, “my mother received that letter. She put it away and treasured it. She hoped that I would grow up and marry a Basque, who would avenge her husband. She sent me to a convent so that I might be a good mate for a man. When she died she left me money for a dot. She had saved and she had inherited, and all was put aside for the man who should avenge her husband.

“But the war came before I was married, and afterward there was little chance that any Basque would take the quarrel on himself. It is too easy for the men to marry now that they are so scarce, and it is very difficult for one like me to find a husband. Besides, I have lived in the world, monsieur, and, like many others, I do not like to marry as though that were all that a woman might do. I do not see why I cannot go to America, find this mine and kill this man. The money that was to be my portion will serve to take me there and pay those who will assist me.”

“You desire to find the mine – or to kill the man?”

“Both. I do not like to be poor. It is an evil thing, these days, to be a poor woman in France. Therefore I wish to find the mine and be rich, for, if I cannot marry, wealth will at least make life pleasant for me. But I wish to find that man, more than the mine.”

“And if I marry you, I will be deputized to do the butchery?”

“Monsieur mistakes me,” Solange spoke scornfully. “I can do my own avenging. Monsieur need not alarm himself.”

De Launay smiled. “I don’t think I’m alarmed. In fact, I am not sure I wouldn’t be willing to do it. Still, this vendetta seems to be rather old for any great amount of feeling on your part. How old were you when your father was killed?”

“Two years.”

De Launay laughed again, but choked it off when he noted the angry stiffening of mademoiselle’s figure. Somehow, her veiled countenance was impressive of lingering, bitter emotions. She was a Basque, and that was a primitive race. She was probably bold enough and hardy enough to fulfill her mission. She had plenty of courage and self-reliance, as he knew.

“The adventure appeals,” he told her, soberly enough, though the fumes of cognac were mounting again in his brain. “I am impelled to consider it, though the element of chance seems remote. It is rather a certainty that you will fail. But what is my exact part in the adventure?”

“That rests with you. For my part, all I require is that you secure for me the right to go to America. I can take care of myself after that.”

“And leave me still married?”

“The marriage can be annulled as soon as you please after we arrive.”

“I am afraid it will hardly be as easy as that. To be sure, in the State of Nevada, where you are going, it should be easy enough, but even there it cannot be accomplished all at once. In New York it will be difficult. And how would I know that you had freed me if you left me behind?”

“If it pleases you you may go with me.” He caught the note of scorn again. In fact, the girl was evidently feeling a strain at having to negotiate with him at all. She was proud, as he guessed, and the only reason she had even considered such an unusual bargain was her contempt for him. He was one who, when he might have remained respected and useful, had deliberately thrown away his chances to become a sot and vagabond.

“But you will understand that this marriage is – not a real marriage. It gives you no right over me. If you so much as dare once to presume – ” She was flaming with earnest threat, and he could well imagine that, if he ventured a familiarity, she would knife him as quickly as look at him.

“I understand that. You need have no fear. I was a gentleman once and still retain some of the instincts. Then I am employed to go with you on this search? And the remuneration?”

“I will pay the expenses. I can do no more than that. And if the mine is found, you shall have a full share in it. That would be a third.”

“If I am to have a full share it would seem only fair that I contribute at least my own expenses. I should prefer to do so. While my pay has not been large, it has been more than an unmarried soldier needs to spend and I have saved some of it.”

“Then,” said mademoiselle in a tired voice, “you have decided that you will go?”

De Launay ordered and tossed off another drink and Solange shuddered. His voice was thickening and his eyes showed the effects of the liquor, although he retained full possession of his faculties.

“A sporting proposition!” he said with a chuckle. “It’s all of that and more. But still, I’m curious about one thing. This Morgan la fée business. If I am to wed a fairy I’ll at least know why they call her one. I’ll take on no witches sight unseen.”

Solange shrank a little. “I do not understand,” she said, faltering. Her expectations had been somewhat dashed.

De Launay spun a coin into the air and leaned forward as it clashed on the marble top of the table.

“Heads I go, tails I don’t!” he said, and clapped his hand over it as he looked at mademoiselle. “And if I go, I’ll see why they call you Morgan la fée!”

“Because of my coloring,” said mademoiselle, wearily. “I have told you.”

“But I have not seen. Shall I lift my hand, mademoiselle, with that understanding?”

Solange stared at him through the veil and he looked back at her mockingly. Angry and depressed at the same time, she nodded slowly, but her stake was large and she could not refrain from bending forward with a little intake of the breath as he slowly lifted his hand from the coin. Then she sighed deeply. It was heads.

“Mademoiselle,” he said with a bow, “I win! You will lift your veil?”

Solange nodded. To her it seemed that she had won. Then, with no sign of anxiety or embarrassment she bent her head slightly, slipped the coif back from her hair with one hand and lifted the veil with the other, sweeping them both away from her head with that characteristic toss that women employ on such occasions. Then she raised her face and looked full at him.

He stared critically, and remained staring, but not critically. He had seen a good many women in his time, and many of them had been handsome. Some had been very beautiful. None of them had ever had much of an effect upon him. Even now he did not stop to determine in his mind whether this woman was beautiful as others had been. Her beauty, in fact, was not what affected him, although she was more than pretty, and her features were as perfect as an artist’s dream.

As she had said, it was her coloring that was extraordinary. He had seen sharp contrasts in his time, women with black hair and light-blue or gray eyes, women with blond hair and brown eyes, but he had never seen one with that mass of almost colorless, almost transparent hair, scintillant where the light fell upon it, black in shadow where the rolls of it cut off the light, nor had he seen such hair in such sharp contrast with eyes that were large and black as night and as deep as pools. The thing would have been uncanny and disturbing if it had not been that her skin was as fair as her hair, white and delicate. As it was, the whole impression was startlingly vivid and yet, after the first shock, singularly fascinating. The strange mixture of extreme blondness and deep coloration seemed to fit a nature that was both fiery and deep.

De Launay reflected that one might well call her a fairy. In many primitive places that combination would have won her the name of having the evil eye. In a kinder land it gave her gentler graces.

“Are you satisfied, monsieur?” asked Solange, with a sneer. As he nodded, soberly, she dropped the veil and restored her cap. The people in the café had looked on with respectful and yet eager curiosity, a murmur of affectionate comment running about the tables.

“I’m quite satisfied,” he repeated again, as he tossed a note on the table to satisfy his account. Solange’s mouth curled scornfully as she noted again the stack of saucers indicating his habits. “I’m going to marry Morgan la fée, the Queen of Avalon, and I’m going to enlist in her service to do her bidding, even to unlicensed butchery where necessary. Mademoiselle, lead on!”

Solange led on, but her head was high and her face expressed an extreme disdain for the mercenary who had signed on with her.

CHAPTER V

A MARRIAGE OF CONVENIENCE

De Launay expressed himself as quite willing to look after most of the details of the affair, and Solange, although capable, being more or less ignorant, was willing to leave them to him, although with some misgiving. The sight of that stack of saucers in the café of the Pink Kitten remained to haunt her with distaste for the whole adventure. She distrusted De Launay, recalling some of the more lurid tales she had heard of his exploits. In spite of everything, he had been a légionnaire, and légionnaires could hardly be purified even in the fires of war. Before he arrived at her apartment to go with her to the mairie of that arrondissement, she was to suffer further misgiving. Ahead of him arrived a gorgeous bouquet of lilies of the valley and orange blossoms, and they were not artificial flowers, either. When he arrived, looking much more respectable than she had expected, his mustache even twisted jauntily and his clothes pressed to neatness, she met him with accusation.

“Is it monsieur that I have to thank for – these?” she indicated the flowers with expressive and disdainful hands. De Launay stared at them vacantly as he stood in the door.

“I suppose it must have been,” he said, meekly. “I am forgetful, mademoiselle. You must make allowances for a broken soldier if my – vagaries – occasionally offend you.”

“It is in bad taste, to say the least, to bedeck the bride in such a ceremony,” she said cuttingly. “If I must hire a husband, he need not, at least, forget decency and make me conspicuous. Remember that.”

“The flowers,” said De Launay, “are as if they had never been. I dismiss them from the earth. With another drink or two I will cease to recall that such things as flowers exist. Mademoiselle will command me!”

Solange tossed the offending blossoms on the floor and walked out ahead of him. He followed at her side but a step behind, and she stalked with face turned forward out to the street and toward the mairie. Yet, in spite of all precautions some wind of her intentions must have got about, for more than one old woman or wounded soldier spoke to her and uttered a blessing and good wishes as she walked along. To all of them she returned greetings in kind, thanking them soberly, but with a lip that trembled. De Launay, rolling behind, was the recipient of curious and doubtful glances, as the man who was taking their Morgan la fée from them. Yet here and there a soldier recognized him and came to a stiff salute, and when this was the case a murmur informing others ran about, and all doubt seemed to die, the greetings growing more cheerful and the blessings being addressed to both of them. This annoyed Solange more than the flowers had done.

“Is it that I am honored by having this mercenary drunkard for a husband?” she said to herself. “Mon Dieu! One would think so!”

Yet she could find nothing really offensive in his attitude to the affair, unless that he was almost too respectful. She suspected that he had been drinking and that his air was due to the exaggeration induced by liquor – or else, and that was worse – he was deliberately, with drunken humor, making a burlesque of his very deference.

The signing of the contract and the ceremony before the maire were successfully completed and De Launay turned to her with a deep bow. The maire, puzzled at the utterly emotionless quality of this wedding, congratulated them formally, and Solange acknowledged it with stiff thanks and a smile as stiff and mirthless. But it was to De Launay that the official showed the deepest respect, and that angered her again.

Her pride was restored somewhat after they had left the mairie and were on their way back to her rooms. A squat, swarthy individual, in the dingy uniform of the French marines, doffed his cap and stepped up to them, speaking to Solange in French, tinged with a broad Breton accent.

“And is it true, Morgan la fée,” he asked, ducking his head, “that this man has been married to you?”

“Why, yes, it is true, Brebon,” she answered, kindly. The man looked searchingly into her face, observing the coldness of it.

“If it is by your will, mademoiselle,” he answered, “it is well. But,” and he swung his lowering head on its bull neck toward De Launay, “if this man who has taken you should ever make you regret, you shall let me know, Morgan la fée! If he causes you a single tear, I shall make sausage meat out of him with a knife!”

Solange shook her head in protest, but just behind her she heard a low laugh from De Launay.

“But, mon brave,” said he, “you would find this one a tough swine to carve!”

The Breton stared at him like a sullen and dangerous bull and moved away, saying no more. But Solange felt cheered. There were some who regarded her ahead of this soldier of fortune whom she had hired to masquerade as her husband.

She had little to cheer her in the next few days before she took the train for Le Havre. In the neighborhood where her marriage had become known, the fact that De Launay had left her at her door and came to see her only occasionally and then stayed but a moment was a fruitful subject of comment. What sort of a marriage was this! Suspicion began, gradually, to take the place of confidence in her. The women that had been her worshiping friends now spoke behind her back, hinting at some scandal. Nasty tales began to circulate as feminine jealousy got the upper hand. In the presence of soldiers these tongues were silent, but there were other males in the quarter who were not soldiers. Big, beefy Achille Marot, who kept the butcher shop on the corner had never been one, except in the reserve, where he had done some police duty behind the front. And Marot was a bully, foul of mind and foul of mouth. The whispers of the women were meat and drink to him. Solange had seen fit to resent in a practical manner some of his freedoms. Her poilu friends had nearly wrecked his shop for him on that occasion. But now she was married – this was said with a suggestive raise of the shoulders and eyebrows – and the poilus were not so much in evidence.

“Ah! what have I always said to you about this one!” Marot remarked as Solange passed his shop on her way to her rooms one day. He was looking out at her and smirking at Madame Ricot, the neighborhood gossip and scold. “Is this what one calls a marriage? Rather is it that such a marriage indicates that a marriage was necessary – and arranged conveniently, is it not? For observe that this broken adventurer who, as I know, was kicked out of the army in disgrace, is not a real husband at all, as every one may see. It is reasonable to suppose, therefore, that the affair has been arranged to hide something, is it not?”

A hand that was like steel closed on the beefy neck of the butcher and a calm voice behind him spoke in his ear.

“Now here is a word for you, my friend, from De Launay, the légionnaire, and you will do well to remember it! A tongue that is evil will win you an evil end and words that are not true will result in your throat being cut before you know it. Realize that, Marot, my friend, and say again that De Launay was kicked out of the army!”

“Death of a dog!” sputtered the butcher, twisting in the iron grasp on his neck. “I will slit thy belly – ”

“Thou wilt do nothing but root in the mud as is thy nature,” said De Launay and kicked him vigorously into the gutter where he did, indeed, plow the filth with his nose. Madame Ricot uttered a shrill shriek for the police, and Solange, who had been unconscious of it all, turned about to see De Launay standing on the sidewalk brushing his hands while the butcher rolled in the mud. At this moment a gendarme came running up.

“Take that carrion and lock him up!” said De Launay, calmly. “I accuse him of public indecency, spreading scandal and criminal slander. He has said that I, the General de Launay, was kicked out of the army for unmentioned crimes. I will prefer charges against him in the morning.”

“Monsieur le général, it shall be done,” said the gendarme, with a smart salute. He grabbed the groveling butcher and hoisted him from his wallow. “Come along with me, Marot! I have long had my eye on thee! And is there a charge against the woman, my general?”

Madame Ricot was gaping wide-mouthed and silent at the unexpected result of her appeal to the forces of the law. And now she shrank fearfully back toward the gathering crowd.

“There is no charge – as yet,” said De Launay. “But she is suspected of being a procuress and a vile scold. If it is she who has been injuring respected reputations, I shall soon know it, and then – ”

“I shall be at your service, my general,” the gendarme assured him, and, with another salute, departed, jerking the roaring Marot with him. De Launay sauntered on, with his rolling walk, toward Solange, who turned and walked away from him so that he did not overtake her until they had come to her apartment.

“There is entirely too much gossip in this quarter,” said De Launay, casually, as she wheeled about at the entrance to her rooms. “It is just as well that you are getting out of it.”

“It is just as well,” agreed Solange, angrily. “For if I remain here much longer the gossip that you arouse will ruin me.”

“Again,” said De Launay, rather dryly, “I apologize.”

Solange was left to feel at fault. She knew that she had been unjust, but De Launay’s casual ways and his very indifferent deference angered her. Yet it could not last much longer since they were to take a train for Le Havre that evening and sail upon the following day. De Launay had called regarding the final arrangements.

Her passports had been secured and her passage on the Astarte, of the Blue Star line, was arranged for. How this had been done she did not inquire, remaining in ignorance of efforts spent by De Launay in securing the intercession of the French and American military authorities in order that she might have suitable accommodations on the crowded liner, which was being used as a troopship. A high dignitary of an allied nation had had to postpone his sailing in order that Madame de Launay might travel in a first-class stateroom.

Even so, the girl, concerned chiefly with her own adventure, and strange to the conditions existing, suspected nothing. The little stateroom was none too luxurious, for the Astarte was not one of the best boats, and four or five years of war service had not improved her. And she had no notion that De Launay, even for such comfort as this, had paid an exorbitant price out of his own pocket. He had given her the rate of the second-cabin berth, a dingy little inside cubby-hole, which he himself occupied.

The voyage was long and slow and dull. The swarming troops and military men crowded the ship to embarrassing fullness and Solange kept mostly to her cabin. She saw little of De Launay, who had not the run of the upper decks as she had, though his rank was recognized and he was made free of the lounge where the military men congregated. She heard somewhat of him, however, and what she heard angered her still more. It was chiefly in the line of gossip and conjecture as to why Madame de Launay, who seemed to be distinguished because she was Madame de Launay, should be traveling alone, first class, while the famous soldier shared a stuffy hole in the wall with a Chicago merchant. The few women aboard, nurses, Y. M. C. A. workers, welfare workers on war missions, picked up the talk among the officers and passed their curiosity on to Solange through stewardesses and maids. Every one seemed to think it strange, and Solange acknowledged that it was strange – stranger than they thought. But the thing that rankled was the fact that the assiduous care of the stewardess, her very obsequiousness, seemed to emanate from De Launay. It was because she was De Launay’s wife that she was a figure of importance – although she pictured him as a discredited mercenary who was even now, probably, indulging his bestial appetite for liquor in the officers’ lounge and boasting of his exploits to a congenial audience.

Her one consoling thought was that it could not last much longer. True, New York would not mean the last of him since he was to accompany her to her destination, but that should not take long. Once at Sulphur Falls, which she understood to be her final railroad station, he could be relegated to his proper place.

Something like this did happen, though not in the measure she anticipated. They landed in New York on a chill, rainy day, and De Launay appeared at the gangway with his usual rolling gait, as though half intoxicated, eyes half closed and indifferent. His bow was almost mocking, she thought, with the flash of irritation that he always aroused in her. Other passengers looked at him curiously and at herself with some wonder, whispers running among them. Behind her veil she flushed, realizing that her own personality was not so much the subject of interest as his. She was uncomfortably aware that he was a striking figure, tall and handsome in spite of his careless demeanor and slouching walk. It was all the more reprehensible that such a man should make so little of himself.

But De Launay led her through the customs with a word that worked like magic and soon had her in a taxicab. He took her to a small and good hotel, not at all conspicuous, and saw that she was properly taken care of and supplied with American currency. Then, as she turned to follow the bell boy to her rooms, he bowed again. But she hesitated a moment.

“May I ask,” she said, with some contrition roused by his care of her, “where you are going?”