Gilbert Parker

“ It was not easy to face the future with the straw-colored, faded Priscilla, whose eyebrows were like strips of dandelion-white, whose lips were so thin that they seemed a mere line of faintish pink, whose body was so deprecating and pliant that it almost wriggled, whose voice had a coaxing, affected tone which only the most toneless ear could endure—and Rigby sang in the Methodist choir; and the young ministers, to their credit, married for love rather than money. ”

“ Yet despite the blameless speech, Priscilla's hot eyes, slightly trembling and nervous fingers, all of which told a tale of emotion, conveyed to Phil that it was her will to put him in greater danger than she had been from his wild horses and the murderous wheels of his wagon. Suddenly he felt as a man would who must fight an armed enemy with his naked hand. He had no courage at all with women if they were "straight," as he called it.
"Your time in jail will he up in another week." Priscilla said at last. "I wont be a bit happy till you're free again." ”

“ What Sam Shorthorn got he deserved; what the warder here's got he didn't deserve. Firing at a man in the water—think of that! Sure, wouldn't the law make the balance between the two?"
"I'm not taking any chances. I guess I got to go," answered Phil decisively.
"The law is the law," said the warder, making a feeble effort to rise. There was warning in his voice. It was as though he meant to take Phil into charge; yet it was plain also from his face that he wished him to go. It was his duty to take Phil back to jail, but he wanted to avoid it. "I've got to take you back," he persisted. ”

“ There were enough people left, however, to furnish tragedy for Phil's escapade; and Priscilla Meekin, who had a preoccupation of mind and a self-will which, working together, might make dark mischief for herself and others, nearly made it a fact.
PRISCILLA was of an age from which the tassels of hope do not hang in any numbers, and her life had been a series of disappointments. It did seem absurd that a girl should have an income of seven hundred dollars a year, and yet should not have been able to abandon the title of spinster and set up a home for two. ”

“ Phil, however, had made friends ever since his coming to Askatoon, particularly among the casual population and non-church-members. He was the essence of querulous good-nature, if such a contradiction may exist. He was free with his money, and full of good stories, and an attraction to every saloon and hotel in the place. Though the Young Doctor and Patsy Kernaghan had frowned upon his reckless driving in the streets, the people who looked out of the doors of the saloons at the tearing onset of man, horses and wagon said merely that he was showing off, and they yelled rude remarks at him. ”

“ He initiated his attack none too strategically. And at last he ventured a remark of an offensive nature about Priscilla, within hearing of Eileen. On the instant Phil, touched in his most chivalrous corner, and hot with accumulated anger, flung the pail of coffee he was carrying for Eileen in Shorthorn's face.
"Long in the tooth, but good sport for them that don't pick and choose—and watch the census, boys!" was the remark made by Shorthorn. ”

“ Yet one morning, before daybreak, there was loud crying in Askatoon, and people scrambled out of their beds into their doorways to hear the alarm rung by the bells of the churches and the shouts of people in trouble. The Mattalan had overflowed its banks according to the prophecy of the scientists.
MORNING broke upon a town almost deserted, as most of the population had stampeded to the upland, taking little with them. In one of the driest places of the West every individual and separate house was now an island; streets were canals; women and children were crying from upper windows ”

“ Down in Montana and Idaho and Wisconsin and Wyoming he had had the time of his life, as he called it, and it was only homesickness to see his two elder brothers—so much older than himself—which had brought him to Askatoon.
He had been warmly welcomed by Tom and Matt, who forthwith determined to make him settle down on the ranch and ultimately join their gang of horse-thieves operating on the Border. They had skillfully organized it, but they needed one who had Phil's popular gifts, his daring and resource, his ingenuity and brains, to carry through their boldest proposals successfully. ”

“ A few people who lived on the opposite side of the river from Askatoon were safe, as there the bank was several feet higher than on the Askatoon side. It was on the farther side that Tannahill and his daughter Eileen lived. They were safe, at least. They could see the cattle carried away by the flood—also barns and outhouses which had had no foundations.
Askatoon never showed to better advantage than in this first crisis of its existence. Men like Jonas Billings were tireless in their efforts to save people, and were full of resource, cheering and comforting. ”

“ He would not have been able to do that, however, had it not been for Eileen Tannahill. From the opposite shore she had seen Phil take to the water from the window of the sheriff's office in the jail; she had seen him making for the shore where she was; and before the warder's boat had overturned, she had already seated herself in a heavy Indian canoe and struck out from the bank. Instinct told her the whole situation when she had seen the shot fired by the warder, and when Phil turned back to rescue his jailer, a thrill of admiration and pride possessed her. Why should she be proud? ”

“ When the door of the cell closed on him, he remarked to the warder: "Well, there's a lot of people can't bother me for a while. Blessed be Jonathan and John!"
For some days, what with sleeping and reading things like "The Story of the Jumping Frog" from the jail library, he got along quite well, but presently he became the bored victim of a conspiracy which even the jail walls could not shut out.
For Priscilla, troubled in spirit, became a conspirator. No sooner had Phil gone to jail than she repented having sent him there. ”

“ A new, good-looking Baptist minister—and poor! One romance had just been slain, but as though Providence had stooped to bring comfort to her, here was the faint vision of another.
"He'd be better if he was married," reflected Phil. "He could do more good. He's coming to pray with me. He's waitin' outside now, I expect."
"Time!" said the warder at the door to Priscilla.
"Bring in the sky-pilot, Warder," said Phil
A MOMENT later the Reverend Enoch Milton was in the cell, a lean, affectionate, soulful-looking man who looked a fit companion for Priscilla Meekin. ”

“ She could see people sniggering at the reference to her "little ones" and her "husband;" and there was Rigby the druggist with his hand over his mouth—Rigby whom she had once tried to capture, Rigby happily married now. Also there was her cousin Jonas, who would gibe at her forever after; it was a humiliation not to be borne!
She sat up, and with finger outstretched to the constable, said:
"Take him to jail. I'll never be well again. I've got internal injuries. Put him in handcuffs. He tried to kill me. He don't care who he rolls in the dust. I was as near death—take him to jail at once!" ”

“ Still, Rigby the druggist, when finding it difficult to carry on his business for lack of increased capital, heard opportune hints from Priscilla's gentle lips, and several young ministers of religion had been carefully waylaid in seasons and circumstances when the young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love. ”

“ He puts things without licking his chops—d'ye see?"
She nodded sorrowfully, for she had been sorely hit. Yet she was interested. The new Baptist minister had only been in Askatoon a very short time. When he learned that Phil had said he was a Baptist when asked his religion by the sheriff, he had gone at once to the jail, and he was again waiting now outside the cell.
"He wont have much of a living in Askatoon," Phil remarked with careful sympathy in his voice, and Priscilla raised her head a little, for now a faint spirit of fresh adventure came into her eye. ”

“ Would she not be a devoted wife to a real man—not the men she talked to in the mirror when alone in her room? Yet no one really worth while, in all her thirty-three years, had ever asked her to marry him, and she had not been successful in her own way of asking, which of course was not asking outright. ”

“ The Young Doctor was in his buggy now, getting the reins into his hands. "Patsy," he said reprovingly, "don't give your tongue so much mouth. It's dangerous calling a man a thief even when it's true. For myself, I don't believe Phil McMahon would steal horses—or anything else."
Patsy scratched his head. "Well, Y'r Anner," he said, "I'd take your word about a man quicker than I would annyone else's. ”

“ I itched to lay him out the minute I set eyes on him at the bee. A skunk, he was, but I wasn't aimin' at killin' him, not for no woman on earth. I got to face a judge and jury too for it, and—"
She almost threw herself in his arms. "Oh, my brave one, you—"
"Don't talk that way." he interrupted irritably. "That's no way to talk to a man that's to be tried for manslaughter. I aint fit company for you—not for one frozen minute. I put Shorthorn out of action forever, and I got to pay. I'm sorry I killed him. There aint no woman that's worth a life like that—and I'm tired of jail already." ”

“ She had lived with them free of charge for months after her father's death, and then had so worked upon the feelings of Jonas' wife, who was a devout Methodist, by becoming "converted," that when the bargain was struck, she got her living far below market price, much to her husband's disgust; for he was no Methodist, he hated cant, he did not like Priscilla and he felt more at home when she was not there, he was a spectator of her accident now. ”

“ I forgive you'—Philip being my baptismal name, but called Phil by everybody. You've seen enough of young people in your time to forgive 'em. I was always young for my age, and I was feelin' partickler young to-day, it bein' my birthday—thirty—sweet and simple thirty. That's why I let myself go.... Say, missus, let bygones be bygones, and I hope you'll accept this here fifteen dollars, the last I got in my pocket, and take 'em home to the little ones—a gift from a repentant sinner. ”

“ Then he marched away, his brothers following; and Eileen watched them go with horror in her eyes.
IV IN jail again on a charge of manslaughter, Phil awaited his trial with indifference. In the town of Askatoon. Priscilla awaited it with an immense emotion—one much too big for either her mind or her body. A man was to be tried for killing another man who had defamed her! She was the center of a tragic situation. She had been the object of a supreme act of devotion. A man had been killed for her sake, and the slayer was in jail! ”

“ He nodded toward the pony. "Is it a go?" he asked Tannahill. "I'll give you fifty dollars for it if it doesn't get back."
Tannahill nodded. "Never mind about the fifty. Take the cayuse."
"I can't hold you," said the warder. "I'm too weak."
"Don't you try, old boy," remarked Phil ironically. He caught the warder's hand for an instant. "There's no strength in y'r grip," he said. "Tell the sheriff it's up to him now. I've done my part by the jail." Then he turned to Eileen. ”

“ The chances were terribly against his making it, unless he abandoned the warder to his fate. That might have to be done, since it was better that one should drown than both; but Phil was not the man to save himself so long as there was a chance of saving anyone else. ”

“ The wind being taken out of Burlingame's sails, the trial soon ended, a fine of fifty dollars or a month in jail being imposed. The month in jail was a heavy punishment, but when he announced it, the magistrate assumed that Phil would naturally elect to pay the fine. His experience had been that men would rather pay five hundred dollars than be in jail for three days. ”