The Prairie Wife
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THE PRAIRIE WIFE
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THE PRAIRIE WIFE
By ARTHUR STRINGER
With Frontispiece in Color by
H. T. DUNN
A. L. BURT COMPANY
PUBLISHERS--NEW YORK
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PUBLISHED BY ARRANGEMENT WITH THE BOBBS, MERRILL COMPANY
COPYRIGHT 1915
THE CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY
COPYRIGHT 1915
THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
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TO VAN
WHO KNOWS AND LOVES
THE WEST
AS WE LOVE HIM!
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Thursday the Nineteenth 1
Saturday the Twenty-first 16
Monday the Twenty-third 33
Wednesday the Twenty-fifth 41
Thursday the Twenty-sixth 48
Saturday the Twenty-eighth 57
Wednesday the First 61
Thursday the Second 64
Friday the Third 67
Saturday the Fourth 68
Monday the Sixth 73
Wednesday the Eighth 80
Saturday the Tenth 88
Sunday the Eleventh 91
Monday the Twelfth 93
Sunday the Eighteenth 101
Monday the Nineteenth 103
Tuesday the Twentieth 105
Thursday the Twenty-second 115
Saturday the Twenty-fourth 119
Tuesday the Twenty-seventh 128
Thursday the Twenty-ninth 133
Friday the Fifth 136
Sunday the Seventh 137
Tuesday the Ninth 138
Saturday the Twenty-first 142
Sunday the Twenty-ninth 150
Monday the Seventh 152
Friday the Eleventh 153
Sunday the Thirteenth 155
Wednesday the Sixteenth 156
Sunday the Twentieth 157
Sunday the Twenty-seventh 158
Wednesday the Thirtieth 159
Thursday the Thirty-first 160
Sunday the Third 167
Thursday the Seventh 171
Saturday the Ninth 172
Monday the Eleventh 175
Tuesday the Nineteenth 182
Sunday the Thirty-first 186
Tuesday the Ninth 188
Wednesday the Seventeenth 189
Thursday the Twenty-fifth 190
Tuesday the Second 191
Thursday the Fourth 193
Wednesday the Seventeenth 194
Saturday the Twenty-seventh 195
Tuesday the Sixth 198
Monday the Twelfth 199
Tuesday the Twentieth 202
Monday the Twenty-sixth 205
Wednesday the Twenty-eighth 207
Monday the Second 209
Thursday the Fifth 210
Tuesday the Tenth 214
Monday the Sixteenth 217
Tuesday the Twenty-fourth 220
Friday the Third 222
Thursday the Ninth 224
Wednesday the Fifteenth 228
Friday the Seventeenth 230
Saturday the Nineteenth 231
Friday the Twenty-eighth 233
Saturday the Twenty-ninth 234
Sunday the Thirtieth 236
Tuesday the First 237
Monday the Seventh 243
Sunday the Thirteenth 247
Monday the Twenty-eighth 249
Saturday the Second 251
Wednesday the Sixth 252
Tuesday the Twelfth 254
Thursday the Fourteenth 255
Wednesday the Fifth 256
Sunday the Ninth 260
Monday the Tenth 262
Tuesday the Eleventh 264
Wednesday the Thirteenth 265
Thursday the Fourteenth 267
Friday the Fifteenth 269
Saturday the Sixteenth 272
Monday the Seventeenth 275
Wednesday the Nineteenth 276
Friday the Twenty-first 277
Monday the Twelfth 290
Wednesday the Fourteenth 292
Thursday the Fifteenth 295
Friday the Sixteenth 298
Sunday the Eighteenth 307
Sunday the Twenty-fifth 308
Tuesday the Twenty-seventh 309
Wednesday the Twenty-eighth 310
Friday the Thirtieth 313
Sunday the First 314
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THE PRAIRIE WIFE
_Thursday the Nineteenth_
Splash!... That's me, Matilda Anne! That's me falling plump into the
pool of matrimony before I've had time to fall in love! And oh, Matilda
Anne, Matilda Anne, I've _got_ to talk to you! You may be six thousand
miles away, but still you've got to be my safety-valve. I'd blow up and
explode if I didn't express myself to some one. For it's so lonesome out
here I could go and commune with the gophers. This isn't a twenty-part
letter, my dear, and it isn't a diary. It's the coral ring I'm cutting
my teeth of desolation on. For, every so long, I've simply got to sit
down and talk to some one, or I'd go mad, clean, stark, staring mad, and
bite the tops off the sweet-grass! It may even happen this will never be
sent to you. But I like to think of you reading it, some day, page by
page, when I'm fat and forty, or, what's more likely, when Duncan has
me chained to a corral-post or finally shut up in a padded cell. For you
were the one who was closest to me in the old days, Matilda Anne, and
when I was in trouble you were always the staff on which I leaned, the
calm-eyed Tillie-on-the-spot who never seemed to fail me! And I think
you will understand.
But there's so much to talk about I scarcely know where to begin. The
funny part of it all is, I've gone and married the _Other Man_. And you
won't understand that a bit, unless I start at the beginning. But when I
look back, there doesn't seem to be any beginning, for it's only in
books that things really begin and end in a single lifetime.
Howsomever, as Chinkie used to say, when I left you and Scheming Jack in
that funny little stone house of yours in Corfu, and got to Palermo, I
found Lady Agatha and Chinkie there at the Hotel des Palmes and the
yacht being coaled from a tramp steamer's bunkers in the harbor. So I
went on with them to Monte Carlo. We had a terrible trip all the way up
to the Riviera, and I was terribly sea-sick, and those lady novelists
who love to get their heroines off on a private yacht never dream that
in anything but duckpond weather the ordinary yacht at sea is about the
meanest habitation between Heaven and earth. But it was at Monte Carlo I
got the cable from Uncle Carlton telling me the Chilean revolution had
wiped out our nitrate mine concessions and that your poor Tabby's last
little nest-egg had been smashed. In other words, I woke up and found
myself a beggar, and for a few hours I even thought I'd have to travel
home on that Monte Carlo Viaticum fund which so discreetly ships away
the stranded adventurer before he musses up the Mediterranean scenery by
shooting himself. Then I remembered my letter of credit, and firmly but
sorrowfully paid off poor Hortense, who through her tears proclaimed
that she'd go with me anywhere, and without any thought of wages
(imagine being hooked up by a maid to whom you were under such
democratizing obligations!) But I was firm, for I knew the situation,
might just as well be faced first as last.
So I counted up my letter of credit and found I had exactly six hundred
and seventy-one dollars, American money, between me and beggary. Then I
sent a cable to Theobald Gustav (so condensed that he thought it was
code) and later on found that he'd been sending flowers and chocolates
all the while to the Hotel de L'Athenee, the long boxes duly piled up in
tiers, like coffins at the morgue. Then Theobald's aunt, the baroness,
called on me, in state. She came in that funny, old-fashioned, shallow
landau of hers, where she looked for all the world like an
oyster-on-the-half-shell, and spoke so pointedly of the danger of
international marriages that I felt sure she was trying to shoo me away
from my handsome and kingly Theobald Gustav--which made me quite calmly
and solemnly tell her that I intended to take Theobald out of
under-secretaryships, which really belonged to Oppenheim romances, and
put him in the shoe business in some nice New England town!
From Monte Carlo I scooted right up to Paris. Two days later, as I
intended to write you but didn't, I caught the boat-train for Cherbourg.
And there at the rail as I stepped on the _Baltic_ was the Other Man, to
wit, Duncan Argyll McKail, in a most awful-looking yellow plaid English
mackintosh. His face went a little blank as he clapped eyes on me, for
he'd dropped up to Banff last October when Chinkie and Lady Agatha and I
were there for a week. He'd been very nice, that week at Banff, and I
liked him a lot. But when Chinkie saw him "going it a bit too strong,"
as he put it, and quietly tipped Duncan Argyll off as to Theobald
Gustav, the aforesaid D. A. bolted back to his ranch without as much as
saying good-by to me. For Duncan Argyll McKail isn't an Irishman, as you
might in time gather from that name of his. He's a Scotch-Canadian, and
he's nothing but a broken-down civil engineer who's taken up farming in
the Northwest. But I could see right away that he was a gentleman (I
_hate_ that word, but where'll you get another one to take its place?)
and had known nice people, even before I found out he'd taught the
Duchess of S. to shoot big-horn. He'd run over to England to finance a
cooperative wheat-growing scheme, but had failed, because everything is
so unsettled in England just now.
But you're a woman, and before I go any further you'll want to know what
Duncan looks like.
Well, he's not a bit like his name. The West has shaken a good deal of
the Covenanter out of him. He's tall and gaunt and wide-shouldered, and
has brown eyes with hazel specks in them, and a mouth exactly like
Holbein's "Astronomer's," and a skin that is almost as disgracefully
brown as an Indian's. On the whole, if a Lina Cavalieri had happened to
marry a Lord Kitchener, and had happened to have a thirty-year-old son,
I feel quite sure he'd have been the dead spit, as the Irish say, of my
own Duncan Argyll. And Duncan Argyll, _alias_ Dinky-Dunk, is rather
reserved and quiet and, I'm afraid, rather masterful, but not as