I'll have the law on that thief if it breaks me--and a sixty-dollar saddle 'n' head-stall gone with her; and only about half the number of Jap lanterns that I ordered have shown up and not candles enough for those.It's enough to make a dog sick.
There's nothing done that you don't do yourself, unless you stand over these loafers with a club.I'm sick of the whole business--and I've lost my hat; wish to God I'd never dreamed of givin'
this rotten fool dance.Clutter the whole place up with a lot of feemales.I sure did lose my presence of mind when I got THATidea."
Then, ignoring the fact that it was he, himself, who had called the young men to him, he added:
"Well, this is my busy day.Sorry I can't stop and talk to you longer."He shouted a last imprecation at the Chinaman and turned back into the barn.Presley and Vanamee went on, but Annixter, as he crossed the floor of the barn, all but collided with Hilma Tree, who came out from one of the stalls, a box of candles in her arms.
Gasping out an apology, Annixter reentered the harness room, closing the door behind him, and forgetting all the responsibility of the moment, lit a cigar and sat down in one of the hired chairs, his hands in his pockets, his feet on the table, frowning thoughtfully through the blue smoke.
Annixter was at last driven to confess to himself that he could not get the thought of Hilma Tree out of his mind.Finally she had "got a hold on him." The thing that of all others he most dreaded had happened.A feemale girl had got a hold on him, and now there was no longer for him any such thing as peace of mind.
The idea of the young woman was with him continually.He went to bed with it; he got up with it.At every moment of the day he was pestered with it.It interfered with his work, got mixed up in his business.What a miserable confession for a man to make;a fine way to waste his time.Was it possible that only the other day he had stood in front of the music store in Bonneville and seriously considered making Hilma a present of a music-box?
Even now, the very thought of it made him flush with shame, and this after she had told him plainly that she did not like him.
He was running after her--he, Annixter! He ripped out a furious oath, striking the table with his boot heel.Again and again he had resolved to put the whole affair from out his mind.Once he had been able to do so, but of late it was becoming harder and harder with every successive day.He had only to close his eyes to see her as plain as if she stood before him; he saw her in a glory of sunlight that set a fine tinted lustre of pale carnation and gold on the silken sheen of her white skin, her hair sparkled with it, her thick, strong neck, sloping to her shoulders with beautiful, full curves, seemed to radiate the light; her eyes, brown, wide, innocent in expression, disclosing the full disc of the pupil upon the slightest provocation, flashed in this sunlight like diamonds.
Annixter was all bewildered.With the exception of the timid little creature in the glove-cleaning establishment in Sacramento, he had had no acquaintance with any woman.His world was harsh, crude, a world of men only--men who were to be combatted, opposed--his hand was against nearly every one of them.Women he distrusted with the instinctive distrust of the overgrown schoolboy.Now, at length, a young woman had come into his life.Promptly he was struck with discomfiture, annoyed almost beyond endurance, harassed, bedevilled, excited, made angry and exasperated.He was suspicious of the woman, yet desired her, totally ignorant of how to approach her, hating the sex, yet drawn to the individual, confusing the two emotions, sometimes even hating Hilma as a result of this confusion, but at all times disturbed, vexed, irritated beyond power of expression.
At length, Annixter cast his cigar from him and plunged again into the work of the day.The afternoon wore to evening, to the accompaniment of wearying and clamorous endeavour.In some unexplained fashion, the labour of putting the great barn in readiness for the dance was accomplished; the last bolt of cambric was hung in place from the rafters.The last evergreen tree was nailed to the joists of the walls; the last lantern hung, the last nail driven into the musicians' platform.The sun set.There was a great scurry to have supper and dress.
Annixter, last of all the other workers, left the barn in the dusk of twilight.He was alone; he had a saw under one arm, a bag of tools was in his hand.He was in his shirt sleeves and carried his coat over his shoulder; a hammer was thrust into one of his hip pockets.He was in execrable temper.The day's work had fagged him out.He had not been able to find his hat.
"And the buckskin with sixty dollars' worth of saddle gone, too,"he groaned."Oh, ain't it sweet?"
At his house, Mrs.Tree had set out a cold supper for him, the inevitable dish of prunes serving as dessert.After supper Annixter bathed and dressed.He decided at the last moment to wear his usual town-going suit, a sack suit of black, made by a Bonneville tailor.But his hat was gone.There were other hats he might have worn, but because this particular one was lost he fretted about it all through his dressing and then decided to have one more look around the barn for it.
For over a quarter of an hour he pottered about the barn, going from stall to stall, rummaging the harness room and feed room, all to no purpose.At last he came out again upon the main floor, definitely giving up the search, looking about him to see if everything was in order.
The festoons of Japanese lanterns in and around the, barn were not yet lighted, but some half-dozen lamps, with great, tin reflectors, that hung against the walls, were burning low.Adull half light pervaded the vast interior, hollow, echoing, leaving the corners and roof thick with impenetrable black shadows.The barn faced the west and through the open sliding doors was streaming a single bright bar from the after-glow, incongruous and out of all harmony with the dull flare of the kerosene lamps.
