The Tenderfoots by Francis Lynde

THE spring of 1881, memorable for the jangling aftermath of the bitter factional political struggle of the previous year which had resulted in the nomination and election of President Garfield, waned to its close, and on the second of July the nation was shocked by the news flashed over the wires of the shooting of the President in a Washington railway station by Charles J. Guiteau.

Isolated by distance from the populous East and Middle West, the new Colorado yet felt the shock and responded to it. Partisanship and the harsh pre-election epithets of "329" and the anti-Chinese cry of "Remember the Morey letter" were forgotten, and the city of the plain marked its sorrow and indignation, as it did everything else, with a magnificent Western gesture.

Philip, now following out his plan of a blind search for his father in the various mountain mining-camps, returned to Denver early in the week following the national tragedy with other failures to add to those which had gone before.

"You mustn't let it dig too deep into you," Bromley urged sympathetically, after the story of the added failures had been told. "You know you admitted in the beginning that there was only the slenderest chance that you might turn him up here in Colorado. You haven't had any later clues, have you?"

"It is all groping in the dark," was the discouraged answer. "All I am sure of is that he would bury himself out of sight. To be the first of his name to have the finger of suspicion pointed at him, however unjustly. you'd have to be New England born yourself to know how these things cut to the bone, Harry."

Something of the same nature he said to Jean Dabney that evening as he was walking home with her from Madame Marchande's. He had long since told her about the cloud on the Trask name, and of his determination to dispel it; as he made no doubt it could be dispelled if he could trace his father and persuade him to return to New Hampshire, there to fight the good fight of reinstatement with half the wealth of a Colorado gold mine to back him.

"I do hope you will succeed," said the one who was to the full as sympathetic as Bromley. "You owe it to him to do your very best to find him."

"To him, and quite as much to myself," Philip amended decisively. "While the cloud remains, it rests upon all of us who bear the Trask name. Until it is cleared away I can't ask any right-minded woman to marry me."

They had reached the bridge over Cherry Creek and had paused to look down upon the damp sands lying dark in the starlight The young woman's tone was merely argumentative when she said: "Don't you think that is carrying it rather far?"

"Not as I see it. The name a man gives to his wife ought not to have even a shadow of disgrace upon it. Don't you believe that?"

"Y-yes, I suppose I do," was the half-hesitant reply. "Yet that seems frightfully sweeping, when you come to think of it. It seems to shut out all idea of repentance and forgiveness."

"Take it home," said Philip shortly. "Would you marry a man who had a bad record, or whose father had been accused of a crime and was still lying under that accusation?"

She was still staring down at the dark sands in the creek channel.

"Since the beginning of time both men and women have been forgiving worse things."

Never before in their renewed acquaintance had he felt so strongly the difference that a year's burden of heavy responsibilities courageously taken up and carried had made in the dark-eyed young woman standing beside him. It was only at rare intervals that a flash of the old-time, teasing mockery came to the surface. He told himself that her burden had not only sobered her; it had brought her too crudely in contact with a world of compromises -- ethical compromises. He remembered what Bromley had said about the double standard of morals, and the part good women played in maintaining or condoning it, and the recollection brought a bitter taste in his mouth.

"If women like you take that attitude, what is the use of a man's trying to keep his record clean? " he demanded.

"Dear me! How savagely righteous you can be! " she exclaimed with a little laugh. Then she cleared the air with a plain-spoken declaration that served to increase the aloes taste in his mouth: "I suppose I am like other women. When the time comes -- if it ever does come -- that I think enough of a man to marry him, I shan't ask what he has been; only what he is and means to be."

"That is heroic -- but entirely wrong," he decided magisterially. "My code is stricter than that, and it applies to men and women alike. I mean to be able to give as much as I ask. If I can't give, I shan't ask."

"What terrible spiritual pride! " she commented, laughing again. Then, soberly: "Don't you know, I shall be truly sorry for the woman you marry."

"Why do you say that?"