THE RECLUSE
As Weir drove his car homeward through the moonlight, he knew that at
last the dark shadow upon his life had passed forever. Memories
poignant and sad, memories bitter and stern, returned again and again
to his mind; but these henceforth with time would soften and change.
Of these his last visit to his father was most vivid, that day in
spring that had proved their last together....
* * * * *
He had been there with his father for a week, and now must go. He was
chopping wood that morning, with his father looking on. Steele had
cast a measuring glance at the pile of wood cut, then wiped the fine
dew of perspiration from his brow, buried the ax blade in the
chopping-log and seated himself upon a sawn block. A smile shaped
itself upon his lips. Though he never chopped wood now except on these
rare visits to his recluse father's cabin here on the forested
mountain side, his tall lean figure was as tough and wiry as ever, his
arm as tireless, his eye as true to cut the exact line. There was yet
no softening of his fibers or fat on his ribs, and there would be
neither if he had anything to say about it.
From the little Idaho town in the valley below, which he viewed
through the clearing before the cabin, his gaze came around to his
father seated on the doorstep. Taciturn and brooding the latter had
always been, but the pity and sorrow struck at the son's heart as he
perceived what a mere shell of a man now sat there, gray-haired, bent,
fleshless, consumed body and soul by the destroying acid of some dark
secret. Even when a lad Steele Weir had sensed the mystery clouding
his father's life. Like an evil spell it had condemned them to
solitude here in the mountains, until Steele's youth at last rebelled
and he had departed, hungry for schooling, for human society and for a
wider field of action.
What that secret might be he had for years not allowed himself to
speculate. Unbidden at times the memory of certain revealing looks or
acts of his father's floated into his mind:--a dread if not terror
that on occasion dilated the elder man's eyes, and a steadfast driving
of himself at work as if to obliterate painful and despairing
thoughts, and an uneasy, furtive vigilance when forced to visit town.
Once when a stranger, a short heavy-set bearded man, had unexpectedly
appeared at the door, his father had leaped for the revolver hanging
in its holster on the wall.
On catching a second view of the chance visitor he had exclaimed, "Not
Burkhardt after all!" With which he burst into a wild laugh, the
shrill mirthless laugh of a man suddenly freed of a terrible fear.
However, as he returned the gun-belt to its place, his hand shook so
that he pawed all around the nail on which it was accustomed to hang.
Steele Weir would never forget that moment of panic, his father's
spring to the wall and following laugh--the only laugh he had
heard from those lips; and though but twelve years old at the time
he could not misread the episode. On another occasion he found his
father kneeling at the grave under the giant pine beyond the
cabin--the grave of the gentle mother of whom Steele had but dim
recollections--and his father's hands were clasped, his head bowed.
With an infinite yearning he had longed to creep forward and
comfort him by his presence, by a clasp of the hand, but the
recollection of his father's habitual chill reserve daunted him and
he stole away.
On his own life the mystery had left its gloomy impress. A solitary
and joyless boyhood, overhung by he knew not what danger, haunted by a
parent's lurking fear and anguish, had made him a silent, cold, ever
watchful man, never entirely free from the expectation that his
father's sealed past at some instant would open and confront him with
the terrible facts. For that reason he felt that the success he had
gained as an engineer, a success won by relentless toil and solid
ability, rested on a quicksand. For that cause he had welcomed
engineering projects full of danger and by his indifference to that
danger gained his name "Cold Steel."
Now on this day with his father he once again put the question he
always asked on his visits, and with no more hope of a consenting
reply than before.
"I must be going to-morrow. Won't you come along with me this time,
father? I want you to live with me, so that I can look after you and
be with you. We can fix up a good cabin at the engineering camp.
You're not so strong as you were; you could fall sick here and die and
never a person know it. I doubt if you spend, making yourself
comfortable, one dollar in ten of the money I send you. You would be
interested in the building of this big irrigation project I'm to
direct."
His father appeared to shudder.
"No, no," he muttered. "I've lived here and I'll die here."
"That's what I'm afraid of," Steele responded. "Afraid you may become
sick and die for lack of care."
"No. I'll remain, my son."
That was conclusive. It was the answer of not only thirty years of
living at the spot, but of his secret dread. Steele saw once more the
stark fear in his eyes, the fear of contact with men, of venturing out
into the world, of precipitating fate.
For a time his father plucked his white unkempt beard with unsteady
hand.
"Where's the place you're going this time?" he presently inquired,
without real interest.
"New Mexico."
On the elder's face appeared suddenly a gray shadow as if the blood
were ebbing from his heart.
"Where in New Mexico?" he whispered.
"The town of San Mateo."
His father struggled to his feet. With one hand he clutched the
doorframe for support. The skin of his cheeks had gone a sickly
white.
"San Mateo--San Mateo!" he gasped. "Not there, not there, Steele! Keep
away, keep away, keep away! My God, not San Mateo--you!"
He swayed as if about to fall full length, gesturing blindly before
his face as if to sweep away the thought, while his son ran towards
him.
"Father, you're sick," Steele exclaimed, putting an arm about the
other. And, in truth, the elder man seemed fainting, ready to
collapse. "Come, let me help you in so you can lie down. I must bring
a doctor."
Steele almost carried him to the bed. On it his father sank, remaining
with closed eyes and scarcely breathing.
"No doctor; bring no doctor," he said painfully, at last. "I feel--I
feel as if dying."
"I must bring a doctor. And I have a flask of whiskey; let me pour you
a little to revive your heart."
The change the words wrought from passivity to action was startling.
The elder Weir arose suddenly on elbow, glaring fiercely.
"Whiskey, never! It brought me to this, it damned my life. If it had
not been for whiskey----" Without finishing the words he fell back on
the bed.
The loathing, the hatred, the utter horror of his exclamation,
banished from his son's mind further thought of using this stimulant.
"But the doctor?" he inquired, gently.
"No use, Steele. I've been the same as a dead man for days. Just
ashes. I want to die; I want to lie by your mother there under the big
pine. And maybe I'll have peace--peace."
Steele took in his own the wasted hand hanging from the bed. He held
it tight, with a feeling of infinite tragedy.
"You'll be yourself again soon," he said comfortingly, though without
faith in the assurance.
His father's lips moved in a whisper.
"No; my time is here at last," said he. "But don't go to San Mateo,
Steele,--don't go, don't go. Oh, my God, spare me that!"
"Would you have me break my word? I never have to any man, father. I
accepted this offer and signed a contract. I'm morally bound; these
men are depending on me. Were you ever at San Mateo? Was it something
that happened there that makes you fearful to have me go? San Mateo is
a thousand miles from here."
The face before him became like the face of a corpse. For an instant
Steele's heart went cold in the belief that his father had died under
the effect of his declaration. But at last the eyelids raised, the
eyes gazed at him. And all at once the features of the harsh visage
seemed softened, changed, lightened by a dim illumination.
"I see you now as you are, a man, stronger than I ever was," he
murmured. "I lived in fear, but my fear was not for myself. Had I been
alone, nothing would have mattered after your mother died. But my fear
was for you--and of you. I was afraid your life would be blasted; I
was in terror lest you should hate and despise me when you learned the
truth. So I sought to conceal it."
"You had no need to fear that."
"I see it now. Tell me everything or nothing as you wish about your
going to San Mateo to work; it will frighten me no longer."
Steele briefly spoke of his new work there, of the magnitude of the
project and the desire he had had that his father might be with him.
"I'm proud of you," his father said. "God knows I have not been the
parent I would or should have been."
"It's enough for me if your heart's easy now."
"I feel as if I were gaining peace at last and--and I must speak. In
San Mateo--ah, Steele, you will hear of me there,--you may have to
fight the damning influence of my name and past, but I know now you'll
come through it. And all I pray for is that you can retain a little
love for me despite everything."
"Whatever it is I shall hear of my father, I should rather hear it
from his lips than from strangers'."
The hand in his closed spasmodically. For a long time nothing was
said, and the only sound in the room was the ticking of the tin clock
on the shelf busily measuring off the seconds of the old man's failing
span. To Steele it was as if his father was slowly summoning the few
remaining shreds of his fortitude to reveal the cancer of his past.
"I'm a branded murderer," he said at last, gasping.
"But you never killed a man out of mere wanton desire to slay," Steele
responded firmly. "I too have killed men in fights in Mexico. That
fact doesn't weight my mind."
"In the line of your duty, in the line of your duty. But I was drunk.
He was a friend. When I became sober, I saw him with a bullet hole in
his head."
"Do you remember nothing of shooting him?"
"Nothing, nothing."
"How do you know you killed him?" his son demanded with inexorable
logic. "What is the proof?"
A low groan escaped his father.
"Men said I had killed him. But my own mind was blank."
"Who were the men? Were they present at the time?"
"They were four--Sorenson, Vorse, Gordon, Burkhardt."
"Were you arrested and tried?"
"No. They helped me to escape. Because of your mother, they said, and
because they said they were my friends. But I never felt they were
really friends. For they were always against new-comers and wanted to
keep things in their own hands. You were only three or four years old
at that time, Steele, so you wouldn't remember anything about matters
there."
"What were you doing at San Mateo, father?"
Now that the hideous past at last stood uncovered the son was able to
turn upon it his incisive mind; he would drag out and scrutinize every
bone of the skeleton which had terrorized his father and shadowed his
own life Facts faced are never so dreadful as fears unmaterialized.
And more, he sought with all the love of a son for circumstances that
would mitigate, excuse, or even justify his father's act.
"I was ranching," was the low answer. "I had come to San Mateo two
years before from the east, bringing you and your mother and
considerable money. I bought a ranch and stocked it with cattle; I was
doing well, in spite of the fact I was new to the country and the
business. Also I was making friends, and I had been nominated for the
legislature of the Territory to run against Gordon. But I had taken to
drinking with the men I met, other cattlemen, because I fancied no
harm in it. And then while in a drunken stupor I killed Jim Dent."
"Had you quarreled with him?"
"Never, never--till that moment I killed Jim. They said I quarreled
with him then. But I remember nothing. Jim was my best friend; I would
have trusted him with my life. Even now I can't make it seem real I
shot him, though it must be true by those four witnesses."
"What of your ranch? Your political nomination?"
"I withdrew from the latter; that was one of the terms made by Gordon
on which they were to help me escape instead of turning me over for
prosecution. And my ranch and cattle, I had to deed them over to the
four men too."
"Then their friendship wasn't disinterested," Steele said quickly,
with suspicion dawning on his face.
"They weren't really friends, I knew that."
"How were they to arrange your escape?"
The senior Weir seemed to shudder at the question.
"By bribing the sheriff and county attorney. I was then to leave the
country at once, never showing my face again, or I should be arrested.
I was still half dazed by whiskey and terror; I took your mother and
you and fled this far, when my money gave out. So here I've remained
ever since, for here I could hide and here was her grave."
"What's the last thing you remember of the circumstance previous to
learning Dent was dead?" he asked.
"Ah, though I had been drinking I can remember clearly up to the time
I stopped playing poker with Jim and the four men, for we were losing
and I felt they were working a crooked deal on us somehow. I asked Jim
to quit also, for though I hadn't lost much he was losing fast and
playing recklessly. But he wouldn't drop out of the game, and when
Vorse and Sorenson cursed me and said for me to mind my own business I
went back to a table near the rear door and laid my head on my arms
and went to sleep. When I was awake again, Vorse and Gordon were
holding me up by their table and Jim was dead on the floor. I had come
forward, they said, begun a big row with Dent and finally shot him."
"Then the only witnesses were these four men who were gambling with
him, who cursed you when you attempted to persuade him to drop his
cards," Steele proceeded, "one of whom was your political adversary,
men who were old-timers and opposed to new-comers, who pretended to be
your friends but took your ranch and cattle. It begins to look to me
as if they not only killed your friend Dent but double-crossed you in
the bargain. Did you look in your gun afterwards?"
"No. I was sick with the horror of the accusation, I tell you, Steele.
I had no way to deny it; it seemed indeed as if I must have killed
him. And from that day until this I've never had the courage of soul
to reload my pistol, or even clean it. It hangs there on the wall with
the very shells, two empty, the rest unfired, that it carried that day
in San Mateo."
Weir sprang up and crossed to the nail where hung the weapon. The
latter he drew from the holster and broke open, so that the cartridges
were ejected into his hand. For an instant he stared at them, but at
length walked to the bed before which he extended his palm.
"Look--look for yourself!" he exclaimed hoarsely. "You never killed
Jim Dent; drunk or sober, you never killed any one. You're not a
murderer. You're the innocent victim of those four infamous
scoundrels; they deceived you, they ruined your life; and their
damnable fraud not only killed my mother in her youth, as I guess, by
grief and despair, but has brought you now to your death too."
His father had raised himself on an arm to gaze incredulously at the
six unfired cartridges lying in Weir's palm. Then all at once his
bearded lips trembled and a great light of joy flashed upon his face.
"Innocent--innocent!" he whispered. "Steele, my son,--Helen, my wife!
No stain on my soul!"
As he sank back Steele's arms caught him. He did not speak again, but
his eyes rested radiantly on his boy's before they glazed in death.
Fear had passed from them, forever.