MARTHY
Billy Louise led the way down the gorge, through the meadow, and along
the orchard to the little gate. The Cove seemed empty and rather
forlorn, with the wind creeping up the river and rattling the dry
branches of the naked fruit trees. Not much more than twenty-four
hours had slid into the past since Billy Louise had galloped away from
the place, yet she felt vaguely that life had taken a big stride here
since she last saw it. Nothing was changed, though, as far as she
could see. A few cattle fed in the meadow next the river, a fattening
hog lifted himself from his bed of straw and grunted at them as they
passed. A few chickens were hunting fishworms in the thawed places of
the garden, and a yellow cat ran creepingly along the top rail of the
nearest corral, crouched there with digging claws and pounced down into
a flock of snowbirds. A drift of dead apple leaves stirred uneasily
beside the footpath through the berry bushes. Billy Louise started
nervously and glanced over her shoulder at Seabeck. For some reason
she wanted the comfort of his presence. She waited until he came up to
her--tall, straight like a soldier, and silent as the Cove itself.
"I'm--scared," said Billy Louise. She did not smile either when she
said it. "I--hate empty-feeling places. I'm--afraid of emptiness."
"Yet you are always riding alone in the hills." Seabeck looked down at
her with a puzzled expression in his eyes.
"The hills aren't empty," she told him impatiently. "They're just big
and quiet. This is--" She flung out a hand and did not try to find a
word for what she felt.
"Shall I go first? I thought you would rather--"
"I would." Billy Louise pulled herself together, angry at her sudden
impulse to run, as she had run from Ward's quiet cabin. She remembered
that unreasoning panic--was it really only yesterday?--and went
steadily up the path and across the little ditch which Marthy had dug.
Why must sordid trouble and dull misery hang over a beauty-spot like
this? she thought resentfully.
She stopped for a minute on the doorstep, hesitating before she opened
the door. Behind her, Seabeck drew close as if he would shield her
from something; perhaps he, too, felt the deadly quiet and emptiness of
the place.
Billy Louise opened the door and stepped into the kitchen. She stopped
and stood still, so that her slim figure would have hidden the interior
from the eyes of Seabeck had he not been so tall. As it was, she
barred his way so that he must stand on the step outside.
By the kitchen table, with her elbows on the soiled oilcloth, sat
Marthy. Her uncombed hair hung in wisps about her head; her hard old
face was lined and gray, her hard eyes dull with brooding. Billy
Louise, staring at her from the doorway, knew that Marthy had been
sitting like that for a long, long time.
She went over to her diffidently. Hesitatingly she laid her gauntleted
hand on Marthy's stooped shoulder. She did not say anything. Marthy
did not move under her touch, except to turn her dull glance upon
Seabeck, standing there on the doorstep.
"C'm in," she said stolidly. "What'd yuh come fer?"
"Miss MacDonald will perhaps explain--"
"She ain't got nothin' to explain," said hard old Marthy with grim
finality. "I'll do what explainin's to be done. C'm in. Don't stand
there like a stump. And shut the door. It's cold as a barn here,
anyway."
"Oh, Marthy!" cried Billy Louise, with the sound of tears in her voice.
"Don't oh Marthy me," said the harsh voice flatly. "I don't want no
Marthyin' nor no sympathy. Well, old man, you're here to colleck, I
s'pose. Take what's in sight; 'tain't none of it yourn, far's I know,
but anything you claim you kin have, fer all me. I've lived honest all
my days an' worked fer what I got. I've harbored thieves in my old age
and trusted them that wa'n't fit to be trusted. I've allus paid my
debts, Seabeck. I'm willin' to pay now fer bein' a fool."
"W-where's Charlie?" Billy Louise leaned and whispered the question.
"I d'no, and I don't care. He's pulled out--him an' that breed. I'll
have t' pay yuh for seven growed cattle I never seen till yist'day,
Seabeck. You can set yer own price on 'em. I ain't sure, but I've got
an idee they was shot las' night an' dumped in the river. You c'n set
yer price. I've got rheumatiz so bad I couldn't go 'n' put a stop to
nothin'--but--"
"Oh, Marthy!" Billy Louise was shivering and crying now. "Marthy!
Don't be so--so hard. It was all Charlie--"
"Yes," said Marthy harshly, "it was all Charlie. He was a thief, an' I
was sech a simple-minded old fool I never knowed what he was. I let
him go ahead, an' I set in the house with a white apurn tied on me an'
thought I was havin' an easy time. I set here and let him rob my
neighbors that I ain't never harmed er cheated out of a cent, and
soon's he thought he was found out, he--left ole Marthy to look after
herself. Never so much as fed the hogs or done the milkin' first!
Looky here, Seabeck! You'll git paid back, an' I'll take your figgers
fer what I owe, but if you git after Charlie, I'll--kill yuh. You let
'im go, I'm the one he hurt most--and I ain't goin'--" She laid her
frowsy old head on her arms, like one who is utterly crushed and dumb.
"Oh, Marthy!" Billy Louise knelt and threw her arms around Marthy's
shoulders.
"You've got to come and lie down, Marthy," said Billy Louise, after a
long, unbroken silence.
"Mr. Seabeck, if you'll start a fire, I'll make some tea for her.
Come, Marthy--just to please me. Do it for Billy Louise, Marthy."
The old woman rose stiffly, and with a feebleness that seemed utterly
foreign to her usual energy, permitted Billy Louise to lead her from
the kitchen. In the sitting-room that Charlie had built and furnished
for her, Marthy lay and stared around her with that same dull apathy
she had shown from the first. Only once did she manifest any real
emotion, and that was when Billy Louise came in with some tea and toast.
"You take all them books outa them shelves an' burn 'em up," she
commanded. "An' you take them two pictures off'n that shelf, of him
an' her, an' bring 'em t' me."
Billy Louise set the toast and tea down on a chair and brought the
pictures. She did not say a word, but she looked a little scared and
her eyes were very big, just as they had been when Ward mistook her for
Buck Olney and so let her see into another one of the dark places of
life. It seemed to Billy Louise that she was being compelled to look
into a good many dark places, lately.
Marthy took the two photographs and looked at the first with hatred.
"The Jezebel! She won't git to run it over ole Marthy," she muttered
with sullen triumph and twisted the cardboard spitefully in her gnarled
old fingers. "She can't come here an' take all I've got an' never give
me a thankye for it. I'm shet uh her, anyway." She twisted again and
yet again, till the picture was a handful of ragged scraps of
cardboard. Then she raised herself to an elbow and flung the fragments
far from her and lay down again with glum satisfaction.
Her fingers touched the other picture, which had slid to the couch.
Mechanically she picked it up and held it so that the light from the
window struck it full. This was Charlie's face--Charlie with the
falsely frank smile in his eyes, and with his lips curved as they did
when he was just going to say, "Now, Aunt Martha!" in tender protest
against her too eager industry.
Marthy's chin began to quiver while she looked. Her lips sagged with
the pull of her aching heart. For the third time in her life Billy
Louise saw big, slow tears gather in Marthy's hard blue eyes and slide
down the leathery seams in her cheeks. Billy Louise looked, found her
vision blurring with her own tears, and turned and tiptoed from the
room.
Seabeck was gone somewhere on his horse. Billy Louise guessed shrewdly
that he was down in the meadows, looking over the cattle and trying to
estimate the extent of the thievery. She put Blue in the stable and
fed him, with that half-mechanical habit of attending to the needs of
one's mount which becomes second nature to the range-bred. She would
not go on to the Wolverine; that needed no decision; she accepted it at
once as a fact. Marthy needed her now more than anyone. More even
than Ward, though Billy Louise hated to think of him up there alone and
practically helpless. But Marthy must have her to-night. Marthy was
facing her bitterest sorrow since Minervy died, and Marthy was old.
Ward, Billy Louise reminded herself sternly, was not old, and he was
facing happiness--so far as he or anyone knew. She wanted very much to
be with Ward, but she could not delude her conscience into believing
that he needed her more than did Marthy.
Seabeck returned after awhile, and Billy Louise, who was watching from
the doorway, met him at the little gate as he was coming up to the
house.
"Well, how bad is it, Mr. Seabeck?" she asked sharply, just because she
felt the imperative need of facts--she who had struggled so long in the
quicksands of suspicion and doubts and fears and suspense.
"Hmm-mm--how bad is it--in the house?" he countered. "The real crime
has been committed there, it seems to me. A few head of cattle, more
or less, don't count for much against the broken heart of an old woman."
"Oh!" Billy Louise, her hands clenched upon the gate, stared up
wide-eyed into his face. And this was the real Seabeck, whom she had
known impersonally all her life! This was the real man of him, whom
she had never known; a flawless diamond of a soul behind those bright
blue eyes and that pointed, graying beard; poet, philosopher, gentleman
to the bone. "Oh! You saw that, too! And they're your cattle that
were stolen! You saw it--oh, you're--you're--"
"Hmm-mm--a human being, I hope, Miss MacDonald, as well as a mere
cattleman. How is the old lady?"
"Crying," said Billy Louise, with brief directness. "Crying over the
picture of that--swine. Think of his running off and leaving her here
all alone--and not even doing the chores first!" (Here, you must know,
was broken an unwritten law of the ranch.) "And Marthy's got
rheumatism, too, so she can hardly walk--"
"I'll attend to the chores, Miss MacDonald." Seabeck's lips quirked
under the fingers that pulled at his whiskers. "You say--over his
picture?"
"Yes, over his picture!" Billy Louise spoke with a suppressed fury.
"With that honest look in his eyes--oh, I could kill him!"
"Hmm-mm--it does seem a pity that one can't. But if she can cry--"
"I see. You believe too that tears are a necessary kind of weakness
for a woman, like smoking tobacco is for a man--or swearing. Well, I
can just tell you, Mr. Seabeck, that some tears pull the very soul out
of a person; they're the red-hot pinchers of the torture-chamber of
life, Mr. Seabeck. Every single, slow tear that Marthy sheds right now
is taking that much away from her life. Why, she--she idolized
that--that devil. She hadn't much that was lovable in poor old Jase;
he was just her husband; he wasn't even a real man. And she never had
any children to love, except a little girl that died. And she's worked
here and scrimped and saved till she got just fairly comfortable, and
then Charlie Fox came and patted her on the back and called her a game
little lady, and poor old Marthy just poured out all the love and all
the trust she had in her, on him! And she's old, and she had starved
all her life for a little love--a little affection and a few kind
words. I don't suppose Jase kissed her once in twenty years; I
couldn't imagine him getting up steam enough to kiss anybody! And
Charlie petted her and did little things for her that nobody had ever
done in her life. It meant a whole lot to Marthy to have a man take
the water bucket away from her and give her a little hug and tell her
she mustn't think of carrying water; oh, you're a man, and I don't
suppose you can realize; I didn't myself, till lately--" Billy Louise
blushed and then twisted her lips, wondering if love had taught her all
this.
"And so Marthy just leaned more and more on him and let him take care
of her and pet her; and she never once dreamed he was doing anything
crooked. I thought she did, I know, Mr. Seabeck. I thought she was in
it, too; but I see now that Marthy has been living the woman in her,
these last two years; she'd never had a chance before. And now to have
him--to know he's just a common thief and to have him go off and leave
her--Mr. Seabeck, I'd be willing to bet all I've got that Marthy would
have forgiven his stealing cattle, if he had just stayed. She'd have
done anything on earth for him; and the bigger the sacrifice she made
for him, the more she would have loved him; women are like that. But
to have him go off--and--leave her--and not bother his head about what
happened to her, just so he got out of it--Mr. Seabeck, that's going to
kill Marthy. It's going to kill her by inches."
"I--see," he assented, looking thoughtfully at the flushed face and
big, shining eyes of Billy Louise. (I wonder if Seabeck was not
thinking how he had known Billy Louise impersonally all her life and
yet had never met the real Billy Louise until to-day!)
"And yet," she added bitterly, "she's going to protect him if it takes
every cent she's managed to rake together these last thirty years. You
heard what she told you. She said she'd kill you if you hurt Charlie.
She'd try it, too."
"Hmm-mm, yes! My life has been threatened several times to-day."
Seabeck looked at her with eyes a-twinkle, and Billy Louise blushed to
the crown of her Stetson hat. "Do you think, Miss MacDonald, she would
feel like talking business for a few minutes?"
"Oh, yes; if she's like me, she'll want to get the agony over with."
Billy Louise turned with a twitch of the shoulders. She felt chilled,
somehow. She had not quite expected that Seabeck would want to talk
about his stolen stock at all. She had rather taken it for granted
that he would let that subject lie quiet for awhile. Oh, well, he was
a cattleman, after all.
Marthy did not attempt to rise when Seabeck followed Billy Louise into
the sitting-room. She caught up her apron and wiped her eyes and her
nose, however, and she also slid Charlie's picture under the cheap
cushion. After that she faced Seabeck with harsh composure and waited
for the settlement.
"Hm-mm! I have been looking over the cattle," he began, sitting on the
edge of a chair and turning his black hat absently round and round by
the brim. "You--mm-mm--you tell me there were seven head of grown
stock--"
"That they shot and throwed in the river, with the brands cut out,"
interpolated Marthy stolidly. "I heard 'em say that's how they would
git rid of 'em, an' I heard 'em shootin' down there."
"Hmm-mm, yes! Do you know just what--"
"Five dry cows 'n' two steers--long two-year-oles, I jedged 'em to be."
Marthy was certainly prompt enough and explicit enough. And her lips
were grim, and her faded blue eyes hard and steady upon the face of
Seabeck.
"Hmm-mm--yes! I find also," he went on in his somewhat precise voice
that had earned him the nickname of "Deacon" among his punchers, "that
there are more young stock vented and rebranded than I--er--sold your
nephew. Fourteen head, to be exact. With the cattle you tell me which
were--mm-m--disposed of last night, that would make twenty-one head of
stock for which--mm-mm--I take it you are willing to pay."
"I ain't got the money now," Marthy stated, too apathetic to be either
defiant or placating. "You c'n fix up the papers t' suit yerself.
I'll sign anything yuh want."
"Hmm-mm--yes! A note covering the amount, with legal rate of interest,
will be--quite satisfactory, Mrs. Meilke. I shall make a lump sum at
the going price for mixed stock. If you have a blank note, I--"
"You kin look in that desk over there," permitted Marthy. "If yuh
don't find any there, there ain't none nowhere."
Seabeck did not find any blank notes. He found an eloquent confusion
of jumbled letters and accounts and papers, and guessed that the owner
had done some hasty sorting and straightening of his affairs. He
sighed, and his blue eyes hardened for a minute. Then Billy Louise
moved from the door and went over to kneel comfortingly beside Marthy,
and Seabeck looked at the two and sighed again, though his eyes were no
longer stern. He pulled a sheet of paper toward him and wrote steadily
in a prim, upright chirography that had never a flourish anywhere, but
carefully crossed t's and carefully dotted i's and punctuation marks of
beautiful exactness.
"You will please sign here, Mrs. Meilke," he said calmly, coming over
to them with the sheet of paper laid smoothly upon a last-year's
best-seller and with Charlie's fountain pen in his other hand. "And if
Miss MacDonald will also sign, as an endorser, I think I can safely do
away with any mortgage or other legal security."
Billy Louise stood up and gave him one look--which Seabeck did not
appreciate, because he did not see it.
"I'd ruther give a mortgage," Marthy said uneasily, sitting up suddenly
and looking from one to the other. "I don't want Billy Louise to git
tangled up in my troubles. She's got plenty of her own. Her maw's
just died, Mr. Seabeck. And I'll bet there was a hospital 'n' doctor's
bill bigger 'n this cattle note, to be paid. I don't want to pile on--"
"Now, Marthy, you be still. I'm perfectly willing to sign this note
with you. If it will satisfy Mr. Seabeck, I'm sure it's the very least
we can do--or--expect." Billy Louise, bless her heart, was trying very
hard to be grateful to Seabeck in spite of the slump he had suffered in
her estimation.
"Well, I'll want your written word that yuh won't prosycute Charlie nor
help nobody else prosycute him," stipulated Marthy, with sudden
shrewdness. "If me 'n Billy Louise signs this note, we'll pay it; and
we want some pertection from you, fer Charlie."
"Hmm-mm--I see!" He turned and went back to the littered desk and
wrote carefully again upon another sheet of paper. "I think this will
be quite satisfactory," he said, and handed the paper to Marthy.
"Git my specs, Billy Louise--off 'n the shelf over there," she said,
and read the paper laboriously, her lips forming the letters of every
word which contained more than one syllable. Marthy, remember, was a
plainswoman born and bred.
"I guess that'll do," she pronounced at last, pushing the spectacles up
on her lined forehead. "You read it, Billy Louise, 'n' see what yuh
think."
"I think it's all right, Marthy," said Billy Louise, after she had read
the document twice. "It's a bill of sale; and it also wipes the slate
clean of any possible--I think Mr. Seabeck is very c-clever."
Whereupon Marthy signed the note, with a spluttering of the abused pen
in her stiffened old fingers and a great twisting of her grim mouth as
she formed the capitals. Then Billy Louise wrote her name with a fine,
schoolgirl ease and a little curl on the end of the last d. Seabeck
took the paper from the tips of Billy Louise's supercilious fingers,
returned with it to the desk for a blotter, hunted an envelope, folded
the note carefully, and laid it away inside.
"I believe that is all, Mrs. Meilke. I hope you will suffer no further
uneasiness on account of your--nephew."
"I'm liable t' suffer some gittin' that five hundred dollars paid up,"
Marthy returned with some acerbity. "I'm much obleeged to yuh, Mr.
Seabeck, fer bein' so easy on us. If yuh hadn't drug Billy Louise into
it, I'd say yer too good to be human."
"Hmm-mm--not at all," Seabeck stammered deprecatingly and left the room
with what haste his natural dignity would permit.
That ended the Seabeck part of the whole sordid affair, except that he
remained for another hour, doing chores and making everything snug for
the night. Also he filled the kitchen woodbox as high as he could pile
the sticks and brought water to last overnight--since Charlie's plan to
pipe water into the cabin had remained a beautiful plan and nothing
more. Billy Louise thanked Seabeck, when he was ready to go.
"I knew you were square, and you're really big-souled, too. I'll
remember it always, Mr. Seabeck."
"Will you?" Seabeck looked down at her, with his hand upon the latch.
"Even if you are put in a position where you must pay that note--you
will still-- Hm-mm! I see. Before I go, Miss MacDonald, I should
like your permission to send a man down here to look after things."
"No, you mustn't." Billy Louise spoke with prompt decision. "Marthy
might think you were--you see, it wouldn't do. I'll see about getting
a man. If you will take this note up and leave it in the mail-box for
me, John Pringle will come up to-morrow. We'll manage all right."
"You're quite right. But, Miss MacDonald, there is something else.
I--er--should like to give you a little--wedding gift, since you
honored me with the news of your approaching--mm-m--marriage. As an
old neighbor, and one of your most sincere admirers, who would feel
greatly honored by your friendship, I--should like to have you accept
this--" He held something out to Billy Louise and pulled open the door
for instant escape. "Good night, Miss MacDonald. I think it will
storm." Then he was gone, hurrying down the narrow path with long
strides, his tall figure bent to the wind, his coat napping around his
lean legs.
Billy Louise closed the door and her half-open mouth and let down her
lifted eyelids. Standing with her back against the wall, she turned
that something--an envelope--over twice, then tore off the end and
pulled out the contents. It was the note she and Marthy had signed no
longer than an hour ago, and written large across the face of it were
the words: "Paid, Samuel Seabeck."
"The--old--darling!" said Billy Louise under her breath and went
straight in to show it to Marthy.