A Real Samaritan
It was the dim-lit interior of a lean-to built against the big barn.
It was the farmer’s workshop, littered with the tools that served his
simple needs. Marton was propped against a sturdy, home-made table
that also served the purposes of a bench. He was gazing down in the
yellow lamplight at the famished creature squatting beside the small
wood-stove on an up-turned box.
It was a painful spectacle. He had realised from his brief catechism
that the man was educated. Yet he sat there devouring a great platter
of hot stew at a speed and in a fashion such as he had never before
witnessed in any human creature. The wolfishness of it was terrible.
The man was literally starving.
Marton was a man of swift decision. And his decision had long since
been taken. The stranger had spoken truth when he said that another
night in the open without food would be his last. He had committed a
crime against the law, and had been sentenced for it. And now he had
made a getaway. Well, that crime by no means found the farmer on the
side of the law. On the contrary, it found him on the side of this
poor, starving wreck. And he meant to help him all he knew. That is, if
subsequent talk failed to inspire doubt.
So he had brought him to this little workshop, where the stove was
still alight, and had released him from the lacerating shackles. He
had sought out Lightning and warned him not to intrude. Then he had
forthwith passed on to the house, and told Molly just sufficient to
account for his demand for the necessary food with which to restore
the convict to some semblance of well-being. But in all this he gave no
clue to the feelings which the encounter had inspired.
The convict cleared up the last of the gravy by wiping the platter out
with bread. He devoured the last crumb of the bread, and took a long
drink from the pannikin of steaming tea that was on the ground beside
him. Then he looked up with an irresistible smile in his eyes.
“Gee! That’s swell!” he said. “The liquor doesn’t count so much, except
it’s hot. Snow-water’s poor sort of stuff, but it’s drink. I’ll never
forget you gave me that feed, whoever you are. I hadn’t eaten for seven
days and seven nights.”
Then his gaze lowered to the hideous lacerations of his wrists.
“They’ve been frozen again and again,” he said.
“And they’ll rot if you ain’t careful.”
“I s’pose they will.”
Marton bestirred himself. He drew out of a pocket the bandages and
ointments he had procured from Molly.
“We best not try to heal ’em,” he said. “You’ll get worse trouble that
way. This dope’ll maybe save ’em from gangrene, and the bandages’ll
keep the frost out of ’em--and the dirt. It’s the best I know. Here,
we’ll wash ’em first.”
For ten minutes or so the farmer worked with the skill of long
experience in frost-bites. He worked in silence, and his patient
offered neither comment, nor protest, nor expression of pain. Then,
when the operation was completed, Marton sent him back to his seat and
returned to his position on the bench. He lit his pipe.
“Well?” he said, in that meaning fashion so comprehensive in difficult
circumstances.
The convict shook his head.
“What’re you going to do?”
The blue eyes were smiling, but a shadow of anxiety was looking out of
them.
“If I hand you feed and loan you a broncho, can you make a clear
getaway without involving me with the Police?”
“D’you mean that?”
The smile in the convict’s eyes was radiant.
Marton still gave no sign of any feeling. He smoked on heavily, his
eyes coldly expressionless.
“I don’t say things without meaning ’em, I guess,” he said, in the
same even tone, which never seemed to vary very much. “Ther’s just two
things I can do. One’s hold you right here till the Police get around
and relieve me of you. The other’s to help you beat it to a place of
safety--that ain’t the penitentiary. Anyway, I’ve a hunch for the man
who can kill his wife’s seducer, and for those that helped him.”
The man at the stove drew a deep breath. His condition was utterly
forgotten. The thought of all that might still lie ahead of him when he
again set out on the winter trail gave him not a tremor of disquiet.
He was thinking only of the heavily built creature smoking his pipe
against the table, and wondering. The sphinx-like face was impossible
to read.
After a few silent moments he stirred.
“Won’t you hand me your name?” he asked almost diffidently.
“Sure. George Marton. Do you feel like talking?”
* * * * *
For some moments Jim Pryse gazed up silently into the face of the
stranger who had so unexpectedly become his benefactor. His emotion was
such that for awhile the talk he had been bidden to seemed impossible.
It was all a miracle--a veritable miracle. A few short hours ago
the last shadow of hope had been extinguished. For days he had been
wandering about interminable hills, with the thermometer more than ten
below zero. His horse had long since been foundered and abandoned,
while he essayed to reach some sort of shelter on foot. Oh, he had made
his escape from Corporal McFardell surely enough, but the hell he had
endured as the price of that escape had been something he had never
thought that human body could endure.
The short days, the desperately long nights; no matches to kindle a
fire, no blankets, nothing but the merciful sheepskin coat which the
police had provided him with; no food of any sort, and only snow-water
to drink; nothing, nothing but his will to flounder on through a world
of snow and ice and a maddening sea of uninhabited hills. The terror of
those last days had been almost insupportable. And only was it a sort
of grim philosophy which had kept him going. A hundred times he could
have lain down and let the temperature lull his weary, starving body
and mind to that final peace which would have saved him from his agony.
But he had kept to his weary feet, that, as he had told himself through
his clenched teeth, he might go down fighting.
And now, now that was all behind him. The scars of it all were there.
Those manacles. The bite of the frost upon his face and hands. Then
the dreadful sense of bodily weariness. Even now he felt that the only
thing he desired was sleep--just sleep. And yet----
No, there was no sleep yet. This man, this queer, unsmiling creature
had offered him help, had given him food and had named no price. God!
There was no price adequate that he could pay him. What was it? Where
was the sign of this silent creature’s humanity? He passed a bandaged
hand over his forehead and thrust his fur cap back.
Then he began to talk, and with talking the desire for sleep passed
away. He talked to the man who sucked silently at his pipe and offered
never a word of comment. And his talk was of that queer history which
had brought him to the gates of the penitentiary. He told everything
without any reservation, even to the fact of the great wealth he had
accumulated during his five years up in the gold country of Alaska. He
felt in his wave of gratitude that he could do no less.
“You see,” he finished up, “I’m handing you all this because I don’t
fancy leaving you with a shadow of doubt. I’m a mighty rich man. So
rich I don’t fancy you can guess. But I’m not the sort that figures to
offer you a thing for what you reckon to do for me. But I want to say
this, and I mean it all; there just isn’t a thing I wouldn’t raise hell
to do for you or yours any old time, and for just as long as I live.
You’ve handed me life and hope. Hope! You don’t know what it means till
you’ve lost it. Hope! Think of life without it. No, you couldn’t. No
one could. Death a thousand times sooner--without hope. Gee, I’m tired!”
Suddenly he thrust his elbows on his knees and dropped his chin into
the palms of his bandaged hands.
The farmer bestirred himself. He knocked out his pipe, and, moving over
to a small pile of wood, replenished the stove. Then he stood up, and,
for the first time, the convict beheld a twinkle in the keen black eyes.
“I wanted that story, Pryse,” he said, addressing the other by name
for the first time. “And you’ve told it good. I’m not left guessing.
Well, boy, I’m going right up to the house now. I’ll be back along with
blankets in awhile. There’s wood right here that’ll keep the frost out
of your bones. You’re welcome to it all. Then you can sleep good. I’ll
have my gal, Molly, pack you up a big bunch of food by morning. I’ll
hand you dollars to pay your way with, in case that wealth of yours has
been left behind. And you can have a broncho that’ll worry the trail
a month without let-up, and live on the dead grass it can scrape from
under the snow. If you can make your getaway with that outfit you’re
welcome to it. If you fancy it, there’s a shot-gun and some shells
that’ll maybe help you to pick up some feed. That’s about all I can see
to do. And you’ll have to make that getaway after you’ve eaten good in
the morning. You won’t see a soul but me till you’ve quit here. I’ll
hand you the best trail to make. That’s all. Now I’ll get along to my
supper.”
He moved towards the door, but paused at the sound of the voice of the
weary creature beside the stove.
“Say, I want--I want----”
Pryse broke off lamentably, and Marton beheld the piteous spectacle of
a strong man with hot tears welling up into his eyes.
“Don’t say a word, boy,” the farmer said, in his curious, even tone.
“Not a word. I know how it feels. Forget it.”
And a radiant light in the twinkling eyes entirely transformed the
unsmiling expression to which the convict had grown accustomed.
George Marton turned again to the door and passed out. And as he went
there was a picture in his mind of a pair of fine blue eyes that gazed
after him through a veil of hot tears of which the man was unashamed.