The Home-Coming
Lightning resettled himself upon his box. He was leaning forward in
an attitude of alert concentration, his arms folded across his knees,
with an elbow grasped in the palm of each of his hands. He remained
unmoving, except for the inevitable chew of tobacco which engaged the
rusty remains of his teeth. His mind was correspondingly active.
Midnight had long since come and gone. The night was brilliant, and
little enough was left for the shadows of night to conceal. The
farm and its surroundings were in full view from where he sat. The
bluff beyond the grass-trail was sharply silhouetted, a deep, black
background to the south and west. Away to the right of him the corral,
where the cows were peacefully slumbering on the accumulations of
despoiled hay feed, was sharply outlined. So, too, with the hay corral,
that stood nearly empty and ready for the new season’s grass. The barn
beside him rose sharply against the night sky, where its thatched
ridge lifted above the sturdy log walls. And then, beyond that, the
whispering tree-tops of the bluff stood up, where once the dead George
Marton had confronted the emaciated figure of the starving fugitive
from justice.
The air was cool with the threat of ground frost. But Lightning was no
more concerned with temperatures than he was with the claims of a weary
body. He was awaiting Molly’s return from the party, and, if necessary,
he would remain there until day came.
The drift of the man’s thought went on without pause. There was
speculation in a hundred directions. There was impatience. There was
anger that was even directed at the girl he desired to protect. His
mood was one of restlessness and disquiet.
A prowling coyote howled its mournful crescendo. Its melancholy cry
died out. The man scarcely noted it. The deep bay of the timber wolf’s
reply, with its harsh threat, sufficiently impressed itself. In a
moment it focused Lightning’s mind upon the keen, dark eyes and narrow
face of the man he felt to be something of a human wolf where women
were concerned. He stirred and spat viciously.
He strove to dismiss the personality of McFardell from his thoughts.
His understanding of the way things stood with Molly was all
sufficient. He was logical enough, even temperate enough, to know he
had no right to interfere. But he was equally determined that, at the
first sign of what he deemed to be necessity, he would interfere. He
would interfere in just such manner as his savage mind prompted.
A grim light shone in his cold eyes as they searched the moonlit scene.
His barbaric ruthlessness was astir, contemplating a “short-circuit” of
the whole situation as he saw it. If he permitted his guns, which he
felt to be yearning to play their part for him, to execute their due
mission, it would save so much precious time in preventing the disaster
he saw lying ahead.
Molly--Molly would be broken hearted for awhile. Yes, that would surely
be so. But he prided himself on his knowledge of women. He remembered
the case of a woman in his Arizona days. He had contemplated piloting
her through the shoals of life as a more than desirable companion.
Tess. She was a swell creature--a real “upstander.” Hair like black
silk. A skin like satin. Then she’d those queer, big eyes that set any
real man yearning for the trouble that ought to be lying around her
anyway. Yes, that was a case in point. When Tug Lennox, her beau, got
in front of his guns, and had no time to get away before they went
off, what happened? Tess was nearly crazy for one day. Then she beat
the trail across the border with Dago Pete, while he, Lightning, was
getting over the elegant souse the boys had handed him for ridding
Arizona of one of the worst toughs that ever shot up a peaceful
township. Yes, Molly would be all in. He was sure of that, but----
He turned suddenly to windward.
No. It wouldn’t last. Those things in a girl were like a summer storm,
or--or horse colic, or something. Sunshine got busy and dried things
up, and the colic passed swiftly, and left a horse feeling it hadn’t
eaten for two days. It seemed to him if he went after Andy McFardell
with two guns it would be the best for all concerned. Certainly best
for----
He stood up alertly, his sense of hearing directed to the hither drift
of the night air. The intensity of the silence had again been broken.
This was no skulking wolf or coyote. It had nothing to do with the frog
chorus at the creek. It was a sound that came to him down the trail
from the north-east. It was the familiar sound of the wheels and hoofs
he had been awaiting.
He stretched his weary limbs. He yawned. Then he spat out his chew, and
bit into a fresh one. Then he kicked his box into the doorway of his
hut, and moved off somewhere in the direction of the house.
* * * * *
Lightning waited. The murmur of voices came to him, but the words
themselves were indistinguishable. He intended that to be so, but he
hated the necessity. Driven by headlong impatience, he felt himself to
be something like a traitor to the charge that was his. But for the
life of him it was impossible to break in upon the scene he knew to be
enacting in the moonlight at the door of Molly’s home.
No, he must just stand by. He was yearning to drive the man headlong.
He had the means to his hand, for all he was an old man and the other
was in the full vigor of his youth. The savage in him was urging all
the time. But even the savage was powerless before his love for the
girl, and his reluctance to wound the heart that found happiness in the
smile of McFardell’s dark eyes. He was torn between head and heart. And
so he stood waiting, waiting until the farewell had been said.
The spring wagon was drawn up before the storm door of the house. The
man and the girl were standing together somewhere in the shadow of
the doorway. They were standing closely together, and Lightning was
maddeningly conscious of that which was passing between them.
He translated it in his own way, inspired by all that was human in him.
He felt that Molly was tightly clasped in McFardell’s arms. The girl
was lost to everything, even to the wonderful finery which had set her
nearly crazy with delight when she first gazed upon it. That was the
way of women, he argued. No, she had no thought for anything or anybody
but that--that--the man he hated.
There were moments of profound silence. Then there came moments when
indistinguishable words passed between the two. Lightning wondered what
they were saying, and would have hated to have known. Oh, he knew well
enough. And as the sound of voices died out he understood that their
words had been swamped by the passionate silence that fell so readily
between them.
His witness of the scene was brief enough. Then, suddenly, the tones
of Molly’s voice became raised, and something strident.
“You must go now, Andy,” Lightning heard her say, and a thrill of
satisfaction gladdened his heart. Then there was added urgency. “Oh,
you must go. Please, please! I--I can’t bear it. I sort of feel haf
crazy. I don’t know--I---- Oh, Andy, please, please go--now.”
The appeal of the girl’s tone drove the hot blood to Lightning’s head,
and his hands rested on those twin friends of his early days that
lolled heavily at his waist. But he remained unmoving, waiting--waiting
in desperate suspense for the man’s reply.
He heard McFardell’s voice, but not his words. They were low and
persuasive, and they went on for some time.
Then the girl spoke again, and it seemed to Lightning that something
akin to terror rang in her words.
“Before God?” she cried, and it sounded like an echo of that which
McFardell had said. “Before summer’s out? Oh, Andy! Sure? Sure?”
The man’s low tones replied. And after that Molly’s voice, full of
excited happiness, rang out, so that no word was lost in the silence of
the night.
“Yes, yes,” she cried. “In Hartspool. At the Catholic church. Say it
shall be the Catholic church. I was raised to father’s religion. Oh,
Andy!”
Lightning raised a hand, and his lean fingers raked their way through
his grey hair as Molly’s final exclamation died out. The snatch of
talk he had been forced to listen to told him the simple truth. The
thing he dreaded most in the world was to happen. There was only one
interpretation possible to the thing he had heard--marriage. McFardell
was to marry Molly before summer was out. Molly was to belong to
that man before summer was out. Molly! A paroxysm of voiceless hate
consumed him, and he moved a step forward.
But he got no farther.
“So long, little girl,” he heard McFardell say. “It’s just too bad.”
He laughed. “Why need I go? You’re mine. Just all mine. We’re---- All
right, little Molly. I’ll beat it. So long.”
Lightning drew a deep breath. McFardell was going. He saw the man
approach his team and pass around it. Then he saw him turn back to
Molly, who had emerged from her doorway. The next moment Lightning saw
him bend over her up-turned face. Then McFardell climbed into the wagon
and the horses moved off.
Molly stood there in the moonlight clad in her beautiful fur wrap,
gazing after the departing team. Lightning saw her hand raised in
farewell. Then she turned sharply and passed into the house. And the
door closed behind her.
* * * * *
When Lightning thrust open the door he discovered Molly seated at the
table. She sat there a ghostly little figure, still wrapped in her
fur cloak, with the shaft of moonlight pouring in through the window
falling athwart her. Otherwise the room was in complete darkness.
Lightning gazed at her in some alarm. Perhaps it was the moonlight that
had transformed her. Her face was pale almost to ghastliness. It was
pathetically drawn, and her eyes gazed up at him so wide, so helpless,
so piteously. She had raised her head at the old man’s intrusion, and
something like reproach was in her silent greeting.
Lightning left the door open and came to the table. His eyes were
smiling softly, and he stood for a moment regarding the queer, huddled
figure, while his mind searched for the greeting that would not betray
him.
“Guess you had a swell time, Molly, gal?” he said. There was no reply.
The girl sat still--so still. Her elbows were thrust upon the table,
and her small, clenched hands supported the oval of her cheeks that
looked so ghastly in the moonlight.
Lightning moved up to the table. Then he glanced about him in the
darkness beyond the moonlight.
“Best fix the lamp,” he said.
“No, no!”
Molly’s denial came almost fiercely. And instantly the man abandoned
his search.
“You can’t see to----”
Lightning’s protest got no further. There was a cry--a cry such as
the old man had never heard pass the girl’s lips before. It was half
fierce, half laughing. It was something that smote him deeply, for
there was pain, horror, and despair in it.
In a moment Molly’s bare arms were flung out full length on the table.
Then they were spasmodically drawn up. Her head drooped forward, and
her face was buried against her own warm flesh, and a flood of tears
broke forth.