Out of the Past
“Poor little soul. Well, anyway, she’s had her dance and all it means
to her. And I guess that’s quite a lot.”
Blanche sighed as she turned from the verandah post, against which
she had been leaning, and moved to the chair beside a squat-legged
table. She flung herself into it, and smiled as she contemplated the
white-haired brother spread out full length in the lounging chair in
front of her.
The man withdrew his gaze from the scene of activity below him.
The population of the ranch was preparing for work after an early
breakfast. In the distance a horseman was riding towards one of the
great barns. There was no mistaking that figure. Its flaming head
of bright red hair stood out like a beacon fire in the sunshine. He
would be up at the house shortly. There were other figures, mounted or
afoot, moving among the corrals, the ploughings, the pastures. It was
so in almost every direction. The activity of it all must have been
pleasantly encouraging to the man responsible for it. Yet somehow the
expression of Jim Pryse’s eyes suggested no particular heartening.
For a moment he regarded his sister. She was full of that charm which
had drawn the red-headed Larry Manford like a magnet to the heart of
the mountains. Jim was by no means insensible to his sister’s beauty,
and even in that preoccupied moment he found it pleasant to gaze upon.
“It was last night, eh?” he said. “The dance, I mean? You know you’re
a good sort, Blanche,” he went on, rousing himself. “I’ll bet you fixed
her right.”
“Fixed her?” Blanche laughed happily. “It’s a safe bet there wasn’t a
woman around that dance that didn’t just about hate Molly Marton. It
was a frock I hadn’t had a chance of wearing up here, and the---- It
was one I’d had made just before I quit New York. I guess it’s out of
date now. But it wouldn’t be in Hartspool. What a child! Just a simple
kid that you wouldn’t fancy had a notion beyond her cook-stove and the
farm. My, it makes me grieve to think about her. There she is, all
alone, except for that queer old tough she calls Lightning. There’s not
a soul nearer than ten miles. Do you get what that means to a young
girl, Jim?”
The man linked his hands behind his white hair, and gazed abstractedly
out down the valley.
“It’s tough, Sis,” he said with a sigh.
Blanche shook her head.
“Tough isn’t the word, Silver-Thatch, my friend,” she said with a
light laugh. “If you’d seen that little girl’s face, if you’d watched
her breath come and go as I talked ‘frock’ to her, I guess I’d surely
have had a new sister-in-law in a week. You--you big, soft-hearted
old thing, you couldn’t have stood up to the pathos of it all for a
half-hour. You’d have loosened your bank-roll right away, and whisked
her off where there was life and such pleasure as that poor little kid
has never known. I’m glad you owe her something, Jim. And I’m glad
you’re going to let me help you pay it.”
The man nodded.
“And Larry did his share,” he smiled.
“Like a jewel. Isn’t it queer? He was most like a kid about acting a
sort of Father Christmas. Oh, he planned the way of it. He planted my
goods right in her doorway, and quit without a soul getting wise. It
cost him a night and more from his bed, but he was glad enough to
do it. And, anyway, I’d threatened him. But she was sore on you in
her little queer way, Jim. I think she was feeling bad you’d quit her
without handing her a name. But I had to smile at her name for you. I
just love it to death. Silver-Thatch! That goes with me all the time.”
Blanche laughed. Then her expression fell serious again and her even
brows drew together.
“But you couldn’t have risked your name with her. I know that. So it
would have meant lying the same as I had to lie. Not about my name, but
where I’m located. You know, Jim, it’s a pretty terrible thing to lie
to innocence like that. It’s like lying to your own child. I’ve acted
a lie once to that kid, and never again. I had to do it for your sake,
old man. And I did it as I’d do most things for you. If we’re going to
help Molly Marton it must be done without lying. I’m sorry, boy. But
I’ve been thinking it a week now since ever I first set eyes on that
child. Now you want to think, and see how it needn’t happen again.
Maybe none of us can get through life without lying. I’m no better
than anyone else. I can lie all day to folks that don’t matter. The
whole world of society needs to lie, or things would break up in five
seconds. But I can’t have innocent child eyes looking up into mine,
full of trust and truth, and know I’m lying.”
Jim dropped his hands from behind his head, and one of them removed the
empty pipe from his mouth.
“There’ll be no need to lie any more,” he said. “It looks to me it’s
only a matter of time before the whole game’s up, anyway.”
He looked up. There was an easy smile in his eyes that was no pretence,
for all the significance of his words. Blanche was startled. She was a
little terrified. The “game” being “up” could only have one meaning for
her. It meant discovery of Jim’s hiding. And discovery of Jim’s hiding
meant a movement towards the penitentiary to fulfil the sentence that
had been passed on him.
“Hadn’t you best tell me, Jim? All of it?” she said, and settled
herself back in her chair.
The woman watched the man’s fingers as they manipulated the tobacco
into his pipe. But all her instinct, all her understanding and courage,
were desperately alert. Where her men-folk were concerned these things
were ever at their service. Larry Manford, with his flaming head, was
her epitome of what manhood should be, but her brother Jim occupied a
place in her heart that was very, very close to that which was reserved
for motherhood.
Jim refolded his pouch and returned it to his pocket.
“Say, be a dear an’ get me a match,” he said easily. “And while you’re
gone I’ll figger out how best to tell you. It’s--amusing.”
“Amusing?” Blanche stood for a moment. Then, as she moved off to do his
bidding: “I’m glad,” she said. “I hadn’t thought it was that way.”
When Blanche returned, she struck a match and held it to the man’s pipe.
“Well?” she said. “We’ll need to be quick. Larry’ll be up along in a
while. And food’s nearly ready.”
Jim spread out his hands.
“It won’t take long,” he said. “The police boys are getting around
Dan’s place.”
“Why?”
“That’s easy. Hartspool and Calford are worried. It’s our sales of
cattle. But it’s not that. I’ve seen a--spook.”
Blanche made a little impatient gesture.
“Cut out the spooks, Jim, and tell me the story quickly.”
“Sure.”
But Jim smoked on for a few moments longer.
“No. It was no spook. We can cut them out,” he said at last. “What
I’ve seen was real human flesh and blood. And it was the one person I
wasn’t yearning to see, or who should see me. I can’t get his name. I
only heard it once. But it was that police boy who was toting me along
down for a rest cure in penitentiary when I made my getaway. I saw him
two evenings ago as I was beating it back here from Dan’s place. Yes.
He wasn’t any spook, but just the boy I recognised right away, for
all he wasn’t wearing uniform. And he recognised me, even though my
hair’s as white as a summer cloud. It wasn’t near Dan’s place either,
so I can’t say for sure he’d been along up there. But he was heading
from that direction.” He laughed. “Queer, eh? I mean the chance of it.
We hit head on to each other right down there on the creek in Dan’s
valley. It was a few miles up from that little girl’s farm, where we
turn off up into these hills at the mouth of Three-Way Creek. If he’d
been a half a minute before, or I’d been the same later, we’d have
missed. And in these hills, too, where you could lose an army like
nothing. Makes you wonder about Fate, doesn’t it? Makes you feel like
two cents trying to fix things the way you need ’em.”
“Did you speak to him?”
“Nope.” Jim’s smile deepened. “But somehow the whole thing tickled me
plumb to death. I just had to grin. I grinned into his queer dark face,
and----”
“That’s when he recognised you.”
The man laughed outright.
“Maybe,” he admitted.
“Of course it was.” In spite of her anxiety Blanche was forced to
smile. “Your silver thatch, as Molly calls it, wouldn’t save you. It
wouldn’t save you if you were all covered up with the flowing beard of
a patriarch. No one who’s ever seen the grin on your foolish old face
is ever going to mistake it again. And you think he’d been up around
Dan’s place? You guess he was a patrol? In plain clothes? And he was
the result of Hartspool and Calford being worried?” She shook her head.
“That doesn’t sound good to me. I don’t know much of the ways of the
Police, but why would he be out of uniform? And why would they send the
particular boy who lost you? And, anyway, why worry with Dan if there’s
been no cattle stealing going on around the hills? What could his place
tell them?”
“Dan’s place could tell them a deal,” Jim protested at once. “You’ve
got to see with their eyes. Dan’s been known to be living a trapper
life years. Suddenly he registers a brand. Then he starts in to trade
stock big. He and I have talked this out. We’ve foreseen it. That’s why
we’ve started his building.”
Again Blanche shook her head.
“You haven’t answered a thing,” she declared keenly. “You’ve got Dan’s
work on your mind. Look around outside it. The thing I’m looking at
is the identity of that boy. Being the boy you got away from, I’d say
he’s more--a deal more--interested in--you. I’d say if he was looking
for anything, he found it when he found you. Remember, you didn’t find
him up around Dan’s. You found him at the start of our highway. Isn’t
that so? Has he discovered that highway, and is wondering who uses it?
Eh?” Again came the woman’s shake of the head. “The notion of Dan’s
place leaves me cold. There’s no cattle stealing going on, no one to
pass a complaint. Molly Marton is his nearest neighbour, twenty-five
miles away. She’s lost nothing. After her, another ten miles nearer
Hartspool, comes that boy Andy, the new settler who took her into that
dance. No, Jim, he was looking for you. And he’s found you.”
Jim removed his pipe from his mouth.
“This boy Andy?” he said inquiringly. “Andy--who? It’s Irish, isn’t it?”
Blanche laughed. She thought she recognised asperity in the man’s
tone, and interpreted it in her woman’s fashion.
“Maybe. Scottish too, Andy’s short for Andrew.”
Jim started. In an instant his unconcern had fallen from him. He sat
up, and his booted and spurred feet came down on to the woodwork of the
verandah with a clatter. He swung round squatting on the side of his
chair.
“Hold on, Sis,” he cried. “Andrew? That was that police boy’s first
name. I got it now. And--it’s given me the rest. Corporal Andrew
McFardell. That’s the name I’ve been yearning to get. And that’s the
man I saw,” he cried in triumph, beating the palm of one hand against
his forehead. “I wonder?”
“What?”
But Jim remained maddeningly silent. And it was not till a restless
movement on Blanche’s part finally reminded him of her presence that he
looked up into her face with a dawning smile.
“It might be,” he said. “It surely looks that way. I guess it must be.
He wasn’t in uniform. But his cloth riding-breeches looked like police
breeches with the yellow stripe gone. Now, what would have happened to
him after my getaway? Guess they’d sort of court-martial him. Sure.
Maybe they’d ‘fire’ him. What then? He’d need to scratch a living some
way. You can’t quit the Police with a wad on the cents they get. That’s
it. That Andy is-- Say, Sis, we got to locate that boy Andy, and get to
know about him. You can do that. Molly can hand you his story. You----”
He broke off. Blanche’s face had suddenly paled. A great apprehension
was looking out of her eyes.
“I told Molly my name was--Pryse,” she cried, aghast.
Jim laughed outright.
“That beats it,” he cried. And Blanche suddenly felt like shaking him.
“What a play! If our little Molly knows your name’s Pryse he’ll know
it, too. If her ‘Andy’ is my ‘Andrew’ it won’t have him guessing more
than a year that Blanche Pryse has to do with one Jim Pryse, who’s
caused him a whole deal of trouble. And, having located Jim Pryse down
at the creek, right by our highway, what then? It’s easy. Maybe he’s
‘fired’ from the Police. It doesn’t matter a thing. There’s a chance of
getting back on the feller who’s queered his job. Sis, we’re going to
get half the Mounted Police hitting our trail before we’re many weeks
older or--or I’m-- No.”
He shook his head decidedly. Then he flung himself back into his chair
and gazed out down the valley. He raised his eyes to the eternal snows
crowning the peaks which rose up in almost every direction about
him. He scanned the dark glades of the forest which clothed their
lower slopes. Then his gaze came back to the little world of his own
creation. That shelter he had designed for erring souls, who, like
himself, had fallen by the wayside of life. His amusement was dead, and
he promptly negatived his hasty conclusion.
“No, Sis,” he said. “We don’t need to worry a thing. There’s no police
boys’ll ever locate this ranch. Dan Quinlan chased these hills ten
years before he lit on this valley--by chance. There’s only you, and
me, and Larry knows the way in and ways out of it. And there’s fifty
miles of hills, and gorges, and mountain streams, like a Chinese maze,
for any feller who don’t know what we know about Three-Way Creek before
he can locate us. No. Don’t worry. But things have changed. We need to
reckon with that boy. We need to watch out. I’ll have to put Dan wise.
And you--why, you must keep tab on little Molly. I owed her father, and
I’ll need to pay his little girl. Nothing’s going to stop that. You
must see her as soon as you can. If you run into him, why, you’ll not
be worried losing him in these hills. And you’ll be the best one to
locate the thing he’s doing. Here’s Larry coming along with a big eat
look written all over his freckled features. I’ll have to tell him.”