John and Martha
I am not an admirer of men. Looking at most any man, I find myself
thinking what a pity it was he had to grow up, since as a little,
helpless child he would have made a complete success.
Sam Stanley is different. There is some of the child left in Sam, just
as there is, I think, in any good man or woman—a little seasoning of
simplicity, really, is all it amounts to—but there is a quality about
Sam that makes a person feel that he set out, early in life, to follow
the recipe for being a man, and that he has made a thorough job of it.
Physically, alone, Sam would make about three of most men, with plenty
left over for gravy. But it is not that. It is the something that
makes him stroll up, unarmed, to a cowpuncher who is bragging wild
with moonshine and clinking with firearms, and say, in that drawling,
gentle voice of his, “What’s the trouble here, son?” And the something
that makes that cowpuncher get polite first, and evaporate immediately
after. And Sam whiteheaded, now, at that.
Why he, as a young man, with a pretty fair education and a tidy sum of
money left him by his father, who had been a well thought of lawyer in
Massachusetts, should come out here to Nevada, take up his homestead
land, and settle content for the rest of his life, has always been
more or less of a mystery to me. I will warn you, though, that it is a
mystery that doesn’t get solved in this story, unless you care to take
Sam’s explanation of it.
He says that, when his father died, it left him without a relative,
whom he knew of, in the world. He was twenty years old, and he owned a
set of roving toes and an imagination. So he went to California,
seeking romance and gold. Finding neither, he took a small boat named
The Indiana, and went up to Oregon, where he joined a friend of his,
named Tom Cone, who had a place on the Columbia River near Rooster
Rock.
One day Sam was out in the woods—he said there was nothing to be out
in except woods or rain in Oregon in those days—and he heard a noise
behind a thicket. He thought Tom, who lived for practical jokes, was
getting ready to pull one. So Sam crept up to the thicket, stooping
low and making no noise, and shouted “Boo!” at the biggest bear he had
ever seen in his life. Sam says he has forgotten what the bear said.
He decided, then and there, that the Oregon forests were no place for
a man with no more sense than he had; he left them, and came down here
to Nevada.
“No forests, no fences, no folks, and a free view for ten thousand
miles,” is the way Sam puts it, “so, I stayed. It was the first place
I’d ever found where I didn’t feel hampered for room.”
He staked out his hundred and sixty acres with Boulder Creek tumbling
and roaring through them. He built his cabin, out of railroad ties, in
a grove of quaking aspen trees. He hired help, and built fences, and
dug ditches, and planted crops, and bought stock. He bought more land.
He hired more help, dug more ditches, planted bigger crops, bought
more stock. He has been doing that, regularly, ever since. And, of
course, he located the lead and silver mine, on his property, that
made him millions, if it made him a cent, before it played out. But,
in spite of the money that “Old Lady Luck,” as he called his mine,
made for him, Sam never gave his heart to it. It was the Desert Moon
Ranch that he loved, and the money he made from it that he was proud
of. That was why, when the honor of the ranch went under, during those
terrible weeks last summer, Sam all but went under with it.
After Margarita left the place from her visit of 1909, taking the
twins with her, Sam went around for a week or two, with his head
cocked to one side as if he was listening for something. I knew what
he was missing, and I was not surprised when, one day, he told me he
had decided to send to San Francisco and get a couple of children and
adopt them.
He wrote to a big hospital in San Francisco and got in touch with a
trained nurse who would be willing to come up and live on the ranch
and take care of the two children. He had her go to an orphan’s home
and select the children and bring them with her when she came. Sam’s
specifications concerning them were that they were to be a boy and a
girl, under ten and over five years old, healthy, American, and
brown-eyed. (Sam’s own eyes are the color of ball-bluing, giving his
face, with his red cheeks, and his white beard, the patriotic effect I
have mentioned.)
The nurse came early in September with the two brown-eyed children,
named Vera and Alvin. Sam at once re-named them. John, he said, was
the only name for a boy, and Mary the only name for a girl. But, since
my name was Mary, he would let the little girl have Martha, which
meant, according to Sam, “Boss of the Ranch.”
The nurse’s name was Mrs. Ollie Ricker. If you can imagine a
blue-eyed, pink-cheeked, yellow-haired bisque doll, turned old, you
will have a good idea of her appearance at that time. I don’t know how
old she was then. I don’t know how old she is now. Younger by many
years than I am, I am sure; and yet she has always seemed old to me;
old with the sudden but inevitable oldness of a wrecked ship, or a
burned-down house, or a felled tree, that makes a body forget that a
year ago, or perhaps only yesterday, it was a fresh, new thing. She
never talked. I do not mean that she never chatted, or gossiped. I
mean that she never said one word, not, “Good-morning,” nor,
“Good-night,” nor, “If you please,” nor, “Thank you,” if she could
possibly avoid it. At the end of sixteen years of daily association
with Mrs. Ricker, that is, up to the time of the second murder on the
Desert Moon, I knew exactly as much about her past life as you know at
this minute.
John, at that time, was nine years old. He was as bright, and as
upstanding, and as handsome, as any little fellow to be found
anywhere; bashful at first, but ready and glad to be friendly, with an
uplifting smile that wrinkled his short nose and that would wheedle a
cooky out of a pickle jar. I may as well say, now, that this
description of John, at nine years old, is as good a description as I
can give of John at twenty-five, if you will draw his height up to six
feet, and put on weight accordingly.
Martha, when she came to us, was a frail, white-faced mite, with
enormous brown eyes that looked as if they had been removed from a
Jersey heifer and set in her white face. The papers from the orphanage
gave her age as five years; but even I, who knew less about children
than it was decent for any woman to know, soon saw that something was
wrong. She walked well enough, but she could scarcely talk at all. Her
ways and her habits were those of a two-year-old infant, yet she was
far too large for that age. Before she had been with us a week I knew
that Martha was not quite right in her mind.
Mrs. Ricker knew it, too. Her excuse was, that she had chosen Martha
because she was so pretty; that she had had no opportunity to judge
her other characteristics. She insisted that she thought, with proper
care, Martha would develop normally.
I knew better. Sam knew it, too. But, when I begged and besought him
not to adopt her, he brought out an argument good and conclusive for
him.
“If I don’t adopt her, and take care of her,” said Sam, “who the heck
would?”
So adopt her he did. And he spent a small fortune on doctors,
specialists, for her. None of them could do anything. It was, they
said, a hopeless case of retarded development. So, at twenty-one years
of age, Martha, though the care and doctoring had given her a fine
healthy body, had the mind of a child of five or six years—not too
bright a child, either. That was at best. At worst—— Well, no matter.
Entirely harmless, the doctors said; but I always had my doubts.
Sam tried all sorts of teachers for her, too; bringing them from back
east and paying them sums to stagger. But, in the end, we found that
Mrs. Ricker was better with her than anyone else. She never pretended
any particular love for Martha, but she took care of her, and kept her
sweet and clean, and put up with her tempers, when many a better woman
than Ollie Ricker would have gone away in disgust. I am not saying
that, if there is a Judgment Day, as many say and some believe, I’d
care to be standing in Ollie Ricker’s shoes, if she is wearing them at
that time; but I do say that her gentleness, and her patience, through
all those years with Martha, should be counted to her credit, whether
or no.