A Conversation
I am not claiming that I possessed one particle of common sense at
that minute, nor for a good many minutes after that. My actions would
give the lie, direct, to any such assertion on my part. It did not
take any common sense to know, straight off, that, sent to him or not,
Sam was not mixed up in any business that had to do with explosives,
bombs, and Bolshevism. It was easy enough to remember, then, that Sam
had not been to Rattail for the past ten days; that Hubert Hand had
been making the trips down for the mail, expressage, and supplies.
Just as he came into my mind, I heard his voice. It was a startling
coincidence; but I need a better excuse than that, for surely no
mortal ever did a more foolish thing than I did then. I climbed into
that chest, along with those packages, and lowered the lid down over
me. If I had any idea, I suppose it must have been a desire not to let
him know that I had discovered his secret—his and Gaby’s together,
undoubtedly—but I can’t remember having any thought at all until, just
as the lid closed, I remembered the sad poem about the bride and the
mistletoe chest.
I thought, then, that her situation was comfortable compared to mine.
If you have never been packed in a box with a lot of explosives, as I
hope you have not, you can have no notion of what I went through. I
could have climbed out. But, if you are an elderly woman, of my size
and build, as I hope you are not, and if you have a certain reputation
for dignity to live up to, and a certain reputation for snooping to
live down, you can have an idea why I didn’t come springing out of
there, like a jack-in-the-box, or like the immoral ladies who emerge
from pies—so the papers say—at bachelor’s parties. I weighed the
matter carefully, as I heard, through the thin boards, Hubert Hand,
talking to someone, come into the kitchen. I chose death by
suffocation or combustion.
“My dear woman,” were the first words I heard from him, “you may set
your mind at rest. I am not going to marry the girl. I am not a
marrying man, as you know; and, if I were, she wouldn’t have me.”
“You leave her alone, then. Understand me. Leave her alone.”
If I believed my ears, that was Mrs. Ricker’s voice; that was Mrs.
Ricker, not only talking, but talking like that to Hubert Hand.
“You flatter me,” he said. “Jealous, still, after all these years?”
“I despise you. But you leave that girl alone. If you think I’ll
stand, silent, and allow you to marry her——”
“Hire a hall. I told you that I wouldn’t marry her, and that she
wouldn’t have me, if I were willing to.”
“Wouldn’t she, though? Wouldn’t she? She is mad about you. She can’t
look at you without love in her eyes, nor speak to you without love in
her voice. She tries to hide it; but she can’t hide it from me. I
know. She loves you.”
I am not sure whether I read it, or whether I figured it out for
myself; but I do know it is a fact that no woman ever accuses another
woman of being in love with a man unless she could imagine being in
love with him herself.
“As to that,” Hubert Hand said, in that preeny, offhand manner that
men, who will discuss their love affairs at all, use when discussing
them, “what possible difference could it make to you, Ollie?”
“Only that I would kill her, and you, too, before I would let her have
you.”
“Easy on there, my girl. Your last attempt at murder—at least I hope
that was your last attempt—was not, you may recall, very successful.”
“I would be successful another time.”
I clamped my teeth to keep them from chattering. I wished that I had
some way as easy for muffling the sound made by the pounding of my
heart, which was thudding away as loudly as a butter churn in rapid
action. Except for that I kept quiet; very quiet. Surrounded, in there
by explosives, and out there by people who talked of murder as calmly
and as comfortably as if they were discussing moss-roses, very quiet
did not seem half quiet enough.
They went into the other room of the cabin and stayed there for a few
minutes. I could not hear what they were saying, but I did not budge
an inch. After I heard them passing the window, and was sure that they
had left the cabin, I remained, very quiet, in the chest for about
five minutes longer before climbing out of it.
I was progressing toward home, shivering in every bone, limping, since
both my legs had gone to sleep, when Sam, riding his bad tempered
bronco named Wishbone, came up behind me and dismounted.
“Corns bad, Mary?” he questioned. “Must be going to have rain.”
“Keep water in the ditches. Both my feet are asleep, from the ankles
up.”
“Upon my soul! First time in history you ever sat still in one place
long enough to have that happen. Well, well. ‘Do the thing that’s
nearest.’ Want to climb up on Wishbone and have me lead him?”
“When I go to meet death,” I told him, “I shan’t go on the back of a
nasty tempered bronco.”
“Speaking of tempers,” Sam grinned, “a person would think I had sung
your feet to sleep, Mary.”
“Considering,” I replied, “that everyone on the Desert Moon is, at
this minute, in mortal danger of their lives, all your lighthearted
jesting seems pretty much out of place.”
I told him, then, about the packages of explosives hidden under the
shelf. I had not told him about my climbing in with them; so I was in
no way prepared for his actions.
He stopped. He dropped Wishbone’s bridle. He put both his hands on his
stomach and leaned over and burst into uproarious laughter.
“Ho-ho-ho,” it rolled out, seeming to fill the entire valley. He
leaned to one side; he leaned to the other side, and kept on laughing
to deafen the far distant deserts.
“Fireworks,” he gasped. “I got them for Martha. Going to surprise her
on the fourth. Sent for them months ago. Hid them up there. Ho-ho-ho!
I told you to stop pussy-footing around, Mary. Ho-ho-ho! ‘Do not look
for wrong and evil, you will find them if you do——’”
With as much dignity as a heavy woman, with both of her legs asleep,
could muster, I turned and left him. His words and his actions had
certainly given me one decision. From this time on, I would tell Sam
Stanley nothing.