Grief
“What is the matter with you?” I demanded. “What are you doing with
that gun?”
“John is in there packing his valise. He says he is going to leave the
place. I say he is not.”
“Going to say it with the six-gun, if necessary, ugh?” I asked.
“If necessary, Mary, by God, he put it up to me, straight. He came to
me, and said that he had to get off the place for a while. Had to. I
baited him along. Asked him where he wanted to go. He didn’t even try
to hide his feelings. Didn’t bother to make up an excuse. Said it was
all the same to him where he went: ’Frisco, Reno, Salt Lake, anywhere,
just so that he could get away. When I reckoned he’d stay right here,
he up with the idea of going down to live with the outfit. He’s a
fool; so he thinks that I am. Thinks I don’t know he could get a good
horse, the first night——”
“If John thinks you’re a fool,” I said, “he’s paying you too much
respect. I can’t think of anything much worse, or more dangerous than
a fool, but whatever it is, you are it. It turns me all over to look
at you. Give me that gun.”
I reached out and took it. His fingers didn’t stick to it very long. I
judged that he was not quite as eager to shoot John on sight as he had
been pretending to be.
“Now get yourself away from here,” I said. “Get on downstairs, if you
know the way, and eat your dinner. I’ll look after John.”
“If you help that boy to escape——”
“Escape your foot!” I slipped into John’s room, shut the door in Sam’s
face, and pushed the new bolt into its slot.
John’s things were all strewn about; his valise was standing open on a
chair, but he had stopped trying to pack it. He was lying face down on
the bed.
I went and sat on the bed beside him and put an arm around his
shoulders.
“Mary?” he questioned.
“Yes. There, there now, John dear. Try to brace up——”
“You don’t know!”
“Yes, I do know, dear. I know just what you know.”
“My God,” he groaned. “It is certain, then? I still had a little hope.
I—I can’t keep on with life, not after this. When I think of these
last weeks—— I—I’m filthy, I tell you.”
“John, dear,” I tried to comfort. “You didn’t know—you couldn’t. You
aren’t to blame. You are young——”
I knew that I had no comfort for agony such as his, but I could not
bear to leave him; so I stayed, hoping, as I suppose foolish women
have always hoped, that just plain, quiet loving him might help a
little.
After a minute or two, he said, “Mary—if you don’t mind, I—I’ve got to
fight this out alone.”
I went to my own room. I put a cold water compress on my eyes, and
pulled down the window-shades and lay on my bed. I was mortal tired
from sorrow, and the hurt in my heart for John was sharp as a
neuralgia pain, but my mind went working right along, independent of
my feelings; straight on, like a phonograph, if somebody had started
it, might keep right on grinding out a tune while the ship that it was
on was sinking.
When Miss MacDonald came up, bringing me some dinner, which I couldn’t
touch, I said to her: “It seems true, but I know that it can’t be. It
is too impossible. I mean—too far fetched.”
“Not a bit of it,” she said. “The only impossible thing about it is
the length of time it has taken us to discover it. Of course—forgive
me, Mrs. Magin, I was almost on the trail once, I had at least started
in the right direction, and then you threw me completely off.”
“I! How?”
She smiled at me. “By seeing something which you did not see. But you
are not in the least to blame for that. The fault is all mine.”
She went and shut my transom. She looked through my clothes-closet.
She looked under my bed, saying, as she did so, “The proverbial
practise of old maids, you know.” She came and sat close beside me,
“Now then . . .” she said.