A DEATH BED
Deciding that it was too late to go back after the deer, Angus headed
for home. The sun was down when he struck into a wagon trail a couple of
miles from the ranch, and he had followed it but a few hundred yards
when he heard the sound of hoofs behind him. Turning in his saddle he
recognized horse and rider which were overhauling him rapidly.
"What's the rush, Dave?" he asked as they drew level.
Whatever the rush had been it seemed to be over. The rider slowed to a
walk. He was a small man, apparently in the forties, wiry and sun-dried.
His name was Rennie, and he was nominally a homesteader, though he did
little more than comply with the statutory requirements. In winter he
trapped and in summer he turned his hand to almost anything. He was a
wizard with horses, he knew the habits of most wild animals thoroughly
and he had seen a great deal of the old West. He and young Mackay were
friends, and he had taught the boy many things from his own store of
experience. As he pulled up, the boy noted that Blaze's bright coat was
dark with sweat and that his head hung wearily.
"You've been combing some speed out of that cayuse," he commented.
"He's been on grass and lathers easy," Rennie returned. "But I was--I
was sorter lookin' for you, kid."
"Why?"
"Well, you see--your daddy he wants you."
"He knew I was hunting. I got a two-year old buck, but it was too late
to pack him in. What does he want me for?"
The question seemed to embarrass Rennie exceedingly. He gulped and went
into a fit of coughing which left him red in the face.
"He wants to talk to you," he replied at last. "He--he wants to tell you
something, I guess. He--he ain't right well, your daddy ain't."
"Not well!" the boy cried in amazement. "Why, what's the matter with
him, Dave?"
"A little accident--just a little accident, kid. He--he--now you don't
want to go worryin' about it; not yet, anyway."
But Rennie's effort to break bad news gently was too obvious. The boy's
voice took on a sharp note of alarm.
"What sort of an accident?" he demanded. "Is he hurt? Talk up, can't
you?"
"Well, now, durn it, kid, I'd ruther break a leg than tell you--but your
daddy, he's been shot up some."
"Do you mean he's dead?" the boy cried in wide-eyed horror.
"No, he ain't dead--or he wasn't when I started out to find you.
But--but he's plugged plumb center, and--and--Oh, hell, I guess you
know what I'm tryin' to say!"
The boy stared at him dumbly while the slow thudding pad of the horses'
feet on the soft trail smote on his ears like the sound of muffled
drums. He failed at first, as the young must ever fail, to comprehend
the full meaning of the message. His father dead or dying! His father,
Adam Mackay, that living tower of muscle and sinew who could lift with
his hands logs with which other men struggled with cant-hook and peavie,
who could throw a steel-beamed breaking plow aboard a wagon as another
man would handle a wheel-hoe? It was unbelievable.
But slowly the realization was forced upon him. His father had been
shot, and with the knowledge came the flame of bitter anger and desire
for revenge that was his in right of the blood in his veins. And the
desire momentarily overwhelmed sorrow.
"Who did it?" he asked, his young voice a fierce, croaking whisper.
"I dunno. He won't tell anybody. Maybe he'll tell you."
"Come on!" Angus Mackay cried, and dug heels into his pony.
The pony was blown and gasping as they rode up to the ranch and Angus
leaped from his back. Rennie's hand fell on his shoulder.
"Kid," he said earnestly, "you want to brace up and keep braced. If it's
a show-down for your daddy he'll like to know you're takin' it like a
man. Then there's Jean and Turkey. This here happens to everybody, and
while it's tough it's a part of the game. And just one more thing: If
you find out who done the shootin', let me know!"
The boy nodded, because he could not trust himself to speak, and ran
into the house. It was hushed in the twilight. Already it seemed to hold
a little of the strange stillness which comes with the departure of a
familiar presence. As the boy paused, from a corner came a little,
sniffling sob, and in the semi-darkness he saw his young brother,
Torquil, curled miserably upon a skin-covered couch. Paying no attention
to him he crossed the living room and as he did so his sister Jean
entered. In some mysterious way she seemed years older than the
girl-child who had come running after him in the gray mists of that
morning. Dry-eyed, slender, quiet-moving, like the shadow of a girl in
the gloom, she led him back and closed the door. He obeyed her touch
without question, without a trace of his superiority of the morning. In
face of sickness and death, like most of his sex he felt helpless,
impotent. He put his long arm around his sister and suddenly she clung
to him, her slender body shaking.
"He's not--dead--Jean?"
"Not--not yet, Angus. Dr. Wilkes is with him now. He says he won't live
long. He didn't want to tell me, but I made him."
She told him all she knew. Adam Mackay had ridden away by himself that
morning, no one knew whither. In the afternoon he had come home swaying
in his saddle, shot through the body. Then young Turkey has climbed into
the blood-soaked saddle and ridden for the doctor. As to how he had met
with his hurt Adam Mackay had said no word.
The inner door opened to admit a burly, thick-bodied man with reddish
hair sprinkled with gray and grizzled, bushy eyebrows. This was Dr.
Wilkes. He nodded to Angus.
"You're in time. Your father wants you. Go to him, and call me if
anything happens."
"He's going to--going to--"
The boy was unable to complete the sentence. The doctor put his arm
over his shoulder for a moment in a kindly, elder-brotherly touch.
"I'm afraid so, my boy. In fact, I know so. Keep a stiff upper lip, old
man. He'll like that."
Adam Mackay stared at his eldest son hungrily from the pillows. Above
his great black beard his face was gray. He was a great frame of a man,
long, lean and sinewy. The likeness of father and son was marked. He
held out his hand feebly and the boy took it and choked. Then Adam
Mackay spoke in a little whisper so unlike his usual deep voice that the
boy was startled, and because it was near the end with him his words
carried the sharp twist and hiss of the Gaelic which was the tongue of
his youth; for though Adam Mackay had never seen Scotland, he had been
born in a settlement which, fifty years before, was more Gaelic than the
Highlands themselves.
"It cannot be helped, son, and it is little I care for myself. When you
come to face death, many years from now, please the God, you'll find it
no' sic' a fearful thing. But it is you and the children that worries me
now, Angus."
"Never mind us, father," the boy said. "I can look after Jean and
Turkey."
The stricken giant smiled at him with a quiet pride of which the
recollection years after warmed the boy's heart.
"I had hoped for twenty years of life yet, by which time you would have
been settled, with children of your own. Eh, well, the young birds must
fledge and fly alone, and your wings are well sprouted, Angus-lad. You
have in you the makings of a man, though yet headstrong and dour by
nature. And now listen, son, for my time is short: I look to you to
take the place I can no longer fill. You are the Mackay, the head of the
family. Remember that, and cease before your time to be a boy."
"I will, father," the boy promised.
"There is little or no money, worse luck," the man went on. "All I have
had I have put into land and timber, and the fire burnt the timber: But
in time the land will make you rich, though not yet awhile, maybe. But
till it does, the ranch will give you a living. Sell nothing now--not an
acre. Promise me, boy!"
"I promise, father," the boy replied.
"A promise to a dying father is an oath," the man went on. "But no
Mackay of our Mackays ever broke his word passed for good or ill.
Remember that, too. I have made a will, and all I have is left to you as
the eldest son. That has ever been our custom. When the time comes, and
they are older, deal generously with your sister and brother. That is
our custom, too. Of this will, the man Braden is named as executor. I
had intended--but it is too late now. He is a man of business and has
the name of an upright man. But if you need advice, son, go to Judge
Riley, drunkard and all as he is. But for that he should have been in
Braden's place. That is all, I think. I feel more content now." And he
closed his eyes with a sigh.
"I will remember, father," the boy said. "But who did this? Who shot
you?"
The eyes opened and searched his deeply for many seconds.
"Why do you want to know?"
"I ought to know," the boy replied.
"You want to know," his father said, "so that if the law should fail,
you would take the old law of the old days into your young hands. Is
that it, my son?"
"Yes," the boy admitted, "that is it. And why for no, father?"
For a moment the graying face of the dying man lighted with a swift
gleam of pride and satisfaction. Then he lifted his great hand feebly.
"You have bred true, lad. Ever were the Mackays good haters, bitter of
heart and heavy of hand. So I have been all my days, and no man did me
wrong that I did not repay it. But listen, son o' mine: Lying here with
my man's strength gone from me and the shadows on my soul I see more
clearly, as clearly as old Murdoch McGillivray, who is dead, and as you
know had the gift while he lived. And I tell you now that hate and
revenge are the things worth least in life; and, moreover, that the
things worth most in life and much more in death, are love, and work
well done, and a heart clean of bitterness. And so I will tell you
nothing at all."
"Please, father!" the boy pleaded, for as his father had said he had
bred true.
"No and no, I tell you, no!" Adam Mackay refused. "No killing will bring
me back. I will not lay a feud upon you. Blood and blood, and yet more
blood I have seen come of such things. I know you, Angus, bone o' my
bone and flesh o' my flesh as I know my own youth, and of the knowledge
in that one thing I will not trust you. I die, and that is the end of
it, for me and for all of me. Your duty is to the living. And now call
you Jean and Torquil, that I may bid them farewell. And take you my
blessing such as it is; for I feel the darkness closing upon me."
An hour later Adam Mackay was dead. And that day was the last of Angus
Mackay's careless boyhood.