STARR, OF THE DESERT
BY B.M. BOWER
AUTHOR OF CHIP OF THE FLYING U, ETC.
1917
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I A COMMONPLACE MAN WAS PETER
II IN WHICH PETER DISCOVERS A WAY OUT
III VIC SHOULD WORRY
IV STARR WOULD LIKE TO KNOW
V A GREASE SPOT IN THE SAND
VI "DARN SUCH A COUNTRY!"
VII MOONLIGHT, A MAN AND A SONG
VIII HOLMAN SOMMERS, SCIENTIST
IX PAT, A NICE DOGGUMS
X THE TRAIL OF SILVERTOWN CORDS
XI THE WIND BLOWS MANY STRAWS
XII STARR FINDS SOMETHING IN A SECRET ROOM
XIII HELEN MAY SIGHS FOR ROMANCE
XIV A SHOT FROM THE PINNACLE
XV HELEN MAY UNDERSTANDS
XVI STARR SEES TOO LITTLE OR TOO MUCH
XVII "IS HE THEN DEAD--MY SON?"
XVIII A PAGE OF WRITING
XIX HOLMAN SOMMERS TURNS PROPHET
XX STARR DISCOVERS THINGS
XXI THROUGH THE OPEN SKYLIGHT
XXII STARR TAKES ANOTHER PRISONER
STARR, OF THE DESERT
CHAPTER ONE
A COMMONPLACE MAN WAS PETER
Daffodils were selling at two bits a dozen in the flower stand beside the
New Era Drug Store. Therefore Peter Stevenson knew that winter was over,
and that the weather would probably "settle." There would be the spring
fogs, of course--and fog did not agree with Helen May since that last
spell of grippe. Peter decided that he would stop and see the doctor
again, and ask him what he thought of a bungalow out against the hills
behind Hollywood; something cheap, of course--and within the five-cent
limit on the street cars; something with a sleeping porch that opened
upon a pleasanter outlook than your neighbor's back yard. If Helen May
would then form the habit of riding to and from town on the open end of
the cars, that would help considerably; in fact, the longer the ride the
better it would be for Helen May. The air was sweet and clean out there
toward the hills. It would be better for Vic, too. It would break up
that daily habit of going out to see "the boys" as soon as he had
swallowed his dinner.
Peter finished refilling the prescription on which he was working, and
went out to see if he were needed in front. He sold a lip-stick to a
pert miss who from sheer instinct made eyes at him, and he wished that
Helen May had such plump cheeks--though he thanked God she had not the
girl's sophisticated eyes. (Yes, a bungalow out there against the hills
ought to do a lot for Helen May.) He glanced up at the great clock and
unconsciously compared his cheap watch with it, saw that in ten minutes
he would be free for the day, and bethought him to telephone the doctor
and make sure of the appointment. He knew that Helen May had seen the
doctor at noon, since she had given Peter her word that she would go,
and since she never broke a promise. He would find out just what the
doctor thought.
When he returned from the 'phone, a fat woman wanted peroxide, and she
was quite sure the bottle he offered was smaller than the last two-bit
bottle she had bought. Peter very kindly and patiently discussed the
matter with her, and smiled and bowed politely when she finally decided
to try another place. His kidneys were hurting him again. He wondered if
Helen May would remember that he must not eat heavy meats, and would get
something else for their dinner.
He glanced again at the clock. He had four minutes yet to serve. He
wondered why the doctor had seemed so eager to see him. He had a vague
feeling of uneasiness, though the doctor had not spoken more than a dozen
words. At six he went behind the mirrored partition and got his topcoat
and hat; said good night to such clerks as came in his way, and went out
and bought a dozen daffodils from the Greek flower-vendor. All day he had
been arguing with himself because of this small extravagance which
tempted him, but now that it was settled and the flowers were in his
hand, he was glad that he had bought them. Helen May loved all growing
things. He set off briskly in spite of his aching back, thinking how
Helen May would hover over the flowers rapturously even while she scolded
him for his extravagance.
Half an hour later, when he turned to leave the doctor's office, he left
the daffodils lying forgotten on a chair until the doctor called him
back and gave them to him with a keen glance that had in it a good deal
of sympathy.
"You're almost as bad off yourself, old man," he said bluntly. "I want
to watch those kidneys of yours. Come in to-morrow or next day and let
me look you over. Or Sunday will do, if you aren't working then. I
don't like your color. Here, wait a minute. I'll give you a
prescription. You'd better stop and fill it before you go home. Take the
first dose before you eat--and come in Sunday. Man, you don't want to
neglect yourself. You--"
"Then you don't think Hollywood--?" Peter took the daffodils and began
absently crumpling the waxed paper around them. His eyes, when he looked
into the doctor's face, were very wistful and very, very tired.
"Hollywood!" The doctor snorted. "One lung's already badly affected, I
tell you. What she's got to have is high, dry air--like Arizona or New
Mexico or Colorado. And right out in the open--live like an Injun for
a year or two. Radical change of climate--change of living. Another
year of office work will kill her." He stopped and eyed Peter
pityingly. "Predisposition--and then the grippe--her mother went that
way, didn't she?"
"Yes," Peter replied, flat-toned and patient. "Yes, she went--that way."
"Well, you know what it means. Get her out of here just as quick as
possible, and you'll probably save her. Helen May's a girl worth saving."
"Yes," Peter replied flatly, as before. "Yes--she's worth saving."
"You bet! Well, you do that. And don't put off coming here Sunday. And
don't forget to fill that prescription and take it till I see you again."
Peter smiled politely, and went down the hall to the elevator, and laid
his finger on the bell, and waited until the steel cage paused to let
him in. He walked out and up Third Street and waited on the corner of
Hill until the car he wanted stopped on the corner to let a few more
passengers squeeze on. Peter found a foothold on the back platform and
something to hang to, and adapted himself to the press of people around
him, protecting as best he could the daffodils with the fine, green
stuff that went with them and that straggled out and away from the
paper. Whenever human eyes met his with a light of recognition, Peter
would smile and bow, and the eyes would smile back. But he never knew
who owned the eyes, or even that he was performing one of the little
courtesies of life.
All he knew was that Helen May was going the way her mother had gone, and
that the only way to prevent her going that way was to take her to New
Mexico or Colorado or Arizona; and she was worth saving--even the doctor
had been struck with her worth; and a bungalow out against the hills
wouldn't do at all, not even with a sleeping porch and the open-air ride
back and forth every day. Radical change she must have. Arizona or New
Mexico or--the moon, which seemed not much more remote or inaccessible.
When his street was called he edged out to the steps and climbed down,
wondering how the doctor expected a man with Peter's salary to act upon
his advice. "You do that!" said the doctor, and left Peter to discover,
if he could, how it was to be done without money; in other words, had
blandly required Peter to perform a modern miracle.
Helen May was listlessly setting the table when he arrived. He went up to
her for the customary little peck on the cheek which passes for a kiss
among relatives, and Helen May waved him off with a half smile that was
unlike her customary cheerfulness.
"I've quit kissing," she said. "It's unsanitary."
"What did the doctor tell you, Babe? You went to see him, didn't you?"
Peter managed a smile--business policy had made smiling a habit--while he
unwound the paper from around the daffodils.
"Dad, I've told you and _told_ you not to buy flowers! Oh, golly, aren't
they beautiful! But you mustn't. I'm going to get my salary cut, on the
first. They say business doesn't warrant my present plutocratic income.
Five a week less, Bob said it would be. That'll pull the company back to
a profit-sharing basis, of course!"
"Lots of folks are losing their jobs altogether," Peter reminded her
apathetically. "What did the doctor say about your cough, Babe?"
"Oh, he told me to quit working. Why is it doctors never have any brains
about such things? Charge a person two dollars or so for telling him to
do what's impossible. What does he think I am--a movie queen?"
She turned away from his faded, anxious eyes that hurt her with their
realization of his helplessness. There was a red spot on either
cheek--the rose of dread which her father had watched heart-sinkingly. "I
know what he _thinks_ is the matter," she added defiantly. "But that
doesn't make it so. It's just the grippe hanging on. I've felt a lot
better since the weather cleared up. It's those raw winds--and half the
time they haven't had the steam on at all in the mornings, and the office
is like an ice-box till the sun warms it."
"Vic home yet?" Peter abandoned the subject for one not much more
cheerful. Vic, fifteen and fully absorbed in his own activities, was more
and more becoming a sore subject between the two.
"No. I called up Ed's mother just before you came, but he hadn't
been there. She thought Ed was over here with Vic. I don't know
where else to ask."
"Did you try the gym?"
"No. He won't go there any more. They got after him for something he
did--broke a window somehow. There's no use fussing, dad. He'll come when
he's hungry enough. He's broke, so he can't eat down town."
Peter sighed and went away to brush his thin, graying hair carefully over
his bald spot, while Helen May brewed the tea and made final preparations
for dinner. The daffodils she arranged with little caressing pulls and
pats in a tall, slim vase of plain glass, and placed the vase in the
center of the table, just as Peter knew she would do.
"Oh, but you're sweet!" she said, and stooped with her face close above
them. "I wish I could lie down in a whole big patch of you and just look
at the sky and at you nodding and perking all around me--and not do a
living thing all day but just lie there and soak in blue and gold and
sweet smells and silence."
Peter, coming to the open doorway, turned and tiptoed back as though he
had intruded upon some secret, and stood irresolutely smoothing his hair
down with the flat of his hand until she called him to come and eat. She
was cheerful as ever while she served him scrupulously. She smiled at him
now and then, tilting her head because the daffodils stood between them.
She said no more about the doctor's advice, or the problem of poverty.
She did not cough, and the movements of her thin, well-shaped hands were
sure and swift. More than once she made a pause while she pulled a
daffodil toward her and gazed adoringly into its yellow cup.
Peter might have been reassured, were it not for the telltale flush on
her cheeks and the unnatural shine in her eyes. As it was, every
fascinating little whimsy of hers stabbed him afresh with the pain of her
need and of his helplessness. Arizona or New Mexico or Colorado, the
doctor had said; and Peter knew that it must be so. And he with his
druggist's salary and his pitiful two hundred dollars in the savings
bank! And with the druggist's salary stopping automatically the moment he
stopped reporting for duty! Peter was neither an atheist nor a socialist,
yet he was close to cursing his God and his country whenever Helen May
smiled at him around the dozen daffodils.
"Your insurance is due the tenth, dad," she remarked irrelevantly when
they had reached the dessert stage of cream puffs from the delicatessen
nearest Helen May's work. "Why don't you cut it down? It's sinful, the
amount of money we've paid out for insurance. You need a new suit this
spring. And the difference--"
"I don't see what's wrong with this suit," Peter objected, throwing out
his scrawny chest and glancing down his front with a prejudiced eye,
refusing to see any shabbiness. "A little cleaning and pressing, maybe--"
"A little suit of that new gray everybody's wearing these days, you
mean," she amended relentlessly. "Don't argue, dad. You've _got_ to have
a suit. And that old insurance--"
"Jitneys are getting thicker every day," Peter contended in feeble jest.
"A man needs to be well insured in this town. There's Vic--if anything
happened, he's got to be educated just the same. And by the endowment
plan, in twelve years more I'll have a nice little lump. It's--on account
of the endowment, Babe. I don't want to sell drugs all my life."
"Just the same, you're going to have a new suit." Helen May retrenched
herself behind the declaration. "And it's going to be gray. And a gray
hat with a dove-colored band and the bow in the back. And tan shoes," she
added implacably, daintily lifting the roof off her cream puff to see how
generous had been the filling.
"Who? Me?" Vic launched himself in among them and slid spinelessly into
his chair as only a lanky boy can slide. "Happy thought! Only I'll have
bottle green for mine. A fellow stepped on my roof this afternoon, so--"
"You'll wear a cap then--or go bareheaded and claim it's to make your
hair grow." Helen May regarded him coldly. "Lots of fellows do. You don't
get a single new dud before the fourth, Vic Stevenson."
"Oh, don't I?" Vic drawled with much sarcasm, and pulled two dollars from
his trousers pocket, displaying them with lofty triumph. "I get a new hat
to-morrow, Miss Stingy."
"Vic, where did you get that money?" Helen May's eyes flamed to the
battle. "Have you been staying out of school and hanging around those
picture studios?"
"Yup--at two dollars per hang," Vic mouthed, spearing a stuffed green
pepper dexterously. "Fifty rehearsals for two one-minute scenes of
honorable college gangs honorably hailing the hee-ro. Waugh! Where'd you
get these things--or did the cat bring it in? Stuffed with laundry soap,
if you ask me. Why don't you try that new place on Spring?"
"Vic Stevenson!" Helen May began in true sisterly disapprobation. "Is
that getting you anywhere in your studies? A few more days out of
school, and--"
Peter's thoughts turned inward. He did not even hear the half playful,
half angry dispute between these two. Vic was a heady youth, much given
to rebelling against the authority of Helen May who bullied or wheedled
as her mood and the emergency might impel, as sisters do the world over.
Peter was thinking of his two hundred dollars saved against disaster; and
a third of that to go for life insurance on the tenth, which was just one
row down on the calendar; and Helen May going the way her mother had
gone--unless she lived out of doors "like an Indian" in Arizona
or--Peter's mind refused to name again the remote, inaccessible places
where Helen May might evade the penalty of being the child of her mother
and of poverty.
Gray hat for Peter or bottle-green hat for Vic--what did it matter if
neither of them ever again owned a hat, if Helen May must stay here in
the city and face the doom that had been pronounced upon her? What did
anything matter, if Babe died and left him plodding along alone? Vic did
not occur to him consolingly. Vic was a responsibility; a comfort he was
not. Like many men, Peter could not seem to understand his son half as
well as he understood his daughter. He could not see why Vic should
frivol away his time; why he should have all those funny little conceits
and airs of youth; why he should lord it over Helen May who was every day
proving her efficiency and her strength of character anew. If Helen May
went the way her mother had gone, Peter felt that he would be alone, and
that life would be quite bare and bleak and empty of every incentive
toward bearing the little daily burdens of existence.
He got up with his hand going instinctively to his back to ease the ache
there, and went out upon the porch and stood looking drearily down upon
the asphalted street, where the white paths of speeding automobiles
slashed the dusk like runaway sunbeams on a frolic. Then the street
lights winked and sputtered and began to glow with white brilliance.
Arizona or New Mexico or Colorado! Peter knew what the doctor had in
mind. Vast plains, unpeopled, pure, immutable in their calm; stars that
came down at night and hung just over your head, making the darkness
alive with their bright presence; a little cottage hunched against a
hill, a candle winking cheerily through the window at the stars; the
cries of night birds, the drone of insects, the distant howling of a
coyote; far away on the boundary of your possessions, a fence of barbed
wire stretching through a hollow and up over a hill; distance and quiet
and calm, be it day or night. And Helen May coming through the sunlight,
riding a gentle-eyed pony; Helen May with her deep-gold hair tousled in
the wind, and with health dancing in her eyes that were the color of a
ripe chestnut, odd contrast to her hair; Helen May with the little red
spots gone from her cheek bones, and with tanned skin and freckles on her
nose and a laugh on her lips, coming up at a gallop with the sun behind
her, and something more; with sickness behind her and the drudgery of
eight hours in an office, and poverty and unhappiness. And Vic--yes, Vic
in overalls and a straw hat, growing up to be the strong man he never
would be in the city.
Like many another commonplace man of the towns, for all his colorless
ways and his thinning hair and his struggle against poverty, Peter was
something of a dreamer. And like all the rest of us who build our dreams
out of wishes and hopes and maybes, Peter had not a single fact to use in
his foundation. Arizona, New Mexico or Colorado--to Peter they were but
symbols of all those dear unattainable things he longed for. And that he
longed for them, not for himself but for another who was very dear to
him, only made the longing keener and more tragic.
CHAPTER TWO
IN WHICH PETER DISCOVERS A WAY OUT
We are always exclaiming over the strange way in which events link
themselves together in chains; and when the chains bind us to a certain
condition or environment, we are in the habit of blandly declaring
ourselves victims of the force of circumstances. By that rule, Peter
found himself being swept into a certain channel of thought about which
events began at once to link themselves into a chain which drew him
perforce into a certain path that he must follow. Or it may have been his
peculiar single-mindedness that forced him to follow the path; however
that may be, circumstances made it easy.
If Helen May worried about her cough and her failing energy, she did not
mention the fact again; but that was Helen May's way, and Peter was not
comforted by her apparent dismissal of the subject. So far as he could
see she was a great deal more inclined to worry over Vic, who refused to
stay in school when he could now and then earn a dollar or two acting in
"mob scenes" for some photoplay company out in Hollywood. He did not
spend the money wisely; Helen May declared that he was better off with
empty pockets.
Ordinarily Peter would have taken Vic's rebellion seriously enough to put
a stop to it. He did half promise Helen May that he would notify all the
directors he could get hold of not to employ Vic in any capacity; even to
"chase him off the studio grounds", as Helen May put it. But he did not,
because chance threw him a bit of solid material on which to rebuild his
air castle for Helen May.
He was edging his way down the long food counter, collecting his lunch of
rice pudding, milk and whole-wheat bread in a cafeteria on Hill Street.
He was late, and there was no unoccupied table to be had, so he finally
set his tray down where a haggard-featured woman clerk had just eaten
hastily her salad and pie. A brown-skinned young fellow with country
manners and a range-fostered disposition to talk with any one who tarried
within talking distance, was just unloading his tray load of provender on
the opposite side of the table. He looked across at Peter's tray, grinned
at the meager luncheon, and then looked up into Peter's face with
friendliness chasing the amusement from his eyes.
"Golly gee! There's a heap of difference in our appetites, from the looks
of our layouts," he began amiably. "I'm hungry as a she-wolf, myself.
Hope they don't make me wash the dishes when I'm through; I'm always
kinda scared of these grab-it-and-go joints. I always feel like making a
sneak when nobody's looking, for fear I'll be called back to clean up."
Peter smiled and handed his tray to a waiter. "I wish I could eat a meal
like that," he confessed politely.
"Well, you could if you lived out more in the open. Town kinda gits a
person's appetite. Why, first time I come in here and went down the chute
past the feed troughs, why it took two trays to pack away the grub I seen
and wanted. Lookout lady on the high stool, she give me two
tickets--thought there was two of, me, I reckon. But I ain't eatin' the
way I was then. Town's kinda gittin' me like it's got the rest of you.
Last night I come pretty near makin' up my mind to go back. Little old
shack back there in the greasewood didn't look so bad, after all. Only I
do hate like sin to bach, and a fellow couldn't take a woman out there in
the desert to live, unless he had money to make her comfortable. So I'm
going to give up my homestead--if I can find some easy mark to buy out my
relinquishment. Don't want to let it slide, yuh see, 'cause the
improvements is worth a little something, and the money'd come handy
right now, helpin' me into something here. There's a chance to buy into
a nice little service station, fellow calls it--where automobiles stop to
git pumped up with air and gasoline and stuff. If I can sell my
improvements, I'll buy in there. Looks foolish to go back, once I made up
my mind to quit."
He ate while he talked, and he talked because he had the simple mind of
a child and must think out loud in order to be perfectly at ease. He
had that hunger for speech which comes sometimes to men who have lived
far from their kind. Peter listened to him vaguely at first; then
avidly, with an inner excitement which his mild, expressionless face
hid like a mask.
"I was getting kinda discouraged when my horse up 'n died," the eater
went on. "And then when some durn greaser went 'n stole my burro, I jest
up 'n sold my saddle and a few head uh sheep I had, and pulled out. New
Mexico ranching is all right for them that likes it, but excuse me! I
want to live where I can see a movie once in a while, anyhow." He stopped
for the simple, primitive reason that he had filled his mouth to
overflowing with food, so that speech was for the moment a physical
impossibility.
Peter sipped his glass of milk, and his thoughts raced back and forth
between the door of opportunity that stood ajar, and the mountain of
difficulty which he must somehow move by his mental strength alone
before he and his might pass through that door.
"Ah--how much do you value your improvements at?" he asked. His emotion
was so great that his voice refused to carry it, and so was flat and as
expressionless as his commonplace face.
"Well," gurgled the young man, sluicing down his food with coffee, "it's
pretty hard to figure exactly. I've got a good little shack, you see, and
there's a spring right close handy by. Springs is sure worth money in
that country, water being scurse as it is. There's a plenty for the house
and a few head of stock; well, in a good wet year a person could raise a
little garden, maybe; few radishes and beans, and things like that. But
uh course, that can't hardly be called an improvement, 'cause it was
there when I took the place. A greaser, he had the land fenced and was
usin' the spring 'n' range like it was his own, and most folks, they was
scared to file on it. But she's sure filed on now, and I've got six weeks
yet before it can be jumped.
"Well, there's a shed for stock, and a pretty fair brush corral, and I
built me a pretty fair road in to the place--about a mile off the main
road, it is. I done that odd times the year I was on the place. The
sheep I sold; sheep's a good price now. I only had seventeen--coyotes
and greasers, they kep' stealin' 'em on me, or I'd 'n' had more. I'd
'a' lost 'em all, I guess, if it hadn't been for Loma--dog I got with
me. Them--"
Peter looked at his watch in that furtive way which polite persons employ
when time presses and a companion is garrulous. He had finished his rice
pudding and his milk, and in five minutes he would be expected to hang up
his hat behind the mirrored partition of the New Era Drug Store and walk
out smilingly to serve the New Era customers, patrons, the New Era called
them. In five minutes he must be on duty, yet Peter felt that his very
life depended upon bringing this wordy young man to a point in his
monologue.
"If you will come to the New Era Drug Store, at six o'clock," said Peter,
"I shall be glad to talk with you further about this homestead of yours.
I--ah--have a friend who has an idea of--ah--locating somewhere in
Arizona or New Mexico or Colorado--" Peter could name them now without
that sick feeling of despair "--and he might be interested. But," he
added hastily, "he could not afford to pay very much for a place. Still,
if your price is low enough--"
"Oh, I reckon we can git together on the price," the young man said
cheerfully, as Peter rose and picked up his check. "I'll be there at six,
sure as shootin' cats in a bag. I know where the New Era's at. I went in
there last night and got something to stop my tooth achin'. Ached like
the very devil for a while, but that stuff sure fixed her."
Peter smiled and bowed and went his way hurriedly, his pale lips working
nervously with the excitement that filled him. The mountain of difficulty
was there, implacably blocking the way. But beyond was the door of
opportunity, and the door was ajar. There must, thought Peter, be some
way to pass the mountain and reach the door.
Helen May telephoned that she meant to pick out that gray suit for him
that evening. Since it was Saturday, the stores would be open, and there
was a sale on at Hecheimer's. She had seen some stunning grays in the
window, one-third off. And would he....
Peter's voice was almost irritable when he told her that he had a
business engagement and could not meet her. And he added the information
that he would probably eat down town, as he did not know how long he
would be detained. Helen May was positively forbidden to do anything at
all about the suit until he had a chance to talk with her. After which
unprecedented firmness Peter left the 'phone hurriedly, lest Helen May
should laugh at his authority and lay down a law of her own, which she
was perfectly capable of doing.
At five minutes to six the young man presented himself at the New Era,
and waited for Peter at the soda fountain, with a lemon soda and a pretty
girl to smile at his naïve remarks. Peter's heart had given a jump and a
flutter when the young man walked in, fearing some one else might snap at
the chance to buy a relinquishment of a homestead in New Mexico. And yet,
how did Peter expect to buy anything of the sort? If Peter knew, he kept
the knowledge in the back of his mind, telling himself that there would
be some way out.
He went with the young man, whose name he learned was Johnny Calvert, and
had dinner with him at the cafeteria where they had met at noon. Johnny
talked a great deal, ate a great deal, and unconsciously convinced Peter
that he was an honest young man who was exactly what he represented
himself to be. He had papers which proved his claim upon three hundred
and twenty acres of land in Dona Ana County, New Mexico. He also had a
map upon which the location of his claim was marked with a pencil.
Malpais, he said, was the nearest railroad point; not much of a point,
but you could ride there and back in a day, if you got up early enough in
the morning.
Peter asked about the climate and the altitude. Johnny was a bit hazy
about the latter, but it was close to mountains, he said, and it was as
high as El Paso, anyway, maybe higher. The climate was like all the
rest of the country, coming in streaks of good and bad. Peter, gaining
confidence as Johnny talked, spoke of his daughter and her impending
doom, and Johnny, instantly grasping the situation, waxed eloquent. Why,
that would be just the place, he declared. Dry as a bone, the weather
was most of the year; hot--the lungers liked it hot and dry, he knew.
And when it was cold, it was sure bracing, too. Why, the country was
alive with health-seekers. At that, most of 'em got well--them that
didn't come too late.
That last sentence threw Peter into a panic. What if he dawdled along and
kept Helen May waiting until it was too late? By that time I think Peter
had pretty clearly decided how he was to remove the mountain of
difficulty. He must have, or he would not have had the courage to drive
the bargain to a conclusion in so short a time.
Drive it he did, for at nine o'clock he let himself into the place he
called home and startled Helen May with the announcement that he had
bought her a claim in New Mexico, where she was to live out of doors like
an Indian and get over that cough, and grow strong as any peasant woman;
and where Vic was going to keep out of mischief and learn to amount to
something. He did not say what the effect would be upon himself; Peter
was not accustomed to considering himself except as a provider of
comfort for others.
Helen May did not notice the omission. "_Bought_ a claim?" she repeated
and added grimly: "What with?"
"With two hundred dollars cash," Peter replied, smiling queerly. "It's
all settled, Babe, and the claim is to stand in your name. Everything is
attended to but the legal signatures before a notary. I was glad my money
was in the all-night bank, because I was not compelled to wait until
Monday to get it for young Calvert. You will have the relinquishment of
his right to the claim, Babe, and a small adobe house with sheds and
yards and a good spring of living water. In building up the place into a
profitable investment you will be building up your health, which is the
first and greatest consideration. I--you must not go the way your mother
went. You will not, because you will live in the open and throw off
the--ah--incipient--"
"Dad--_Stevenson_!" Helen May was sitting with her arms lying loose in
her lap, palms upward. Her lips had been loose and parted a little with
the slackness of blank amazement. In those first awful minutes she really
believed that her father had suddenly lost his mind; that he was joking
never occurred to her. Peter was not gifted with any sense of humor
whatsoever, and Helen May knew it as she knew the color of his hair.
"You will no longer be a wage slave, doomed to spend eight hours of every
day before a typewriter in that insurance office. You will be
independent--a property owner who can see that property grow under your
thought and labor. You will see Vic growing up among clean, healthful
surroundings. He will be able to bear much of the burden--the brunt of
the work. The boy is in a fair way to be ruined if he stays here any
longer. There will be six weeks of grace before the claim can be
seized--ah--jumped, the young man called it. In that time you must be
located upon the place. But you should make all possible haste in any
case, on account of your health. Monday morning we will go together with
young Calvert and attend to the legal papers, and then I should advise
you to devote your time to making preparations--"
"Dad--_Stevenson_!" Helen May's voice ended in an exasperated, frightened
kind of wail. "I and Vic! Are you crazy?"
"Not at all. It is sudden, of course. But you will find, when you stop to
think it over, that many of the wisest things we ever do are done without
dawdling,--suddenly, one may say. No, Babe, I--"
"But two hundred dollars just for the rights to the claim! Dad, look at
it calmly! To build up a ranch takes money. I don't know a thing about
ranching, and neither do you; but we both know that much. One has to eat,
even on a ranch. I wouldn't have my ten a week, remember, and you
wouldn't have your salary, unless you mean to stay here and keep on at
the New Era. And that wouldn't work, dad. You know it wouldn't work. Your
salary would barely keep you, let alone sending money to us. You can't
expect to keep yourself and furnish us money; and you've paid out all you
had in the bank. The thing's impossible on the face of it!"
"Yes, planning from that basis, it would be impossible." Peter's eyes
were wistful. "I tried to plan that way at first; but I saw it wouldn't
do. The expense of getting there, even, would be quite an item in itself.
No, it couldn't be done that way, Babe."
"Then will you tell me how else it is to be done?" Helen May's voice was
tired and exasperated. "You say you have paid the two hundred. That
leaves us just the furniture in this flat; and it wouldn't bring enough
to take us to the place, let alone having anything to live on when we got
there. And my wages would stop, and so would yours. Dad, do you realize
what you've done?" She tilted her head forward and stared at him intently
through her lashes, which was a trick she had.
"Yes, Babe, I realize perfectly. I'm--not counting on just the
furniture. I--think it would pay to ship the stuff on to the claim."
"For heaven's sake, dad! What are you counting on?" Helen May gave a
hysterical laugh that set her coughing in a way to make the veins stand
out on forehead and throat. (Peter's hands blenched into fighting fists
while he waited for the spasm to wear itself out. She should not go the
way her mother had gone, he was thinking fiercely.) "What--are--you
counting on?" she repeated, when she could speak again.
"Well, I'm counting on--a source that is sure," Peter replied vaguely.
"The way will be provided, when the time comes. I--I have thought it all
out calmly, Babe. The money will be ready when you need it."
"Dad, don't borrow money! It would be a load that would keep us
staggering for years. We are going along all right, better than hundreds
of people all around us. I'm feeling better than I was; now the weather
is settled, I feel lots better. You can sell whatever you bought; maybe
you can make a profit on the sale. Try and do that, dad. Get enough
profit to pay for that gray suit I saw in the window!" She was smiling at
him now, the whimsical smile that was perhaps her greatest charm.
"Never mind about the gray suit." Peter spoke sharply. "I won't need
it." He got up irritably and began pacing back and forth across the
little sitting room. "You're not better," he declared petulantly. "That's
the way your mother used to talk--even up to the very last. A year in
that office would kill you. I know. The doctor said so. Your only chance
is to get into a high, dry place where you can live out of doors. He told
me so. This young man with the homestead claim was a godsend--a godsend,
I tell you! It would be a crime--it would be murder to let the chance
slip by for lack of money. I'd steal the money, if I knew of any way to
get by with it, and if there was no other way open. But there is a way.
I'm taking it.
"I don't want to hear any more argument," he exclaimed, facing her quite
suddenly. His eyes had a light she had never seen in them before. "Monday
you will go with me and attend to the necessary legal papers. After that,
I'll attend to the means of getting there."
He stood looking down at her where she sat with her hands clasped in her
lap, staring up at him steadfastly from under her eyebrows. His face
softened, quivered until she thought he was going to cry like a woman.
But he only came and laid a shaking hand on her head and smoothed her
hair as one caresses a child.
"Don't oppose me in this, Babe," he said wearily. "I've thought it all
out, and it's best for all of us. I can't see you dying here by
inches--in the harness. And think of Vic, if that happened. He's just at
the age where he needs you. I couldn't do anything much with him alone.
It's the best thing to do, the only thing to do. Don't say anything more
against it, don't argue. When the time comes, you'll do your part
bravely, as I shall do mine. And if you feel that it isn't worth while
for yourself, think of Vic."
Peter turned abruptly and went into his room, and Helen May dropped her
head down upon her arms and cried awhile, though she did not clearly
understand why, except that life seemed very cruel, like some formless
monster that caught and squeezed the very soul out of one. Soon she heard
Vic coming, and pulled herself together for the lecture he had earned by
going out without permission and staying later than he should. On one
point dad was right, she told herself wearily, while she was locking up
for the night. Town certainly was no place for Vic.
The next day, urged by her father, Helen May met Johnny Calvert, and
cooked him a nice dinner, and heard a great deal about her new claim. And
Monday, furthermore, the three attended to certain legal details. She had
many moments of panic when she believed her father was out of his mind,
and when she feared that he would do some desperate thing like stealing
money to carry out this strange plan. But she did as he wished. There was
a certain inflexible quality in Peter's mild voice, a certain
determination in his insignificant face that required obedience to his
wishes. Even Vic noticed it, and eyed Peter curiously, and asked Helen
May what ailed the old man.
An old man Peter was when he went to his room that night, leaving Helen
May dazed and exhausted after another evening spent in absorbing queer
bits of information from the garrulous Johnny Calvert. She would be able
to manage all right, now, Peter told her relievedly when Johnny left. She
knew as much about the place as she could possibly know without having
been there.
He said good night and left her wondering bewilderedly what strange thing
her dad would do next. In the morning she knew.
Peter did not answer when Helen May rapped on his door and said that
breakfast would be ready in five minutes. Never before had he failed to
call out: "All right, Babe!" more or less cheerfully. She waited a
minute, listening, and then rapped again and repeated her customary
announcement. Another wait, and she turned the knob and looked in.
She did not scream at what she found there. Vic, sleeping on the couch
behind a screen in the living room, yawned himself awake and proceeded
reluctantly to set his feet upon the floor and grope, sleepy-eyed, for
his clothes, absolutely unconscious that in the night sometime Peter had
passed a certain mountain of difficulty and had reached out unafraid and
pulled wide open the door of opportunity for his children.
Beyond the door, Helen May was standing rigidly beside the bed where
Peter lay, and was reading for the second time the letter which Peter had
held in his hand. At first her mind had refused to grasp its meaning.
Now, reading slowly, she knew ...
Dear Babe, (said the letter).
Don't be horrified at what I have done. I have thought the whole matter
over calmly, and I am satisfied that this is the best way. My life could
not go on very long, anyway. The doctor made that plain enough to me
Sunday. I saw him. I was in a bad way with kidney trouble, he said. I
knew it before he told me. I knew I was only good for a few months more
at the most, and I would soon be a helpless burden. Besides, I have heart
trouble that will account for this sudden taking off, so you can escape
any unpleasant gossip.
Take the life insurance and use it on that claim, for you and Vic. Live
out in the open and get well, and make a man of Vic. Three thousand
dollars ought to be ample to put the ranch on a paying basis. And don't
blame your dad for collecting it now, when it will do the most good. I
could see no benefit in waiting and suffering, and letting you get
farther downhill all the while, making it that much harder to climb back.
Go at once to your claim, and do your best--that is what will make your
dad happiest. You will get well, and you will make a home for you and
Vic, and be independent and happy. In doing this you will fulfill the
last, loving wish of your father.
PETER STEVENSON.
P.S. Better stock the place with goats. Johnny Calvert thinks they would
be better than sheep.
CHAPTER THREE
VIC SHOULD WORRY
Wise man or fool, Peter had taken the one way to impress obedience upon
Helen May. Had he urged and argued and kept on living, Helen May could
have brought forth reasons and arguments, eloquence even, to combat him.
But Peter had taken the simple, unanswerable way of stating his wishes,
opening the way to their accomplishment, and then quietly lying back upon
his pillow and letting death take him beyond reach of protest.
For days Helen May was numb with the sudden dropping of Life's big
responsibilities upon her shoulders. She could not even summon energy
enough to call Vic to an accounting of his absences from the house. Until
after the funeral Vic had been subdued, going around on his toes and
looking at Helen May with wide, solemn eyes and lips prone to trembling.
But fifteen years is the resilient age, and two days after Peter was
buried, Vic asked her embarrassedly if she thought it would look right
for him to go to the ball game. He had to do _something_, he added
defensively.
"Oh, I guess so; run along," Helen May had told him absently, without in
the least realizing what it was he had wanted to do. After that Vic went
his way without going through the ceremony of asking her consent, secure
in the knowledge of her indifference.
The insurance company for which she had worked set in motion the wheels
that would eventually place in her hands the three thousand dollars for
which Peter had calmly given his life. She hated the money. She wanted to
tell her dad how impossible it was for her to use a cent of it. Yet she
must use it. She must use it as he had directed, because he had died to
open the way for her obedience. She must take Vic, against his violent
young will, she suspected, and she must go to that claim away off there
somewhere in the desert, and she must live in the open--and raise goats!
For there was a certain strain of Peter's simplicity in the nature of his
daughter. His last scrawled advice was to her a command which she must
obey as soon as she could muster the physical energy for obedience.
"What do I know about goats!" she impatiently asked her empty room one
morning after a night of fantastic dreams. "They eat tin cans and paper,
and Masonic candidates ride them, and they stand on high banks and look
silly, and have long chin whiskers and horns worn back from their
foreheads. But as to _raising_ them--what are they good for, for
heaven's sake?"
"Huh? Say, what are you mumbling about?" Vic, it happened, was awake, and
Helen May's door was ajar.
"Oh, nothing." Then the impulse of speech being strong in her, Helen May
pulled on a kimono and went out to where Vic lay curled up in the
blankets on the couch. "We've got to go to New Mexico, Vic, and, live on
that land dad bought the rights to, and raise goats!"
"Yes, we have--not!"
"We have. Dad said so. We've got to do it, Vic. I expect we'd better
start as soon as the insurance is paid, and that ought to be next week.
Malpais is the name of the darned place. Inez Garcia says Malpais means
bad country. I asked her when she was here yesterday. I expect it does,
though you can't tell about Inez. She's tricky about translating stuff;
she thinks it's funny to fake the meaning of things. But I expect it's
true; it sounds like that."
"I should worry," Vic yawned, with the bland triteness of a boy who
speaks mostly in current catch phrases. "I've got a good chance for a
juvenile part in that big five-reeler Walt's going to put on. Fat chance
anybody's got putting _me_ to herding goats! That New Mexico dope got my
number the first time dad sprung it. Not for mine!"
Helen May sat down on the arm of a Mission chair, wrapped her kimono
around her thin figure, and looked at Vic from under her lashes. Besides
raising goats and living out in the open, she was to make a man of Vic.
She did not know which duty appalled her most, or which animal seemed to
her the more intractable.
"We've got to do it," she said simply. "I don't like it either, but that
doesn't matter. Dad planned that way for us."
Vic sat up crossly, groping for the top button of his pajama coat. His
long hair was tousled in front and stood straight up at the back, and his
lids were heavy yet with sleep. He looked very young and very unruly, and
as though several years of grace were still left to Helen May before she
need trouble herself about his manhood.
"Not for mine," he repeated stubbornly. "You can go if you want to, but
I'm going to stay in pictures." No film star in the city could have
surpassed Vic's tone of careless assurance. "Listen! Dad was queer along
towards the last. You know that yourself. And just because he had a nutty
idea of a ranch somewhere, is no reason why we should drop everything--"
"We've got to do it, and you needn't fuss, because you've got to go
along. I expect we can study up--on goats." Her voice shook a little, for
she was close to tears.
"Well, I'm darned if you ain't as nutty as dad was! Of course, he was
old and sick, and there was plenty of excuse for him to slop down along
towards the last. Now, listen! My idea is to get a nifty bungalow out
there handy to the studios, and both of us to go into pictures. We can
get a car; what I want is a speedy, sassy little boat that can _travel_.
Well, and listen. We'll have plenty to live on till we both land in
stock. I've got a good chance right now to work into a comedy company;
they say my grin screens like a million dollars, and when it comes to
making a comedy getaway I'm just geared right, somehow, to pull a laugh.
That college picture we made got me a lot of notice in the projection
room, and I was only doing mob stuff, at that. But I stood out. And
Walt's promised me a fat little bit in this five-reeler. I'll land in
stock before the summer's half over!
"And you can land with some good company if you just make a stab at it.
Your eyes and that trick of looking up under your eyebrows are just the
type for these sob leads, and you've got a good photographic face: a
_good_ face for it," he emphasized generously. "And your figure couldn't
be beat. Believe me, I know. You ought to see some of them Janes--and at
that, they manage to get by with their stuff. A little camera experience,
under a good director that would bring out your good points--I was going
to spring the idea before, but I knew dad wouldn't stand for it."
"But we've got to go and live on that claim. We've _got_ to."
Vic's face purpled. "Say, are you plumb _bugs_? Why--" Vic gulped and
stuttered. "Say, where do you get that stuff? You better tie a can to it,
sis; it don't get over with me. I'm for screen fame, and I'm going to get
it too. Why, by the time I'm twenty, I'll betcha I can pull down a salary
that'll make Charlie Chaplin look like an extra! Why, my grin--"
"Your grin you can use on the goats," Helen May quelled unfeelingly. "I
only hope it won't scare the poor things to death. You needn't argue
about it--as if I was crazy to go! Do you think I want to leave Los
Angeles, and everybody I know, and everything I care about, and go to New
Mexico and live like a savage, and raise goats? I'd rather go to jail, if
you ask me. I hate the very thought of a ranch, Vic Stevenson, and you
know I do. But that doesn't matter a particle. Dad--"
"I told you dad was crazy!" Vic's tone was too violent for grief. His
young ambitions were in jeopardy, and even his dad's death must look
unimportant alongside the greater catastrophe that threatened. "Do you
think, for gosh sake, the whole family's got to be nutty just because he
was sick and got a queer streak?"
"You've no right to say that. Dad--knew what he was doing."
"Aw, where do you get that dope?" Vic eyed her disgustedly, and with a
good deal of condescension. "If you had any sense, you'd knew he was
queer for days before it happened. _I_ noticed it, all right, and if
you didn't--"
Helen May did not say anything at all. She got up and went to her room
and came back with Peter's last, pitiful letter. She gave it to Vic and
sat down again on the arm of the Mission chair and waited, looking at him
from, under her lashes, her head tilted forward.
Vic was impressed, impressed to a round-eyed silence. He knew his dad's
handwriting, and he unfolded the sheet and read what Peter had written.
"I found that letter in--his hand--that morning." Helen May tried to
keep her voice steady. "You mustn't tell any one about it, Vic. They
mustn't know. But you see, he--after doing that to get the money for me,
why--you see, Vic, we've _got_ to go there. And we've got to make good.
We've got to."