something about the party they're advertising for. That'd be the way
to find out if they're really on the scent. I'll take him down with
me--that's what I'll _do_--and let him have a talk with the young man
himself. It'll make a good opening. Are you listening, Polly?” She was
not. “I wish you'd git him to fix himself up a little. Layout one o'
my clean shirts for him, and I'll take him down with me day after
to-morrow.”
“I'll have a fresh churning to-morrow,” Aunt Polly mused. “You can take
a little pat of it with you. I won't put no salt in it, and I'll send
along a glass or two of my wild strawberry jam. It takes an awful time
to pick the berries, but I guess it'll be appreciated after the table
Jimmy sets. I don't believe Jimmy'll be offended?”
“Bogardus is their name,” continued Leander. “Mr. and Mrs. Bogardus,
from New York. Jimmy's got it down in his hotel book and he's showing
it to everybody. Jimmy's reel childish about it. I tell him one swallow
don't make a summer.”
Uncle John had come into the room and sat listening, while a yellow
pallor crept over his forehead and cheeks. He moved to get up once, and
then sat down again weakly.
“What's the matter, Uncle?” Aunt Polly eyed him sharply. “You been out
there chopping wood too long in this hot sun. What did I tell you?”
She cleared the decks for action. Paler and paler the old man grew. He
was not able to withstand her vigorous sympathies. She had him tucked up
on the calico lounge and his shoes off and a hot iron at his feet; but
while she was hurrying up the kettle to make him a drink of something
hot, he rose and slipped up the outside stairs to his bedroom in the
attic. There he seated himself on the side of his neat bed which he
always made himself camp fashion,--the blankets folded lengthwise with
just room for one quiet sleeper to crawl inside; and there he sat,
opening and clinching his hands, a deep perplexity upon his features.
Aunt Polly called to him and began to read the riot act, but Leander
said: “Let him be! He gits tired o' being fussed over. You're at him
about something or other the whole blessed time.”
“Well, I have to! My gracious! He'd forgit to come in to his meals if I
didn't keep him on my mind.”
“It just strikes me--what am I going to call him when I introduce him to
those folks? Did he ever tell you what his last name is?”
“I wouldn't be surprised,” Aunt Polly lowered her voice, “if he couldn't
remember it himself! I've heard of such cases. Whenever I try to draw
him out to talk about himself and what happened to him before you found
him, it breaks him all up; seemingly gives him a back-set every time.
He sort of slinks into himself in that queer, lost way--just like he was
when he first come to.”
“He's had a powerful jar to his constitution, and his mind is taking a
rest.” Leander was fond of a diagnosis. “There wasn't enough life left
in him to keep his faculties and his bod'ly organs all a-going at once.
The upper story's to let.”
“I wish you'd go upstairs, and see what he is doing up there.”
“Aw, no! Let him be. He likes to go off by himself and do his thinking.
I notice it rattles him to be talked to much. He sets out there on the
choppin'-block, looking at the bluffs--ever notice? He looks and
don't see nothin', and his lips keep moving like he was learning a
spellin'-lesson. If I speak to him sharp, he hauls himself together and
smiles uneasy, but he don't know what I said. I tell you he's waking up;
coming to his memories, and trying to sort 'em out.”
“That's just what _I_ say,” Aunt Polly retorted, “but he's got to eat
his meals. He can't live on memories.”
Uncle John was restless that evening, and appeared to be excited. He
waited upon Aunt Polly after supper with a feverish eagerness to be of
use. When all was in order for bedtime, and Leander rose to wind the
clock, he spoke. It was getting about time to roll up his blankets
and pull out, he said. Leander felt for the ledge where the clock-key
belonged, and made no answer.
“I was saying--I guess it's about time for me to be moving on. The grass
is starting”--
“Are you cal'latin' to live on grass?” Leander drawled with cutting
irony. “Gettin' tired of the old woman's cooking? Well, she ain't much
of a cook!”
Uncle John remained silent, working at his hands. His mouth, trembled
under his thin straggling beard. “I never was better treated in my life,
and you know it. It ain't handsome of you, Lewis, to talk that way!”
“He don't mean nothing, Uncle John! What makes you so foolish, Looander!
He just wants you to know there's no begrudgers around here. You're
welcome, and more than welcome, to settle down and camp right along with
us.”
“Winter and summer!” Leander put in, “if you're satisfied. There's
nobody in a hurry to see the last of ye.”
Uncle John's mild but determined resistance was a keen disappointment
to his friends. Leander thought himself offended. “What fly's stung you,
anyhow! Heard from any of your folks lately?”
The old man smiled.
“Got any money salted down that needs turning?”
“Looander! Quit teasing of him!”
“Let him have his fun, ma'am. It's all he's likely to get out of me. I
have got a little money,” he pursued. “'T would be an insult to name it
in the same breath with what you've done for me. I'd like to leave it
here, though. You could pass it on. You'll have chances enough. 'T ain't
likely I'll be the last one you'll take in and do for, and never git
nothing out of it in return.”
There was a mild sensation, as the speaker, fumbling in his loose
trousers, appeared to be seeking for that money. Aunt Polly's eyes
flamed indignation behind her tears. She was a foolish, warm-hearted
creature, and her eyes watered on the least excuse.
“Looander, you shouldn't have taunted him,” she admonished her husband,
who felt he had been a little rough.
“Look here, Uncle John, d'you ever know anybody who wasn't by way of
needing help some time in their lives? We don't ask any one who comes
here”--
“He didn't come!” Aunt Polly corrected.
“Well, who was brought, then! We don't ask for their character, nor
their private history, nor their bank account. I don't know but you're
the first one for years I've ever took a real personal shine to, and
we've h'isted a good many up them stairs that wasn't able to walk much
further. I'd like you to stay as a favor to us, dang it!”
Leander delivered this invitation as if it were a threat. His
straight-cut mustache stiffened and projected itself by the pressure of
his big lips; his dark red throat showed as many obstinate creases as an
old snapping-turtle's.
“I'm much obliged to you both. I want you to remember that. We--I--I'll
talk with ye in the morning.”
“That means he's going all the same,” said Leander, after Uncle John had
closed the outside door.
Sure enough, next morning he had made up his little pack, oiled his
boots, and by breakfast-time was ready for the road. They argued the
point long and fiercely with him whether he should set out on foot or
wait a day and ride with Leander to the Ferry. It was not supposed he
could be thinking of any other road. By to-morrow, if he would but wait,
Aunt Polly would have comfortably outfitted him after the custom of the
house; given his clothes a final “going over” to see everything taut
for the journey, shoved a week's rations into a corn-sack, choosing such
condensed forms of nourishment as the system allowed--nay, straining a
point and smuggling in a nefarious pound or two of real miner's coffee.
Aunt Polly's distress so weighed with her patient that he consented
to remain overnight and ride with Leander as far as the dam across the
Bruneau, at its junction with the Snake. There he would cross and take
the trail down the river, cutting off several miles of the road to the
Ferry. As for going on to see Jimmy or Jimmy's “folks,” the nervous
resistance which this plan excited warned the good couple not to press
the old man too far, or he might give them the slip altogether.
A strangeness in his manner which this last discussion had brought out,
lay heavy on aunt Polly's mind all day after the departure of the team
for the Ferry. She watched the two men drive off in silence, Leander's
bush beard reddening in the sun, his big body filling more than his half
of the seat.
“Well, by Gum! If he ain't the blamedest, most per-sistent old fool!”
he complained to his wife that night. Their first words were of the old
man, already missed like one of the family from the humble place he had
made for himself. Leander was still irritable over his loss. “I set him
down with his grub and blankets, and I watched him footing it acrost the
dam. He done it real handsome, steady on his pins. Then he set down
and waited, kind o' dreaming, like he used to, settin' on the
choppin'-block. I hailed him. 'What's the matter?' I says. 'Left
anything?' No: every time I hailed he took off his hat and waved to me
real pleasant. Nothing the matter. There he set. Well, thinks I, I can't
stay here all day watching ye take root. So I drove on a piece. And, by
Gum! when I looked back going around the bend, there he went a-pikin'
off up the bluffs--just a-humping himself for all he was worth. I
wouldn't like to think he was cunning, but it looked that way for
sure,--turning me off the scent and then taking to the bluffs like he
was sent for! Where in thunder is he making for? He knows just as well
as I do--you have heard me tell him a dozen times--the stages were
hauled off that Wood River road five year and more ago. He won't git
nowhere! And he won't meet up with a team in a week's walking.”
“His food will last him a week if he's careful; he's no great eater. I
ain't afraid his feet will get lost; he's to home out of doors almost
anywhere;--it's his head I'm afraid of. He's got some sort of a skew on
him. I used to notice if he went out for a little walk anywhere, he'd
always slope for the East.”
XX
A STATION IN THE DESERT
That forsworn identity which Adam Bogardus had submitted to be clothed
in as a burial garment was now become a thing for the living to flee
from. He had seen a woman in full health whiten and cower before
it;--she who stood beside his bed and looked at him with dreadful eyes,
eyes of his girl-wife growing old in the likeness of her father. Hard,
reluctant eyes forced to own the truth which the ashen lips denied.
Are we responsible for our silences? He had not spoken to her. Nay, the
living must speak first, or the ghostly dead depart unquestioned. He
asked only that he might forget her and be himself forgotten. If it were
that woman's right to call herself Emily Bogardus, then was there no
Adam her husband. Better the old disguise which left him free to work
out his own sentence and pay his forfeit to the law. He had never
desired that one breath of it should be commuted, or wished to accept an
enslaving pardon from those for whose sake he had put himself out of the
way. If he could have taken his own comparative spiritual measurement,
he might have smiled at the humor of that forgiveness promised him in
the name of the Highest by his son.
For many peaceful years solitude had been the habit of his soul. Gently
as he bore with human obligations, he escaped from them with a sense of
relief which shamed him somewhat when he thought of the good friends to
whom he owed this very blessed power to flee. It was quite as
Leander had surmised. He could not command his faculties--memory
especially--when a noise of many words and questions bruised his brain.
The stillness of the desert closed about him with delicious healing.
He was a world-weary child returned to the womb of Nature. His old
camp-craft came back; his eye for distance, his sense of the trail, his
little pet economies with food and fire. There was no one to tell him
what to eat and when to eat it. He was invisible to men. Each day's
march built up his muscle, and every night's deep sleep under the great
high stars steadied his nerves and tightened his resolve.
He thought of the young man--his son--with a mixture of pain and
tenderness. But Paul was not the baby-boy he had put out of his arms
with a father's smile at One Man station. Paul was himself a man now; he
had coerced him at the last, neither did he understand.
The blind instinct of flight began after a while to shape its own
direction. It was no new leaning with the packer. As many times as he
had crossed this trail he never had failed to experience the same pull.
He resisted no longer. He gave way to strange fancies and made them his
guides.
At some time during his flight from the hospital, in one of those blanks
that overtook him, he knew not how, he had met with a great loss. The
words had slipped from his memory--of that message which had kept him in
fancied touch with his wife all these many deluding years. Without them
he was like a drunkard deprived of his habitual stimulant. The craving
to connect and hold them--for they came to him sometimes in tantalizing
freaks of memory, and slipped away again like beads rolling off a
broken thread--was almost the only form of mental suffering he was now
conscious of. What had become of the message itself? Had they left it
exposed to every heartless desecration in that abandoned spot?--a scrap
of paper driven like a bit of tumble-weed before the wind, snatched at
by spikes of sage, trampled into the mire of cattle, nuzzled by wild
beasts? Or, had they put it away with that other beast where he lay with
the scoff on his dead face? Out of dreams and visions of the night that
place of the parting ways called to him, and the time was now come when
he must go.
He approached it by one of those desert trails that circle for miles
on the track of water and pounce as a bird drops upon its prey into the
trampled hollow at One Man station--a place for the gathering of hoofs
in the midst of the plain.
He could trace what might have been the foundation of a house, a few
blackened stones, a hearthstone showing where a chimney perhaps had
stood, but these evidences of habitation would never have been marked
except by one who knew where to look. He searched the ground over for
signs of the tragedy that bound him to that spot--a smiling desolation,
a sunny nothingness. The effect of this careless obliteration was
quieting. Nature had played here once with two men and a woman. One of
the toy men was lost, the other broken. She had forgotten where she
put the broken one. There were mounds which looked like graves, but the
seeker knew that artificial mounds in a place like this soon sink into
hollows; and there were hollows like open graves, filled with unsightly
human rubbish, washed in by the yearly rains.
He spent three days in the hollow, doing nothing, steeped in sunshine,
lying down to rest broad awake in the tender twilight, making his peace
with this place of bitter memory before bidding it good-by. His thoughts
turned eastward as the planets rose. Time he was working back towards
home. He would hardly get there if he started now, before his day was
done. He saw his mother's grave beside his father's, in the southeast
corner of the burying-ground, where the trees were thin. All who drove
in through the big gate of funerals could see the tall white shafts of
the Beviers and Brodericks and Van Eltens, but only those who came on
foot could approach his people in the gravelly side-hill plots. “I'd
like to be put there alongside the old folks in that warm south corner.”
He could see their names on the plain gray slate stones, rain-stained
and green with moss.
On the third May evening of his stay the horizon became a dust-cloud,
the setting sun a ball of fire. Loomed the figure of a rider topping
the heaving backs of his herd. All together they came lumbering down
the slopes, all heading fiercely for the water. The rider plunged down
a side-draw out of the main cloud. Clanking bells, shuffling hoofs, the
“Whoop-ee-youp!” came fainter up the gulch. The cowboy was not pleased
as he dashed by to see an earlier camp-fire smoking in the hollow. But
he was less displeased, being half French, than if he had been pure-bred
American.
The old man, squatting by his cooking-fire, gave him a civil nod, and
he responded with a flourish of his quirt. The reek of sage smoke, the
smell of dust and cattle rose rank on the cooling air. It was good to
Boniface, son of the desert; it meant supper and bed, or supper and
talk, for “Bonny” Maupin (“Bonny Moppin,” it went in the vernacular)
would talk every other man to sleep, full or empty, with songs thrown
in. To-night, however, he must talk on an empty stomach, for his chuck
wagon was not in sight.
“W'ich way you travelin'?” he began, lighting up after a long pull at
his flask. The old man had declined, though he looked as if he needed a
drink.
“East about,” was the answer.
“Goin' far?”
“Well; summer's before us. I cal'late to keep moving till snow falls.”
“Shucks! You ain' pressed for time. Maybe you got some friend back
there. Goin' back to git married?” He winked genially to point the jest
and the old man smiled indulgently.
“Won't you set up and take a bite with me? You don't look to have much
of a show for supper along.”
“Thanks, very much! I had bully breakfast at Rock Spring middlin' late
this morning. They butcherin' at that place. Five fat hog. My chuck
wagon he stay behin' for chunk of fresh pig. I won' spoil my appetide
for that tenderloin. Hol' on yourself an' take supper wis me. No?--That
fellah be 'long 'bout Chris'mas if he don' git los'! He always behin',
pig or no pig!”
Bonny strolled away collecting fire-wood. Presently he called back,
pointing dramatically with his small-toed boot. “Who's been coyotin'
round here?” The hard ground was freshly disturbed in spots as by the
paws of some small inquisitive animal. There was no answer.
“What you say? Whose surface diggin's is these? I never know anybody do
some mining here.”
“That was me”--Bonny backed a little nearer to catch the old man's
words. “I was looking round here for something I lost.”
“What luck you have? You fin' him?”
“Well, now, doos it reely matter to you, sonny?”
“Pardner, it don' matter to me a d--n, if you say so! I was jus' askin'
myself what a man _would_ look for if he los' it here. Since I strike
this 'ell of a place the very groun' been chewed up and spit out
reg'lar, one hundred times a year. 'T'is a gris' mill!”
“I didn't gretly expect to find what I was lookin' for. I was just
foolin' around to satisfy myself.”
“That satisfy me!” said Bonny pleasantly; and yet he was a trifle
discomfited. He strolled away again and began to sing with a boyish show
of indifference to having been called “sonny.”
“Oh, Sally is the gal for me! Oh, Sally's the gal for me! On moonlight
night when the star is bright--Oh”--
“Halloa! This some more your work, oncle? You ain' got no chicken wing
for arm if you lif' this.--Ah, be dam! I see what you lif' him with.
All same stove-lid.” Talking and swearing to himself cheerfully, Bonny
applied the end of a broken whiffletree to the blunt lip of the old
hearthstone which marked the stage-house chimney. He had tried a
step-dance on it and found it hollow. More fresh digging, and marks upon
the stone where some prying tool had taken hold and slipped, showed he
was not the first who had been curious.
“There you go, over on you' back, like snap' turtle; I see where you lay
there before. What the dev'! I say!” Bonny, much excited with his find,
extracted a rusty tin tobacco-box from the hole, pried open the spring
lid and drew forth its contents: a discolored canvas bag bulging with
coin and whipped around the neck with a leather whang. The canvas was
rotten; Bonny supported its contents tenderly as he brought it over to
the old man.
“Oncle, I ask you' pardon for tappin' that safe. Pretty good lil'
nest-egg, eh? But now you got to find her some other place.”
“That don't belong to me,” said the old man indifferently.
“Aw--don't be bashful! I onderstan' now what you los'. You dig
here--there--migs up the scent. I just happen to step on that
stone--ring him, so, with my boot-heel!”
“That ain't my pile,” the other persisted. “I started to build a fire
on that stone two nights ago. It rung hollow like you say. I looked and
found what you found--”
“And put her back! My soul to God! An' you here all by you'self!”
“Why not? The stuff ain't mine.”
“Who _is_ she? How long since anybody live here?”
“I don't know,--good while, I guess.”
“Well, sar! Look here! I open that bag. I count two hondre' thirteen
dolla'--make it twelve for luck, an' call it you' divvee! You strike her
first. What you say: we go snac'?”
“I haven't got any use for that money. You needn't talk to me about it.”
“Got no h'use!--are you a reech man? Got you' private car waitin' for
you out in d' sagebrush? Sol' a mine lately?”
“I don't know why it strikes you so funny. It's no concern of mine if a
man puts his money in the ground and goes off and leaves it.”
“Goes off and die! There was one man live here by himself--he die, they
say, 'with his boots on.' He, I think, mus' be that man belong to this
money. What an old stiff want with two hondre' thirteen dolla'? That
money goin' into a live man's clothes.” Bonny slapped his chappereros,
and the dust flew.
“I've no objection to its going into _your_ clothes,” said the old man.
“You thing I ain' particular, me? Well, eef the party underground was
my frien', and I knew his fam'ly, and was sure the money was belong to
him--I'd do differend--perhaps. Mais,--it is going--going--gone! You
won' go snac'?”
The old man smiled and looked steadily away.
“Blas' me to h--l! but you aire the firs' man ever I strike that jib at
the sight of col' coin. She don' frighten me!”
Bonny always swore when he felt embarrassed.
“Well, sar! Look here! You fin' you'self so blame indifferend--s'pose
you _so_ indifferend not to say nothing 'bout this, when my swamper
fellah git in. I don' wish to go snac' wis him. I don' feel oblige'.
See?”
“What you want to pester me about this money for!” The old man was
weary. “I didn't come here, lookin' for money, and I don't expect to
take none away with me. So I'll say good-night to ye.”
“Hol' on, hol' on! Don' git mad. What time you goin' off in the
morning?”
“Before you do, I shouldn't wonder.”
“But hol'! One fine idea--blazin' good idea--just hit me now in the
head! Wan' to come on to Chicago wis me? I drop this fellah at Felton.
He take the team back, and I get some one to help me on the treep. Why
not you? Ever tek' care of stock?”
“Some consid'able years ago I used to look after stock. Guess I'd know
an ox from a heifer.”
“Ever handle 'em on cattle-car?”
“Never.”
“Well, all there is, you feed 'em, and water 'em, and keep 'em on their
feets. If one fall down, all the others they have too much play. They
rock”--Bonny exhibited--“and fall over and pile up in heap. I like to
do one turn for you. We goin' the same way--you bring me the good luck,
like a bird in the han'. This is my clean-up, you understand. You bring
me the beautiful luck. You turn me up right bower first slap. Now it's
goin' be my deal. I like to do by you!”
The packer turned over and looked up at the cool sky, pricked through
with early stars. He was silent a long time. His pale old face was like
a fine bit of carving in the dusk.
“What you think?” asked Moppin, almost tenderly. “I thing you better
come wis me. You too hold a man to go like so--alone.”
“I'll have to think about it first;--let you know in the morning.”
XXI
INJURIOUS REPORTS CONCERNING AN OLD HOUSE
A Rush of wheels and a spatter of hoofs coming up the drive sent
Mrs. Dunlop to the sitting-room window. She tried to see out through
streaming showers that darkened the panes.
“Isn't that Mrs. Bogardus? Why, it is! Put on your shoes, Chauncey,
quick! Help her in 'n' take her horse to the shed. Take an umbrella with
you.” Chauncey the younger, meekly drying his shoes by the kitchen
fire, put them on, not stopping to lace them, and slumped down the
porch steps, pursued by his mother's orders. She watched him a moment
struggling with a cranky umbrella, and then turned her attention to
herself and the room.
Mrs. Bogardus made her calls in the morning, and always plainly on
business. She had not seen the inside of Cerissa's parlor for ten years.
This was a grievance which Cerissa referred to spasmodically, being
seized with it when she was otherwise low in her mind.