BETWEEN TWO ON JERUSALEM
"So he didn't have no doctor but a bowl o' ginger tea,
And it didn't seem to help him, not so far as we could see."
--Gettin' Larry Home.
When they came out upon the bare granite, long after mid-day, they fell
upon their faces, and lay there without speaking or the desire to speak.
They did not open their smarting eyes.
Over and over again Wade heard a dull rumble which his stricken senses
failed to understand. But when a hollow boom reverberated among the
hills and jarred the granite under his face he sat up. He saw the purple
flash shiver across the swaying smoke, heard the splitting crack of the
bolt, and felt a raindrop on his face.
"Thank God, Mr. Barrett, it has come at last! The rain!" he shouted. And
the timber baron staggered to his feet, and turned a bloodshot gaze on
the panorama of blazing forest and sheeting heavens. Then he looked at
Wade, blinking stupidly and searching his soul for words.
"I haven't got the language, Mr. Wade--" he began. But the young man
broke upon his stammering speech.
"There's no need of saying anything," he said, looking away. "I don't
want to hear any thanks."
"I was left there to die--tied up there and left to die by a crazy fool
that tried to blackmail me--that's it, tried to blackmail me. And I'll
put him where he belongs. It was the most infernal plot ever put up on a
man. Blackmail and murder!" He gabbled his charges hysterically. The
shock of his experience had unmanned him. "You can't blackmail a man
like me without suffering for it. I'll put him into the deepest hole in
the insane asylum--with a gag in his mouth." He was going on to relate
his experience, but Wade again interrupted him.
"I won't bother you to tell it, Mr. Barrett," he said, coldly. "I know
how it happened. Mr. Withee told me this morning."
"It's all lies and blackmail!" screamed Barrett, his fury rising at
thought of this gossip. "Withee is against me, too. I told him I'd take
his stumpage contract away, and this is how he is getting back. I'll
have him and his whole crew in jail for blackmail if he doesn't shut his
yawp."
A roar of thunder drowned his voice, and he stood, with the rain pelting
on him, shaking his fists above his head. But by the twist of his mouth
Wade saw that he was still cursing "blackmail."
The sight angered him. In as insulting a passion had John Barrett railed
at him, Dwight Wade, when he had asked for the hand of John Barrett's
daughter. The man had tossed his arms in the same way when he called
Wade "a beggar of a school-master."
"Don't call it blackmail and murder--not to me, Mr. Barrett," he said,
harshly.
"Don't you know it's blackmail and a put-up job to ruin me?" roared the
timber baron.
Wade stood up now and faced him. Torrents of rain beat upon them, and
they took no heed; for the face of the young man was working with a
mighty emotion and the features of the other man showed that sudden fear
had come upon him.
"Have you ever seen that daughter of yours that you left to wallow with
human swine?" demanded Wade, with a fury he could not restrain. "Well, I
have!" Into those words he put all the bitter resentment of months of
remembrance of John Barrett's insults.
"And I have seen the daughter you cherish in your home. I don't need any
man's say-so to prove to me that they're both your children, Mr.
Barrett. You stand convicted in the eyes of every man who has eyes and
who sees Elva Barrett and then looks on poor Kate Arden--even her name a
cruel jest! I don't want to hear a man like you lie, Mr. Barrett. Don't
talk any more to me about blackmail." He shook his fist at the roof of
the Jerusalem fire station, just showing above the ledges. "I know that
girl over there is your daughter. Now go slow, Mr. Barrett, with your
threats of what you will do to Lane. If there is any unwritten law, he
deserves to have the forfeit of the life that I've helped to save.
That's still a matter between you two. But as to that girl yonder, I
propose to ask something. What are you going to do with her?"
Barrett muttered incoherently, dazed by the new light of Wade's words.
"Your blackmail story may go with woodsmen, Mr. Barrett. But if Lane
should go out of these woods with his story and that girl to back it he
can hold you up to execration by every decent person in the State. The
girl proves it in every feature of her face."
"The lunatic tried to make me take her home, own her publicly, and treat
her as a daughter--and he demanded that to ruin me. It would ruin me in
my political prospects, Wade. You know it. I'm willing to do what's
right. But I can't do that." His courage revived a little. "I'd rather
go down fighting."
The young man pondered awhile.
"I don't want you to think that I'm persecuting you for any of the
trouble between us, Mr. Barrett," he said, at last. "That is all over
and done with. But as a man who knows what that poor girl has been
condemned to, and like others here who can tell by their own eyes that
Lane is speaking the truth, I'm going to see that she gets a fair show."
Barrett concealed his private doubts as to the young man's animus. But
sudden dread of this new weapon in his foe's hand mastered him.
"In the name of God, help me out, Wade!" he pleaded, dropping all his
obstinacy. "I couldn't argue with that crazy man. I'll put the girl to
school. I'll give her money. She shall have everything heart can
wish--except my home. Think of my family, Mr. Wade! Think of my
daughter! I want to have the respect of my family, Mr. Wade, for the few
years that are left to me. Help me, and you won't be sorry for it.
I'll--"
"I want no pay and no promises," broke in the young man. "You have been
free with your cry of blackmail. You can never taunt me with that. I'm
simply appealing to your manhood. But I'm going to see that your
daughter gets her rights, and that is no threat--it is justice."
"Aren't those rights enough--what I have said?" urged Barrett.
"Perhaps they are. They are probably all she can expect. People hardly
ever get all they deserve in this world--either in blessings or
punishments." His tone was bitter. And he stood apart and gazed out over
the broad expanse to the south, his brow wrinkling. He was trying to
analyze the emotions that made him champion the outcast.
The thunder-heads had rolled on, but like mighty and noisy engines they
had dragged behind them masses of clouds that covered the skies with a
slaty expanse, and a storm, settled and steady, poured down its
grateful floods.
Already the fire was dying. Only here and there scattered flames fought
the streaming skies from the tops of resinous trees.
"Mr. Barrett," said Wade, at length, "the girl is at Lane's. You can't
meet her now. It is not the time and place. Probably Lane has returned
there. I don't think his mind is right--and after knowing the wrong you
did him, I can understand why. You've time to reach Britt's camp before
night. It is in the clearing to the north. You are an old woodsman. You
can find your way there."
Barrett nodded relieved assent.
"You have asked me to help you. As that includes helping this poor girl
most of all, I am going to do what I can, for the sake of you and your
family." Barrett gave a quick glance at him, but the young man's face
was impassive. Perhaps the timber baron had hoped, for his own temporary
guarantee, to see a flash of the old love in Wade's eyes. "I'm going to
request you to leave this matter in my hands for the present. I will see
Withee, and try to stop gossip in that quarter. Will you give me the
right to--well, to modify some of your threats? And as to Withee--I
believe you spoke of a contract!"
John Barrett stood straighter now. The sneer of conscious authority, the
frown of tyranny, had gone from his face. There was a frankness in his
face and a sincerity in his tones that few persons had seen or heard
before. But the new inspiration was logical and real. The young man who
stood before him had just waived a mean vengeance so nobly that his
heart swelled. His doubts were quieted.
"My boy," he said, softly, pulling off his cap and standing bareheaded
in the rain, "I'm alive now, after the experience of looking straight
into the eyes of death and giving up every hope. And, I tell you, it
seemed hard to die--just now, when the best hopes of my life are coming
true. I had time to think. I thought. I know I talked hard just a bit
ago. But I wasn't myself then. I was too near the smoke and fire." He
stopped and put his hand to watering eyes. "I can see clear now. And
I've got over my bitterness, and I guess now I can understand the Golden
Rule. That's my word, and there's my hand on it. Now talk for me to
those I've hurt."
They clasped hands. But it was Barrett who made that overture.
"I'll wait for you at Britt's camp--until you come and tell me what I'm
to do," said the timber baron. And then he turned and trudged away
across the wet ledges.
Wade gazed after him until he disappeared in the stunted growth. He
gazed sourly into the palm of the hand that the millionaire had
squeezed, and reflected that perhaps Barrett's precipitate repentance
was off the same piece as his own forgiveness of the bitter matter that
lay between them. Being a young man inclined to be honest with himself,
Dwight Wade confessed that the fabric of his forgiveness had a selvage
that already showed signs of ravelling. He was a little angry at his
state of mind.
"And yet it sounded like a campaign speech to catch votes," he muttered.
He was still angrier at himself then, for, put into words, his doubt
seemed an unjust suspicion.
"I must have got more of a jolt than I thought when I dropped from
ideals to the real," he pondered, gazing out through the slanting lines
of rain. "I seem to have about as many grudges against humanity as old
Lane himself."
When he looked towards the roof of the little fire station he awoke
to the consciousness that the rain was wet and the wind searching. To
himself, in a sudden flash of introspection, he seemed to be as unkempt
within as without. There on the granite of the bare mountain, with the
forces of nature conquering the last embers of the mighty conflagration,
the narrower things of life and living--the amenities, the trammels
that man patiently puts upon himself for the sake of the social
fabric--appeared vain and delusive ideals. It was not thus that the
strong battled and won.
"Considering what sort of a man they're making of me up here, where
cast-iron is better than velvet, I think it's likely, John Barrett, that
it has been lucky for you that you have a daughter away down there."
He set his face in long gaze to the southern hills, bulked dimly behind
the mists.
"As for Kate Arden--" He shook his head despondently, and walked away
across the glistening granite towards "Ladder" Lane's house.