to end, and then back again, from end to beginning. Up in the Tigmores
Crit Madeira's drills beat and bore at the heart of the earth, deeper,
deeper; by the Redbud shack, the two men, on the ground, bore into
Madeira's trickery, deeper, deeper. By the light of that torch from the
Rockies, they followed the twisting trail all the way from inception to
finish. The tortuous, underhand curve of it now and then looked like the
self-deceptive work of lunatic cunning. As they talked about it, they
talked too earnestly for the little whisking movements in the growth up
the bluff to reach their ears.
"At least," cried old Bernique at last, "at least the Teegmores are
yours! At last! At last!"
At last! At last! Steering's eyes were travelling the long tumbling
Tigmore line. "If they are," he said in that musing way he had developed
within the last quarter of an hour, "if I take the Tigmores now, Uncle
Bernique, I'll pull Madeira's house about him. That company of his is
not so secure that it could stand a blow at its head. If I take the
Tigmores,--Uncle Bernique, listen a minute," he was pleading, "she has
been used to much all her life. I can't take her father's fortune away
from him. Don't you see that? I can't do anything. You understand?" he
was commanding. Bernique jumped to his feet.
"God above, you mean----" The thought snapped in the old man's brain,
the words stuck in his throat.
"I mean that we must leave things as they are. I can't ruin her father.
That's all I mean!"
Bernique doubled up both fists. "I'll see him damn' before he shall
keep those Teegmores! I can r-ruin him!" But Bruce caught the old man's
arm in a grip that hurt. When Bernique spoke again it was to say
breathlessly, "You take the Teegmores, Mistaire Steering, and protect
Madeira's fortune. You can do that easy."
"I know. It looks easy. But think back a little. Madeira is sure to
fight. Grierson's death occurred months ago under an assumed name. To
prove that he died we must prove when he died, where he died and who he
was. To prove all that is to let the light in upon dark places. I hardly
see how the light can be let in, Uncle Bernique, without cutting Madeira
out sharp and keen as a rascal. Madeira would never allow,--at this
juncture, he couldn't allow us to establish my claim to the Tigmores on
my word and yours. He has done unwise, crazy things already. He would
fight us. I know it, you know it. We could win. But where would our
victory leave him, Uncle Bernique? Ah, you see?"
The old man was shaking from head to foot. He clung close to Steering.
"Oh, my God!" he moaned, "I will not let this thing be."
"Yes, you will let it be! It is my affair even more than it is yours.
You will do as I say about it, Uncle Bernique. Here and now, you shall
swear this oath with me: I by my love for Sally Madeira, you by your
love for Piney's young mother, that never, so help us God, shall one or
the other of us carry word of these matters to anyone, least of all to
Crittenton Madeira or his daughter Salome!"
The old man's breath came gustily, his cheeks flamed, the hectic burned
like fire in his shrivelled cheeks. He loosed his clinging hold and
tried to shake Bruce off.
"Swear," Bruce decreed again, his powerful grip on the old man, his eyes
half shut, "I by my love for Sally Madeira, you by your love for Piney's
young mother! Swear!" He held up his own right hand, and Bernique said
brokenly:
"God above, I swear!" The old man was crying. Neither heard the swish in
the bluff growth, neither saw the brave light in the two eyes that
peered through the bushes.
"Why now, everything is all right," cried Bruce. "Are you going on into
Canaan to-night, or shall you sleep here with me? I think that I shall
take the skiff now and go up toward Madeira Place, then drift back
down-stream, a sort of good-bye journey. What will you do meantime?"
Old Bernique hardly knew. He was sore, bewildered. He thought he might
spend the night on the hills, then again he might come back to the shack
for the night. He wanted to go into Choke Gulch first thing.
Bruce pushed away in the skiff through the swollen Di. Bernique got his
horse and started off, climbing the yellow road up the bluff slowly,
heading toward Choke Gulch. As he neared the top, he lifted his head and
saw Piney and the pony outlined on the bald summit of the bluff. The boy
made a trumpet of his hands and shouted to Bernique.
"Hurry! For God's sake! So I cand talk to you!" Piney's was a reckless
and impassioned young figure, cut out against the sky sharply, on a pony
that danced like a dervish.
The old man nodded, with a flash of pleasure at the sight of the boy,
then let his head fall wearily upon his breast. He felt very powerless.
When he reached Piney's side he put out his hand and held to the boy's
hand as though he found its warmth and firmness sustaining.
"Let's git into the timber," said Piney, and they rode forward a little
way quite silent. "I don' want Mist' Steerin' to look back an' see me
here," the boy explained. In the growth where the hills began to roll
down toward Choke Gulch, Piney stopped short, with a detaining hand upon
Bernique's bridle.
"I hearn," he said. His young face was so grey and solemn that Bernique
regarded him questioningly. "I was simlike half asleep up there in the
bushes. Whend you begand to tell your story, I waked up an' I listened.
I hearn all you said an' all he said. Ev'thing. Unc' Bernique, you
cayn't tell nobody! Mist' Steerin', he cayn't tell nobody!--but Me!" the
boy was breathing harder, his face was growing greyer, "Unc' Bernique,
I'm f'm the hills, an' not like them," the blood began suddenly to come
back to his lips; he raised in his stirrups and slashed at the branches
of a black-jack tree with his riding switch, as though he cut a vow
across the air, high up. "But what I can, I will!" he cried, and
clenched his hands proudly. "Fer her an'--an' fer him!" he choked.
Whatever he meant to do, his young passion for Salome Madeira and his
young affection for Steering, his hero, leaped out on his face whitely.
"She loves him, too, Unc' Bernique!" he cried in a final, broken
crescendo.
Old Bernique stared at the boy in exaltation. "God above!" he shouted,
"if that is it, it begins to be hope in my old breast! All may come
right yet, and no oaths broken!"
"None broke!" cried Piney. "One more took! I'm a-ridin' saouth, to
Madeira Place, Unc' Bernique;" he gathered up the reins from his pony's
neck,--"I'm a-goin' to Miss Sally Madeira to tell her abaout Mist'
Steerin';" he was blind with hot, young tears. "She'll do the rat thing
whend she knows, Unc' Bernique;" he had put the pony about,--"I'll see
you on the hills in the mornin'!" he was gone down the yellow road like
a winged Mercury.
On the hills behind him, Old Bernique, comprehending and envying,
locked his hands on his saddle-horn in a vehement tension. His lips
moved, and what he said seemed to float out after the flying figure of
the boy like a benediction.
_Chapter Fifteen_
A MISTAKE SOMEWHERE
The afternoon of that day was golden out at Madeira Place. Through the
kitchen windows the sun streamed in, in broad, unfretted bands of light.
Just beyond the window the crab-apple trees and the quince trees and the
pear trees and the damson trees were rioting in blossom.
The kitchen itself was a place to take comfort in. By a table sat fat
black Chloe, seeding raisins, when she was not asleep. Before another
table stood Sally Madeira, her brown, round arms bared to the elbow,
flapping cake batter with a wooden paddle. With her sense of eternal
fitness the girl was a fine housekeeper as easily as she was a sweet
singer and a good horsewoman. She had kept the past beautifully intact
in the old brick-floored room. Overhead hung strings of red peppers,
streaks of scarlet on the heavy black rafters. Little white sacks of
dried things, peas and beans and apples, depended from hooks. Against
the walls were quaint old tin safes, their doors gone, their shelves
covered with dark blue crockery. The tin and brass stuff shone brightly.
On a low shelf stood a great piggin of water, a fat yellow drinking
gourd sticking out of it. The whole picture was a kitchen pastel,
delicately toned, a kitchen of the long ago, Sally Madeira fitting into
it exquisitely, re-establishing the stately domesticity of an old regime
by her fine adaptability and appreciation.
Chloe brought the raisins over to Miss Madeira at last, and let them
drop slowly into the crock, watching carefully for stray bits of stem.
"Simlike nowadays ef he teef go agin a hardness spile he tas' fuh de
cake," she said anxiously.
"We do have to humour his poor appetite, don't we, Chloe? Never mind,
he'll be better soon, I hope."
"Whut madder wid he, Miss Sally, innyhow, Honey?"
"Just overwork, I think, Chloe. Works all the time; in the office now,
bent double over his desk."
The darky shuffled restlessly on her flat feet. "Simlike to me he
pester'd. I d'n know. Miss Sally, who else gwine eat dishyer cake
tumorreh, Honey?"
"I'm not expecting any company at all, Chloe. Father isn't really well
enough to care to talk to people."
"Miss Honey, simlike de house gittin' mighty lonesome nowadays. Taint
like it uster be."
"Do you feel it, Chloe? Do you know I've grown to like it better quiet."
The girl's voice was wistful, she let the batter trickle recklessly
while she gazed off out of the window. Then she sighed and began to beat
the batter very hard.
"Miss Honey-love?"
"Yes, Chloe."
"That tha' Mist' Steerin' aint ben come no mo' fuh gre't while, air he?"
"No."
"Samson he say he gwine ride down by Redbud this evenin'."
"Well, Chloe, I'm sorry that I can't send an invitation to your
favourite, but I'm afraid Father isn't well enough--oh, there's Piney,
Chloe!"
The boy had come up the bridle-path slowly, his mission weighting him
and making him languid. At the latticed porch he jumped to the ground,
turned the pony's nose into the grass and came into the kitchen.
"Howdy, Miss Sally. Hi, Chloe. Cand I have a drink, please'm, Miss
Sally?"
He drank long and greedily from the gourd dipper, so long that Sally
Madeira turned to him laughingly at last. "Well, Piney, son, got Texas
fever?" she began, and then, being quick of wit, saw at once that the
boy's pallor, his thirst, his absorption meant something especial. "I'm
glad you came, Piney," she went on capably, and gave the batter paddle
to Chloe. "I've been wanting to see you all day to have a little talk
with you. Let's go out under the crab-apple tree."
She took off the great apron and led the way from the kitchen, the boy
following her with dragging feet. Under the crab-apple tree she drew him
down upon a bench beside her. The orchard blooms shut them in close. The
stillness was unbroken save for the warm sibilant droning of the insect
life in the air. The shadows on the orchard grass were like lace-work.
"Now, Piney, lad," began Miss Madeira at once, "what's the trouble?" Her
voice sounded strong, maternal, to Piney, who had been wondering how he
was to tell her, calling himself a fool for having undertaken to tell
her, reminding himself that he couldn't for the life of him begin. Here,
suddenly, the girl was making it easier for him, showing him that the
way to begin was to begin.
"I wouldn' tell you the trouble ef I could he'p it, Miss Sally," he said
pleadingly, his hands shut about his knees, his eyes beseeching as a
fawn's. "Ef they wuz inny way to make things come aout rat lessen I
told, I wouldn' tell. But I don' see no way." It was easier to talk up
to the thing and around the thing, than to get directly into it.
"Is it your own trouble, Piney?" she asked, helping again.
"No'm."
"Whose trouble, Piney?"
"Mist' Steerin's, Miss Sally."
"Ah!" She leaned nearer Piney. "Tell me quickly, dearie," she said, "is
he ill?"
"Well'm, it's your trouble, too, Miss Sally."
"Yes, surely, Piney, go on, go on!"
"And your father's trouble, Miss Sally."
"Something about the Tigmores, I suspect, then, Piney, go on."
"Yes'm, abaout the hills." Then, fortunately for both, his youth made up
in directness what it lacked in finesse. "It's this-a-way, Miss Sally,"
he blurted savagely, "Ole Bruce Grierson is dead an' Mist' Steerin' owns
the Tigmores."
Her face shone with joy. "But, Piney, boy, where's the trouble in that?
When did Mr. Grierson die? That's not trouble even for him, Piney. He
was a weary old man. When did he die?"
"Las' September, Miss Sally," answered the boy gravely.
"Last September? _Last Septem_---- Why, where's the word been all this
while, Piney? Why hasn't my father known?"
"He--he has known, Miss Sally. Miss Sally, it was this-a-way, simlike:
that ole man writtend Mist' Madeira he wuz goin' to die an' he tol'
Mist' Madeira to give the hills to Mist' Steerin'. But I don't reckon
your father believed ole Grierson, Miss Sally."
The girl on the bench under the crab-apple tree was beginning to draw
herself up proudly. "There is some mistake somewhere, I can see that,
Piney, dear. Where did you learn all this?"
"Wy, Miss Sally," cried the boy, a great, painful reluctance in his
voice, "that old varmint Grierson writtend another letter to Unc'
Bernique an' had a man hold it up an' not mail it till las' week. Then
he lay daown an' died. An' here las' week the letter to Unc' Bernique
was mailed, aouter ole Grierson's grave like--an' Unc Bernique he's jes
got it, an' it tells him that ole Grierson died las' September an' that
he writtend your father to say so."
"I don't understand that, Piney. Mr. Grierson died last September and
has written letters since he died, you are getting it all mixed, aren't
you?"
Very slowly and laboriously Piney told then what he knew, told it over
and over until she had comprehended it, whether she believed it or not.
When the boy had finished she was leaning back on the bench, dull and
pale.
"But it isn't true," she said, with white lips. "And Mr. Steering,
Piney,--has Uncle Bernique told Mr. Steering this fantastic tale?"
"Yes'm."
"And what did Mr. Steering say and do, Piney?"
The memory of what Steering had said and done seemed to come on to Piney
like an inspiration. "Miss Sally, he set his jaw an' he ketched Unc'
Bernique by the arm an' helt him an' made him swear like this, 'You by
your love for Piney's young mother, I by my love for Salome Madeira,
that never, s'help us God, will you or I carry word of this to
Crittenton Madeira and his daughter Salome'--sumpin like that, Miss
Sally. I don' adzackly remember the words."
The dulness had all gone out of her eyes, the colour beat back into her
cheeks. She had forgotten Crittenton Madeira. "'I by my love for
Salome'--are you sure, Piney?"
"I'm sure, Miss Sally. An' so I thought as wuzn't nobody else to tell
you, I'd tell you. I d'n know as I done rat," the boy's face was all
a-quiver, too, as he looked up at the girl on the misty heights of her
passion. His self-abnegation, his young heroism made him for the moment
as finely luminous as she was. Sally Madeira took his head between her
hands and gazed into his eyes tenderly, caressingly, and there was in
her touch something large and sweet and tender that comforted and
soothed the boy while it made his heart leap within him.
"Ah, Darling," she said, "how bitter-sweet it is, this loving! But be
patient. Some day it will all seem right." She took her hands away from
him and stood up straightly.
"I'm going in to my father now, Piney. There's a mistake somewhere. You
wait for me here until I get it all explained. Wait here till I come
back."
She went off toward the house then, a fragrant shower of orchard
blossoms falling upon her and shutting her away from the boy's eyes as
she went.
_Chapter Sixteen_
MADEIRA'S PEACE
Sally Madeira crept to the door of her father's study and listened. In
the pallid light that was stealing up to her from Piney's story her face
was shadowy, with hurtful doubt, ashamed fear, and she steadied herself
by the wall with hands that shook. She had stopped to put on a white
gown that her father loved and her lustrous hair lay banded closely, a
halo, about her shapely head. Her face looked like a saint's.
"It is not so much to save Bruce Steering's inheritance for him, it's to
save my father for myself." Her lips moved stiffly as she whispered. "My
old dream-father, my idol, I cannot live without him!" As she opened the
door and passed in, she felt as though he had been away on a long
journey and that this might be the hour of his return.
Inside Madeira sat at his desk, Bruce Grierson's letter spread out
before him, the ghost of his torture. At night he heard it move, with a
spectral rustling, under his pillow where he kept it. By day it writhed,
a small, hot thing, over his heart. He had tried again and again to
destroy it. Everything else that had got in his way he had destroyed,
but this he had not destroyed. He was trying to destroy it now, but he
returned it to his pocket, unable to destroy it, ruled by it, when he
raised his eyes and saw his daughter before him. She had not been
without foresight even in her shame and sorrow. She had taken great
pains to gown herself especially for him, especially to establish her
influence over him. He held out his arms to her lovingly. In the
sickness of soul and body now upon him he had turned more and more to
her; she had to be with him almost constantly.
"You look so sweet," he said. "You are sweetest like this. I love you
like this." Despite the relief that came when with her, he talked
nervously, his mouth jerking. His hands wandered to her head, and he
held her face and peered at her. "Sally, I wish I was a girl like you,"
he said, "girls look so peaceful. Business tangles a man,--just to have
peace, Sally."
"It will come Father, it will come. Father, Piney rode in from the hills
just now, and he brought me news."
He could feel the tremor of her lithe body against his breast, and he
moved quickly and uneasily, suspecting danger. His dreams had so long
been terror-fraught that he was all nerves and suspicion. "News of what,
Sally?" The whitest, deadest voice, for so simple a question; on his
face the most awful strain! She drew back on his knee and looked at him
steadily, lovingly, and his eyes dropped and his hands began to drum on
the chair-arm.
"Father," she said, "Piney has heard a long story. He was hid on the
bluff-side, up at Redbud, and he heard a letter read at the shack there,
a dead man's letter."
"A dead--oh, God bless you--wait--Sally, did that move? eh, what
foolishness is this, a dead man's letter? What dead man? eh? what dead
man?"
"Bruce Grierson, father."
"They lie! They lie! Let them prove it!"
"Ah, that was what I told Piney, Father! I knew, I knew that you could
explain it. And you can now, and you will, Father?" She was really
beseeching him to rise up against her and the accusation against him,
rise up in a great storm of indignation; she was praying that he would
do that, expecting that he would, so firm were her convictions of his
nobility. She drew back a little, to give him room, as it were; her
hands fell upon his knee, and she leaned from him the better to see him,
her face aglow with her fierce hope, her big belief, while she waited
for that storm, that outraged denial, that tremendous vindication. And
while she waited, erect, hopeful, eager, he shrank in upon himself;
crumpled and wrinkled in upon himself until he looked weazened and
small.
"Let them prove it, let them," a whining mumble.
"They will not, Father." She was leaning toward him again, her face
quiet as the first frightened dawn of a grey morning; her voice was
beaten and sad, but she went on dauntlessly. "The letter was to Uncle
Bernique, Father. And Bruce Steering read it. And though it told him
that he was the owner of the Tigmores, he and Uncle Bernique will not
prove it." For a moment she paused, and then, with some new purpose on
her face, she began again, "There was an oath to make all sure that they
would not prove it. Listen, Father, these were the words of the oath:
'Swear, I by my love for Salome Madeira, you by your love for Piney's
young mother, that never, so help us God, shall one or the other of us
carry word of this thing to anyone, least of all to Crittenton Madeira
and his daughter, Salome!'"
"Ah-h-h!" The words of the oath seemed to bring Madeira his first brief
respite in a long torture. The girl shivered at such relief, then went
on resolutely:
"So now you see, Father, everything is safe. I have come to let you know
that everything is safe, that you need not be troubled, sleeping or
waking, any more about this thing. You may keep the Tigmores as long as
you will," the light of her eyes beat upon him like a rain of pure gold,
"you may be as rich as you like, Father. Mr. Steering is to leave here;
you need never be dispossessed during your lifetime. It is all safe and
sure. Uncle Bernique will not tell, Mr. Steering will not tell, Piney
will not tell, I shall make no sign." The tragic strength of her
endeavour to make him see that it was all with him; to leave it all to
him; if so be that the better part were to be chosen, to make him choose
it for himself; re-establish himself in so much as was possible for her
loving regard, was in the hot clasp of the young hand that she laid upon
him, the sweet earnestness of the face that leaned toward him. It was a
strange fight, a battle of vast forces. He began to shake like an aspen
leaf, but his eyes lifted to hers presently, to drink from them as from
a fountain of life. His lips moved.
"Just to have peace," he gasped hoarsely, "take that letter--take it
from my pocket--send it to Steering."
"Father!" It was the cry of victory well won. "Father! I am so glad!"
over and over again. "All my life, Father, I have expected the good
thing to happen because of you, the right thing, I am so glad!"
Laughing, crying, she kissed him, took the letter and stole to the door.
"Piney shall be its bearer," she cried as she went, "Piney shall take
it; he will say the very best that there is to say!"
She ran out, and the door swung quickly behind her, so that she did not
see that he put his hand over his empty pocket and held his heart with a
great relief; then pitched forward suddenly, his head on the desk, a
look of late-come, profound peace on his face.
_Chapter Seventeen_
JUST A BOY
It was not quite dark when Piney left Miss Sally Madeira in the garden
back of Madeira Place, the Grierson letter in the inside band of his
hat. The pretty spring day had closed in grey and sullen, and a high
wind tore through the bluffs. Up in Canaan people were going anxiously
to their windows, and trying to decide what was about to happen out
there in that whirl of dust and wind and high-spattering rain. Down at
Madeira Place it was grey, windy, and damp, but the rain had not come on
yet. Piney went down the bridle-path from the Madeira grounds and out
into the river road at a gallop, and the pony sped on like mad toward
the little shack down stream at Redbud. All the way Piney kept a watch
on the Di, which was sucking and booming. Long before he reached Redbud
the boy had begun to hope that Steering had not put through his evening
programme to that last number of going back to Redbud by water, after
the haunting visit to the waters about Madeira Place. The river seemed
very black and restless with the long urge of the spring rains within
her. Now and again, he called loudly, prompted by some fear, he knew not
what:
"Steerin'! Steerin'! Steerin'!"
He reached Redbud by and by, to find no Steering, only the little empty
shack. The lean bunks, swaddled roughly in their bedding, looked
strangely deserted. Piney sat down on Steering's bunk for a moment to
take breath. Once his hand patted the covers, and once he stooped down
and clung to the pillow.
"Oh, may God bless you! For I love him, my dear Piney! Bless you, for I
love him, my dear Piney!" he kept saying over and over, with an
hysterical quaver in his voice, his lips pale and moving constantly.
"Oh, may God bless you, for I love him, my dear Piney!" It was what
Salome Madeira had said to him when he had left her, a white, angelic
figure, swaying a little toward him, there in the garden back of Madeira
Place. "Oh, may God--for I love him!"