THE WOLF SCRATCHES
Mormon Joe had underestimated Jasper Toomey's capacity for extravagance
and mismanagement when he had given him five years to "go broke" in, as
he had accomplished it in four most effectively--so completely, in fact,
that they had moved into town with only enough furniture to furnish a
small house, which they spoke of as having "rented," though as yet the
owner had had nothing but promises to compensate him for their
occupancy.
It was close to a year after their advent in Prouty that Mrs. Toomey
awakened in the small hours, listened a moment, then prodded her husband
sharply:
"The wind's coming up, Jap, and I left out my washing."
"Never mind--I'll borrow a saddle horse in the morning and go after it."
"Everything will be whipped to ribbons," she declared plaintively.
"I'm not going out this time of night to collect laundry; besides, the
exercise would make me hungrier."
"Are you hungry, Jap?"
"Hungry! I've been lying here thinking of everything I ever left on my
plate since I was a baby!"
Mrs. Toomey sighed deeply.
"Wouldn't a fat club sandwich with chicken, lettuce, thin bacon and
mayonnaise dressing--"
"Hush!" Toomey exploded savagely. "If you say that again I'll dress and
go out and rob a hen roost!"
Mrs. Toomey suggested hopefully:
"Perhaps if you light the lamp, and smoke, it will take your mind off
your stomach."
"I surmise that's all there is on it." Toomey lighted the lamp on the
table beside the bed and looked at the clock on the bureau.
"Hours yet, my love, before I can gorge myself on a shredded wheat
biscuit."
Mrs. Toomey braided a wisp of hair to an infinitesimal end and said
firmly:
"Jap, we've simply _got_ to do something! Can't you borrow?"
"Borrow! I couldn't throw a rock inside the city limits without hitting
some one to whom I owe money. Come again, Old Dear," mockingly.
"Wouldn't Mormon Joe--"
"I'd starve before I'd ask that sheepherder!" His face darkened to
ugliness. "I'm surprised at you--that you haven't more pride. You know
he broke me, shutting me off from water with his leases. I've explained
all that to you."
She was silent; she didn't have the heart to hit him when he was down,
though she had her own opinion as to the cause of his failure.
Since she did not reply, he went on vindictively:
"I've come to hate the sight of him--his damned insolence. Every time I
see him going into his shack over there," he nodded towards the diagonal
corner, "I could burn it."
"It's funny--his building it."
"To save hotel bills when he comes to town. Yes," ironically, "I can see
_him_ lending _me_ money." Mrs. Toomey sat up and cried excitedly:
"Jap, let's sell something! There's that silver punch bowl that your
Uncle Jasper gave us for a wedding present, and Aunt Sarah Page's silver
teapot--Mrs. Sudds admires it tremendously."
Toomey's brow cleared instantly.
"We can do that--I'll raffle it--the punch bowl--and get a hundred and
fifty out of it easily." He discussed the details enthusiastically,
finally blowing out the light and going to sleep as contentedly as
though it already had been accomplished.
But in the darkness Mrs. Toomey cried quietly. Selling tickets for a
raffle which was for their personal benefit seemed a kind of genteel
begging. She wondered that Jap did not feel as she did about it. And
what would Mrs. Pantin think? What Mrs. Abram Pantin thought had come to
mean a great deal to Mrs. Toomey.
The wind had risen to a gale and she thought nervously of fringed
napkins and pillow slips--the wind always gave her the "blues" anyway,
and now it reminded her of winter, which was close, with its bitter
cold--of snow driven across trackless wastes, of gaunt predatory
animals, of cattle and horses starving in draws and gulches, and all the
other things which winter meant in that barren country. She slept after
a time, to find the next morning that the wind still howled and the
fringe on her laundry was all she had pictured.
Toomey set forth gaily immediately after breakfast with the punch bowl
wrapped in a newspaper, and Mrs. Toomey nerved herself to negotiate for
the sale of the teapot to Mrs. Sudds, in the event of his being
unsuccessful.
She watched for his return eagerly, but it was two o'clock before she
saw him coming, leaning against the wind and clasping the punch bowl to
his bosom. Her heart sank, for his face told her the result without
asking.
Toomey set Uncle Jasper's wedding gift upon the dining room table with
disrespectful violence.
"You must be crazy to think I could sell that in Prouty! You should have
known better!"
"Didn't anybody want it, Jap?" Mrs. Toomey asked timidly.
"Want it?" angrily. "'Tinhorn' thought it was some kind of a tony
cuspidor, and a round-up cook offered me a dollar and a half for it to
set bread sponge in."
"Never mind," soothingly, "I'm sure Mrs. Sudds will take the teapot."
"We can't live all winter on a teapot," he answered gloomily.
"But you're sure to get into something pretty quick now."
"When I land, I'll land big--I'll land with both feet," he responded
more cheerfully.
"Of course, you will--I never doubt it." Mrs. Toomey endeavored to make
her tone convincing. "Let's have tea in the heirloom before we part with
it," she suggested brightly. "It's never been used that I can remember."
"It's ugly enough to be valuable," Toomey observed, eyeing the teapot as
she took it from the top of the bookcase.
"Solid, nearly, and came over in the _Mayflower_," Mrs. Toomey replied
proudly. "We'll have tea and toast and codfish."
"The information is superfluous." Toomey sniffed the air and made a wry
face. "I'd as soon eat billposter's paste as codfish."
"To-night we'll have steak--thick, like that--" Mrs. Toomey measured
with her thumb and finger as she went into the kitchen.
Toomey eyed the codfish darkly when his wife placed it on the table.
"Sit down, Jap," she urged. "The tea will be steeped in just a second.
Don't wait--" A scream completed the sentence.
Toomey overturned his chair as he rushed to the kitchen. He arrived in
time to see the lid of the priceless heirloom disappearing in a puddle
of pewter. It seemed to the Toomeys that the Fates had singled them out
as special objects for their malevolence.
The wind continued to blow as though it meant never to stop. It was a
wind of which the people of the East who speak awesomely of their own
"gales" and "tempest" wot not.
This wind which had kept Prouty indoors for close to a week came out of
a cloudless sky, save for a few innocent looking streaks on the western
horizon. It had blown away everything that would move. All the loose
papers had sailed through the air to an unknown destination--Nebraska,
perhaps--while an endless procession of tumble weed had rolled in the
same direction from an apparently inexhaustible supply in the west.
Housewives who had watched their pile of tin cans move on to the next
lot found their satisfaction short-lived, for as quickly they acquired
the rubbish that belonged to their neighbor on the other side. Shingles
flew off and chimney bricks, and ends of corrugated iron roofing slapped
and banged as though frantic to be loose. Houses shivered on their
foundations, and lesser buildings lay on their sides. Clouds of dust
obscured the sun at intervals, and the sharp-edged gravel driven before
the gale cut like tiny knives.
Any daring chicken that ventured from its coop slid away as if it were
on skates. Pitchforks were useless, and those who had horses to feed
carried the hay in sacks. The caged inhabitants stood at their windows
and made caustic comments upon the legs and general contour of such
unfortunates as necessity took out, while those pedestrians who would
converse, upon catching sight of each other made a dive for the nearest
telephone pole. There, clinging by an arm like a shipwrecked sailor to a
mast, they ventured to opine that it must be "getting ready for
something." It seemed as though the earth would soon be denuded of its
soil, leaving the rocks exposed like a skeleton stripped of its flesh.
Yet, day after day, it blew without respite, and the effect of it upon
different temperaments was as varied as that of drink.
No one could seem to remember that the wind had not always blown, or
realize that it would sometime stop. No character was strong enough to
maintain a perfect equilibrium after three days of it. Logic or
philosophy made no more impression upon the mental state than water
slipping over a rock. It set the nerves on edge. Irritation,
restlessness and discontent were as uncontrollable as great fear. Two
wildcats tied together were not more incompatible than husbands and
wives, who under normal conditions lived together happily. Doting
mothers became shrews; fond fathers, brutes, lambasting their offspring
on the smallest pretext; while seven was too conservative an estimate to
place upon the devils of which the children who turned the house into
Bedlam seemed to be possessed.
Optimists grew green with melancholia, pessimists considered suicide as
an escape from the futility of life, neighbors resurrected buried
hatchets. Friends found fault with friends. Enemies vowed to kill each
other as soon as the wind let up.
If the combination of wind and altitude had this effect upon phlegmatic
temperaments, something of Mrs. Toomey's state may be surmised. With
nerves already overwrought this prolonged windstorm put her in a
condition in which, as she declared hysterically to her husband, she was
"ready to fly."
Lying on his back on the one-time handsome sofa, where he spent many of
his waking hours, Toomey responded, grimly:
"I'm getting so light on that breakfast-food diet that we'll both fly if
I don't make a 'touch' pretty quick. I'm 'most afraid to go out in a
high wind without running a little shot in the bottoms of my trousers."
Mrs. Toomey, who was standing at the dining room table laying a section
of a newspaper pattern upon a piece of serge, felt an uncontrollable
desire to weep. Furthermore, the conviction seized her that, turn and
twist the pattern as she might, she was not going to have material
enough unless she pieced.
Her lids turned pink and her eyes filled up.
"Isn't it awful, Jap, to think of us being like this?"
"You make me think of a rabbit when you sniffle like that. Can't you cry
without wiggling your nose?"
Mrs. Toomey's quavering voice rose to the upper register:
"Do you suppose I care how I look when I feel like this?"
"How do you think I feel," ferociously, "with my stomach slumping in so
I can hardly straighten up?" He raised a long arm and shook a fist as
though in defiance of the Fate that had brought him to this. "I'd sell
my soul for a ham! I'm going to Scales and put up a talk."
Toomey found his hat and coat. "Don't cut your throat with the scissors
while I'm gone, Little Sunbeam, and I'll be back with food pretty
quick--unless I blow off."
He spoke with such confidence that Mrs. Toomey looked at him hopefully.
When he opened the door the furious gust that shook the house and
darkened the room with a cloud of dust seemed to suck him into a vortex.
Mrs. Toomey watched him round the corner with a sense of relief. Now
that she was alone she could cry comfortably and look as ugly as she
liked, so the tears flowed copiously as she stood at the table puzzling
over the pattern and cloth. They flowed afresh when she proved beyond
the question of a doubt that she would have to piece the under-arm
sleeve. Simultaneously she wondered if she could do it so skilfully that
Mrs. Abram Pantin would not see the piece. Then she frowned in vexation
at the realization that it was becoming second nature to wonder what
Prissy Pantin would think. Was it possible that there had been a time
when she had debated as to whether she wanted to know Mrs. Abram Pantin
at all?
When she had married Jap she had thought she was done forever with the
miserable poverty and hateful economies that are the lot of the family
of a small-town minister; that after years of suppression of opinions
and tastes in order not to evoke criticism or give offense, she at last
was in a position to assert herself.
And now after a taste of freedom, of power and opulence, here she was
back in practically the same position and rapidly developing the same
mental attitude towards those more affluent and, therefore, more
socially important than herself. Mrs. Toomey's thoughts were much the
color of the serge into which she slashed.
Finally, after a glance at the clock, she walked to the window to look
for her husband. He was not in sight. As she lingered her glance fell on
Mormon Joe's tar-paper shack that set in the middle of the lot on the
diagonal corner from their house, and she told herself bitterly that
even that drunken renegade, that social pariah, had enough to eat.
Her face brightened as Toomey turned the corner and promptly lengthened
when she saw that he was empty-handed and walking with the exaggerated
swagger which she was coming to recognize as a sign of failure.
A glimpse of his face as he came in, banged the door, and flung off his
hat and coat made her hesitate to speak.
"Well?" he glared at her. "Why don't you say something?"
"What is there to say, Jap?" meekly. "I see he refused you."
"Refused me? He insulted me!"
Mrs. Toomey looked hurt.
"What did he say, Jap?"
"He offered me fifteen dollars a week to _clerk_."
Toomey resented fiercely the pleased and hopeful expression on his
wife's face, and added:
"I suppose you'd like to see me cutting calico and fishing salt pork out
of the brine?"
She ventured timidly:
"I thought you might take it until something worth while turned up."
"Maybe," he sneered, "I could get a job swamping in 'Tinhorn's'
place--washing fly specks off the windows and sweeping out."
"Of course, you're right, Jap," conciliatingly, but she sighed
unconsciously as she went back to her work.
Toomey paced the floor for a time, then sank into his usual place on the
sofa. Mrs. Toomey permitted herself to observe sarcastically:
"It's a wonder to me you don't get bed sores--the amount of time you
spend on the flat of your back."
"What do you mean by that?" suspiciously. "Do you mean I'm lazy because
I didn't take that job?"
Since she made no denial, conversation ceased, and the silence was
broken only by the sound of her scissors upon the table and the howling
of the gale.
He smoked cigarette after cigarette in gloomy thought, finally getting
up and going to a closet off the kitchen.
"What are you looking for, Jap?" she called as she heard him rummaging.
He did not reply, but evidently found what he sought for he came out
presently carrying a shotgun.
"Are you going to try and raffle that?"
Still he did not deign to answer, but preserved his injured air, and
getting once more into his hat and coat started off with the martyred
manner of a man who has been driven from home.
Mrs. Toomey finally threw down her scissors with a gesture of despair.
She was too nervous to do any more. The wind, her anxious thoughts, the
exacting task of cutting a suit from an inadequate amount of cloth, was
a combination that proved to be too much. She glanced at the clock on
the bookcase--only three o'clock! Actually there seemed forty-eight
hours in days like this. She stood uncertainly for a moment, then
determination settled on her tense worried face. Why put it off any
longer? It must be done sooner or later--she was sure of that. Besides,
nothing ever was as hard as one anticipates. This was a cheering
thought, and the lines in Mrs. Toomey's forehead smoothed out as she
stood before the mirror buttoning her coat and tying a veil over her
head.
It took no small amount of physical courage for a person of Mrs.
Toomey's frailty to face such a gale. But with her thin lips in a
determined line and her gaze straight ahead, she managed, by tacking
judiciously and stopping at intervals to clasp a telephone pole while
she recovered her breath, to reach the iron fence imported from Omaha
which gave such a look of exclusiveness to the Pantins' residence.
Mr. Pantin thought he heard the gate slam and peered out through the
dead wild-cucumber vines which framed the bow window to see Mrs. Toomey
coming up the only cement walk in Prouty. He immediately thrust his
stockinged feet back in his comfortable Romeos preparatory to opening
the door, but before he got up he stooped and looked again, searchingly.
Mr. Pantin was endowed with a gift that was like a sixth sense, which
enabled him to detect a borrower as far as his excellent eyesight could
see one. This intuition, combined with experience, had been developed to
the point of uncanniness. No borrower, however adroit, could hope to
conceal from Mr. Pantin for a single instant the real purpose of his
call by irrelevant talk and solicitous inquiries about his health. In
the present instance it did not require great acumen to guess that
something urgent had brought Mrs. Toomey out on a day like this, nor any
particular keenness to detect the signs of agitation which Mr. Pantin
noted in his swift glance. She was coming to borrow--he was as sure of
that as though she already had asked, and if any further confirmation
were needed, her unnatural gayety when he admitted her and the
shortness of her breath finished that.
It availed Mrs. Toomey nothing to tell herself that Mrs. Pantin was her
best friend, and that what she was asking was merely a matter of
business--the sort of thing that Mr. Pantin was doing every day. Her
heart beat ridiculously and she was rather shocked to hear herself
laughing shrilly at Mr. Pantin's banal inquiry as to whether she had not
"nearly blown off." He added in some haste:
"Priscilla's in the kitchen."
Mrs. Pantin looked up in surprise at her caller's entrance.
"How perfectly sweet of you to come out a day like this!" she chirped.
"You'll excuse me if I go on getting dinner? We only have two meals a
day when we don't exercise. This wind--isn't it dreadful? I haven't been
out of the house for a week."
She placed two rolls in the warming oven and broke three eggs into a
bowl.
"Abram and I are so fond of omelette," she said, as the egg-beater
whirred. "Tell me," she beamed brightly upon Mrs. Toomey, "what have you
been doing with yourself?"
"Priscilla--Prissy--" Mrs. Toomey caught her breath--"I've been
miserable--and that's the truth!"
"Why, my dear!" The egg-beater stopped. "Aren't you well? No wonder--I'm
as nervous as a witch myself." The egg-beater whirred again
encouragingly. "You must use your will power--you mustn't allow yourself
to be affected by these external things."
"It's not the wind." Mrs. Toomey's eyes were swimming now. "I'm worried
half to death."
Mrs. Pantin had not lived twelve years with Abram in vain. A look of
suspicion crossed her face, and there was a little less solicitude in
her voice as she inquired:
"Is it anything in particular? Bad news from home?"
"It's money!" Mrs. Toomey blurted out. "We're dreadfully hard up. I came
to see if we could get a loan."
The egg-beater went on, but the milk of human kindness which,
presumably, flowed in Mrs. Pantin's breast stopped--congealed--froze up
tight. Her blue eyes, whose vividness was accentuated as usual by the
robin's egg blue dress she wore, had the warm genial glow radiating from
a polar berg. It was, however, only a moment before she recovered
herself and was able to say with sweet earnestness:
"I haven't anything to do with that, my dear. You'll have to see Mr.
Pantin."
Mrs. Toomey clasped her fingers tightly together and stammered:
"If--if you would speak to him first--I--I thought perhaps--"
Mrs. Pantin's set society smile was on her small mouth, but the finality
of the laws of the Medes and the Persians was in her tone as she
replied:
"I never think of interfering with my husband's business or making
suggestions. As fond as I am of you, Delia, you'll have to ask him
yourself."
Mrs. Toomey had the feeling that they never would be quite on the same
footing again. She knew it from the way in which Mrs. Pantin's eyes
travelled from the unbecoming brown veil on her head to her warm but
antiquated coat, stopping at her shabby shoes which, instinctively, she
drew beneath the hem of her skirt.
To be shabby from carelessness was one thing--to be so from necessity
was another, clearly was in Mrs. Pantin's mind. She had known, of
course, of the collapse of their cattle-raising enterprise, but she had
not dreamed they were in such a bad way as this. She hoped she was not
the sort of person who would let it make any difference in her warm
friendship for Delia Toomey; nevertheless, Mrs. Toomey detected the
subtle note of patronage in her voice when she said:
"Abram is alone in the living room--you might speak to him."
"I think I will." Mrs. Toomey endeavored to repair the mistake she felt
she had made by speaking in a tone which implied that a loan was of no
great moment after all, but she walked out with the feeling that she
used to have in the presence of the more opulent members of her father's
congregation when the flour barrel was low.
Mrs. Toomey was not too agitated to note how immaculate and dainty the
dining room table looked with its fine linen and cut glass. There were
six dices of apple with a nut on top on the handsome salad plates, and
the crystal dessert dishes each held three prunes swimming in their rich
juice.
The living-room, too, reflected Mrs. Pantin's taste. A framed motto
extolling the virtues of friendship hung over the mantel and the "Blind
Girl of Pompeii" groped her way down the staircase on the neutral-tinted
wall. A bookcase filled with sets of the world's best literature
occupied a corner of the room, while ooze leather copies of Henry Van
Dyke gave an unmistakable look of culture to the mission table in the
center of the room. A handsome leather davenport with a neat row of sofa
pillows along the back, which were of Mrs. Pantin's own handiwork,
suggested luxurious ease. But the chief attraction of the room was the
brick fireplace with its spotless tiled hearth. One of Mr. Pantin's
diversions was sitting before the glowing coals, whisk and shovel in
hand, waiting for an ash to drop.
Seeing Mrs. Toomey, Mr. Pantin again hastily thrust his toes into his
slippers--partly because he was cognizant of the fact that no real
gentleman will receive a lady in his stocking feet, and partly to
conceal the neat but large darn on the toe of one sock. He was courteous
amiability itself, and Mrs. Toomey's hopes shot up.
"I came to have a little talk."
"Yes?"
Mr. Pantin's smile deceived her and she plunged on with confidence:
"I--we would like to arrange for a loan, Mr. Pantin."
"To what amount, Mrs. Toomey?"
Mrs. Toomey considered.
"As much as you could conveniently spare."
The smile which Mr. Pantin endeavored to conceal was genuine.
"For what length of time?"
Mrs. Toomey had not thought of that.
"I could not say exactly--not off-hand like this--but I presume only
until my husband gets into something."
"Has he--er--anything definite in view?"
"I wouldn't say definite, not definite, but he has several irons in the
fire and we expect to hear soon."
"I see." Mr. Pantin's manner was urbane but, observing him closely, Mrs.
Toomey noted that his eyes suddenly presented the curious illusion of
two slate-gray pools covered with skim ice. It was not an encouraging
sign and her heart sank in spite of the superlative suavity of the tone
in which he inquired:
"What security would you be able to give, Mrs. Toomey?"
Security? Between friends? She had not expected this.
"I--I'm afraid I--we haven't any, Mr. Pantin. You know we lost
everything when we lost the ranch. But you're perfectly safe--you
needn't have a moment's anxiety about that."
Immediately it seemed as though invisible hands shot out to push her
away, yet Mr. Pantin's tone was bland as he replied:
"I should be delighted to be able to accommodate you, but just at the
present time--"
"You can't? Oh, I wish you would reconsider--as a matter of friendship.
We need it--desperately, Mr. Pantin!" Her voice shook.
Again she had the sensation of invisible hands fighting her off.
"I regret very much--"
The hopelessness of any further plea swept over her. She arose with a
gesture of despair, and Mr. Pantin, smiling, suave, urbane, bowed her
out and closed the door. He watched her go down the walk and through the
gate, noting her momentary hesitation and wondering where she might be
going in such a wind. When she started in the opposite direction from
home and walked rapidly down the road that led out of town it flashed
through his mind that she might be bent on suicide--she had looked
desperate, no mistake, but, since there was no water in which to drown
herself, and no tree from which to hang herself, and the country was so
flat that there was nothing high enough for her to jump off of and break
her neck, he concluded there was no real cause for uneasiness.
It was Mr. Pantin's proud boast that he never yet had "held the sack,"
and now he thought complacently as he turned from the window, grabbed
the shovel and whisk and leaped for an ash that had dropped, that this
was an instance where he had again shown excellent judgment in not
allowing his warm heart and impulses to control his head.