MacNutt was able to boss the job on the following day; but Kent was less
fortunate. Pains in side and head attacked him, what of the pounding he
had received. After waiting a couple of days for them to disappear, with
a healthy man's confidence in his own recuperative powers, he was driven
back to Maguire's, where he took train for Falls City. There his injured
side was strapped and he was ordered complete rest and quiet.
Early in the winter, because he was alone in the world, he had leased
his house and moved to an apartment building. This now seemed to him
about as cheerful as a prison. He longed for human companionship of some
sort, and he would have disobeyed his doctor's orders and gone out in
search of it, but for the fact that his face, covered with bruises,
would have attracted attention. But in the afternoon of his first day's
confinement came William Crooks and Miss Jack.
That young lady took charge of the situation with calm capacity.
"Now, Joe," she said, "you're coming up to the house until you're well.
Doctor's orders. So tell me what things you want and I'll pack them for
you."
"I couldn't think of troubling you," he protested. "I'm not sick, you
know. Just a cracked rib and a jolt on the head. I feel all right,
really."
"You do as you're told," she replied. She began to pull out the drawers
of his chiffonier. "What a mess your things are in! Nothing where it
ought to be. Where _do_ you keep your pajamas? Dad, look in that closet
for his suit case."
"This is kidnapping," said Joe.
"Call it what you like," chuckled Crooks. "Do as Jack tells you and quit
kicking. _I_ have to." He brought out a suit case and a deep club bag.
"Fire in what you think he needs, Jack."
Joe watched uneasily her selection of articles supposedly indispensable
to his comfort, and gave in.
"Hold on, Jack, or else get a trunk. Let me show you, if I have to go."
"That's better," said Crooks. He paused and regarded Joe critically.
"Well, you did get a pounding. Did the whole crew jump on your face?"
"It felt that way at the time," said Joe, "but you ought to see Finn
Clancy's." He told the story of the fight briefly, making little mention
of his own part in it. "So you see I was out of the fun at the wind-up,"
he concluded.
"Too bad," said Crooks with a sympathy born of personal experience.
"There will be trouble over that, though. They'll call it contempt of
court, and malicious destruction, and the Lord and Locke only know what
else."
This prophecy proved to be correct. As soon as he could be located
writs, summonses, and orders to appear and show cause showered on Joe.
These passed on to Locke, who secured delay by physicians' certificates,
affidavits, motions--all the methods by which the experienced attorney
can clog the slowly moving wheels of the law.
Meanwhile Joe nursed his knitting ribs and rested completely. Jack
established an invisible wall about him through which no business
affairs penetrated.
"Dad and Mr. Wright can look after things for a week or two," she
explained. "Mr. Locke says you needn't worry about law matters.
Everything at the camps is going well. So, young man, you just make
yourself comfortable and be lazy. That's your job for the present."
When a few days had accustomed him to inaction it proved to be a very
pleasant job. He developed an unsuspected capacity for sleep. This meant
the restorage of his nerve cells. The pains in his head lessened and
ceased, and the bruised flesh gradually assumed a normal hue.
His favourite place was Jack's den. There was a bow window with a south
exposure, and in the recess stood a huge easy-chair. Joe lay in it and
absorbed sunshine, for the days were warming and lengthening, and stared
up into the blue sky dotted with little white-wool clouds, or watched
Jack, who had made the den her workroom. He found the latter pursuit the
more entertaining.
Jack affected white, with a superb disregard of laundry bills. It set
off her lithe, straight figure, the small uplifted head with the
abundant coils of dark hair, and the pretty piquant face with the firm
yet tender mouth. From top to toe she was spotless and neat and trim and
dainty. Her conversation was a tonic in itself. She was direct of
speech, frank, and often slangy when slang best expressed her meaning.
There were many odd "characters" dependent upon the open-handed bounty
of William Crooks, and from them she had heard strange philosophies born
of twisted lives, odd expressions which occasionally crept into her
speech, and scraps of forgotten song. She had listened by the hour to
old Micky Keeliher who tended the garden; to the widowed Mrs. Quilty who
came once a week to do the washing; to crippled Angus McDougal, once a
mighty riverman, whose strength had departed, and to a dozen others. Not
one of them but would have died for William Crooks's daughter. To her
they sang the songs of their youth in cracked, quavering voices; for her
they unlocked the storehouses of their experience and gave of it freely.
She absorbed their songs, their sayings, their tales; and as nearly as
her youth would permit she understood their viewpoint of life.
Joe, buried in his chosen chair, listened to the queer tunes she
lilted--tunes which had stirred the hearts of by-gone generations in
other lands--and by turns stared at the bright out-of-doors and slept.
And Jack, on her part, felt a strange happiness, as if the room held all
that was best and most to be desired. She did not analyze the feeling;
she was content that it was hers. Bending over her sewing one bright
afternoon during the last days of Joe's convalescence she crooned:
"Is it far away ye're goin', Danny, dear?
Is it lavin' me ye arre, widout a tear?
Sure the ship's white sails is swellin',
But it's this to ye I'm tellin'--
Ye shall love an' seek me out widin the year,
"By the spell that's laid upon ye ye shall come agin to me,
The dear, bould, handsome head of ye shall drop upon me knee.
While ye sleep or while ye wake,
It's the heart of ye shall ache
Wid love o' that poor weepin' gyurl ye left beside the sea!"
"That's a cheerful song," said Joe ironically from his chair. "Did he
come back?"
"Of course," laughed Jack. "Unfortunately, he died as his head touched
her knee, and naturally she was inconsolable. Like to hear her lament?"
She drew her face into lines of sorrow and threw back her head in a
preliminary wail, as a dog howls.
E-e-yah-h-h! Oh, why did he die?
Oh-h-h-h, why did----
"Stop!" cried Joe. "Look here, Jack, remember I'm an interesting
invalid. I want something cheerful."
"Well, that _is_ comparatively cheerful. Now, if I sang you a real
Hielan' lament----"
"Don't you dare," Joe interrupted. "I am still far from strong."
Jack laughed. "You smoked yesterday. Doctor Eberts says that a man who
can enjoy a smoke is well enough to work."
"Good for the doc!" cried Joe. "Me for the office and then back to the
woods. Hooray!"
"Not for a day or two," said Jack. "Things are going all right. You keep
quiet."
Joe sank back in his chair. "I suppose so, but--well, I want to look
after them myself." Far off against the blue sky a wedge of black specks
bored through space, swinging off beyond the limits of the town. "Look,
Jack! The first geese going north. That means the end of winter and open
water. We'll start our drives in a few weeks."
"Yes, Joe." She perched on the arm of the big chair and stared after the
birds, her face clouded with discontent. "That's life, and you can live
it. Oh, heavens! Why wasn't I a boy? I'd love it so. I want to go up to
the camps and see the rollways broken out and the banking grounds
emptied. I want to wear spiked boots and ride a stick in white water and
use a peavey. I want to come back to the wanegan at night, and eat and
dry off by a big fire and sleep out of doors. I want--don't you dare to
laugh at me, Joe Kent--I want to come into town with the bully-boys,
with a hat pulled down over my eyes and a cigar in my mouth sticking up
at an angle, and sing 'Jimmy Judge,' and 'From Far Temiskamang.' I
want"--she faced him defiantly--"I want to ride up town in a hack--_with
my feet out of the window!_ Yes, I do. And now tell me you are shocked."
"I might be if I saw you do it," said Joe. "I've felt the same way
myself--like breaking loose from everything. If you were a man you
wouldn't, though. Only the shanty boys tear off these stunts. _We_
can't."
"All very well for you to talk--you could if you wanted to," said Jack
disconsolately. "I'm a girl. I can't even go up to the camps unless dad
takes me." She voiced her grievance again. "I wish I had been a boy."
She turned to the window and stared out. Joe rose and stood beside her,
looking down at the burnished brown of her hair and the soft profile of
her cheek. Once more the nameless thrill he had felt before when he had
touched her hand possessed him. Hesitatingly, awkwardly, impelled by
something which was not of his own volition, he put his arm around her.
Instantly, as if a curtain had been rolled up--as if a screen had been
withdrawn--he saw his own mind clearly.
Why, he loved her!
It came to him with a shock of utter amazement. Little Jack Crooks, his
playmate, his friend, his confidant, the girl he had looked at so long
with unseeing eyes--she, she was the only woman in the wide world for
him. She had always been the only one. Edith Garwood? Pshaw! How could
he have been so blind? Not all her radiant beauty and deceptive
sweetness could compare with straight, loyal, little Jack, his chum and
his love.
She seemed unconscious of his arm until he spoke her name. Then she
turned her head slowly and her dark eyes looked directly into his. What
she saw there brought the red to her cheeks in a wave. Up and up the
telltale crimson tide leaped to her brow, to the roots of her glossy
brown hair, but her gaze did not waver.
"Should you, Joe?" she asked simply.
Stumblingly, humbly he told her, and she listened, nestling in his arms
as one who has found her own place. And so, when bluff old William
Crooks came home, he found them sitting in the twilight, planning
wonderful things. Joe put the situation simply.
"Jack has consented to marry me, sir."
William Crooks stared at him and then at his daughter.
"Fact, dad," she confirmed.
"Well, I'll be--" began Crooks out of his unbounded astonishment.