XX

There was peace and harmony in the home of the Reverend Taylor. An air

of neatness and prosperity was about his four-room adobe house. The

mocking-bird that hung in a willow cage against the white wall, by the

door, whistled sweet mimicry of the cheep of the little chickens in the

back yard, and hopped to and fro and up and down on his perches, pecking

at the red chili between the bars. From the corner of his eyes he could

peek into the window, and it was bright with potted geraniums, white as

the wall, or red as the chili, or pink as the little crumpled palm that

patted against the glass to him.

He whistled more cheerily yet when he saw that small hand. He was a tame

mocking-bird, and he had learned to eat dead flies from it. That was one

of the greatest treats of his highly satisfactory life. The hand left

the window and presently waved from the doorway.

The Reverend Taylor stood there with his son in his arms. The

mocking-bird trilled out a laugh to the evening air. It was

irresistible, so droll that even a bird must know it,--the likeness

between the little father and the little son. There was the same big

head and the big ears and the big eyes and the body that was too small

for them all, a little, thin body, active and quivering with energy.

There were the very same wrinkles about the baby's lids, crinkles of

good humor and kindly tolerance, and the very same tufts of hair running

the wrong way and sticking out at the temples.

The tufts were fuzzy yellow instead of gray, and the miniature face had

not yet grown tanned and hard with the wind and the sun, but those were

mere details. The general effect was perfect. There was no mistaking

that the lively fraction of humanity in the Reverend Taylor's arms was

the little Reverend. That was the only name he went by, though he had

been christened properly on the day he was six months old, Joshua for

his father and Randolph for his mother, in memory of Virginia, and her

own long maidenhood. She was herself a Randolph, and she wanted the fact

perpetuated. But in Tombstone, Joshua Randolph Taylor was simply the

little Reverend.

The little Reverend was the first thing on earth to his father. For the

wife had made that step in advance, which is yet a step in descent in a

woman's life, when she becomes to her husband less herself than the

mother of his child.

The Reverend Taylor grabbed at a fly and caught it in his palm. He had

become very expert at this, to his wife's admiration and his son's keen

delight. It was because the little Reverend liked to see him do it, and

derived so much elfish enjoyment from the trick, that he had perfected

himself in it. He gave the crushed fly to the baby, and held him up to

feed the bird. The bird put its head through the bars and pecked with

its whiskered bill, and the little Reverend gurgled joyfully, his small

face wrinkling up in a way which was really not pretty, but which his

father thought the most engaging expression in the world.

The puppy which had been born the same day as the little Reverend, a

beast half coyote, half shepherd, and wholly hideous, came and sat

itself down beside them on the sill, looked up with its tongue hanging

out to one side, and smiled widely. The beaming good nature of the two

Reverends was infectious. The baby squealed gleefully, and kicked until

it was set down on the doorstep to pat the dog.

Presently the nurse came, a big, fat Mexican woman, with all her

people's love of children showing on her moon face as she put out her

arms. She had been with the Taylors since before the baby's birth, and

she had more of its affection than the mother.

The little Reverend understood only Spanish, and his few words,

pronounced with a precision altogether in keeping with his appearance,

were Spanish ones. The old nurse murmured softly, as she took him up,

"_Quieres leche hombrecito, quieres cenar? El chuchu tiene hambre

tambien. Vamos á ver mamá._"

The little Reverend was not to be blandished. He was willing to go

because it was his supper time and he knew it, but the big-eyed look of

understanding he turned up to the gentle, fat face said plainly enough

that he was too wise a creature to be wheedled. He submitted to be

carried in, but he cast a regretful glance at the "chuchu," which sat

still in the doorway, and at his father, who was watching the line of

flying ants making their way, a stream of red bodies and sizzing white

wings, out of the window and across the street.

They had been doing that for three days. They came down the chimney,

made across the floor in a line that never changed direction, nor

straggled, nor lessened, up the wall and out a crack in the window. They

did no harm, but followed blindly on in the path the first one had

taken. And the minister had said they should not be smoked back or

thwarted.

The little Reverend had been much interested in them also. He had sat

for several hours sucking an empty spool, and observing them narrowly,

in perfect silence. His father had great hopes of him as a naturalist.

Finally the minister raised his eyes and looked down the street. It was

almost empty, save for two men in high-heeled top boots and sombreros

who sat in chairs tilted back against the post-office wall, meditating

in mutual silence. The only sounds were the rattling of dishes over in

his mother-in-law's restaurant across the street, and the sleepy

cheeping of the little chickens in his own back yard, as they cuddled

under their mother's wing.

The Reverend Taylor was about to go to the coops and close them for the

night, when he saw a man and a woman on horseback coming up the street.

The woman was bending forward and swaying in her saddle. He stood still

and watched. The red sunset blaze was in his face so that he could not

see plainly until they were quite near. Then he knew that it was

Cairness and--yes, beyond a doubt--Bill Lawton's runaway wife.

They halted in front of him, and the woman swayed again, so much that he

ran to her side. But she righted herself fiercely. Cairness was

dismounted and was beside her, too, in an instant. He lifted her from

the horse, pulled her down, more or less; she was much too ungainly to

handle with any grace.

"May I take her in?" he said, nodding toward the open door.

"Surely," said the minister, "surely." There might have been men who

would have remembered that Mrs. Lawton was a tough woman, even for a

mining town, and who would in the names of their own wives have refused

to let her cross the threshold of their homes. But he saw that she was

ill, and he did not so much as hesitate.

Cairness put his arm around the big angular shoulders and helped her

into the sitting room. She dropped down upon the sofa, and sat there,

her head hanging, but in sullenness, not humility.

Mrs. Taylor came to the dining-room door and looked in. "Can I do

anything?" she asked.

"Come in," said her husband. He was pouring out a drink of whiskey.

She came and stood watching, asking no questions, while the woman on the

sofa gulped down the raw whiskey and gave back the glass.

Cairness had gone out to hitch the horses. When he came in he spoke to

Mrs. Lawton, as one possessed of authority. He told her to lie down if

she wanted to. "With your leave, Mrs. Taylor?" he added. Mrs. Taylor was

already beside her, fussing kindly and being met with scant courtesy.

Cairness took the Reverend Taylor to the door. "You know that is Bill

Lawton's wife?" he said.

Taylor nodded.

"The one who sloped with the Greaser?"

The parson nodded again.

"Do you object to taking her into your house for a short time?"

The Reverend Taylor did not object.

"And your wife?"

"She will shrink, I guess, at first," he admitted. "Women who ain't seen

much of life kind of think they ought to draw aside their skirts, and

all that. They were taught copy-book morals about touching pitch, I

reckon,"--he was wise concerning women now--"and it takes a good deal of

hard experience to teach them that it ain't so. But she'll take my word

for it."

"She is ill, you see?"

The parson had seen.

"She may be ill some time. Would it be asking too much of you to look

after her?" The bachelor showed in that.

Taylor realized from the Benedict's greater knowledge that it was asking

a great deal, but still not too much. He assured Cairness that she

should be cared for.

"She was a captive among the Chiricahuas up in the Sierra Madre. She's

had a hard time of it. That and the return march have been too much for

her."

The parson expressed pity--and felt it, which is more.

"Yes," Cairness said, "of course it's hard luck, but she's deserved it

all, and more too. You may as well know the whole thing now. It's only

fair. She and her husband were the cause of the Kirby massacre. Drove

off the stock from the corrals and left them no escape."

His teeth set. The little man gasped audibly. "Good God!" he said, "I--"

he stopped.

"I rather thought that might be too much for even you," said Cairness.

"No, no; it's a good deal, but it ain't too much. Not that it could be

more, very well," he added, and he glanced furtively at the woman

within, who had stretched out on the lounge with her face to the wall.

Mrs. Taylor was fanning her.

"You will still keep her then?" Cairness wished to know.

He would still keep her, yes. But he did not see that it would be in the

least necessary to tell his wife the whole of the woman's iniquity. It

took quite all his courage, after they had gotten her safely in bed, to

remind her that this was the same woman who had gone off with the

Mexican.

Mrs. Taylor folded her hands in her lap, and simply looked at him.

"Well?" said he, questioningly, setting his mouth. It answered to the

duellist's "On guard!" She had seen him set his mouth before, and she

knew that it meant that he was not to be opposed. Nevertheless there was

a principle involved now. It must be fought for. And it would be the

first fight of their marriage, too. As he had told Cairness once, she

was very amiable.

"Well," she answered, "I think you have done an unspeakable thing, that

is all."

"Such as--"

"To have brought an abandoned woman into our home."

"If her presence blackens the walls, we will have them whitewashed."

But she was not to be turned off with levity. It was a serious matter,

involving consequences of the sternest sort. Mrs. Taylor was of the

class of minds which holds that just such laxities as this strike at the

root of society. "It is not a joke, Joshua. She pollutes our home."

"Are you afraid she will contaminate me?" he asked. He was peering at

her over the top of a newspaper.

She denied the idea emphatically.

"Baby, then?"

Equally absurd.

"Or the nurse?"

It was too foolish to answer.

"Then," said the Reverend Taylor, laying down the paper, "you must be

scared for yourself."

"Never!" she declared; it was merely because she could not breathe the

same air with that creature.

"I wonder, my dear, what sort of air you breathed in your mother's

restaurant at meal times?"

Mrs. Taylor was silent. Her pop blue eyes shifted.

"Trouble is," he went on evenly, "trouble is, that, like most women,

you've been brought up to take copy-book sentiments about touchin'

pitch, and all that, literal. You don't stop to remember that to eat

with unwashen hands defileth not a man. If she can't do you any harm

spiritually, she certainly ain't got the strength to do it physically. I

can't say as I'd like to have her about the place all the time unless

she was going to reform,--and I don't take much stock in change of

heart, with her sort,--because she wouldn't be a pleasant companion, and

it ain't well to countenance vice. But while she's sick, and it will

oblige Cairness, she can have the shelter of my manta. You think so too,

now, don't you?" he soothed.

But she was not sure that she thought so. She wanted to know why the

woman could not be sent to the hotel, and he explained that Cairness

wished a very close watch kept on her until she was able to be up.

Curiosity got the better of outraged virtue then. "Why?" she asked, and

leaned forward eagerly.

But the Reverend Taylor's lips set again, and he shrugged his narrow

shoulders. "I'm not certain myself," he said shortly.

An eminent student of the sex has somewhere said that women are like

monkeys, in that they are imitative. The comparison goes further. There

is a certain inability in a monkey to follow out a train of thought, or

of action, to its conclusion, which is shared by the major part of

womankind. It is a feminine characteristic to spend life and much energy

on side issues. The lady forgot almost all about her original premise.

She wished especially to know that which no power upon earth would

induce her lord to tell.

He took up his paper again. "He ain't told me the whole thing yet," he

said.

She wished to hear as much as he had confided.

The Reverend Taylor shook his head. "I may tell you sometime, but not

now. In the meanwhile I'm sure you think we had better keep Mrs. Lawton

here, don't you now?"

She did not. She would as lief touch a toad.

"Ain't it funny how narrow-minded some good women can be, though?" he

speculated, looking at her very much as he was in the habit of looking

at his specimens. And he quoted slowly, as if he were saying over the

names and family characteristics of a specimen.

"'And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give

my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.' I

wonder how many women who have lived up to every word of the Decalogue

have made it all profitless for want of a little charity?"

She asked, with the flat Virginia accent of the vowels, if he would

like her to go and embrace the woman, and request her to make their home

henceforth her own.

"No," he said, "I wouldn't like you to, and she wouldn't want it, I

reckon." He dropped back into his usual speech. "She ain't any repentant

sinner, by a good deal. But as Cairness wants me to keep an eye on her,

and as she's sick, I wish you to let her stay in the house, and not to

make a rumpus about it. If you really don't like to go near her,

though," he finished, "I'll tell you what I'll do, I'll take her in her

food myself, and nurse can clean out her room."

Perhaps the Scripture texts had taught their lesson, or perhaps there

yet lingered a hope of learning that which her husband would not tell.

Anyway, for the week which the woman lay on the cot in the little

whitewashed chamber, which had no outlet save through the sitting room

where some one was always on guard night and day, Mrs. Taylor served her

with a good enough grace.

When she was able to be up, Cairness went in to see her. She was sitting

on a chair, and looking sulkily out of the window. "You got me jailed

all right," she sneered, "ain't you?" and she motioned to the grating of

iron.

"You can go whenever you like now," Cairness told her. She demanded to

know where she was to go to, and he answered that that was not his

affair, but that he would suggest a safe distance. "Somebody else

getting hold of the truth of the Kirby business mightn't be so easy on

you as I am."

"How do I know you're done with me yet?" she snapped.

He told her that she didn't know it, because he was not; and then he

explained to her. "What I want of you now is for you to come over with

Taylor and me to see Stone."