ARRIVALS IN THE NIGHT
Murray McTavish was standing before the glowing wood stove when Alec
entered the room. The factor was gazing down at the iron box of it
with his fat, strong hands outspread to the warmth. He was not cold.
He had no desire for the warmth. He was thinking.
He was not a prepossessing figure. His clothing bulged in almost every
direction. In age this loses its ugliness. In a young man there is no
more painful disadvantage. His dark hair was smoothly brushed, almost
to sleekness. His clothing was good, and by no means characteristic of
the country. He was the epitome of a business man of civilization,
given, perhaps, to indulgence in the luxuries of the table. Nature had
acted unkindly by him. He knew it, and resented it with passionate
bitterness.
Alec Mowbray displayed no hesitation. He entered the room quickly, and
in a truculent way, and closed the door with some sharpness behind him.
The action displayed his mood. And something of his character, too.
Murray took him in from head to foot without appearing to observe him.
Nor was his regard untinged with envy. The youngster was over six feet
in height. In his way he was as handsome as his mother had been.
There was much of his dead father about him, too. But his eyes had
none of the steadiness of either of his parents. His mouth was soft,
and his chin was too pointed, and without the thrust of power. But for
all these things his looks were beyond question. His fair, crisply
curling hair, his handsome eyes, must have given him an appeal to
almost any woman. Murray felt that this was so. He envied him and----
He looked definitely in the boy's direction in response to a rough
challenge.
"Well--what is it?"
Murray's shining eyes gazed steadily at him. The smile so usual to him
had been carefully set aside. It left his face almost expressionless
as he replied.
"I want to tell you I'm sorry for--this afternoon. Darn sorry. I was
on the jump with work, and didn't pause to think. I hadn't the right
to act the way I did. And--well, I guess I'm real sorry. Will you
shake?"
The boy was all impulse, and his impulses were untainted by anything
more serious than hot-headed resentment and momentary intolerance.
Much of his dislike of Murray was irresponsible instinct. He knew, in
his calmer moments, he had neither desire nor reason to dislike Murray.
Somehow the dislike had grown up with him, as sometimes a boy's dislike
of some one in authority over him grows up--without reason or
understanding.
But Murray's amends were too deliberate and definite to fail to appeal
to all that was most generous and impulsive in Alec. It was impossible
for him to listen to a man like Murray, generously apologizing to him,
without going more than half-way to meet him. His face cleared of its
shadow. His hot eyes smiled, as many times Murray had seen his mother
smile. He came towards the stove with outstretched hand. A hand that
could crush like a vice.
"Why, you just don't need to say another word, Murray," he exclaimed.
"And, anyway, I guess you were right. I'd slacked on those pelts and
knew it, and--and that's what made me mad--you lighting on it."
The two men shook hands, and Alec, as he withdrew his, passed it across
his forehead and ran his fingers through his hair.
"But say, Murray," he went on, in a tone of friendliness that rarely
existed between them. "I'm sick. Sick to death with it all--and
that's about the whole of the trouble. It's no sort of good. I can't
even keep my mind on the work, let alone do it right. I hate the old
store. Guess I must get out. I need to feel I can breathe. I need to
live. Say, I feel like some darn cabbage setting around in the middle
of a patch. Jess doesn't understand. Mother doesn't. Sometimes I
kind of fancy Father José understands. But you know. You've lived in
the world. You've seen it all, and know it. Well, say, am I to be
kept around this forgotten land till my whiskers freeze into sloppy
icicles? I just can't do it. I've tried. Maybe you'll never know how
I've tried--because of mother, and Jess, and the old dad. Well, I've
quit now. I've got to get out a while, or--or things are going to
bust. Do you know how I feel? Do you get me? I'll be crazy with six
months more of this Fort, and these rotten neches. Gee! When I think
how John Kars has lived, and where he's lived, it gets me beat seeing
him hunting the long trail in these back lands."
Murray's smile had returned. But it was encouraging and friendly, and
lacked all fixity.
"Maybe the other life set him crazy, same as this is fixing you," he
said, with perfect amiability.
The boy laughed incredulously. He flung himself into his mother's
chair, and looked up at Murray's face above the stove.
"I don't believe that life could set folk crazy. There's too much to
it," he laughed. He went on a moment later with a warmth of enthusiasm
that must have been heart-breaking to those of greater experience.
"Think of a city," he cried, almost ecstatically. "A big, live city.
All lights at night, and all rushing in daylight. Men eager and
striving in competition. Meeting, and doing, and living. Women,
beautiful, and dressed like pictures, with never a thought but the joy
of life, and the luxury of it all. And these folk without a smell of
the dollars we possess. Folk without a difference from us. Think of
the houses, the shows, the railroads. The street cars. The sleighs.
The automobiles. The hotels. The dance halls. The--the--oh, gee, it
makes me sick to think of all I've missed and you've seen. I can't--I
just can't stand for it much longer."
Murray nodded.
"Guess I--understand." Then, in a moment, his eyes became serious, as
though some feeling stirred them that prompted a warning he was
powerless to withhold. "It's an elegant picture, the way you see it.
But it's not the only picture. The other picture comes later in life,
and if I tried to paint it for you I don't reckon you'd be able to see
it--till later in life. Anyway, a man needs to make his own
experience. Guess the world's all you see in it, sure. But there's a
whole heap in it you don't see--now. Say, and those things you don't
see are darn ugly. So ugly the time'll come you can't stand for 'em
any more than you can stand for the dozy life around here now. Those
folk you see in your dandy picture are wage slaves worshiping the gods
of this darned wilderness just as we are right here. Just as are all
the folks who come around this country, and I'd say there's many folks
hating all the things you fancy, as bad as you hate the life you've
been raised to right here. Still, I guess it's up to you."
"I'd give a heap to have mother think that way," Alec responded with a
shade of moodiness.
"She does think that way."
The youngster sprang from his chair. His eyes were shining, and a
joyous flush mounted to his handsome brow. There was no mistaking the
reckless youth in him.
"She does? Then--say, it's you who've persuaded her. There hasn't
been a day she hasn't tried to keep me right here, like--like some darn
kid. She figgers it's up to me to choose what I'll do?" he cried
incredulously.
Murray nodded. His eyes were studying the youth closely.
"Then I'll tell her right away." Alec laughed a whole-hearted,
care-free laugh. "I'll ask her for a stake, and then for Leaping
Horse. Maybe Seattle, and 'Frisco--New York! Murray, if you've done
this for me, I'm your slave for life. Say, I'd come near washing your
clothes for you, and I can't think of a thing lower. You'll back me
when I put it to her?"
"There's no need. She'll do just as you say."
Murray's moment of serious regard had passed. He was smiling his
inscrutable smile again.
"When? When?"
The eagerness of it. It was almost tragic.
"Best go down with me," Murray said. "I'm making Leaping Horse early
this fall on the winter trail. I'm needing stocks. I'm needing arms
and stuff. How'd that fix you?"
"Bully!" Then the boy laughed out of the joy of his heart. "But fix
it early. Fix it good and early."
The exclamation came in such a tone that pity seemed the only emotion
for it to inspire.
But Murray had finished. Whatever he felt there was no display of any
emotion in him. And pity the least of all. He crossed to the door
which opened into the kitchen. He opened it. In response to his call
Ailsa Mowbray appeared, followed by Jessie.
Murray indicated Alec with a nod.
"We're good friends again," he said. "We've acted like two school
kids, eh, Alec?" he added. "And now we've made it up. Alec figgers
he'd like to go down with me this fall to Leaping Horse, Seattle,
'Frisco, and maybe even New York. I told him I guessed you'd stake
him."
The widowed mother did not reply at once. The aging face was turned in
the direction of the son who meant so much to her. Her eyes, so
handsome and steady, were wistful. They gazed into the joy-lit face of
her boy. She could not deny him.
"Sure, Alec, dear. Just ask me what you need--if you must go."
Jessie gazed from one to the other of the three people her life seemed
bound up with. Alec she loved but feared for, in her girlish wisdom.
Murray she did not understand. Her mother she loved with a devotion
redoubled since her father's murder. Moreover, she regarded her with
perfect trust in her wisdom.
The change wrought by Murray in a few minutes, however, was too
startling for her. Their destinies almost seemed to be swayed by him.
It seemed to her alarming, and not without a vague suggestion of terror.
Father José was lounging over his own wood stove in the comfort of a
pair of felt slippers, his feet propped up on the seat of another chair.
He was a quaint little figure in his black, unclerical suit, and the
warm cloth cap of a like hue drawn carefully over a wide expanse of
baldness which Nature had imposed upon him. His alert face, with its
eyes whose keenness was remarkable and whose color nearly matched the
fringe of gray hair still left to him, gave him an interest which
gained nothing from his surroundings in the simple life he lived. It
was a face of intellect, and gentle-heartedness. It was a face of
purpose, too. The purpose which urges the humbler devotee to a charity
which takes the form of human rather than mere spiritual help.
Father José loved humanity because it was humanity. Creed and race
made no difference to him. It was his way to stand beside the stile of
Life ready to help any, and everybody, over it who needed his help. He
saw little beyond that. He concerned himself with no doctrine in the
process. Help--physical, moral. That was his creed. And every day of
his life he lived up to it.
The habits of the white folk at St. Agatha Mission varied little enough
from day to day. It was the custom to foregather at Mrs. Mowbray's
home in the evening. After which, with unfailing regularity, Murray
McTavish was wont to join the little priest in his Mission House for a
few minutes before retiring for the night to his sleeping quarters up
at the Fort.
It was eleven o'clock, and the two men were together now in the shanty
which served the priest as a home.
It was a pathetic parody of all that home usually conveys. The comfort
of it was only the comfort radiating from the contentment of the owner
in it. Its structure was powerful to resist storm. Its furnishing was
that which the priest had been able to manufacture himself. But the
stove had been a present from Allan Mowbray. The walls were whitened
with a lime wash which disguised the primitive plaster filling in
between the lateral logs. There were some photographs pinned up to
help disguise other defects. There were odds and ends of bookshelves
hung about, all laden to the limit of their capacity with a library
which had been laboriously collected during the long life of Mission
work. Four rough chairs formed the seating accommodation. A table,
made with a great expenditure of labor, and covered with an old
blanket, served as a desk. Then, at the far end of the room, under a
cotton ceiling, to save them from the dust from the thatch above, stood
four trestle beds, each with ample blankets spread over it. Three of
these were for wayfarers, and the fourth, in emergency, for the same
purpose. Otherwise the fourth was Father José's own bed. Behind this
building, and opening out of it, was a kitchen. This was the entire
habitation of a man who had dedicated his life to the service of others.
Murray was sitting at the other side of the stove and his bulky figure
was only partly visible to the priest from behind the stovepipe. Both
men were smoking their final pipe before retiring. The priest was
listening to the trader in that watchful manner of one deeply
interested. They were talking of Alec, and the prospects of the new
decision. Murray's thoughts were finding harsh expression.
"Say, we're all between the devil and the deep sea," he said, with a
hard laugh. "The boy's only fit to be tied to a woman's strings.
That's how I see it. Just as I see the other side of it. He's got to
be allowed to make his own gait. If he doesn't, why--things are just
going to break some way."
The priest nodded. He was troubled, and his trouble looked out of his
keen eyes.
"Yes," he agreed. "And the devil's mostly in the deep waters, too.
It's devil all around."
"Sure it is." Murray bent down to the stove and lit a twist of paper
for his pipe. "Do you know the thing that's going to happen? When we
get clear away from here, and that boy's pocket is filled with the
bills his ma has handed him, I'll have as much hold on him as he's
going to have on those dollars. If I butt in he'll send me to hell
quick. And if I don't feel like taking his dope lying down there'll be
something like murder done. If I'm any judge of boys, or men, that
kid's going to find every muck hole in Leaping Horse--and there's
some--and he's going to wallow in 'em till some one comes along and
hauls him clear of the filth. What he's going to be like after--why,
the thought makes me sweat! And Allan--Allan was my friend."
"But--you advised his mother?" The priest's eyes were searching.
Murray crushed his paper tight in his hand.
"How'd you have done?" he demanded shortly.
The priest weighed his words before replying.
"The same as you," he said at last. "Life's full up of pot holes. We
can't learn to navigate right if we don't fall into some of them. I've
taught that boy from his first days. He's the makings of anything, in
a way. He can't be kept here. He's got to get out, and work off his
youthful insanity. Whatever comes of it, it won't be so bad as if he
stopped around. I think you've done the best." He sighed. "We must
hope, and watch, and--be ready to help when the signal comes. God
grant he comes to no----"
He broke off and turned towards the heavy closed door of the shanty, in
response to a sharp knocking. In a moment he was on his feet as the
door was thrust open, and two familiar figures pushed their way in.
"Why, John Kars, this is the best sight I've had in weeks," cried the
priest, with cordiality in every tone of his voice, and every feature
of his honest face. "And, Dr. Bill, too? This is fine. Come right
in."
The Padre's cordiality found full reflection in his visitors' faces as
they wrung his hand.
"It's been some hustle getting here," said Kars. "There wasn't a
chance sending on word. We made the landing, and came right along up.
Ha, Murray. Say, we're in luck."
Both men shook hands with the factor, while the priest drew up the
other chairs to the stove, which he replenished with a fresh supply of
logs from the corner of the room.
"But I guess we're birds of bad omen," Kars went on, addressing Murray
in particular. "The neches are out on Bell River, and they sniped us
right along down to within twenty miles of the Fort."
"The Bell River neches within twenty miles of the Fort?"
It was the priest who answered him. His question was full of alarm.
He was thinking of the women of the Mission, white as well as colored.
Murray remained silent while Kars and Bill dropped wearily into the
chairs set for them. Then, as the great bulk of the man he disliked
settled itself, and he held out his chilled hands to the comforting
stove, his voice broke the silence which followed on the priest's
expression of alarm.
"Best tell us it right away. We'll need to act quick," he said, his
eyes shining under the emotion stirring him.
Kars looked across at the gross figure which suggested so little of the
man's real energy. His steady eyes were unreadable. His thoughts were
his own, masked as emphatically as any Indian chief's at a council.
"They handed me this," he said, with a hard laugh, indicating the
bandage which still surrounded his neck, although his wound had almost
completely healed under the skilful treatment of Dr. Bill. "We hit
their trail nearly two days from Bell River. They'd massacred an
outfit of traveling Indians, and burnt their camp out. However, we
kept ahead of them, and made the headwaters of the river. But we
didn't shake 'em. Not by a sight. They hung on our trail, I guess,
for nearly three weeks. We lost 'em twenty miles back. That's all."
Bill and the priest sat with eyes on Murray. The responsibility of the
post was his. Kars, too, seemed to be looking to the factor.
Murray gave no outward sign for some moments. His dark eyes were
burning with the deep fires which belonged to them. He sat still.
Quite still. Then he spoke, and something of the force of the man rang
in his words.
"We got the arms for an outfit. But I don't guess we got enough for
defence of the post. It can't come to that. We daren't let it. I'm
getting a big outfit up this fall. Meanwhile, we'll need to get busy."
He pulled out his timepiece and studied it deliberately. Then he
closed its case with a snap and stood up. He looked down into Kars'
watchful eyes.
"They're on the river? Twenty miles back?"
His questions came sharply, and Kars nodded.
"They're in big force?"
Again Kars made a sign, but this time in the negative.
"I don't think it," he said.
"Right. I'll be on the trail in an hour."
The factor turned to the Padre.
"Say, just rouse out the boys while I get other things fixed. There
isn't a minute to waste."
He waited for no reply, but turned at once to Kars and Bill.
"Maybe you fellers'll keep your outfit right here. There's the
women-folk. It's in case of--accident?"
"I'll join you, and leave Bill, here, with the Padre and the outfit."
Kars' suggestion came on the instant.
But Murray vetoed it promptly. He shook his head.
"It's up to me," he said curtly. Then he became more expansive.
"You've had yours. I'm looking for mine. I'm getting out for the sake
of the women-folk. That's why I'm asking you to stop right here. You
can't tell. Maybe they'll need all the help we can hand them. I've
always figgered on this play. Best act my way."
There was something like a flicker of the eyelid as Kars acquiesced
with a nod. Except for that his rugged face was deadly serious. He
filled his pipe with a leisureliness which seemed incompatible with the
conditions of the moment. Bill seemed to be engrossed in the study of
the stove. Murray had turned to the Padre.
"Not a word to the women. We don't need to scare them. This thing's
got to be fixed sudden and sharp."
A moment later he was gone.
The Padre was climbing into a heavy overcoat. The night was chill
enough, and the little missionary had more warmth in his heart than he
had in his blood channels. He moved across to the door to do his part
of the work, when Kars' voice arrested him.
"Say, Padre," he cried, "don't feel worried too much. Murray'll fix
things."
His eyes were smiling as the priest turned and looked into them. Bill
was smiling, too.
"They _are_ twenty miles back--on the river?"
The priest's demand was significant. The smiles of these men had
raised a doubt in his mind.
"Sure."
"Then--the position's bad."
Bill Brudenell spoke for the first time.
"The post and Mission's safe--anyway. Murray'll see to that."