That broke me, because I mapped so hard and set so much store.... Bit
by bit Bart showed me he’d have his way--taking his whippings easy,
looking white, but ready to laugh, and going his own way just the same
afterward. I never seemed able to do the right thing by him; couldn’t
let him alone; cared too much, I guess--the kind of care that hurts.
Why, I’d get lonesome for him when he was right in the room, and flare
up over things I’d never dream of getting sore about in any one else.
Altogether, what I didn’t know in them days was so much, young man,
that I’ve been fillin’ in ever since, and ain’t through yet.’
IV
‘ARE YOU DOOMED?’
AFTER they had parted, on the night of their first supper together,
Elbert fell to thinking of his own relationships at home. This occupied
him for an hour or two before going to bed--mixed in with memories of
what he had heard about Mr. Leadley’s missing son, and old days on the
Rio Brava. He saw for the first time that there were two sides to this
father-and-son business; that it was just possible a man might be able
to talk to another man, saying things he couldn’t tell his own son.
Moreover, Elbert was able to see something of the tangle between Bart
and his father with a clearness that had never come to him in regard to
his own affairs.
He was a touch lonely that night, but queerly glad, for the first time,
that he had never shown the knack to ‘work’ his father. All regret
eased about that; better as it was.
Mr. Leadley didn’t appear to be in any hurry to get back to his mine.
It seemed to do him good to talk about the old days. Elbert listened
eagerly, especially about Bart as a horseman.
‘You see, he learned all we knew about hosses and all that the Mexicans
know besides. He rode light, his hand quick, a sort of kidding way with
him that got right into the good feelings of a hoss. I made him give
up a bad one once and I had no right to do that, but I didn’t see it
straight until afterward. It was an old gray outlaw he brought home
from a near-by ranch--a discard, but Bart was sitting him upright and
amiable. That hoss pretty near finished me. I’m limpin’ yet, on rainy
days, from tryin’ to correct his misdemeanors. And because I couldn’t,
it bore down on me not to let Bart ride him, who could. That was
another mistake.... A hossman at ten, Bart was; had to have his six-gun
before he was twelve. He could fan it, too. No use me tryin’ to keep
him from it, and the fellows I worked with at the mines whisperin’ that
he’d kill himself--that he wouldn’t live to be hanged. You always hear
what you’re afraid of.
‘Slim, black-haired, easy smilin’ and Spanish on his tongue, Mexican
spurs and reata, more interested in guitar music than gold mining,
and off by himself or with the Mexicans instead of with his own kind.
You know, Bart’s mother was Spanish.... Yet any one could see Bart
was game and gritty--life a feather to him--take it or leave it;
laughin’ but dangerous. No, they couldn’t see it, either,’ Mr. Leadley
finished abruptly. ‘I’m talking from a distance, from where I am now,
I didn’t see it myself then--not rightly, I didn’t. I’m shore gettin’
talkative.’
‘I like to hear about him,’ said Elbert.
‘Now as to that, I had a queer feelin’ you did from the first day
I came to the leather-store. Guess that’s why I’ve kept hangin’
around--that, and your bein’ about Bart’s age and size.’
* * * * *
And yet, if it hadn’t been for the curious sensitiveness within him
that registered Mr. Leadley’s feelings, Elbert would have thought that
the other was merely recalling matters of pleasantness from years ago.
Finally one evening, after talk touching Bart’s prolonged stay below
the Border, Elbert said:
‘I’d certainly like to get somewhere down in Sonora.’
‘Don’t you ever draw a vacation at your store?’
Elbert laughed. ‘I’ve only been there a few weeks.’
‘I’d hate to cause any disaster in the leather business--’
‘How do you mean?’
The other’s voice became husky with strain. ‘I was thinkin’ as a
starter, possibly, you might come over to my claim on your vacation.’
It began to appear more and more feasible as they talked. Directions
opened right here at the Plaza. Elbert was told that an old friend and
mining partner of Mr. Leadley’s--Mort Cotton, now a cattleman, the
same to whom the saddle had been shipped--would meet him at San Forenso
and drive him up as far as the road went on the way to the mine.
‘That’s at Slim Stake Camp,’ Mr. Leadley added. ‘From there you just
keep on hikin’ up the canyon trail till you come to White Stone Flats,
where I’ll be watchin’ for you--’
It sounded somewhat complicated to Elbert. ‘But suppose I should miss
the trail?’ he said.
‘I can’t see how you could, unless you got headstrong--’
‘But how am I to know when I get to White Stone Flats?’
‘By composin’ yourself to listen a little longer. First you see two big
pines less’n twenty feet apart, still alive, but showing marks of a
forest fire ten or twelve years back.’
‘I’m afraid I wouldn’t know how a tree would look, twelve years after a
forest fire--’
‘Right, you wouldn’t, but that ain’t all to go by. It is a Flats,
remember, and on the Flats is a lot of big white stones, and printed on
the biggest of ’em in black letters, “ARE YOU DOOMED?”’
Elbert saw himself getting there.
‘... humorist--now I wonder?’ Mr. Leadley went on. ‘Or just a pious
gent coming up into Nineveh, as if sent for? “Are You Doomed?”--he
paints, right on the big stone facin’ the trail, and a little ways
off on a smaller stone, he fixes the answer: “JESUS SAVES.” That there
handwritin’ on the rock seems to be for me, ’cause every time I go for
water--there it is. But as I was sayin’, you’ll know you’re comin’ to
the Flats when you get to the last water.’
‘How shall I know it’s the last water?’
‘’Cause pretty soon after that you’ll come to the Flats. Anyway, I’d be
watchin’ on the day set--’
Elbert was finally able to arrange a few days off, without losing his
job outright, though he felt queerly uncertain about coming back, the
claim being beyond Yuma on his way East. On a morning in late March, he
reached San Forenso, where he was met by Mr. Cotton, with a two-horse
rig. The hand that Elbert gripped was crippled in shape, but did
not lack strength, and the eyes of Mr. Leadley’s old partner peered
into his with such frequency and deep intent from under their bushy
white brows, that Elbert began to feel he had never before been so
exhaustively appraised.
‘Has Bob started in tellin’ you about Red Ante, yet?’ Mr. Cotton asked
after they had driven some time.
‘No,’ said Elbert, wondering if Red Ante were a game.
‘Now that’s funny--he never gets away from that when I see him. That’s
one reason I don’t see him a whole lot more. Told you about Bart, of
course--’
‘Yes.’
‘Way back in Bismo--’
‘Yes--’
‘And stopped short at Red Ante?’
‘I didn’t hear him mention--’
‘Now that’s queer--nothin’ about a man not bein’ able to wash his
hands?’
‘No,’ said Elbert, more mystified.
‘Can’t be it’s dyin’ out of him,’ Mr. Cotton mused, eyes rigid on the
flanks of his team, as they wound up a canyon trail. ‘But that ain’t
the kind of thing as dies out,’ he added.
At Slim Stake Camp, where the road ended, Mr. Cotton excused himself to
write a note to Mr. Leadley, which Elbert was asked to deliver. ‘And
don’t let him fill you up none on how bad he’s treated Bart,’ was the
last swift injunction. ‘I was along myself in them days and I didn’t
miss all that was goin’ on.’
Elbert nodded attentively.
‘Remember what I say, when he starts tellin’ you about Red Ante!’
shouted Mr. Cotton, holding hard on his swerving team.
A while after that Elbert was alone on the steep canyon trail, his
ears cracking like drying wallpaper from the altitude, and his heart
windily at work. Springs saturated the earth from time to time. There
positively didn’t seem to be any last water, until the trail widened in
mid-afternoon and there faced him:
‘ARE YOU DOOMED?’
White Stone Flats. He found the two pines that had lived through the
fire--all straight, but no Mr. Leadley to meet him. He called a little,
but the raising of his voice left him queerly uneasy. There was food in
his roll, and he finally spread his blankets and stretched out for the
night. The idea struck him that he must soon get back to work, for it
seemed like ten days already.
Mr. Leadley must have forgotten the date. Up here anything was
possible. Hours after, a white glare through the eastern trees and
a tardy, bulging moon showed up; then quite the most curdling wail
sounded through the whitish night. It was ‘doggy’ in depth and volume,
but the wauling of it was like a greatly enlarged cat. Now Elbert had
an opportunity to study the stuff he was made of. He wasn’t encouraged.
His heart was knocking to get out. Nothing short of a mountain lion
made that noise.
There was another sound--hard to place, that welled out of the dragging
hours--a queer hum, so soft that one didn’t know whether it was a
mile away or in his hair. It was like a woman going insane, but not
violently.
Hard to believe, but the sky began to show signs at last that another
day was actually to be given to mankind. Elbert was making coffee in
full daylight, when another outcry reached him--his first dawning
suspicion as to the human quality of these tones. He stood up; his hand
actually shook as he set down his tin cup, and his eye caught the black
letters:
‘ARE YOU DOOMED?’
‘How did you know?’ he muttered--and right then, the call
again--vaguely like his own name. A minute later he was running across
the Flats, his ears verifying as he ran:
‘Oh, Sartwell--this wa-a-ay!’ ahead, and somewhat above.
‘Yes, I’m coming!’
On the easy slope before his eyes, he saw a trail.
‘... turn to the left at the rotted cedar!’
The voice nearer, his own steps soundless for sixty or seventy feet
along the punk of fallen timber; then a bald ridge which the winds had
swept clean--a hand raised from the gravel--the old man crumpled there,
his lips stretched white in a pained smile.
‘A long time gettin’ to you ... couldn’t make it last night. Where’s
your canteen?’
‘Back with my stuff--shall I get it?’
‘No, I guess I can wait a little longer. We’ll get to the cabin.
Mebby, leaning a whole lot, I can walk a bit.’
‘What did you do? You haven’t been lying out here all night?’
‘Yes. It happened in the tunnel yesterday ’bout noon--falling rock ...
too big for the small of a man’s back. Started a trickle in there,
somewhere--’
Did he mean in the mine or in his back?
‘Left me uncoupled. Too bad to spoil that vacation of yours this
way.... Figured I could reach you by crawlin’--but played out--couldn’t
make you hear in the night. Feared you might have gone back to town.’
Mr. Leadley couldn’t stand now, even with help. Elbert shouldered him
at last; a long hard pull up to the cabin. No need for directions
the latter part of the way, for a horse kept up an incessant
nickering--like showers of gold coins falling upon a metal surface.
‘That’s Mamie. She ain’t been fed since yesterday mornin’,’ the old man
apologized. ‘She never misses bestowin’ her welcomes, though it ain’t
like her to be quite so noisy. She’s a real listener, too, Mamie is.’
A cabin in the midst of a group of great yellow pines. Elbert entered
the open door, gasping with his burden. The old man’s tortured mouth
still smiled up at him from the bunk. The room smelled like cigar-box
wood. It was stuffed with chests, cupboards and cabinets--a hand-hewn
room, with massive frame and heavy cedar shakes on the outside. Elbert
brought water and started to unlace the nearest boot.
A ghost of the old chuckle and the words:
‘No, nothing for me, ’til you go feed Mamie. She ain’t used to bein’
treated like this--’
Half in a dream, Elbert went out to the little corral, lifting the
wooden pin that let him in. The mare played curiously about him, but
mainly kept her eyes to the cabin; her ears straight out for a voice
from there. He only saw a bay butterball at first--shiny satin in the
bright sunlight--a lot more rounded out than the wooden horse in the
leather-store, not so tall as Cal Monroid’s Chester, which had stood in
Elbert’s mind up to this moment as all that a horse could be.
He was thinking of the look he had seen in Bob Leadley’s face; and of
the rock, too big for the small of a man’s back, and of feeding the
mare before anything could be done. He dropped a measure of grain into
the manger under the shed roof, but Mamie didn’t stay with it. She kept
running up and down the corral, nickering softly, listening, her head
cocked toward the cabin, her ears held forward pointing to the open
door. She seemed appareled in sunshine.
V
‘I, ROBERT LEADLEY--’
THAT leak wasn’t in the mine.
‘I feel a trickle inside, young man--’
Thus, every little while, through the heat of the day, the old man
intimated his hurt, and how he felt himself bleeding internally.
Elbert’s idea was to set out at once and in a hurry to bring help from
Slim Stake Camp, but Mr. Leadley so far had persistently refused to let
him go.
‘Things I’ve got to say are more important. You never can tell when I’m
apt to start talkin’--don’t go yet. I’m restin’ a little first, that’s
all--’
When he dozed, Elbert roamed about outside, but within call. Everything
imaginable in the way of canned goods, dried fruits, preserves, were
stored in a shed as commodious as the cabin; ample supplies of tobacco,
quantities of unused tools. Stocked for a year, the place looked; with
at least a ton of baled hay and many bags of grain in the corral-shed.
All the carpenter work was made of cedar; hand-tooling everywhere--work
of a man who liked to bring out the best with a sharp blade; quaint art
about the cabinets and wooden insets in the fireplace.
Down trail to the right from the cabin door was the tunnel entrance to
the mine, and ahead out over many tree-tops, a glimpse of the Flats,
in a great pit of saffron light. Elbert kept thinking he should go for
help in spite of Mr. Leadley’s protestations. A call from the cabin
hurried him in shortly after noon.
Twice the injured man’s lips started, before he got words going:
‘Maybe I ain’t goin’ to die, and maybe I am. That’s all right--only
there’s some things I mean to say first. It wasn’t only a vacation I
brought you here for--that and somethin’ else, though I didn’t expect
to be hurried like this, in unburdenin’ my mind. Yes, sir, I took to
you the minute you looked so inquirin’ as to what I meant, when I
came in that leather-store ... same age and all that, as Bart down in
Sonora--and when you hints you’d like to get down there .... Draw up a
box to write on, and bring me a little leather sack of papers in the
lower cabinet by the fireplace--the key in the wallet here. You’re to
write down what I say.’
Reserves of will-power were drawn upon; part of the quaint twang went
out of the old man’s speech:
‘I, Robert Leadley, of the Dry Cache mine, near San Forenso, Arizona,
in sound mind, so far as I know, but badly hurt from a fallen rock in
the tunnel of said mine--my own fault because I knew for a long time
there were spots that needed timbering--do hereby confer upon my young
friend, Elbert Sartwell, who is writing this at my word, the sole right
and authority to manage and administer all property I possess--’
Elbert had no chance to interrupt. The enumeration went on without a
break, including the Dry Cache mine, saddle-horse, all goods stored in
cabin and corral-shed, bank-books, documents and keys to a lock-box
in the San Forenso Bank--amounting to about ninety thousand dollars,
Mr. Leadley explaining that he had refused an offer of seventy-five
thousand dollars for the mine itself.
‘Don’t sell in a hurry,’ he broke in. ‘There’s a gold tooth in her
head. Mort Cotton understands. You can tell that to Bart--’
‘I tell Bart--’
‘That’s the general idea--’
‘But how do you mean, Mr. Leadley?’
‘Because Mort Cotton can’t go--I’ve talked to him--and administerin’
property isn’t his line. It’s--it’s because I took to you--that’s the
main reason. Listen on--let me get it all out straight.’
Gradually it appeared that Mr. Leadley’s desire was to leave the bulk
of what he possessed to his only son, Bart Leadley, now somewhere in
Sonora, Mexico, at large, and Elbert’s work to find same. Elbert was
to be identified by Mr. Cotton who would help him through business
of bank and possible probate, and answer all questions as to why
the property could not be left and arranged for in the usual way. A
generous salary and expense account was provided, and on the day Bart
Leadley was brought back to the States, Elbert was at liberty to assign
to himself a one-fifth interest in the Dry Cache mine; a second one
fifth to go to Mort Cotton, memo of which was on separate paper, and
three fifths to the son, Bart Leadley.
Elbert’s eye was held to the page, after this was written, his mind
so lost in what it all meant, that the voice from the bunk actually
startled after a silence:
‘Well, how about it, young man--does the paper stand?’
‘But--in case your son isn’t to be found--at least, from anything I can
do?’
‘All you have to do is convince Mort Cotton of the facts, and the whole
business then lies between you and him. There’s nobody else.’
Elbert went to the door to breathe, more astonished than ever before
in his life; astonished and hurt, too, by the reality of this
friendliness, and the mystery of the smiling courage with which Mr.
Leadley bore his pain. Sonora--to find Bart Leadley at large in
Sonora--expenses to draw from--an interest in the mine. His eyelids
narrowed as he turned from the corral, where the mare stood listening
in the vivid afternoon light.
Then presently he saw, stretched from one branch of scrub-oak to
another, between him and the corral gate, a shining thread that hung
and waved in the sunlight. Just a spider’s suspension cable, but a
deep meaning now about that connecting thread; so thin one wouldn’t
see at all, if the sun hadn’t been shining just right. Mr. Leadley
had trusted him, felt drawn to him, even before the accident in the
shaft--mysterious threads binding people together. Why, that must have
been the meaning of his taking the job in the leather-store. The voice
called from behind:
‘But Bart Leadley isn’t dead! I don’t feel he’s dead,’ Mr. Leadley
said, when Elbert hurried in. ‘No, you won’t be able to go for a doctor
just yet--little later for that, maybe. The paper’s done, but there’s
something to tell about Red Ante before you go--and, yes, about Mamie.
I’m giving her to you outright, not that Bart isn’t a horseman--he’s
that before everything else--but you might be a long time findin’ him,
and I don’t want her to change hands too often. And then you’re the one
who’ll need her in Sonora.... Don’t try to run her, young man. Just
try to come to an understanding. Stand around and talk to her--she’s
one more listenin’ mare. She likes to be consulted about family
affairs. It won’t do you no harm. And don’t ever tie her up, when you
camp in the open. She’ll graze within range and keep an eye on you
besides, like her mother used to. You’ll get the hang of each other.
Keep on her right side, and whistle when you want her--’
He put two fingers to his lips to show how. Elbert couldn’t make a
sound that way. He thought of getting a whistle to carry.
As dusk thickened, a wind stirred across high country--sometimes
the sound of a waterfall, sometimes the sound of the sea in the top
branches of big timber. The mountains grew heavy on Elbert’s heart with
the falling night. Meanwhile he was encouraged to bake a honey-cake for
his own supper.
‘No, you don’t need salt nor sodie--all that’s in the flour--just
can-milk and honey in the batter, an’ grease on the pan.... Not too
near the coals, an’ keep turnin’ her round and round. You’ll have
a cake yet, young man, and what you have over you can feed Mamie
to-morrow. She’ll like it, if it’s good.’
* * * * *
‘Just a trickle--’
Elbert heard the words from time to time through the first half of the
night. Then for a while delirium was unmistakable:
‘_You didn’t have to go, Bart--_’ the voice once said in a wistful
tone, and names were uttered with dread, yet a kind of life-long
familiarity as well: ‘Welton--Letchie Welton.’ ... ‘Palto’ ... ‘Mort
Cotton’ ... ‘Red Ante’ and in and out through sustained incoherencies,
with dreadful impressiveness, references to a blacksmith shop: and once
starting up, the old man found Elbert’s eyes and spoke slowly with
intolerable contrition:
‘_There are times when you can’t wash your hands, I’m sayin’. It wasn’t
what I did--but what I didn’t do!_’
Toward daylight he slept, but it was only for an hour or so. Elbert,
drowsing in a chair, heard the call.
‘Start some coffee for yourself, and turn in a measure of grain for
Mamie; then draw your chair close. You’ll be goin’ down trail for a
doctor this morning--I know it’s bearin’ heavy on you, and maybe there
won’t be much talkin’ after the doctor comes.’
Altogether quiet and hasteless--so different from the delirium of the
night. It was dim and cool in the cabin; the sun not yet over the
ridge; fragrant firelight, coffee on to boil.
‘You can telephone Mort, too, from the lower camp. He wouldn’t like
it, if I didn’t let him know, and bring your coffee here.... Yep, sit
in close.’
At times it seemed as if the old man were easing a burden from
his heart, as gradually Elbert began to get it all straight: The
mining town of Bismo, Arizona, one morning twelve years ago; an old
storekeeper, murdered in the night--young Bart hanging around, though
sent back--Bart following the posse and being permitted to stay by the
marshal when they were ten miles out.
Elbert had to be reminded of his coffee as the story of the three
days’ chase carried on--hunger, thirst, fatigue: how one of the
Mexicans split, breaking up the pursuing party also--Letchie Welton,
Mort Cotton, Bob Leadley and his son Bart continuing straight south,
four others turning east. Then it was that the telling took on an
unprecedented intensity, though the voice was held low.
‘Over a hundred miles from Bismo, and just before dark, coming to water
and an abandoned town called Red Ante. Bart ridin’ light and easy; the
rest of us done for, my horse dyin’ under me, ears loppin’, the weight
of his head hangin’ on my arm. I’d ridden him to death--that made me
all the uglier.... Gettin’ dark, as I say, and we halted at the edge of
that dusty hell-hole, everything saggin’ and sand-blown.... Palto--our
work wasn’t over--’
* * * * *
‘But what did they do to him?’ Elbert burst out a moment later; yet
he was afraid to hear. The cabin interior had taken on a startling
unreality. He seemed to be back in Red Ante ... the lone sandy road
that nightfall twelve years ago. Then the quiet words:
‘Recollect what I told you was in the blacksmith shop?’
Elbert moved to the door, his eyelids narrowed by the sunlight. He was
ill, intolerably shaken, but the weary voice followed him.
‘I know it ain’t pleasant to hear, young man. It ain’t been pleasant
to live through--that night, nor for a dozen years. It don’t get no
better, but you’ve got to know. And there’s only a little more--’
Elbert braced for the rest. What called his will-power to bear it was
that he was only listening to a story a dozen years later, and this man
had lived through the action of it--had heard the sounds--had lost his
boy--just a note pinned to the saddle, all that was left.
The old man turned his face away.
‘I guess that’s about talk enough from me right now,’ he said after a
moment, ‘only that when we got back to Bismo, they entered a murder
charge against Bart. ‘Mebbe it was murder Letchie,’ Mort Cotton said
at the hearin’, ‘but the most merciful bullet I ever heard fired, was
that one of Bart’s just ’fore he rid out of Red Ante.’ But no words of
Mort’s or mine did any good.... You can go down trail now. Mort’ll tell
you the rest, if I don’t get to it--’
VI
THE LISTENING MARE
TWO weeks later Elbert was closing up the cabin. He had been through
all the papers. There was one having to do with the lineage of
Ganopol, a running horse, with lines tracing back to Europe and the
Near East, and the days when man and horse were mates of the world.
Names--feminine names of the desert like those of the Old Testament,
for the horse-lines of Araby were kept from mother to daughter and not
from father to son--‘The Listening Mares.’ There were sweet meadow
names of England ... there was a remark in pencil on one corner of the
big sheet:
‘Her pedigree isn’t any longer than a piece of burnt string, and where
she got herself from, I’m not prepared to state, but for a horse to sit
on and come across with good sense, little Mamie’s mother, old Clara,
was sure a triumph of breeding--’