A VICTIM OF LAW'S DELAY
For years, Eleanor could not let herself remember the details of that
night. We like to persuade ourselves that by some miraculous chance,
some trickery of fate, good may come in a vague somehow out of evil;
contrary to the proofs from the beginning of time that good fruit never
yet grew from evil seed. The girl was too honest for such fetish
faith. She could not turn up the whites of her eyes in a pious
resignation that it had been the will of God evil should triumph. So
she shut out the details of the horror from mind's memory and set her
teeth, knowing well that when lewd horrors triumph it is not because
the God of the Universe is a fool but because the powers for right have
not fought valiant as the powers for evil.
She remembered the Ranger had tossed a revolver to the old frontiersman
and Matthews had gone tearing up the slippery clay of the Mesa road
ripping out oaths of his unregenerate days that he would have "the
scoundrels' scalps if he had to tear them off with his own hands."
Somehow, Wayland had headed the draggled horses round on the narrow Rim
Rock trail.
"Go down and break the news to his mother. I'll get the body," he had
said; and she had driven the buckboard down with her foot on the wheel
brake. Not a soul appeared around the Senator's place as she passed
the white square of fenced buildings. All the mosquito doors were
hooked. Everything looked deserted; branding irons lying in disorder
round the k'raal. The River had swollen too turbulent for fording and
she had crossed the white bridge--she remembered she had crossed at a
gallop contrary to the little notice tacked on the board railing.
Then, the horses steaming from rain had stopped in front of the Mission
gate and Mrs. Williams had come out "wondering about Fordie in the
storm." With her back to the waiting mother, Eleanor had spent an
unconscionable time tying the ponies, trying to control her own
trembling lips and threshing round for some way to tell the untenable.
She remembered the roil of the raging waters, the floating star
blossoms on the muddy swirl, the light sifting in beaten rain dust
through the silver pine needles, the curve and dip of the joyous
swallows. Then, she had followed the little white haired lady into the
Mission Parlor.
Almost hysterically, that saying of an old profane writer came to mind,
"God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb;" and all her inner being was
shouting in rebellion "Does He, Does He?" Then she shut the door. She
knew very well how she ought to have broken the news with the pious
platitudes that everything is for the best, with the whitewashed lies
that every damnable tragedy is a blessing in disguise, that every
devil-dance of fool circumstance is beneficent design, that disease is
really health in a mask and sin a joke, a misnomer, that crime is
really a trump card up Deity's sleeve to play down some wonderful trick
of good; but--was it the Indian strain in her blood back many
generations? She could not mouthe the hollow mockery of such
sophistries in the presence of Death.
"Eleanor--what is it? Why do your eyes look so strange?"
The little woman clasped both the girl's hands and gazed questioningly
up in her face. At the same moment, she began to tremble. She tried
to ask and faltered; a tremor pulsed in the upper lip. Then the
grand-daughter of the man of the iron hand had gathered the little
white haired lady in her arms as if to ward the blow.
"The outlaws drove Fordie over the Rim Rocks with the herd," she said.
"Is he dead? Is he dead?"
The little woman had drawn her body up its full height.
Eleanor tried to answer. The words would not come from her lips. She
nodded. There again she had to shut the door of memory; for, when we
break the news, it isn't the news we break; it's the news breaks us.
After what seemed an interminable quiet, Mrs. Williams was asking
through dry tearless sobs:
"What does it all mean? Have we not given our whole lives to God? How
could this thing happen--to an innocent child? There isn't any justice
or right in this whole world."
"We must _not_ be quiescent any more, Mrs. Williams. We must fight.
We have such a habit of letting things go, and things let go--go wrong.
It isn't God's fault at all: it's us--us humans: it's our fault. Every
one of us ought to have been ready to die to prevent crime; and we've
been letting things go. We mustn't be quiescent any more. We must
fight wrongs and evils. And much more;" the girl in tears, the little
woman fevered, red-eyed, gazing with glazed look into dark spaces,
kneading her clasped hands together. Once the door opened and the
shawled head of the old half-breed woman poked in.
"Ford?" Calamity asked.
"Go 'way, Calamity," whispered Eleanor.
She saw the little woman rise slowly.
"He is murdered," Mrs. Williams said, "he is murdered just as truly as
if Moyese had cut his throat with his own hand." It was not for months
after, that Eleanor recalled the look on Calamity's face as the Indian
woman heard those frenzied words. Then Mrs. Williams broke in
uncontrollable sobbing. "Leave me! Go out--all of you. Leave me
alone!"
Eleanor shut the door and led the dazed Indian children from the outer
hall. In the Library, opposite the Mission Parlor, she found old
Calamity sitting on the floor with the shawl over her head. The
half-breed woman sat peering through the shawl as Eleanor lighted the
hanging lamp. No Indian will mention the name of the dead. She
fastened her eyes on Eleanor, snakily, sinister, never shifting her
glance.
"What is it, Calamity?"
"Is dat true? Senator man he keel heem--keel leetle boy?" she asked
slowly.
Eleanor thought a moment.
"Yes, it is entirely true," she said, never heeding the import of her
words to the superstitious mind of the Indian woman.
A little hiss of breath came from the crouching form. She rose, drew
the shawl round her head and at the door, turned.
"Dey take mine," she said, "and now dey keel heem, an' white man, he
yappy--yappy--yappy; not do--not do any t'ing! He send for Mount'
P'lice, mabee no do anyt'ing unless Indian man . . . he keel." The
little hiss of breath again and a cunning mad look in the eyes.
"Go 'way Calamity! Go home to our ranch house!"
By and by, came Wayland. She knew why he had come after dark, carrying
the slender body against his shoulder. A white handkerchief had been
thrown over the face; and she saw that he held the arms tightly to hide
the fact that both had been broken in the fall. The rains had matted
the curly hair and brought a strange rose glow to the cheeks. There
again--Eleanor had to shut the doors of memory; for they had carried
him in together. The wind was not tempered to the shorn lamb; and it
is the living, not the dead, who beat against the Portals of Death.
They kept watch together, she and Wayland, in the Library across from
the closed door of the Mission. Parlor, black-eyed Indian urchins
peeping furtively from the head of the stairs till bells rang lights
out. Then silence fell, stabbed by the creak of floor, the swing of
door, the click and rustle of the cotton wood leaves outside.
There was a slight patter of rain-drip from the eaves somewhere. A
gate swung to the wind; and, from across the hall, they could hear the
driven footsteps pacing up and down the parlor. Then, the
drip,--drip,--was broken by longer blanks, and stopped. The cotton
wood leaves ceased to rustle and flutter. Only the twang of the night
hawk's wing hummed through the stillness; and the distracted tread no
longer paced the Mission Parlor. When Eleanor came back from across
the hall, she shut the Library door softly.
"She is praying," she said.
Wayland had been extemporizing a morris chair into a lounge with his
Service coat for a pillow. He threw a navajo rug across. Then, he
faced her. The look of masterdom had both hardened and softened. She
did not know that the hunger-light of her own face hardened that
hardness; and she gazed through the darkened window to hide her tears.
He stood beside her with his arms folded. A convulsive shudder shook
her frame. Wayland tightened his folded arms. Sympathy is so easy.
The sense of her nearness, of her trust, of the warm living fire of her
love was pushing him not over the precipice but into the battle, out
beyond the firing line. What did one man matter in this big fight
anyway? They heard the sibilant hush of the River flood-tide; and the
warm June dark enveloped them as in a caress. They could see the sheet
lightning glimmer on the bank of cumulous clouds behind the Holy Cross.
The humming night-hawk, up in the indigo of mid-heaven, uttered a
lonely, far, fading call, as of life in flight; and a rustle of wind,
faint as the brushing of moth wings, passed whispering into silence.
"You don't really think death is the end of all, do you?" she asked.
Wayland could not answer. If she had looked, she would have seen his
face white and his eyes shining with a strange new light. He drew back
a little in the dark of the window casement, with his hand on the sill.
It touched hers and closed over it. Then, somewhere from the dark came
a night-sound heard only in June, the broken dream-trill of a bird in
its sleep. When she spoke, her voice was low, keyed as the dream-voice
from the dark.
"Where did the spray of flowers you gave me come from?"
"Sprig I'd stuck in my hat band."
"Was that all? Didn't you mean to tell me more?"
"It's a pearl everlasting blossom," answered Wayland.
She waited. He heard the slow ticking of his own watch.
"I was dreaming of your face," he blundered out, "and when I wakened,
the thing had blown down on--the hammock." It was a clumsy subterfuge;
and he knew that her thought meeting his half-way divined his dream.
The wind passed whispering into silence. He felt the quiver of the
pine needles outside, trembling to the touch of wind and night. The
sense of her nearness, of her trust, of the warm living fire of her
love swept over him unstemmed; and, when she turned and looked in his
eyes, he caught her in his arms and held her there with a fierce
tenderness, her face thrown back, the veins of her throat pulsing to
the touch of wind and night, her lips parted, her lashes hiding her
eyes.
"Tell me that you are mine," he whispered.
She did not answer for a moment. Then she lifted her eyes. He drank
their light as a thirsty man might drink waters of life. Neither
spoke. The rustling wind passed whispering. The June dark enveloped
them in the warm caress of the night. By the dim flare of the library
lamp he saw her lips trembling.
"Tell me," he commanded.
"Do I need to tell you?"
"Yes, yes! I must have a seal of memory for the dark future," and his
tongue poured forth such utterances as he had not dreamed men could use
but in prayer. "I must know from your own lips."
He felt the tremor, felt the two hands rise to frame his face, felt the
catch and take of breath, heard the broken notes of gold.
"Then, take it," she said.
He bent over her lips in an exquisite torture that could neither give
nor take enough till she struggled to free herself, when he crushed her
the closer, and kissed the closed eyes and the forehead and the hair
and the pulsing throat. Then he opened his arms.
She sank on the morris chair and hid her face in her hands. They
neither of them spoke nor heard very much but the pounding of their own
hearts. Wayland gazed out in the dark at the shiny flood-tides of the
river. She had not meant--she had meant always to be free; she had not
meant to mingle her life currents in the destiny of others.
The door opened suddenly. It was old Calamity, red-shawled and
stooping.
"Missa Vellam say not for vait no longer, Mademoiselle! She aw' right.
She say t'ank you now for to go home!"
Eleanor rose with a shuddering sigh
"Come then, Calamity," she said.
Wayland walked with her to the ranch house, the old half-breed woman
pattering behind. The gray dawn-light lay on the river mistily. At
the gate, she turned.
"Has Mr. Matthews come back yet, Calamity?"
Calamity gave a vigorous shake of her head.
"I am going up to the Rim Rocks at once to see what's become of him.
Go on in, Calamity; I want to speak to Miss MacDonald! Forgive me," he
pleaded. "I had no right. I have no right to anything till I have
cleaned up this damnable hell-work. I must not leave duty till I have
fought this thing out; and I must not drag you in; but I wanted--" he
paused; "I couldn't help it."
She trembled, but she took refuge in neither the subterfuge nor the
pretence of the Eastern woman.
"It was yours," she said.
Wayland's eyes flashed their gratitude. "It's so God-blessed
beautiful, Eleanor; it's so wonderfully beautiful I mustn't spoil it
with my man hands! I couldn't believe it true without the memory
you've given me; but you must keep me in line! Now that I have that
memory in my heart I'll drink it, and hike for the firing line! My
place isn't here; you must never let me break my resolution again."
"I never will," interrupted Eleanor.
"We've got to fight this thing to the last ditch! If the innocent may
be done to death by our law makers; if murder can be planned and
carried out unpunished; there's an end to our democracy! Last year it
was a little school teacher strangled down in the Desert; nobody
punished, because that would have interfered with a voting gang on
election day. This year, it's Fordie. _If these crimes had been
committed under a monarchy, the people would have tanned the hide of
the king into boot leather_! Last year it was the little school
teacher. This year it's Fordie. Tomorrow, it may be any man, woman or
child in the Valley. If they'd keep their crimes among their own kind,
there would be some excuse for this let-alone policy; but when freedom
to do what a man likes means freedom to push crime into your life and
mine, freedom to deprive others of freedom, it's time the Nation jumped
on somebody! We've got to fight this damnable thing to the last ditch,
Eleanor!"
"Good luck and God speed," she said without looking up; and she turned
without once looking back, and walked up the slab steps of the rustic
entrance to the ranch house.