THE LOGICAL CUSTODIAN
Caleb Hunter had never married, and even now, at the age of forty and
odd, in particularly mellow moments he was liable to confess that,
while matrimony no doubt offered a far wider field for both general
excitement and variety, as far as he himself was concerned, he felt
that his bachelor condition had points of excellence too obvious to be
treated with contumely. Perhaps the fact that Sarah Hunter, four years
his senior, had kept so well oiled the cogs of the domestic machinery
of the white place on the hill that their churnings had never been
evidenced may have been in part an answer to his contentment.
For Sarah Hunter, too, had never married. To the townspeople who had
never dared to try to storm the wall of her apparent frigidity, or been
able quite to understand her aloof austerity, she was little more than
a weekly occurence as dependable as the rising and setting of the sun
itself. Every Sunday morning a rare vision of stately dignity for all
her tininess, assisted by Caleb, she descended from the Hunter equipage
to enter the portals of the Morrison Baptist church. After the service
she reappeared and, having complimented the minister upon the sagacity
of his discourse, again assisted by Caleb, she mounted to the rear seat
of the surrey and rolled back up the hill.
That was as much as the townspeople ever saw of "Cal Hunter's maiden
sister" unless there happened to be a prolonged siege of sickness in
the village or a worse accident than usual. Then she came and camped
on the scene until the crisis was over, soft-voiced, soft-fingered and
serenely sure of herself. Sarah had never married, and even though she
had in the long interval which, year by year, had brought to Caleb a
more placid rotundity grown slender and slenderer still, and
flat-chested and sharp-angled in face and figure, Caleb knew that
underneath it all there had been no shrinkage in her soul--knew that
there were no bleak expanses in her heart, or edges to her pity.
They often joked each other about their state of single blessedness,
did Caleb and his sister. Often, hard upon his easy boast of
satisfaction with things as they were, she would quote the fable of the
fox and the high-hanging grapes, only to be taunted a moment later with
her own celibacy. But the taunt and the fable had long been stingless.
For Sarah Hunter knew that one end of Caleb's heavy gold watch chain
still carried a bit of a gold coin, worn smooth and thin from years of
handling; she knew that the single word across its back, even though it
had long ago been effaced so far as other eyes were concerned, was
still there for him to see. And Caleb, rummaging one day for some lost
article or other, in a pigeonhole in Sarah's desk in which he had no
license to look, had come across a picture of a tall and black-haired
lad, brave in white trousers and an amazing waistcoat. Caleb
remembered having been told that he had died for another with that same
smile which the picture had preserved--the tall and jaunty youngster.
And so their comprehension was mutual. They understood, did Caleb and
his sister.
But sure as he was of Sarah's fundamental kindness, Caleb experienced a
twinge of guilty uncertainty that August afternoon as he closed the
iron gate behind the grotesque little figure which had already started
across his lawn. For the moment he had forgotten that the sun was low
in the west; he had overlooked the fact that it was customary for the
Hunter establishment to sup early during the warm summer months. But
when he turned to find Sarah watching, stiff and uncompromising, from
the doorway, he remembered with painful certainty her attitude toward
his propensity to pick up any stray that might catch him in a moment of
too pronounced mellowness--stray human or feline or lost yellow dog.
Sarah's gaze, however, was not for her brother at that moment. Her
eyes were fixed unswervingly upon the figure in the once-white drill
trousers and bobbed swallow-tail coat and shuffling boots. She was
staring from wide and, Caleb noted, rather horror-stricken eyes at the
huge steel trap above the blanket pack. But the boy who must have
received her glance full in his face had not faltered a step in his
advance. He went forward until he stood at the foot of the low steps
which mounted to the veranda; and there he stopped, looking up at her,
and removed his battered hat. Caleb ranged awkwardly up alongside him
and looked up at her in turn. He, searching desperately for a neat and
cleverly casual opening speech, could not know that beneath her
forbidding manner a peal of soft laughter was struggling for utterance;
could not know that, at that moment, she was telling herself that, of
the two, Caleb was far the younger.
At last he cleared his throat, oratorically, and then she promptly
interrupted him.
"Supper is served, Cal," she drawled in her gentle, almost lisping
voice.
Caleb received the statement as if it were an astounding bit of
hitherto undreamed-of news.
"Comin', Sarah!" he chirped briskly. "Comin' this blessed minute!"
And then, with an attempt at disingenuousness:
"I--I've a friend here, Sarah, whom I'd like to--er--present to you!
This is my sister, Miss Hunter," he announced to the silent boy, "and
this young man, Sarah, this young man is--er--ah--Mr.----"
"I'm Steve," said the boy, mildly. "I'm just Stephen O'Mara!"
"Certainly!" gasped Caleb. "Quite so--quite so! Sarah, this is just
Steve."
The frail little woman with her quaint dignity of another decade failed
to move; she did not unbend so much as the fraction of an inch. But
hard upon the heels of Caleb's last words the boy went forward
unhesitatingly. Hat in the hand that balanced his big steel trap, he
stopped in front of her and offered one brown paw.
"Haow dye do, Miss Hunter," he saluted her, gravely. And with a slow
smile that discovered for her a row of white and even teeth: "Haow dye
do? I--I reckon you're the first--dressed-up lady I ever did git to
know!"
The calm statement took what little breath there had been left in
Caleb's lungs; it left Sarah breathless, too. But after an
infinitesimal moment of waiting she held out her own delicate fingers
and took the outstretched hand.
"Haow dye do, Steve?" she answered, and Caleb was at a loss to
interpret the suppressed quality of her voice. "And I--some day I am
sure it will be a great pleasure to remember that I was the--first!"
Then she faced her brother.
"Will you--will your friend, Mr.--Steve--remain for supper, Cal?" she
asked.
And Caleb, quick to see an opening, made the most of this one.
"Stay for supper," he repeated her question, and he laughed.
"Stay--for--supper! Well, I should hope he would. Why--why, he's
going to stop for the night!"
From the vantage place there at the top of the steps Sarah stood and
surveyed her brother's wide and guileless face for a second. Then her
lips began to twitch.
"Very clever, Cal," she told him. "Quite clever--for you!"
And she nodded and withdrew to see that the table was laid for three.
Caleb, chuckling, watched her go; then with a nod to the boy, he
started to follow her in. But Steve paused at the threshold, and when
the man stopped and looked back to ascertain the cause of his delay he
found that the boy was depositing the bear trap upon the porch
floor--found him tugging to free the rusty old revolver from his belt.
"I'll leave Samanthy here," the one called Steve stated, and Caleb
understood that he meant the trap. "An' I reckon I'd better not lug my
weapon into the house, neither, hed I? She might----" He nodded in
the direction of Sarah's disappearance--"Old Tom says womin folks
that's gentle born air kind-a skittish about havin' shootin' irons
araound the place. And I don't reckon it's the part of men folks to
pester 'em."
Caleb didn't know just what to say, so he merely nodded approval.
Again he had been made to feel that it was not a boy but some little
old man who was explaining to him. Silently he led the way upstairs,
and after he had seen the blanket pack deposited in one corner of
Sarah's beloved guest-room, after he had seen the rusty coat peeled off
as a preface to removing the dust accumulation of the long hot day from
hands and face, an inspiration came to him. While the boy was washing,
utterly lost to everything but that none-too-simple task, he went out
of the room on a still-hunt of his own, and came back presently with
the thing for which he had gone searching. He found the boy wrestling
a little desperately with a mop of wavy chestnut hair which only grew
the more hopeless with every stroke of the brush.
"Never mind that." Caleb met the misapprehension in the boy's eyes.
"Never mind that! And I--I've taken the liberty of digging out this
old canvas shooting coat. It's one I got for Sarah--for my
sister--but, as you say, women folks are mighty skittish about anything
that has to do with a gun. She never would go even so far as to try it
on, but if you don't mind---- That coat of yours must be a trifle hot
for this weather, I should say."
Steve reached out a hand that trembled a little and took the coat. He
took it and stared at it with that same strained and hungry look which
he had bestowed a half hour before upon the "City."
"Do you mean," he asked, and his lips remained parted breathlessly upon
the question, "do you mean--this yere's for me?"
Caleb thought of the "injine"--the "_steam_ injine."
"I mean just that, if you'll have it," he replied. The boy slipped his
little body into the garment and wheeled to survey himself in a mirror.
In comparison with the dismembered swallowtail it was the purple of a
Solomon. There was a cartridge web across its front, with loops, and
after he had looked long and long at his reflection, the boy thrust
both his thumbs into the belt it made.
Then: "Them's fer ketridges," he announced solemnly.
He scowled judiciously and nodded.
And, "I'll hev to git me some, the first thing in the mornin'," he said.
That was his only remark then, and yet Caleb felt amply repaid. Later
he had more to say, but for the time being he merely followed Caleb
back downstairs, walking very stiff and straight except when, with
every few steps, he leaned over the better to see the looped webbing
across his middle.
And at table that evening the man came to know another trait in the odd
little stranger's odd makeup which, coupled with those which he had
already mentally tabulated for future private contemplation, set him to
wondering more than a little.
With the appearance of the first dish upon the table that night the boy
was very frankly nonplussed at the array of implements upon each side
of his plate, placed there for him to manipulate. He scarcely knew one
from the other, and the separate uses for each not at all. But the way
in which he met the problem made Caleb lift his eyes and meet Sarah's
inscrutable glance with something akin to triumph. For there was no
awkwardness in the boy's procedure, no flushing embarrassment, no
shame-facedness nor painfully self-conscious attempt to cover his
ignorance. Instead, he sat and waited--sat and watched openly until
Miss Sarah had herself selected knife or fork, as the case might
be--and then, turning back to those beside his own place, frowning
intently, he made painstaking selection therefrom. Nor did he once
make a mistake. And Caleb, after he had begun to mark a growing
softness in the color of his sister's thin cheeks, ventured to draw
into conversation their small guest.
The boy talked freely and openly, always with his wide eyes upon the
face of his questioner, always in the grave and slightly drawling
idioms of the woods. Again he confided that he had never before been
out of the timber; he explained that "Old Tom's" untimely taking-off a
fortnight back had been alone responsible for this pilgrimage. And
that opened the way for a question which Caleb had been eager to ask
him.
"I suppose this--this 'Old Tom' was some kin of yours?" he observed.
The boy shook his head.
"No," he answered, "no, I ain't never hed no kin. I ain't never hed
nobody--father ner mother, neither!"
Caleb saw Sarah start a little and bite her thin lips. But the
bird-like movement of surprise was lost upon the speaker.
"I ain't never hed nobody," he re-averred, and Caleb, straining to
catch a note of self-pity or plea for sympathy in the words, realized
that the boy didn't even know what the one or the other was. "I ain't
never hed nobody but Old Tom. And he was--he wasn't nuthin' but what
he called my--my"--the sentence was broken while he paused to get the
phrase correctly--"he was what he called my 'logical custodian.'"
Guiltily Caleb knew that his next question would savor of indelicacy,
but he had to ask it just the same.
"Still, I suppose his--his taking-off must have been something in the
nature of a blow to you?" he suggested.
The boy pursed his lips.
"Wall, no," he exclaimed at last, nonchalantly. "No-o-o! I can't
say's it was. We'd both been expectin' it, I reckon. Old Tom, he
often sed he knew that some day he'd go and git just blind, stavin'
drunk enough to try an' swim the upper rapids--and two weeks ago he
done so!"
And the rest of the words were quite casual.
"I kind-a reckon he'd hev made it, at that," he offered his opinion,
"if they'd hev been a trifle more water. But the rocks was too close
to the surface fer comfortable swimmin'. The Jenkinses found him down
in the slack water, Sunday noon or thereabouts, and they sed he'd never
be no deader, not even if he'd a-died in a reg'lar bed, with a doctor
helpin' him along."
Caleb threw his sister one lugubriously helpless glance. Sarah had
choked, apparently upon a crumb of bread, and was coughing,
stranglingly. And Caleb made to change the drift of the conversation,
but he was not quick enough.
"I ain't never been much of a hand for licker," Steve finished naively.
"Old Tom sed he never could understand it in me, neither, but he
reckoned it was lucky in a way fer both of us. He sed he'd whale the
life outen me if he ever caught me even smellin' of a cork; and as fer
him--well, it come in handy for him, havin' a sober hand round the
shack when he wan't quite hisself!"
This time when Caleb lifted his eyes he met a startled gleam behind
Sarah's half dropped lashes. She was peering steadily into the boy's
lean, untroubled face. Caleb voiced the query which he knew must be
behind her quiet intentness.
"You said your name was O'Mara, I believe. I suppose that was--ah--Old
Tom's last name, too?"
Steve laughed; he laughed frankly for the first time since he had
halted, hours before, outside in the dusty road.
"Why, Old Tom had a dozen different names in the last few years," he
replied. "He had a new one every time he went outen the woods fer a
trip. But he always sed he mostly favored Brown or Jones or Smith,
they bein' quiet and common and not too hard to remember. He just
changed names whenever he got tired of his old one, Old Tom did. But
he always did say, too, that if he'd hed as good a one as O'Mara, he'd
a kept it--and kept it proud."
At the conclusion of that statement it was Miss Sarah's gaze which went
searching across the table for her brother's eyes. But the boy just
ran on and on, totally oblivious to their glances.
He told them of his lonely days in the woods shack, when Old Tom went
down river and was three or four weeks in returning; he dwelt upon
blissful days in the spring when he had been allowed to play a man's
part in the small drives which he and Old Tom and the "Jenkinses"
began, and which Old Tom and the Jenkinses alone saw through to market
in Morrison. He touched lightly and inconsequentially upon certain
days when Old Tom would hang for hours over an old tin box filled with
soiled and ink-smeared memoranda, periods which were always followed by
days of moody silence and a week or more of "lessons" in a tattered and
thumbed reader which the woodsman had brought up-river--lessons as
painful and laborious to Old Tom as they were delightful to the starved
mentality of the pupil. And Old Tom, the boy explained, was pretty
likely to be "lickered up fer quite a spell" after such a session which
invariably began with an exploration of the battered tin box.
The boy told Caleb of days and nights on the trail--boasted
unconsciously of Old Tom's super-cunning with trap and deadfall, and
even poison bait. And that brought him to the beautifully oiled bear
trap which he had left outside the door.
"I brung Samanthy along with me," he stated. "I brung her just because
somehow I kind-a thought mebby Old Tom'd be glad if I did. Next to me
he always sed he set a heap o' store on thet ole critter. He sed
Samanthy was as near to hevin' a woman around the house as anything he
knew on--she hed a voice like a steel trap, and when she got her teeth
sot in a argument she never did let up. I brung her along with me, and
the gun he give me, but I didn't take nuthin' else."
Caleb waited there until he knew that the boy had finished.
"You never bothered about that old tin box?" he inquired casually.
The boy shook his head again.
"Old Tom, whenever he went away for a spell, always sed I wan't to
meddle with it," he explained. "This time I reckoned his goin' was
just about the same thing, only he won't be comin' back, so I--I just
locked the box up in the cubberd and hitched the staple into the door
and come down myself."
By the time that meal was finished the boy's eyes were so heavy-lidded
that, fight as he would, they still persisted in drooping till the long
lashes curled over his cheeks. And in spite of Caleb's remonstrance it
was Sarah who saw him upstairs and into the huge guest-room with its
four-poster and high-boy and spindle-backed chairs.
When she came back downstairs her eyes were shining more than a little
and the flush upon her cheeks was undeniably rose. Her brother, from
his seat before the unlighted fireplace, puffed methodically upon his
pipe and barely lifted his head at her coming. He was deep in
meditation. She stood looking at him for a time from the foot of the
stairway.
"He's asleep," she began finally in a very little voice. "He fell
asleep almost before his cheek touched the pillow."
Caleb made no answer. He nodded but his eyes were vacant with thoughts
of his own.
"Cal," she went on, "did you give him that old coat of mine?"
Caleb nodded again--an affirmative.
"Well, the last thing he asked before he slept was that I deliver a
message to you. 'Tell him thanks for me,' he said. 'Tell him I clean
forgot it til now!' And as for me, Cal--why--why, 'he'd git me
anuther, anytime I took the notion thet I wanted one!'"
And still Caleb nodded. The room was quiet for a long time.
"Sarah," he murmured at last.
"Yes, Cal," she answered.
"Has that boy's--yarn--set you to thinking a little?"
"It was very interesting and unusual," she admitted. Then she rose and
crossed over to his chair and perched herself, with odd, elfish,
girlish grace upon its arm.
"Do you mean Old Tom's tin box?" she asked gently.
And he nodded.
"Yes, in part--yes," he said. "But not just that alone, either. I
mean everything, Sarah. The way he handles himself; the way he looks
one in the face when he is talking. The--the--now what are you
grinning over?"
She stroked his sparse hair.
"Cal, you old romancer, you. Who'd ever suspect it in a man of your
age and--and avoirdupois!"
"Avoirdupois!" he snorted. "Can't a man continue to have ideas now and
then, even if he does become a--a trifle plump. And that boy--why,
Sarah I tell you----!"
And then his sister put one hand over his lips.
"I know, Cal," she interrupted placidly. "I know! You're going to
tell me, once more, your pet theory that there's many a boy in that
backwoods who might paint a great canvas, or model a deathless
bronze--or--or lead a lost cause, if he could only be found and
provided with the chance. It sounds--it sounds very big and grand and
romantic, Cal, but has it ever occurred to you that anyone big enough
for things like those would find the way himself?"
Immediately, jerkily, Caleb started to straighten up.
Argumentatively--and then she checked him.
"Oh, I know you don't believe it and I--I don't think I do myself, Cal.
A man has to know what opportunity is before he can go out and hunt up
his own big chance. I just said it for the sake of argument, Cal.
I--I'm like Samanthy--ole Samanthy, you know! I'm a woman, and when I
git my teeth sot in a argumint I never do let up. Have your dreams,
you--you boy! And in the meantime, if you have any plans, tell me,
please, what are you going to do with him in the morning?"
Caleb Hunter bobbed his head, vehemently. Rapidly he related to her
the episode of the switch engine in Dexter Allison's millyards.
"And I believe what I believe," he insisted, doggedly. "And to-morrow
I aim to give that boy a ride in one of Allison's 'steam injine' cabs,
if it's all I do!"
"I thought so," said Miss Sarah.
For a time she sat there upon his arm chair. Neither spoke, nor felt
the need for words. Just before she rose to go upstairs, she broke
that quiet.
"He has an odd, strange, half-wild beauty," she mused aloud. "A beauty
that is quite unusual, I should say, in children of his--his station.
His hair is silken and, oh so thick! And his eyes and square chin with
that little cleft. And his nose--his nose, I should say, might be said
to denote estheticism--and--a--a--ah----"
Caleb Hunter threw back his head at the telltale little quaver in the
voice and found Sarah Hunter smiling down at him, whimsically.
"Get all the amusement out of it that you can," he invited her.
"And--and trust a woman to take note of such points as you have
mentioned!"
From the stairs she gave him one backward glance.
"Forgive me, Cal," she hogged. "I meant it all--truly! Even the
estheticism, which I only included to tease you. And if you don't want
to trust to a woman's judgment on such points as I have mentioned, I
would suggest that you peep in on him when you retire, and--and confirm
them for yourself."
Hours later Caleb acted upon her suggestion. Every characteristic
which Sarah had mentioned he found and noted in that half-lighted
moment or two while he stood at the bedside.
And he noted more than just that. Sarah's old canvas hunting coat was
folded into a small bundle and lay, guarded by one outflung,
loose-fingered brown hand, beside the sleeping boy's face on the pillow.
Caleb went to bed with a half dozen wild notions whirling in his head,
and a strange something tugging at his heart.