"If he wants to come home and help me with the cattle and behave himself
now that he's fooled away his time and failed--"
"But he hasn't failed." Helen insisted with eager impatience. "He won't
fail if----"
"Well he's hard up--he wants money----" Burt spoke as though the fact
were a crime.
"A good many men have been 'hard up' and needed money before they
succeeded," Helen pleaded. "Surely you know that crises come in nearly
every undertaking where there isn't unlimited capital, obstacles and
combinations of circumstances that no one can forsee. And if you knew
what Bruce has had to fight----"
Helen had expected of course to tell Bruce's father of the placer
properties and his efforts to develop them. She had thought he would
have a father's natural pride in what Bruce had accomplished in the face
of dangers and difficulties. She had intended to tell him of Sprudell,
to show him Smaltz's confession, and the options which would defeat
Sprudell's plotting, but in the face of his narrow obstinacy, his deep
prejudices, she felt the futility of words or argument. She had not for
a moment counted upon such opposition; now she felt helpless, impotent
before this armor of hardness.
"I don't care what he's had to fight. I'd just as soon put my money in
the stove as put it in a mining scheme. There's two things I never do,
young lady, and that's speculate and go on people's notes."
"But, Mr. Burt," she begged hopelessly, "If you'd only make an
exception--just this once. Go to him--see for yourself that all he needs
is a helping hand across this one hard place."
"I got on without any helping hands. Nobody saw me across hard places.
I've told you the only way that he can expect to get anything from me."
"Then it's useless, quite, quite useless for me to say any more?" Helen
was struggling hard to keep her voice steady to the end. "No matter what
the circumstances may be you refuse to do anything for Bruce?"
"That's the size of it--unless he comes back. There's plenty for him to
do here." His tone was implacable and he was waiting with a stolid
patience for her to go.
"I'm sorry if I've bored you and I shan't inflict you any more. Please
remember that Bruce knew nothing of my coming. I came upon my own
responsibility. But his success meant so much to him--to me that I--that
I----" she choked and turned away abruptly. She dared not even say
good-bye.
Burt remained standing by his horse looking after her straight, slender
figure as she walked toward the gate. His face was still sphinx-like but
there was a speculative look in his shrewd eyes. Bruce's success "meant
so much to her," did it? That, then, was why she had come. The distance
she had travelled for the purpose of seeing him had not impressed him in
the least before.
Helen was halfway to the gate when she stopped to replace the rubber
that stuck in the muddy corral and slipped from her heel. Her chin was
quivering, her sensitive lips drooped and, feeling that Burt was looking
at her, she raised her eyes to his. They were brimming full of tears.
She looked for all the world like a sorrowful, disappointed, woe-begone
little girl of not more than ten or twelve.
The unconscious pathos of some look or pose grips the heart harder than
any spoken word and so it was that this unstudied trick of expression
found the vulnerable spot in Burt's armor--the spot which might have
remained impervious indefinitely to any plea. It went straight to his
one weakness, his single point of susceptibility, and that was his
unsuspected but excessive fondness for little girls.
The distinct picture that was firmly fixed in his unimaginative mind
before Bruce was born was still there; the picture of that little girl
with flaxen hair that had blue ribbons in it, with a laughing mouth that
had tiny sharp teeth like pearls, and who was to come dancing to meet
him with her arms outstretched each time that he rode into the yard.
That the dream was never realized was one of the real disappointments of
Burt's life. Inexplicably he saw that little girl again as he looked at
Helen's upturned face with its quivering chin and swimming, reproachful
eyes.
John Burt had a queer feeling of something wilting, crumbling inside of
him, something hard and cold giving way around his heart. He could not
have explained it, it was not his way to try, but he took an impulsive
step toward her and called out:
"Wait a minute! Go on in the house till I put up my horse, I'll hear
what you have to say."