FAY
At the home of Jane Withersteen Little Fay was climbing Lassiter’s
knee.
“Does oo love me?” she asked.
Lassiter, who was as serious with Fay as he was gentle and loving,
assured her in earnest and elaborate speech that he was her devoted
subject. Fay looked thoughtful and appeared to be debating the
duplicity of men or searching for a supreme test to prove this
cavalier.
“Does oo love my new muvver?” she asked, with bewildering suddenness.
Jane Withersteen laughed, and for the first time in many a day she felt
a stir of her pulse and warmth in her cheek.
It was a still drowsy summer of afternoon, and the three were sitting
in the shade of the wooded knoll that faced the sage-slope. Little
Fay’s brief spell of unhappy longing for her mother—the childish,
mystic gloom—had passed, and now where Fay was there were prattle and
laughter and glee. She had emerged from sorrow to be the incarnation of
joy and loveliness. She had grown supernaturally sweet and beautiful.
For Jane Withersteen the child was an answer to prayer, a blessing, a
possession infinitely more precious than all she had lost. For
Lassiter, Jane divined that little Fay had become a religion.
“Does oo love my new muvver?” repeated Fay.
Lassiter’s answer to this was a modest and sincere affirmative.
“Why don’t oo marry my new muvver an’ be my favver?”
Of the thousands of questions put by little Fay to Lassiter this was
the first he had been unable to answer.
“Fay—Fay, don’t ask questions like that,” said Jane.
“Why?”
“Because,” replied Jane. And she found it strangely embarrassing to
meet the child’s gaze. It seemed to her that Fay’s violet eyes looked
through her with piercing wisdom.
“Oo love him, don’t oo?”
“Dear child—run and play,” said Jane, “but don’t go too far. Don’t go
from this little hill.”
Fay pranced off wildly, joyous over freedom that had not been granted
her for weeks.
“Jane, why are children more sincere than grown-up persons?” asked
Lassiter.
“Are they?”
“I reckon so. Little Fay there—she sees things as they appear on the
face. An Indian does that. So does a dog. An’ an Indian an’ a dog are
most of the time right in what they see. Mebbe a child is always
right.”
“Well, what does Fay see?” asked Jane.
“I reckon you know. I wonder what goes on in Fay’s mind when she sees
part of the truth with the wise eyes of a child, an’ wantin’ to know
more, meets with strange falseness from you? Wait! You are false in a
way, though you’re the best woman I ever knew. What I want to say is
this. Fay has taken you’re pretendin’ to—to care for me for the thing
it looks on the face. An’ her little formin’ mind asks questions. An’
the answers she gets are different from the looks of things. So she’ll
grow up gradually takin’ on that falseness, an’ be like the rest of the
women, an’ men, too. An’ the truth of this falseness to life is proved
by your appearin’ to love me when you don’t. Things aren’t what they
seem.”
“Lassiter, you’re right. A child should be told the absolute truth.
But—is that possible? I haven’t been able to do it, and all my life
I’ve loved the truth, and I’ve prided myself upon being truthful. Maybe
that was only egotism. I’m learning much, my friend. Some of those
blinding scales have fallen from my eyes. And—and as to caring for you,
I think I care a great deal. How much, how little, I couldn’t say. My
heart is almost broken, Lassiter. So now is not a good time to judge of
affection. I can still play and be merry with Fay. I can still dream.
But when I attempt serious thought I’m dazed. I don’t think. I don’t
care any more. I don’t pray!... Think of that, my friend! But in spite
of my numb feeling I believe I’ll rise out of all this dark agony a
better woman, with greater love of man and God. I’m on the rack now;
I’m senseless to all but pain, and growing dead to that. Sooner or
later I shall rise out of this stupor. I’m waiting the hour.”
“It’ll soon come, Jane,” replied Lassiter, soberly. “Then I’m afraid
for you. Years are terrible things, an’ for years you’ve been bound.
Habit of years is strong as life itself. Somehow, though, I believe as
you—that you’ll come out of it all a finer woman. I’m waitin’, too. An’
I’m wonderin’—I reckon, Jane, that marriage between us is out of all
human reason?”
“Lassiter!... My dear friend!... It’s impossible for us to marry!”
“Why—as Fay says?” inquired Lassiter, with gentle persistence.
“Why! I never thought why. But it’s not possible. I am Jane, daughter
of Withersteen. My father would rise out of his grave. I’m of Mormon
birth. I’m being broken. But I’m still a Mormon woman. And you—you are
Lassiter!”
“Mebbe I’m not so much Lassiter as I used to be.”
“What was it you said? Habit of years is strong as life itself! You
can’t change the one habit—the purpose of your life. For you still pack
those black guns! You still nurse your passion for blood.”
A smile, like a shadow, flickered across his face.
“No.”
“Lassiter, I lied to you. But I beg of you—don’t you lie to me. I’ve
great respect for you. I believe you’re softened toward most, perhaps
all, my people except—But when I speak of your purpose, your hate, your
guns, I have only him in mind. I don’t believe you’ve changed.”
For answer he unbuckled the heavy cartridge-belt, and laid it with the
heavy, swing gun-sheaths in her lap.
“Lassiter!” Jane whispered, as she gazed from him to the black, cold
guns. Without them he appeared shorn of strength, defenseless, a
smaller man. Was she Delilah? Swiftly, conscious of only one
motive—refusal to see this man called craven by his enemies—she rose,
and with blundering fingers buckled the belt round his waist where it
belonged.
“Lassiter, _I_ am the coward.”
“Come with me out of Utah—where I can put away my guns an’ be a man,”
he said. “I reckon I’ll prove it to you then! Come! You’ve got Black
Star back, an’ Night an’ Bells. Let’s take the racers an’ little Fay,
en’ race out of Utah. The hosses an’ the child are all you have left.
Come!”
“No, no, Lassiter. I’ll never leave Utah. What would I do in the world
with my broken fortunes and my broken heart? I’ll never leave these
purple slopes I love so well.”
“I reckon I ought to ’ve knowed that. Presently you’ll be livin’ down
here in a hovel, en’ presently Jane Withersteen will be a memory. I
only wanted to have a chance to show you how a man—_any_ man—can be
better ’n he was. If we left Utah I could prove—I reckon I could prove
this thing you call love. It’s strange, an’ hell an’ heaven at once,
Jane Withersteen. ’Pears to me that you’ve thrown away your big heart
on love—love of religion an’ duty an’ churchmen, an’ riders an’ poor
families an’ poor children! Yet you can’t see what love is—how it
changes a person!... Listen, an’ in tellin’ you Milly Erne’s story I’ll
show you how love changed her.
“Milly an’ me was children when our family moved from Missouri to
Texas, an’ we growed up in Texas ways same as if we’d been born there.
We had been poor, an’ there we prospered. In time the little village
where we went became a town, an’ strangers an’ new families kept movin’
in. Milly was the belle them days. I can see her now, a little girl no
bigger ’n a bird, an’ as pretty. She had the finest eyes, dark
blue-black when she was excited, an’ beautiful all the time. You
remember Milly’s eyes! An’ she had light-brown hair with streaks of
gold, an’ a mouth that every feller wanted to kiss.
“An’ about the time Milly was the prettiest an’ the sweetest, along
came a young minister who began to ride some of a race with the other
fellers for Milly. An’ he won. Milly had always been strong on
religion, an’ when she met Frank Erne she went in heart an’ soul for
the salvation of souls. Fact was, Milly, through study of the Bible an’
attendin’ church an’ revivals, went a little out of her head. It didn’t
worry the old folks none, an’ the only worry to me was Milly’s
everlastin’ prayin’ an’ workin’ to save my soul. She never converted
me, but we was the best of comrades, an’ I reckon no brother an’ sister
ever loved each other better. Well, Frank Erne an me hit up a great
friendship. He was a strappin’ feller, good to look at, an’ had the
most pleasin’ ways. His religion never bothered me, for he could hunt
an’ fish an’ ride an’ be a good feller. After buffalo once, he come
pretty near to savin’ my life. We got to be thick as brothers, an’ he
was the only man I ever seen who I thought was good enough for Milly.
An’ the day they were married I got drunk for the only time in my life.
“Soon after that I left home—it seems Milly was the only one who could
keep me home—an’ I went to the bad, as to prosperin’ I saw some pretty
hard life in the Pan Handle, an’ then I went North. In them days Kansas
an’ Nebraska was as bad, come to think of it, as these days right here
on the border of Utah. I got to be pretty handy with guns. An’ there
wasn’t many riders as could beat me ridin’. An’ I can say all
modest-like that I never seen the white man who could track a hoss or a
steer or a man with me. Afore I knowed it two years slipped by, an’ all
at once I got homesick, an’ pulled a bridle south.
“Things at home had changed. I never got over that homecomin’. Mother
was dead an’ in her grave. Father was a silent, broken man, killed
already on his feet. Frank Erne was a ghost of his old self, through
with workin’, through with preachin’, almost through with livin’, an’
Milly was gone!... It was a long time before I got the story. Father
had no mind left, an’ Frank Erne was _afraid_ to talk. So I had to pick
up what’d happened from different people.
“It ’pears that soon after I left home another preacher come to the
little town. An’ he an’ Frank become rivals. This feller was different
from Frank. He preached some other kind of religion, and he was quick
an’ passionate, where Frank was slow an’ mild. He went after people,
women specially. In looks he couldn’t compare to Frank Erne, but he had
power over women. He had a voice, an’ he talked an’ talked an’ preached
an’ preached. Milly fell under his influence. She became mightily
interested in his religion. Frank had patience with her, as was his
way, an’ let her be as interested as she liked. All religions were
devoted to one God, he said, an’ it wouldn’t hurt Milly none to study a
different point of view. So the new preacher often called on Milly, an’
sometimes in Frank’s absence. Frank was a cattle-man between Sundays.
“Along about this time an incident come off that I couldn’t get much
light on. A stranger come to town, an’ was seen with the preacher. This
stranger was a big man with an eye like blue ice, an’ a beard of gold.
He had money, an’ he ’peared a man of mystery, an’ the town went to
buzzin’ when he disappeared about the same time as a young woman known
to be mightily interested in the new preacher’s religion. Then,
presently, along comes a man from somewheres in Illinois, en’ he up an’
spots this preacher as a famous Mormon proselyter. That riled Frank
Erne as nothin’ ever before, an’ from rivals they come to be bitter
enemies. An’ it ended in Frank goin’ to the meetin’-house where Milly
was listenin’, en’ before her en’ everybody else he called that
preacher—called him, well, almost as hard as Venters called Tull here
sometime back. An’ Frank followed up that call with a hosswhippin’, en’
he drove the proselyter out of town.
“People noticed, so ’twas said, that Milly’s sweet disposition changed.
Some said it was because she would soon become a mother, en’ others
said she was pinin’ after the new religion. An’ there was women who
said right out that she was pinin’ after the Mormon. Anyway, one
mornin’ Frank rode in from one of his trips, to find Milly gone. He had
no real near neighbors—livin’ a little out of town—but those who was
nearest said a wagon had gone by in the night, an’ they thought it
stopped at her door. Well, tracks always tell, an’ there was the wagon
tracks an’ hoss tracks an’ man tracks. The news spread like wildfire
that Milly had run off from her husband. Everybody but Frank believed
it an’ wasn’t slow in tellin’ why she run off. Mother had always hated
that strange streak of Milly’s, takin’ up with the new religion as she
had, an’ she believed Milly ran off with the Mormon. That hastened
mother’s death, an’ she died unforgivin’. Father wasn’t the kind to bow
down under disgrace or misfortune but he had surpassin’ love for Milly,
an’ the loss of her broke him.
“From the minute I heard of Milly’s disappearance I never believed she
went off of her own free will. I knew Milly, an’ I knew she _couldn’t_
have done that. I stayed at home awhile, tryin’ to make Frank Erne
talk. But if he knowed anythin’ then he wouldn’t tell it. So I set out
to find Milly. An’ I tried to get on the trail of that proselyter. I
knew if I ever struck a town he’d visited that I’d get a trail. I knew,
too, that nothin’ short of hell would stop his proselytin’. An’ I rode
from town to town. I had a blind faith that somethin’ was guidin’ me.
An’ as the weeks an’ months went by I growed into a strange sort of a
man, I guess. Anyway, people were afraid of me. Two years after that,
way over in a corner of Texas, I struck a town where my man had been.
He’d jest left. People said he came to that town _without_ a woman. I
back-trailed my man through Arkansas an’ Mississippi, an’ the old trail
got hot again in Texas. I found the town where he first went after
leavin’ home. An’ here I got track of Milly. I found a cabin where she
had given birth to her baby. There was no way to tell whether she’d
been kept a prisoner or not. The feller who owned the place was a mean,
silent sort of a skunk, an’ as I was leavin’ I jest took a chance an’
left my mark on him. Then I went home again.
“It was to find I hadn’t any home, no more. Father had been dead a
year. Frank Erne still lived in the house where Milly had left him. I
stayed with him awhile, an’ I grew old watchin’ him. His farm had gone
to weed, his cattle had strayed or been rustled, his house weathered
till it wouldn’t keep out rain nor wind. An’ Frank set on the porch and
whittled sticks, an’ day by day wasted away. There was times when he
ranted about like a crazy man, but mostly he was always sittin’ an’
starin’ with eyes that made a man curse. I figured Frank had a secret
fear that I needed to know. An’ when I told him I’d trailed Milly for
near three years an’ had got trace of her, an’ saw where she’d had her
baby, I thought he would drop dead at my feet. An’ when he’d come round
more natural-like he begged me to _give up_ the trail. But he wouldn’t
explain. So I let him alone, an’ watched him day en’ night.
“An’ I found there was one thing still precious to him, an’ it was a
little drawer where he kept his papers. This was in the room where he
slept. An’ it ’peared he seldom slept. But after bein’ patient I got
the contents of that drawer an’ found two letters from Milly. One was a
long letter written a few months after her disappearance. She had been
bound an’ gagged an’ dragged away from her home by three men, an’ she
named them—Hurd, Metzger, Slack. They was strangers to her. She was
taken to the little town where I found trace of her two years after.
But she didn’t send the letter from that town. There she was penned in.
’Peared that the proselytes, who had, of course, come on the scene, was
not runnin’ any risks of losin’ her. She went on to say that for a time
she was out of her head, an’ when she got right again all that kept her
alive was the baby. It was a beautiful baby, she said, an’ all she
thought an’ dreamed of was somehow to get baby back to its father, an’
then she’d thankfully lay down and die. An’ the letter ended abrupt, in
the middle of a sentence, en’ it wasn’t signed.
“The second letter was written more than two years after the first. It
was from Salt Lake City. It simply said that Milly had heard her
brother was on her trail. She asked Frank to tell her brother to give
up the search because if he didn’t she would suffer in a way too
horrible to tell. She didn’t beg. She just stated a fact an’ made the
simple request. An’ she ended that letter by sayin’ she would soon
leave Salt Lake City with the man she had come to love, en’ would never
be heard of again.
“I recognized Milly’s handwritin’, an’ I recognized her way of puttin’
things. But that second letter told me of some great change in her.
Ponderin’ over it, I felt at last she’d either come to love that feller
an’ his religion, or some terrible fear made her lie an’ say so. I
couldn’t be sure which. But, of course, I meant to find out. I’ll say
here, if I’d known Mormons then as I do now I’d left Milly to her fate.
For mebbe she was right about what she’d suffer if I kept on her trail.
But I was young an’ wild them days. First I went to the town where
she’d first been taken, an’ I went to the place where she’d been kept.
I got that skunk who owned the place, an’ took him out in the woods,
an’ made him tell all he knowed. That wasn’t much as to length, but it
was pure hell’s-fire in substance. This time I left him some
incapacitated for any more skunk work short of hell. Then I hit the
trail for Utah.
“That was fourteen years ago. I saw the incomin’ of most of the
Mormons. It was a wild country an’ a wild time. I rode from town to
town, village to village, ranch to ranch, camp to camp. I never stayed
long in one place. I never had but one idea. I never rested. Four years
went by, an’ I knowed every trail in northern Utah. I kept on an’ as
time went by, an’ I’d begun to grow old in my search, I had firmer,
blinder faith in whatever was guidin’ me. Once I read about a feller
who sailed the seven seas an’ traveled the world, an’ he had a story to
tell, an’ whenever he seen the man to whom he must tell that story he
knowed him on sight. I was like that, only I had a question to ask. An’
always I knew the man of whom I must ask. So I never really lost the
trail, though for many years it was the dimmest trail ever followed by
any man.
“Then come a change in my luck. Along in Central Utah I rounded up
Hurd, an’ I whispered somethin’ in his ear, an’ watched his face, an’
then throwed a gun against his bowels. An’ he died with his teeth so
tight shut I couldn’t have pried them open with a knife. Slack an’
Metzger that same year both heard me whisper the same question, an’
neither would they speak a word when they lay dyin’. Long before I’d
learned no man of this breed or class—or God knows what—would give up
any secrets! I had to see in a man’s fear of death the connections with
Milly Erne’s fate. An’ as the years passed at long intervals I would
find such a man.
“So as I drifted on the long trail down into southern Utah my name
preceded me, an’ I had to meet a people prepared for me, an’ ready with
guns. They made me a gun-man. An’ that suited me. In all this time
signs of the proselyter an’ the giant with the blue-ice eyes an’ the
gold beard seemed to fade dimmer out of the trail. Only twice in ten
years did I find a trace of that mysterious man who had visited the
proselyter at my home village. What he had to do with Milly’s fate was
beyond all hope for me to learn, unless my guidin’ spirit led me to
him! As for the other man, I knew, as sure as I breathed en’ the stars
shone en’ the wind blew, that I’d meet him some day.
“Eighteen years I’ve been on the trail. An’ it led me to the last
lonely villages of the Utah border. Eighteen years!... I feel pretty
old now. I was only twenty when I hit that trail. Well, as I told you,
back here a ways a Gentile said Jane Withersteen could tell me about
Milly Erne an’ show me her grave!”
The low voice ceased, and Lassiter slowly turned his sombrero round and
round, and appeared to be counting the silver ornaments on the band.
Jane, leaning toward him, sat as if petrified, listening intently,
waiting to hear more. She could have shrieked, but power of tongue and
lips were denied her. She saw only this sad, gray, passion-worn man,
and she heard only the faint rustling of the leaves.
“Well, I came to Cottonwoods,” went on Lassiter, “an’ you showed me
Milly’s grave. An’ though your teeth have been shut tighter’n them of
all the dead men lyin’ back along that trail, jest the same you told me
the secret I’ve lived these eighteen years to hear! Jane, I said you’d
tell me without ever me askin’. I didn’t need to ask my question here.
The day, you remember, when that fat party throwed a gun on me in your
court, an’—”
“Oh! Hush!” whispered Jane, blindly holding up her hands.
“_I seen in your face that Dyer, now a bishop, was the proselyter who
ruined Milly Erne!_”
For an instant Jane Withersteen’s brain was a whirling chaos and she
recovered to find herself grasping at Lassiter like one drowning. And
as if by a lightning stroke she sprang from her dull apathy into
exquisite torture.
“_It’s a lie!_ Lassiter! No, no!” she moaned. “I swear—you’re wrong!”
“Stop! You’d perjure yourself! But I’ll spare you that. You poor woman!
Still blind! Still faithful!... Listen. I _know_. Let that settle it.
An’ I give up my purpose!”
“What is it—you say?”
“I give up my purpose. I’ve come to see an’ feel differently. I can’t
help poor Milly. An’ I’ve outgrowed revenge. I’ve come to see I can be
no judge for men. I can’t kill a man jest for hate. Hate ain’t the same
with me since I loved you and little Fay.”
“Lassiter! You mean you won’t kill him?” Jane whispered.
“No.”
“For my sake?”
“I reckon. I can’t understand, but I’ll respect your feelin’s.”
“Because you—oh, because you love me?... Eighteen years! You were that
terrible Lassiter! And _now_—because you love me?”
“That’s it, Jane.”
“Oh, you’ll make me love you! How can I help but love you? My heart
must be stone. But—oh, Lassiter, wait, wait! Give me time. I’m not what
I was. Once it was so easy to love. Now it’s easy to hate. Wait! My
faith in God—_some_ God—still lives. By it I see happier times for you,
poor passion-swayed wanderer! For me—a miserable, broken woman. I loved
your sister Milly. I _will_ love you. I can’t have fallen so low—I
can’t be so abandoned by God—that I’ve no love left to give you. Wait!
Let us forget Milly’s sad life. Ah, I knew it as no one else on earth!
There’s one thing I shall tell you—if you are at my death-bed, but I
can’t speak now.”
“I reckon I don’t want to hear no more,” said Lassiter.
Jane leaned against him, as if some pent-up force had rent its way out,
she fell into a paroxysm of weeping. Lassiter held her in silent
sympathy. By degrees she regained composure, and she was rising,
sensible of being relieved of a weighty burden, when a sudden start on
Lassiter’s part alarmed her.
“I heard hosses—hosses with muffled hoofs!” he said; and he got up
guardedly.
“Where’s Fay?” asked Jane, hurriedly glancing round the shady knoll.
The bright-haired child, who had appeared to be close all the time, was
not in sight.
“Fay!” called Jane.
No answering shout of glee. No patter of flying feet. Jane saw Lassiter
stiffen.
“_Fay—oh—Fay!_” Jane almost screamed.
The leaves quivered and rustled; a lonesome cricket chirped in the
grass, a bee hummed by. The silence of the waning afternoon breathed
hateful portent. It terrified Jane. When had silence been so infernal?
“She’s—only—strayed—out—of earshot,” faltered Jane, looking at
Lassiter.
Pale, rigid as a statue, the rider stood, not in listening, searching
posture, but in one of doomed certainty. Suddenly he grasped Jane with
an iron hand, and, turning his face from her gaze, he strode with her
from the knoll.
“See—Fay played here last—a house of stones an’ sticks.... An’ here’s a
corral of pebbles with leaves for hosses,” said Lassiter, stridently,
and pointed to the ground. “Back an’ forth she trailed here.... See,
she’s buried somethin’—a dead grasshopper—there’s a tombstone... here
she went, chasin’ a lizard—see the tiny streaked trail... she pulled
bark off this cottonwood... look in the dust of the path—the letters
you taught her—she’s drawn pictures of birds en’ hosses an’ people....
Look, a cross! Oh, Jane, _your_ cross!”
Lassiter dragged Jane on, and as if from a book read the meaning of
little Fay’s trail. All the way down the knoll, through the shrubbery,
round and round a cottonwood, Fay’s vagrant fancy left records of her
sweet musings and innocent play. Long had she lingered round a
bird-nest to leave therein the gaudy wing of a butterfly. Long had she
played beside the running stream sending adrift vessels freighted with
pebbly cargo. Then she had wandered through the deep grass, her tiny
feet scarcely turning a fragile blade, and she had dreamed beside some
old faded flowers. Thus her steps led her into the broad lane. The
little dimpled imprints of her bare feet showed clean-cut in the dust
they went a little way down the lane; and then, at a point where they
stopped, the great tracks of a man led out from the shrubbery and
returned.