Money Magic: A Novel

by Hamlin Garland

  CHAPTER XXIX

  MARSHALL HANEY'S LAST TRAIL

  Marshall Haney was a brave man, and his resolution was fully taken, butthat final touch of Bertha's hand upon his arm very nearly unnerved him.His courage abruptly fell away, and, leaning back against the cushionsof his carriage, with closed eyelids (from which the hot tears dripped),he gave himself up to the temptation of a renewal of his life. It washarder to go, infinitely harder, because of that impulsive, sweetcaress. Her face was so beautiful, too, with that upward, tender,pitying look upon it!

  While still he sat weak and hesitant, a roughly dressed man of large anddecisive movement stopped and greeted him. "Hello, Mart, how are youthis fine day?"

  Haney put his tragic mask away with a stroke of his hand, and hastilyreplied: "Comin' along, Dan, comin' along. How are things up on thepeak?"

  "Still pretty mixed," replied the miner, lightly; then, with a furtherlook around, he stepped a little nearer the wheel. "Hell's about tobreak loose again, Mart."

  "What's the latest?"

  "I can't go into details, and I mustn't be seen talking with you, butWilliams is in for trouble. Tell him to reverse engine for a few weeks.Good-day," and he walked off, leaving the impression of having been sentto convey a friendly warning.

  Haney seized upon this message. His resolution returned. His voice tookon edge and decision. "Oscar," he called quickly, "drive me down to thestation, I want to get that ten-thirty-seven train."

  As the driver chirruped to his horses and swung out into the street,Marshall Haney, with full understanding that this was to be his eternalfarewell, turned and looked up, hoping to catch a last glimpse of hiswife's sweet face at the window. A sign, a smile, a beckoning, and hispurpose might still have faltered, but the recall did not take place,and facing the west he became again the man of will. When the carriagedrew up to the platform he gave orders to his coachman as quietly asthough this were his usual morning ride. "Now, Oscar, you heard whatthat friend of mine said?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "Well, forget it."

  "Very well, sir."

  "But tell Mrs. Haney I've gone up to the mine. You can say to her thatWilliams sent for me. You can tell her, but to no one else, what youheard Dan say. You understand?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "All right, that stands. Now you go home and wait till abouttwelve-thirty. Then go down for Mrs. Haney."

  The coachman, a stolid, reliable man, well trained to his duties, didnot offer to assist his master, but sat in most approved alertness uponhis box while Haney painfully descended to the walk.

  The train was about to move, and the conductor had already signalled theengineer to "go ahead," but at sight of the gambler, whom he knew,stopped the train and helped Haney aboard. "A minute more and you wouldhave been left. Going up to the mine, I reckon?"

  They were still on the platform as Mart answered, "Yes, I'm due to takea hand in the game up there." He said this with intent to cover histrail.

  He was all but breathless as he dropped into a seat near the door. Thesense of leaden weakness with which he had come to struggle daily haddeepened at the moment into a smothering pain which threatened to blindhim.

  "I must be quiet," he thought--"I will not die in the car." There seemedsomething disgraceful, something ignominious in such a death.

  Gradually his fear of this misfortune grew less. "What does it matterwhere death comes or when it comes? The quicker the better for allconcerned."

  Nevertheless, he opened the little phial of medicine which Steele hadgiven him and swallowed two of the pellets. That they were a powerfulstimulant of the heart he knew, but that an overdose would kill he onlysuspected from Steele's word of caution.

  They were, indeed, magical in their effect. His brain cleared, his pulsegrew stronger, and the feeling of benumbing weakness which dismayed himpassed away.

  The conductor, on his round, found him sitting silently at the window,very pale and very stern, his eyes fixed upon the brawling stream alongwhose winding course the railway climbed. While noting the number ofMart's pass the official leaned over and spoke in a low voice, but Haneyheard what he said as through a mist. He was no longer moved by thesound of the bugle. A labor war was temporary, like a storm in thepines. It might arrest the mining for a few weeks or a month, butthrough it all, no matter what happened, deep down in the earth layBertha's wealth, secure of any marauder. So much he was able to reasonout.

  One or two of the passengers who knew him drew near, civilly inquiringas to his health, and to each one he explained that he was on the gainand that he was going up to the camp to study conditions for himself.They were all greatly excited by the news of battle, but they did notsucceed in conveying their emotion to Haney. With impassive countenancehe listened, and at the end remarked: "'Tis all of a stripe to me, boys.I'm like the soldier on the battle-field with both legs shot off. I hearthe shouting and the tumult, but I'm out of the running."

  Without understanding his mood, they withdrew, leaving him alone. Hismind went back to Bertha. "What will she do when she finds me gone? Shewill not be scared at first. She will wire to stop me; but nomatter--before she can reach me, I'll be high in the hills."

  He could not prevent his mind from dwelling on her. He tried to fix histhoughts upon his life as a boyish adventurer, but could not keep tothose earlier periods of his career. All of his days before meeting herseemed base or trivial or purposeless. She filled his memory to theexclusion of all other loves and desires. She was at once his wife andhis child. He possessed a thousand bright pictures of her swift andgraceful body, her sunny smile, her sweet, grave eyes. He recalled thefirst time he saw her on the street in Sibley, and groaned to think howbasely he had planned against her. "She never knew that, thank God!" hesaid, fervently.

  Then came that unforgetable drive to the ranch, when she put her hand inhis--and on this hour he dwelt long, searching his mind deeply in orderthat no grain of its golden store of incident should escape him. Histhroat again began to ache with a full sense of the loss he wasinflicting upon himself. "'Tis a lonely trail I'm takin' for your sake,darlin'," he whispered, "but 'tis all for the best."

  Slowly the train creaked and circled up the heights, following the sharpturnings of the stream, passing small towns which were in effect summercamps of pleasure-seekers, on and upward into the moist heights wherethe grass was yet green and the slopes gay with flowers. A mood ofexaltation came upon the doomed man as he rose. This was the place todie--up here where the affairs of men sank into insignificance like thesound of the mills and the rumble of trains. Here the centuries circledlike swallows and the personal was lost in the ocean of silence.

  At one of these towns which stood almost at the summit of the pass theconductor brought a telegram, and Mart seized it with eager, tremblinghands. It was (as he expected) a warning from Bertha. She implored himto let the mine go and to return by the next train.

  He was too nerveless of fingers to put the sheet back within itsenvelope, and so thrust it, a crumpled mass, into his pocket. It was asif her hand was at his shoulder, her voice in his ear, but he did notfalter. To go back now would be but a renewal of his torture. Therecould not come a better time to go--to go and leave no suspicion of hispurpose behind him.

  Just over the summit, at a bare little station, the train was held fororders, and Haney, who was again suffocating and almost blind, tookanother dose of the mysterious drug, and with its effect returned to adim perception of his surroundings. He was able vaguely to recall that atrail which began just back of the depot mounted the hill towards hislargest mine. A desire to see Williams, his faithful partner, his mostloyal friend, came over him, and, rising to his feet, he painfully creptdown the aisle to the rear of the car and dropped off unnoticed, just asthe conductor's warning cry started a rush for the train.

  As the last coach disappeared round the turn the essential bleakloneliness of the place returned. The station seemed deserted by everyhuman being, even the operator was lost to sight, and the gambler
,utterly solitary, with clouded brain and laboring breath, turned towardsthe height, his left leg dragging like a shackle.

  For the first half-mile the way was easy, and by moving slowly hesuffered less pain than he had expected. Around him the frost-smittenaspens were shivering in the wind, their sparse leaves dangling likecoins of red-and-yellow gold, and all the billowing land below, to thewest, was iridescent with green and flame-color and crimson. A voicelessregret, a dim, wide-reaching, wistful sadness came over him, but did notshake his resolution. He had but to look down at his crippled body toknow that the beauty of the world was no longer his to enjoy. His dayswere now but days of pain.

  He had always loved the heights. From the time he had first sighted thisrange he had never failed to experience a peculiar exaltation as hemounted above the ranch and the mine. Gambler and night-owl though hehad been, he had often spent his afternoons on horseback riding highabove the camps, and now some small part of his love of the upper aircame back to lead him towards his grave. With face turned to thesolitudes of the snows, with ever-faltering steps, he commenced hischallenging march towards death.

  At the first sharp up-raise in the way his heart began to pound and heswayed blindly to and fro, unable to proceed. For an instant he lookeddown in dismay at the rocky, waiting earth, a most inhospitable grave. Afew minutes' rest against a tree, and his brain cleared. "Higher--I mustgo higher," he said to himself; "they'll find me here."

  As he rose he could see the town spread wide on the hill-tops beneathhim--the cabins mere cubes, the mill a child's toy. He could discern menlike ants moving to and fro as if in some special excitement--but he didnot concern himself with the cause. His one thought was to mount--toblend with the firs and the rocks. He drew the phial from his pocket andheld it in his hand in readiness, with a dull fear that the chemicalwould prove too small, too weak, to end his pain.

  It was utterly silent and appallingly lonely on this side of the greatpeak. Hunters were few and prospectors were seldom seen. Theseupward-looping trails led to no mine--only to abandoned prospectholes--for no mineral had ever been found on the western slope. Thecopses held no life other than a few minute squirrels, and no soundbroke the silence save the insolent cry of an occasional jay orcamp-bird. To die here was surely to die alone and to lie alone, as thefallen cedar lies, wrought upon by the wind and the snows and the rain.

  Nevertheless, his suicidal idea persisted. It had become the one final,overpowering, directing resolution. There is no passion more persistentthan that which leads to self-destruction. In the midst of the blindingswirl of his thought he maintained his purpose to put himself above theworld of human effort and to become a brother of the clod, to mixforever with the mould.

  Slowly he dragged himself upward, foot by foot, seeking the friendlyshelter and obscurity of a grove of firs just above him. Twice he sankto his knees, a numbing pain at the base of his brain, his breathroaring, his lips dry, but each time he rose and struggled on, eager toreach the green and grateful shelter of the forest, filled with desireto thrust himself into its solitude; and when at last he felt the chillof the shadow and realized that he was surely hidden from all the world,he turned, poised for an instant on a mound where the trail doubledsharply, gave one long, slow glance around, then hurled himself down therocky slope. Even as he leaped his heart seemed to burst and he felllike a clod and lay without further motion. It was as if he had beensmitten in flight by a rifle-ball.

  Around him the small animals of the wood frolicked, and the jay calledinquiringly, but he neither saw nor heard. He was himself but a gaspingcreature, with reason entirely engaged in the blind struggle which thephysical organism was instinctively making to continue in its wontedways. All the world and all his desires, save a longing for his fairyoung wife, were lost out of his mind, and he thought of Bertha only ina dim and formless way--feeling his need of her and dumbly wondering whyshe did not come. In final, desperate agony, he lifted the phial ofstrychnine to his lips, hoping that it might put an end to hissuffering; but before this act was completed a sweet, devouring flood offorgetfulness swept over him, his hand dropped, and the unopened bottlerolled away out of his reach. Then the golden sunlight darkened out ofhis sky, and he died--as the desert lion dies--alone.

  * * * * *

  When they found him two days later he lay with his head pillowed uponhis left arm, his right hand outspread upon the pine leaves--palm upwardas if to show its emptiness. A bird--the roguish gray magpie--had stolenaway the phial as if in consideration of the dead man's wish, and nosign of his last despairing act was visible to those who looked into hisface. His going was well planned. Self-murder was never written oppositethe name of Marshall Haney.

  THE END