Main-Travelled Roads

by Garland, Hamlin

  "Kill me-if you want to-but let her-alone. She's-"

  The children were crying. The wind whistled drearily across the room, carrying the evanescent flakes of soft snow over the heads of the pausing, listening crowd in the doorway. Quick steps were heard.

  "Hold on there!" cried McPhail as he burst into the room. He seemed an angel of God to the wife and mother.

  He spread his great arms in a gesture which suggested irresistible strength and resolution. "Clear out! Out with ye!"

  No man had ever seen him look like that before. He awed them with the look in his eyes. His long service as sheriff gave him authority. He hustled them, cuffed them out of the door like schoolboys. Barney backed out, cursing. He knew McPhall too well to refuse to obey.

  McPhail pushed Barney out, shut the door behind him, and stood on the steps, looking at the crowd.

  "Well, you're a great lot! You fellers, would ye jump on a sick man? What ye think ye're all doin', anyhow?"

  The crowd laughed. "Hey, Mac; give us a speech!"

  "You ought to be booted, the whole lot o' yeh!" he replied.

  "That houn' in there's run the bank into the ground, with every cent o' money we'd put in," said Barney. "I s'pose ye know that."

  "Well, s'pose he has-what's the use o' jumpin' on

  "Git it out of his hide."

  "I've heerd that talk before. How much you got in?"

  "Two hundred dollars."

  "Well, I've got two thousand." The crowd saw the point.

  "I guess if anybody was goin' t' take it out of his hide, I'd be the man; but I want the feller to live and have a chance to pay it back. Killin' 'im is a dead loss."

  "That's so!" shouted somebody. "Mac ain't no fool, if he does chaw hay," said another, and the crowd laughed. They were losing that frenzy, largely imitative and involuntary, which actuates a mob. There was something counteracting in the ex-sheriff's cool, humorous tone.

  "Give us the rest of it, Mac!"

  "The rest of it is clear out o' here, 'r I'll boot every mother's son of yeh!"

  "Can't do it!"

  "Come down an' try it!"

  McIlvaine opened the door and looked out. "Mac, Mrs. Sanford wants to say something-if it's safe."

  "Safe as eatin' dinner."

  Mrs. Sanford came out, looking pale and almost like a child as she stood beside her defender's towering bulk. But her face was resolute.

  "That money will be paid back," she said, "dollar for dollar, if you'll just give us a chance. As soon as Jim gets well enough every cent will be paid, If I live."

  The crowd received this little speech in silence. One or two said, in low voices: "That's business. She'll do it, too, if anyone can."

  Barney pushed his way through the crowd with contemptuous. curses. "The — she will!" he said.

  "We'll see 't you have a chance," McPhall and McIlvaine assured

  Mrs. Sanford.

  She went in and closed the door.

  "Now git!" said Andrew, coming down the steps. The crowd scattered with laughing taunts. He turned and entered the house. The rest drifted off down the street through the soft flurries of snow, and in a few moments the street assumed its usual appearance.

  The failure of the bank and the raid on the banker had passed into history.

  V

  In the light of the days of calm afterthought which followed, this attempt upon the peace of the Sanford home grew more monstrous and helped largely to mitigate the feeling against the banker. Besides, he had not run away; that was a strong point in his favor.

  "Don't that show," argued Vance to the post office- "don't that show he didn't intend to steal? An' don't it show he's goin' to try to make things square?"

  "I guess we might as well think that as anything."

  "I claim the boys has a right t' take sumpthin' out o' his hide," Bent

  Wilson stubbornly insisted.

  "Ain't enough t' go 'round," laughed McPhail. "Besides, I can't have it. Link an' I own the biggest share in 'im, an' we can't have him hurt."

  McIlvaine and Vance grinned. "That's a fact, Mac. We four fellers are the main losers. He's ours, an' we can't have him foundered 'r crippled 'r cut up in any way. Ain't that woman of his gritty?"

  "Gritty ain't no name for her. She's goin' into business."

  "So I hear. They say Jim was crawling around a little yesterday. I didn't see.

  "I did. He looks pretty streak-id-now you bet."

  "Wha'd he say for himself?"

  "Oh, said give 'im time-he'd fix it all up."

  "How much time?"

  "Time enough. Hain't been able to look at a book since. Say, ain't it a little curious he was so sick just then-sick as a p'isened dog?"

  The two men looked at each other in a manner most comically significant. The thought of poison was in the mind of each.

  It was under these trying circumstances that Sanford began to crawl about, a week or ten days after his sickness. It was really the most terrible punishment for him. Before, everybody used to sing out, "Hello, Jim!"- or "Mornin', banker," or some other jovial, heartwarming salutation. Now, as he went down the street, the groups of men smoking on the sunny side of the stores ignored him, or looked at him with scornfull eyes.

  Nobody said, "Hello, Jim!"-not even McPhail or Vance. They nodded merely, and went on with their smoking. The children followed him and stared at him without compassion. They had heard him called a scoundrel and a thief too often at home to feel any pity for his pale face.

  After his first trip down the street, bright with the December sunshine, he came home in a bitter, weak mood, smarting, aching with a poignant self-pity over the treatment he had received from his old cronies.

  "It's all your fault," he burst out to his wife. "If you'd only let me go away and look up another place, I wouldn't have to put up with all these sneers and insults."

  "What sneers and insults?" she asked, coming over to him.

  "Why, nobody 'll speak to me."

  "Won't Mr. McPhail and Mr. Mcllvalne?"

  "Yes; but not as they used to."

  "You can't blame 'em, Jim. You must go to work and win back their confidence."

  "I can't do that. Let's go away, Nell, and try again." Her mouth closed firmly. A hard look came into her eyes. "You can go if you want to, Jim, I'm goin' to stay right here till we can leave honorably. We can't run away from this. It would follow us anywhere we went; and it would get worse the farther we went"

  He knew the unyielding quality of his wife's resolution, and from that moment he submitted to his fate. He loved his wife and children with a passionate love that made life with them, among the citizens he had robbed, better than life anywhere else on earth; he had no power to leave them.

  As soon as possible he went over his books and found out that he owed, above all notes coming in, about eleven thousand dollars. This was a large sum to look forward to paying by anything he could do in the Siding, now that his credit was gone. Nobody would take him as a clerk, and there was nothing else to be done except manual labor, and he was not strong enough for that.

  His wife, however, had a plan. She sent East to friends for a little money at once, and with a few hundred dollars opened a little store in time for the holiday trade-wallpaper, notions, light dry goods, toys, and millinery. She did her own housework and attended to her shop in a grim, uncomplaining fashion that made Sanford feel like a criminal in her presence. He couldn't propose to help her in the store, for he knew the people would refuse to trade with him, so he attended to the children and did little things about the house for the first few months of the winter.

  His life for a time was abjectly pitiful. He didn't know what to do. He had lost his footing, and, worst of all, he felt that his wife no longer respected him. She loved and pitied him, but she no longer looked up to him. She went about her work and down to her store with a silent, resolute, uncommunicative air, utterly unlike her former sunny, domestic self, so that even she seemed alien like the rest. If he had
been ill, Vance and McPhail would have attended him; as it was, they could not help him.

  She already had the sympathy of the entire town, and McIlvaine had said: "If you need more money, you can have it, Mrs. Sanford. Call on us at any time."

  "Thank you. I don't think I'll need it. All I ask is your trade," she replied. "I don't ask anybody to pay more'n a thing's worth, either. I'm goin' to sell goods on business principles, and I expect folks to buy of me because I'm selling reliable goods as cheap as anybody else."

  Her business was successful from the start, but she did not allow herself to get too confident.

  "This is a kind of charity trade. It won't last on that basis. Folks ain't goin' to buy of me because I'm poor-not very long," she said to Vance, who went in to congratulate her on her booming trade during Christmas and New Year.

  Vance called so often, advising or congratulating her, that the boys joked him. "Say, looky here! You're gom' to get into a peck o' trouble with your wife yet. You spend about hall y'r time in the new store."

  Vance looked serene as he replied, "I'd stay longer and go oftener

  If I could."

  "Well, if you ain't cheekier 'n ol' cheek! I should think you'd be ashamed to say it."

  "'Shamed of it? I'm proud of it! As I tell my wife, if I'd 'a' met Mis' Sanford when we was both young, they wouldn't 'a' be'n no such present arrangement."

  The new life made its changes in Mrs. Sanford. She grew thinner and graver, but as she went on, and trade steadily increased, a feeling of pride, a sort of exultation, came into her soul and shone from her steady eyes. It was glorious to feel that she was holding her own with men in the world, winning their respect, which is better than their flattery. She arose each day at five o'clock with a distinct pleasure, for her physical health was excellent, never better.

  She began to dream. She could pay off five hundred dollars a year of the interest-perhaps she could pay some of the principal, if all went well. Perhaps in a year br two she could take a larger store, and, if Jim got something to do, in ten years they could pay it all off-every cent! She talked with businessmen, and read and studied, and felt each day a firmer hold on affairs.

  Sanford got the agency of an insurance company or two and earned a few dollars during the spring. In June things brightened up a little. The money for a note of a thousand dollars fell due-a note he had considered virtually worthless, but the debtor, having had a "streak o' luck," sent seven hundred and fifty dollars. Sanford at once called a meeting of his creditors, and paid them, pro rata, a thousand dollars. The meeting took place in his wife's store, and in making the speech Sanford said:

  "I tell you, gentlemen, if you'll only give us a chance, we'll clear this thing all up-that is, the principal. We can't-"

  "Yes, we can, James. We can pay it all, principal and interest. We owe the interest just as much as the rest." It was evident that there was to be no letting down while she lived.

  The effect of this payment was marked. The general feeling was much more kindly than before. Most of the fellows dropped back into the habit of calling him Jim; but, after all, it was not like the greeting of old, when he was "banker." Still the gain in confidence found a reflex in him. His shoulders, which had begun to droop a little, lifted, and his eyes brightened.

  "We'll win yet," he began to say.

  "She's a-holdin' of 'im right to time," Mrs. Bingham said.

  It was shortly after this that he got the agency for a new cash-delivery system, and went on the road with it, traveling in northern Wisconsin and Minnesota. He came back after a three weeks' trip, quite jubilant. "I've made a hundred dollars, Nell. I'm all right if this holds out, and I guess it will."

  In the following November, just a year after the failure, they celebrated the day, at her suggestion, by paying interest on the unpaid sums they owed.

  "I could pay a little more on the principal," she explained, "but I guess it'll be better to use it for my stock. I can pay better dividends next year.

  "Take y'r time, Mrs. Sanford," Vance said.

  Of course she could not escape criticism. There were the usual number of women who noticed that she kept her 'young uns" in the latest style, when as a matter of fact she sat up nights to make their little things. They also noticed that she retained her house and her furniture.

  "If I was in her place, seems to me, I'd turn in some o' my fine furniture toward my debts," Mrs. Sam Gilbert said spitefully.

  She did not even escape calumny. Mrs. Sam Gilbert darkly hinted at certain "goin's on durin' his bein' away. Lit up till after midnight some nights. I c'n see her winder from mine."

  Rose McPhail, one of Mrs. Sanford's most devoted friends, asked quietly, "Do you sit up all night t' see?"

  "S'posin' I do!" she snapped. "I can't sleep with such things goin' on."

  "If it'll do you any good, Jane, I'll say that she's settin' up there sewin' for the children. If you'd keep your nose out o' other folks' affairs, and attend better to your own, your house wouldn't look' like a pigpen, all' your children like A-rabs."

  But in spite of a few annoyances of this character Mrs. Sanford found her new life wholesomer and broader than her old life, and the pain of her loss grew less poignant.

  VI

  One day in spring, in the lazy, odorous hush of the afternoon, the usual number of loafers were standing on the platform, waiting for the train. The sun was going down the slope toward the hills, through a warm April haze.

  "Hello!" exclaimed the man who always sees things first. "Here comes Mrs. Sanford and the ducklings."

  Everybody looked.

  "Ain't goin' off, is she?"

  "Nope; guess not. Meet somebody, prob'ly Sanford."

  "Well, sornethin's up. She don't often get out o' that store."

  "Le's see; he's been gone most o' the winter, hain't he?"

  "Yes; went away about New Year's."

  Mrs. Sanford came past, leading a child by each hand, nodding and smiling to friends-for all seemed friends. She looked very resolute and businesslike in her plain, dark dress, with a dull flame of color at the throat, while the broad hat she wore gave her face a touch of piquancy very charming. Evidently she was in excellent spirits, and laughed and chatted in quite a carefree way.

  She was now an institution at the Siding. Her store had grown in proportions yearly, until it was as large and commodious as any in the town. The drummers for dry goods all called there, and the fact that she did not sell any groceries at all did not deter the drummers for grocery houses from calling to see each time if she hadn't decided to put in a stock of groceries.

  These keen-eyed young fellows had spread her fame all up and down the road. She had captured them, not by beauty, but by her pluck, candor, honesty, and by a certain fearless but reserved camaraderie. She was not afraid of them, or of anybody else, now.

  The train whistled, and everybody turned to watch it as it came pushing around the bluff like a huge hound on a trail, its nose close to the ground. Among the first to alight was Sanford, in a shining new silk hat and a new suit of clothes. He was smiling gaily as he fought his way through the crowd to his wife's side. "Hello!" he shouted. "I thought I'd see you all here."

  "W'y, Jim, ain't you cuttin' a swell?"

  "A swell! Well, who's got a better right? A man wants to look as well as he can when he comes home to such a family."

  "Hello, Jim!. That plug 'll never do."

  "Hello, Vance! Yes; but it's got to do. Say, you tell all the fellers that's got anything ag'inst me to come around tomorrow night to the store. I want to make some kind of a settlement."

  "All right, Jim. Goin' to pay a new dividend?"

  "That's what I am," he beamed as he walked off with his wife, who was studying him sharply.

  "Jim, what ails you?"

  "Nothin'; I'm all right."

  "But this new suit? And the hat? And the necktie?" He laughed merrily-so merrily, in fact, that his wife looked at him the more anxiously. He appeared to be in a queer st
ate of intoxication-a state that made him happy without impairing his faculties, however. He turned suddenly and put his lips down toward her ear. "Well, Nell, I can't hold in any longer. We've struck it!"

  "Struck what?"

  "Well, you see that derned fool partner o' mine got me to go into a lot o' land in the copper country. That's where all the trouble came. He got awfully let down. Well, he's had some surveyors to go up there lately and look it over, and the next thing we knew the Superior Mining Company came along an' wanted to buy it. Of course we didn't want to sell just then."

  They had reached the store door, and he paused.

  "We'll go right home to supper," she said. "The girls will look out for things till I get back."

  They walked on together, the children laughing and playing ahead.

  "Well, upshot of it is, I sold out my share to Osgood for twenty thousand dollars."

  She stopped and stared at him. "Jim-Gordon Sanford!"

  "Fact! I can prove it." He patted his breast pocket mysteriously.

  "Ten thousand right there."

  "Gracious sakes alive! How dare you' carry so much money?"

  "I'm mighty glad o' the chance." He grinned.

  They walked on almost in silence, with only a word now and then. She seemed to be thinking deeply, and he didn't want to disturb her. It was a delicious spring hour. The snow was all gone, even under the hedges. The roads were warm and brown. The red sun was flooding the valley with a misty, rich-colored light, and against the orange and gold of the sky the hills stood in Tyrian purple. Wagons were rattling along the road. Men on the farms in the edge of the village could be heard whistling at their work. A discordant jangle of a neighboring farmer's supper bell announced that it was time "to turn out."

  Sanford was almost as gay as a lover. He seemed to be on the point of regaining his old place in his wife's respect. Somehow the possession of the package of money in his pocket seemed to make him more worthy of her, to put him more on an equality with her.

  As they reached the little one-story square cottage he sat down on the porch, where the red light fell warmly, and romped with the children, while his wife went in and took off her things. She "kept a girl" now, so that the work of getting supper did not devolve entirely upon her. She came out soon to call them all to the supper table in the little kitchen back of the sitting room.