by Max Brand
“Boys, it seems to me like I see what you’re starting in to do here. You’re going to concentrate chiefly on making this farm a go, Hal. You’re going to practice law over in Gridley, Jack. If the two of you will pull together, why, they ain’t hardly a thing that you couldn’t do. You could have everything smooth as silk inside of a couple or three years. But, gents, I’ll tell you where you got to watch yourselves. Him that don’t trust other folks, ain’t going to be trusted by them. That’s sure plain!”
The thought burst upon Tom like an inward light. He saw that the two brothers had forgotten their bruises and their wounds in the battle against him. He saw that they were listening, fascinated. That they were as much hypnotized by the display of emotion on that rough and bearded face as by his words, did not occur to him. But a glory fell on Tom Keene and glittered in his wild eyes and made him tremble until his beard quivered.
“Partners!” he cried. “When I think of what you two have got by being brothers, I sure envy you. There ain’t no bar between you. You don’t have to sit across the table making talk that don’t mean nothing and chattering about stuff that’s just news of other people. No, sir, for you can sit down there and open up and talk right from the bottom of your hearts. You don’t have to be ashamed of showing yourselves the way you are. You can learn out of each other. Why, if you’d trusted each other and had faith in each other, you’d’ve been able to break me in two and throw the pieces out the door. D’you believe me?”
They were afraid to deny him. They could only gasp.
“God made you strong enough to make each other stronger,” Tom said as the belief in his own words took hold on him like a torrent. His voice rose and crowded the cabin. “All you got to do is to give your hand freely to your friend and believe him. Them that you believe in will believe in you. Partners, if we had faith in one another, this old world could be as happy as a dream.”
Chapter Five
It was noon before they would let him leave, and, when he insisted that he could stay no longer, Hal went out and saddled black Major. Tom turned on the younger brother.
“Partner,” he said, “I been talking like I was a pile older than I am. And I been talking like I was a good man. I ain’t.”
Jack watched him carefully, thoughtfully. After that first moment of battle, he seemed vastly attracted to the stranger.
“I ain’t denying that,” Jack said, “till I hear what else you got to say.”
“What would you say was my way of making a living?” asked Tom.
“Why, preaching, I’d say,” said Jack. “I suppose you’re on your way to take up your work in a church right now?”
Tom jerked off his money belt. It fell on the table with the weight of a heavy fist. “How d’you think a preacher got that much money?”
“In a town,” Jack answered. “Folks in a town would pay that much money to hear the sort of things that you can say.”
“Do you think they would?” Tom asked, wondering. “But why should they pay me anything?”
“So you could use it to help the poor, of course.”
“Suppose I used it to help myself?”
Jack laughed softly. “Anybody could see that you’re honest,” he said. “Anybody could see that you’re a pretty good sort of a man.”
Tom Keene sighed. “I’ll tell you something,” he said. “My father died because I left him in want when he was an old man. And this money, yonder, is the money I got by being a sharper at cards. That’s the sort of a good man I am.” As he spoke his confession, shame and sorrow burned into him. “I’ve been a thief, Jack … except that thieves have got to use some sort of courage. They got to take a chance on being caught. But I’ve been a gambler. Nothing is any lower than that.”
“A long time ago,” Jack said, his eyes wide, “a lot of good men have been pretty rough characters, but they repent and make the best sort, they say. They know what being really bad is. A man that’s born a saint … why, he don’t know what temptation is.”
“I tell you this, son,” Tom Keene said, “a gent can’t get over a thing by just repenting. It won’t work at all. The things you’ve done that are wrong stay with you. They’re part of you. Everything that a gent has ever done is a part of him, just like his eyes and his ears. He can’t forget. It grows with him. I’ll never be over being sick for what I’ve done in my life. I’ve done a pile of bad things. But worst of all, I’m a murderer.”
“I don’t believe it!” Jack cried, nevertheless shaken.
“I am,” groaned Tom. “I’ve murdered my own father. I broke his heart waiting for me, and then I killed him with starvation. Why, a murder with a gun ain’t nothing compared to that sort of thing. And d’you know why I’m telling you all this, Jack?”
“I don’t know,” Jack replied humbly.
“Because it’ll make you remember me and what I’ve said,” said Tom. “You got interested in what I’ve talked about, but you been just interested in the words. Now that you know the truth about me, you’ll remember everything and believe. It ain’t the words I’ve spoke that’ll do any good in this old world, Jack. It’s something behind the words that counts. I tell you, son, we all got a fire inside of us. Sometimes that fire gets into our words. Sometimes it gets into what we do. But I can feel it burning inside of me … the want to help other folks and keep ’em from doing what I’ve done and to teach ’em to have faith and trust in one another. I ain’t got no words to pour that fire into. But God will help me to show it to folks, and God will help me to stand it when they laugh at me. But you, Jack, you’ll remember?”
“Why will Hal remember without knowing this?” asked Jack. “Why shouldn’t he know the truth about you, too?”
“Because he ain’t got your head on his shoulders,” Tom said. “If he knew that I’d ever been real bad, he’d lose all trust in me. He’d think that I was playacting all this. You see? But you look deeper. Because I’m smudged up, you’ll be more apt to think I may have something worthwhile in me. D’you know why? Because you’re smudged up yourself, Jack.”
The younger man started back from him, indignant and surprised.
“I mean it,” said Tom. “You’re using your brother mighty shameful, Jack. You think that gents that don’t know nothing about books can’t amount to much in the world. But I tell you, Jack, that your brother is a mighty good man. He ain’t open-minded like you, but everything that’s inside his mind is good stuff. You got to do your part. You think you ought to get a pile of praise because you’re reading books and getting ready to practice law. You think that, because you’re boosting yourself along, everybody had ought to give you a lift. Well, Jack, that’s a devil of a good way for a gent to ride for a fall, I can tell you. You got to be more humble … you got to think about making your brother comfortable while he works like blazes to give you a home. And if you only half try, he’ll be so grateful, Jack, that the tears’ll plumb start in his eyes. Meantime, here he comes. Before he comes … I know you’ll be needing money. Here’s a hundred. Spend it just for your books. So long.”
He strode out of the cabin, leaving Jack breathing hard, confused by a dozen conflicting emotions of gratitude, anger, suspicion, happiness.
Outside, Tom took the black horse from the hand of Hal. And into the latter’s unwilling fingers he stuffed his money belt.
“Look here,” protested Hal, “you’ve done more good for us than you can make out, already. D’you think that I’m going to take …”
“It belongs to you or to nobody,” Tom said. “I’ll tell you why. A dying man told me to give it to the first good man that I met along the road. And I guess that you’re him, Hal. So long!”
He was in the saddle and away before Hal could open his lips to protest again.
Among the mountains rode Tom Keene. The day faded. The evening came on with a soft wind blowing upon him through a gap in the range of peaks before
him, and the wind was fragrant with the perfumes of the evergreens. The stars were beginning to walk out into the eastern sky. And a mighty happiness was beginning to strike through Tom’s soul.
“And,” Tom cried, “to think that all my life I been working as hard as I could to take things, and never guessed for a minute that the greatest fun of all was in giving things away!”
The road climbed. And his thoughts climbed with it. To Tom it seemed that the dark lowlands behind him represented the dark years of his life, the cruelly selfish years. But, beyond the tops of the mountains, just before him, the stars were crowding down against the shadows. There was beauty before him. Why had he never paid any attention to such things before? Because he had kept his eyes too constantly fixed on his own welfare. And now, the minute he lifted his eyes from himself, a weight lifted from him, a weight of worry about his welfare. Let each day take care of itself. He would only, hereafter, labor to sow the seeds of happiness and faith in one another among his fellow men.
So thinking, he reached the top of the divide. Below him was a valley. He saw the sprinkled lights of a town straight ahead. And in that distance, every household was reduced to a single, meager spider thread of golden light. A dozen people, perhaps, were represented by each shaft of light. And in a great outflowing of compassion it seemed to Tom Keene that the blackness of the rest of the village was typical of the lives of men. Happiness was confined, in every house, to only a golden instant here and there in the blackness of the days.
But if he could waken them to the truth—if he could kill suspicion, envy, greed, hatred of one another—then the besieging darkness would roll away.
He lifted his voice into tremendous singing, and Major, as though in response to a prick of the spurs, spurted into a swift gallop down the slope.
Chapter Six
It was two or three months later. Tom himself did not know, for he had long since lost all track of time. He counted existence only in terms of the good he could do in the future, and the evil he had done in the past. Just as he had poured his whole strength into the game of taking by skill and cunning, so he now poured it into the opposite game of giving all he had.
He studied the Bible, not as extensively as he might, for study did not come easily to him. Moreover, he fell into the habit of dreaming over the poetry of the Great Book, with instinct for its power and suggestiveness. Out of it he quarried the proofs with which he fortified his theory. But, on the whole, he was able to do very well without reference to the Bible or quotation from it. He was making his own religious way and gathering his own adherents by the preaching of his simple belief that the clue to golden happiness for all men is faith and trust in one another.
He carried his voice everywhere. In mines, in cow camps, in lumber gangs he appeared and held forth, and men listened. They listened to him in the first place, because he was so big and his beard was so tangled and thick. They listened to him in the second place because his voice was so ringing and loud. They listened to him in the third place because, otherwise, if they taunted him or interrupted him, he knocked them down with two fists that were like two boulders, and they listened to him in quiet wonder because his words bore the stamp of his sincerity, which made them current coin for any mind, no matter how simple, to grasp.
“If you believe in your brother, your brother will believe in you. If you give with a free hand, you cannot help getting back what you give.”
Such a doctrine was simplicity itself, and a simple doctrine is the best for a man who wants to make converts. Once in a mining camp, as he was talking after supper to the long table lined with miners at their coffee, he was interrupted by a man who knew him as an ex-gambler, and this fellow stood up and accused him in round terms. And when he was through and the miners leaned forward to hear the denial and weigh the proofs, they were astonished to hear, instead, an admission of the truth. Such a man was to be believed. Rather than scoff at Tom Keene for his past, they believed him on the theory that he who knows what sin is from practice, should be more able to talk of it to others.
He was riding in a country new to him, a country of neither dead flat nor mountains, but rather of pleasantly rolling hills, with stretches of arable soil between, and some forest and much good grazing land. In the distance, a town was announced by the pricking of the church steeple above a hill. Closer at hand was a house by the road, with a little girl of twelve, perhaps, her bare legs and bare arms brown, singing like a bird near a well.
Tom Keene drew rein. All that is beautiful, he had found, gives a man strength. And he smiled as he watched the child and listened. She sat with her legs dangling on the inside of the well, and with a stick and string she fished for imaginary prizes in the airy depths below her. It was no doubt a disused well. On the far side of the house was a windmill swinging its shaft and creaking busily as a changeable wind swung the fan slowly back and forth.
She leaned, slipped. Tom saw two brown arms flash in the air as she turned and caught at the edge of the well stones. Then she dropped from sight, and her scream was chopped away in the middle by a splash.
Major, inspired by the unaccustomed touch of the spurs, cleared the fence in a tremendous bound. Tom was out of the saddle in the instant, and stooped above the well. Far below, past the dried mosses on the stones of the old well, was the dark circle of water with a swirl of green to mark the spot where the child had gone down.
At that moment the girl showed again, her clutching arm thrusting above the water. Had she been clearheaded, she could have caught a crevice of the stones at the level of her head and there supported herself for some time, but she was blind with panic, and Tom had only a single glimpse of the wild face before she went under again.
The next instant he was going down the well with reckless speed, wedging his boots into the rough projections of the stones and cursing the spurs and the high heels that hampered him. He reached the bottom in time to thrust his right hand far down and tangle his fingers in her hair. He drew up. It seemed that a dead weight floated toward the surface. Then her face was exposed, wonderfully changed. Indeed, death could not have altered her more. The brown was vanished from her face. He saw colorless lips, closed eyes, and a small, pinched, pretty face.
Still higher he raised her. Weakly her arms dangled behind her. When he called, the crowding echoes made his voice an immense murmur that was confused to his own ears. But he managed to get his arm under her shoulders, and with some effort he worked her up until she could be placed across his shoulder.
As he labored, he jammed one of her arms against the stones, and this brought a sudden outcry of pain from her. He saw that the arm was hanging crooked. The bone had been snapped in the fall. That wail did not last. All in a moment she shook back the hair that straggled around her face. She clasped his neck with her other arm, and when he panted out, “Hold tight, little one, and don’t be afraid,” she actually managed to summon up a wan smile to assure him of her courage.
He began to climb. His boots had touched the water at the bottom, and now they slipped half a dozen times on his way up. He was in constant danger of falling from his place. Moreover, it was hot as an oven where the sun had heated the stones, and they now reflected the heat. The descent had seemed short. But the climb up was prodigiously long. Even his huge muscles began to ache before he was halfway up.
And, partly to give himself more courage, he said to the girl over and over, “You’re not afraid, honey?”
She would answer in a voice made small with the pain that she was suffering, “I’m not afraid.”
A voice came running from the distance, crying out. And as he neared the top, a woman leaned, calling, “Mary! Mary!” and then a scream as she saw Tom and his burden.
But what a plucky young one it was. She raised her head. It had fallen a moment before on Tom’s shoulder, and a faint moan of pain had come from her. But now she looked up and cried, “I’m all right. I’m ’mos
t as good as new.”
A moment later Tom placed his burden in the arms of the woman, and all three were laughing and talking at once, weak with joy and thrilling with the saved life—until Mary dropped back her head in a dead faint.
They put her down on the ground, and her mother opened her dress at the throat. But Tom started up and pointed over his shoulder.
“Where’s the nearest doctor?” he asked. “We’ve got to have one here. Her arm’s broke bad, lady. It ought to be set right away, I guess.”
“He’s only two miles away, around that hill, yonder. But I doubt that he will come. We owe him too much money already, and I can fix …” She broke off.
Tom was already in the saddle, and Major rose like a bird and cleared the fence. His leap carried him into the center of the road, and then he swerved and spurted away at a sprinting gait for the doctor’s.
Tom found the man of medicine reading comfortably on his veranda. He was a little, stern-faced person, equipped with powerful glasses and a precise manner. His appearance was finished off with a narrow gray beard, carefully trimmed.
He uttered a wail and dropped his book at the sight of Major soaring over the fence, smashing to bits some of the choicest rows in the vegetable garden that the doctor cared for in his leisure moments.
In the next instant big Tom Keene vaulted out of the saddle and landed with a crash on the porch. “A broken arm,” he said. “Where’s your things?”
And he rushed the doctor into the house, stammering protests at every step of the way.
“I’ll get my horse and buggy,” began the doctor. “But who’s this for?”
“Up the road, here. I dunno their names. A pretty woman and a sight prettier girl. They say you’ve been there before. And …”
“The Carvers!” the doctor cried. “I can’t go. Mercy is one thing, and human kindness is all very well … but it can be run into the ground. By the eternal, I’m not going, sir. They owe me for scarlet fever and measles and whooping cough. I’ve doctored their horses and their cattle. I’ve gone to them in fair weather and foul. But last year I drew a line and swore that never again would worthless John Carver command my services when …”