by Max Brand
“Some gents are that way,” observed Neilan. “They ain’t got the knack of being at home no matter where they may be. Take Johnny, now. He’s different. He used to be at home in every house within thirty miles of us. That was a way he had. Give him a nail to hang up his hat and a box to sit on, and he was all right any place.”
Mary Thomas glanced sharply at Mrs. Neilan and saw that the old lady was trembling, but there was no stopping John Neilan. All year, every year, he was silent on the topic of topics. But on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day his tongue was loosened. But the mother never named her missing boy, perhaps because she did not share the absolute conviction of her spouse that Johnny was still alive, or because she feared that to speak cheerfully, as though confident of his return, might irritate a capricious Providence. She merely nodded to John Neilan with a wan smile and, in a trembling voice, turned the subject of the talk.
And Mary Thomas reached out suddenly, covertly, and pressed the hand of Mrs. Neilan under the cover of the tablecloth. Mrs. Neilan started and then stared at the girl as though she feared the latter had gone mad. But, understanding that the pressure of the hand was meant by way of consoling sympathy, she flushed heavily and frowned. Mary Thomas winced back into her chair. It was always this way. They fenced her out of their inner lives. In the midst of their household they kept her a stranger.
“Hush,” said John Neilan suddenly.
Outside, borne strongly toward the house on the wind, came the sound of a galloping horse and the singing of a man. There was something indescribably joyous about the song. The rhythm of it matched the swing of the gallop. There was the quick-step of youth in that singing, a great, free, ringing voice that went on smoothly, hardly jarred by the gallop which carried the singer so swiftly toward the house.
“Who is that?” asked Mrs. Neilan. “Who is expected today?”
“Nobody,” answered her husband. He added, pushing back his chair: “Who do you think it could be?”
The question in his voice, the wild question in his eyes, made Mrs. John Neilan turn white.
“Don’t, John,” she whispered. “Don’t say that. Don’t think that.”
Mary Thomas looked from one to the other. Long as she had lived with them, she could hardly understand a grief so bitterly vital that it turned the chance-heard sound of a galloping horse and a singing traveler into a promise and a hope.
Then—they heard it indistinctly—a heavy footfall ran up the steps.
“The side steps, John,” breathed Mrs. Neilan, swaying forward and steadying herself with her withered hands against the edge of the table.
And Mary remembered that in the past, Johnny had always used the side entrance.
“Wait,” gasped Mr. Neilan.
And, commanded by his raised hand, they dared not draw a breath. And then—the door banged with a jingling of the outer screen. The stranger had boldly entered without knocking. He had entered from the side. He was coming, singing softly. His footfall was swift and heavy. The old flooring trembled beneath the shocks of his heels and set the glasses quivering on the table. No, that vibration was caused by the shaking hands of Mr. and Mrs. Neilan!
Suddenly the mother was strong and the father was weak.
“Listen,” breathed John Neilan. “It’s the old song … his old song, ‘The Bullwacker.’”
Mary Thomas, who had hitherto pitied them for their excitement, was caught up in the contagion.
“Don’t, John!” pleaded the old woman. “I can’t stand it!”
He dropped into his chair and covered his face with his hands. What old hands they were, and how much they had labored, and how much they had made his own—all for the sake of that lost child. But Mrs. Neilan rose and moved swiftly around the table and went to him. There she stood, with her hand resting on the bowed head, facing the door. All at once Mary knew how pretty the withered old woman had been in her youth. And her eyes, beneath their wrinkled, puckered lids, were now as brilliant and liquid as the eyes of a girl. The door from the library opened into the hall. The singing, now boomed out at them, was hushed to a humming sound. Then came a silence, and in the silence Mary saw the knob of the dining room door turn slowly, without sound.
Her heart stopped—then bounded violently.
The door swung open, and there against the darkness of the hall appeared a tall youth of mighty shoulders, handsome in a singularly boyish way, brown as a berry, so that his eyes in contrast were a deep-sea blue.
There he stood smiling, his hat in his hand, a thin powdering of snow across the breast of his coat gleaming in the lamplight like diamond dust. The brain of Mary Thomas swirled with a hundred thoughts. Could this be he? Were those straight-looking eyes the eyes of the mischievous, untrustworthy boy of whom she had heard so many tales? Could it be that he had returned, in fact, on this day of all days?
Suddenly he was frowning.
“Why, Mother, don’t you know me?”
That word removed all doubt, swept away all hesitancy to credence.
“John!” cried the mother. “It’s … the boy! Oh, Johnny, my dear!”
What a cry it was. The long winter of grief was over and broken. The green and golden springtime of happiness had come in an instant. She ran across the room with a step as light as the step of a girl. She reached up her arms and caught them around the big fellow in the doorway, and he, as lightly as though she were a child, lifted her bodily from the floor and kissed her.
John Neilan came stumbling blindly toward them, his hand stretched out to feel his way. And then a great arm, a great brown hand, swept out and gathered in the old man. The three were a weeping, murmuring unit.
What was her place in that room or in that house? Mary rose and slipped from the dining room.
IV
In her own room she went to the window and peered forth. The night was frosty-clear. The stars were out. The trees were doubly black against that pure white of snow which, now and then, puffing up like dust, was whirled past the window, obscuring the landscape.
Truly there was never a more perfect night for a Christmas Eve. There was something wonderfully pure and honest about that great outdoors. It could not have allowed a fraud to come out of it to the house. Fraud? No, the deep-blue eyes gleaming out of that brown face were ample assurance of his honesty. And, indeed, he had come like fate. And the instant his voice was heard, had not the father guessed? Blood spoke to blood. There was something terribly moving about it all. The heaven, full of stars, was splintered with party-colored rays. She was staring up through her tears. Her dear ones could never come to her out of the night. Out of the past she gathered the few memories which had clung in her child-mind—the tender eyes of her mother, the deep voice of her father. That was all she had to take to her heart on Christmas Eve.
A light, faltering tap was heard on the door, and then Mrs. Neilan came running in. How changed she was! Joy bubbled up within her and looked out through her eyes. Was this the iron-hard woman she had known and feared? She came to Mary and passed her arm about the girl.
“John saw you leave the room, dear. He wants you to come back. And … oh, Mary, isn’t it like a miracle? Isn’t it like an answer to a prayer? Are there really fools who don’t believe in a God … even on Christmas Day?”
“You ought to be alone with him,” Mary said, “on this first night. And I think I should be alone, too.”
Ordinarily the least resistance to suggestions angered Mrs. Neilan. But she was a new woman tonight and, turning the girl toward the lamp, she studied her face and the tear-dimmed eyes.
“I know,” she said. “I think, I know. Poor dear! But you must come down. We have happiness enough to spare for the whole world. And why should we care about one night? He’s promised that he’ll never leave again. Never!”
Mary could not resist. She went down the stairs with Mrs. Neilan, their arms about each other like two fr
iends of one age. That dark stairway had always been a place of dread to Mary, but now she felt as though she were going down into a sunshine presence.
A new place had been laid at the table, and the wanderer sat at it with a plate heaped high. He rose at once and came to them.
“They’ve told me about you a little,” he said. “I figured maybe you’d think that this was just a family party, and that you were out of it. But, to my way of thinking, you’re as much a part of the family as I am. Let’s all sit around and be sociable, eh?”
He took her to her chair. He drew it out and seated her. Then he hurried around to his place again and attacked the ample provisions that Mrs. Neilan had heaped before him. And what a time followed! How the father heaped questions—how the mother warded those questions away until her boy should have eaten. And eat he did with tremendous appetite. He talked as he could in the brief interludes.
“Where have I been? Everywhere! North, but mostly south. What have I been doing? Everything! Remember I was a work hater? Well, I’ve had to swing a pick and a shovel and hammer a drill. I’ve had to pitch hay and mow it and stack it. I’ve had to feed on a baler. I’ve roped and branded and bored fence holes and strung wire. Look there!”
He extended his long arms so that they dominated the whole table—what a huge fellow he was, thought Mary—and, turning his palms uppermost, he exposed to their view hands callused from the heel of the palm to the work-squared tips of the fingers. And as he flexed them, the big wrist cords stood out, mute testimony to lifting of weights and struggling at burdens.
“Poor boy! Poor Johnny!” his mother said, and sighed.
“Poor nothing!” The wanderer grinned with an irrepressible smile of good humor. “It’s been a twelve-year lark. I’ve had to work, sure enough … but those calluses are the price of freedom. By the way, I figure there’s no price too high to pay for that.”
“John,” murmured Mrs. Neilan. “Johnny, dear, do you mean that?”
“Oh, no fear of me slipping off again,” he said, flushing a little. “I’ve had my fling, right enough. What you see, Dad?”
The old man had taken the right hand of the newcomer and now examined it earnestly.
“The other hand is tolerable pale from glove wearing,” he said slowly, “but this one looks as though they ain’t been many gloves on it, Son.” Raising his eyes gravely, he added, as he relinquished the hand: “I dunno where you been, but around these parts you may remember that gents that don’t wear gloves on their right hands keep ’em bare for one reason … and that was so’s they’d be quick and clean on the draw.”
“John!” cried Mrs. Neilan to her husband. “You have no right to accuse Johnny of being a fighting man. And on his first night home.”
“I’ve done my share of fighting,” said the wanderer, his face darkening slightly as he looked down to the sun-browned right hand that was now the center of the conversation. “I don’t deny that I’ve had my troubles, and I guess I have to admit that I ain’t been in the habit of running away from fights. But”—and here he raised his head and looked around with a suddenly bright smile—“I can say this much … I’ve never picked on any gent on the ranges, north or south. I’ve never forced a fight. I’ve never hunted trouble. And I’ve never taken an unfair advantage. If what you’re driving at is that maybe some think I’m a gunfighter, well, I got to admit that I’ve been called that. But I’ve never used a gun to get a gent that hadn’t done me a wrong or wronged a pal of mine. I’ve never used it to get something that wasn’t mine by rights. Does that clear me up?”
And he looked a straight challenge at John Neilan. The latter laughed softly and joyously.
“Do you think I expected you to turn out a softy?” he asked. “Do you think I expected you to turn out a ladies’ man? Ain’t you John Neilan’s son?”
Here the door from the hall opened, and the servant, who had been absent from the dining room for some time, now stood grinning and nodding before them.
Mrs. Neilan rose at once with a flush of pleasure. “Chung has something to show us,” she suggested. “Let’s see what it is. You first tonight, Johnny.”
The big fellow stepped smilingly ahead, crossed the dark gap of the hallway, and passed on through the open doors of the parlor. It was a flare of light from the huge lamp that hung in chains from the center of the ceiling, and from three or four more big circular burners placed most effectively to cast their light on one corner. And in that corner stood a young fir tree, with gay trimming heaped upon its branches, and all about it on the floor was a jumble of wrapped-up boxes and packages. Some of the paper on those packages had yellowed with time, others were fresh and crisp. It was a huge pile, spread wide across the floor.
“What in the world!” exclaimed the wanderer.
“It’s twelve Christmases all in one,” said the mother, with a trembling voice. “See what’s here, Johnny. Open them for him, Dad. No, give them to him to open!”
“Here’s the first one,” said the old man, quickly making a selection. “I remember getting it. More’n twelve years ago. Here you are Johnny!”
And he thrust a long, slender, heavy box into the hands of a stranger.
Mary Thomas glanced to the big youth with an expectant smile, but her smile went out. He, too, was attempting to smile, but his face was white and his mouth pinched in at the sides.
“You been remembering me every Christmas since I … left?”
“Remembering you? Son, have we remembered anything but you?”
“Open it, dear,” said the mother. “Open it.”
The big hand strayed slowly down the length of the package. Anyone could guess from the shape and weight that it was a gun.
But instead of opening it, he repeated slowly: “Every Christmas?”
“Aye, every one.”
“It’s been twelve years,” the big man said huskily, “and that’s a long time to wait. I ain’t written to you. I’ve treated you plumb bad all the way through. And still … every year … for twelve years … you ain’t forgot me a single time at Christmas.”
“Open up them packages and see,” John Neilan said eagerly. “Ah, Johnny, it’s been a sad business, getting presents every year and never knowing if you …”
“I knew,” said Mrs. Neilan suddenly. “I always knew he’d come.”
But Mary Thomas heard their voices no more distinctly than if they had been ghost whispers. She saw nothing but the face of the wanderer, gray and drawn with pain.
“I didn’t know,” he muttered, “that fathers and mothers could be like this. I didn’t know what Christmas could be.”
“You didn’t have much cause to find out from me,” said the father. “I treated you pretty bad, Son. I was too busy making money and stacking it away to pay much attention to my own boy. But I’ve learned different in these twelve years. I know now what’s worthwhile in the world. You remember what we had the last trouble about? About the key to the safe?” He laughed in excitement. “The safe is in the cellar in the old place, and here’s that key to the lock. Take it, Johnny, and keep it for me, and if you want everything in the safe, go and take it and don’t ask no questions. Money? Money’s dirt compared to having you back.”
The wanderer accepted the key with a trembling hand, and then offered to return it. “Too much trust is like too much liquor,” he said. “You sure you want me to have this? You sure it ain’t going to turn my head for me?”
“That’s only the beginning,” declared the father. “What you do with things don’t matter. They’re yours. Now open the packages, Son!”
“Not now,” said the stranger slowly. “Not now. Seems to me the way used to be to open up things on Christmas morning. Ain’t that right? I … I’ll open ’em up then, all together.”
But for some reason Mary Thomas knew, as she watched him, that he would never break the string on one of those pac
kages. Instinct told her that, and she wondered at it.
V
In all that followed throughout the evening, Happy Jack was aware of one thing only, and that was the watchful eye of Mary Thomas. Whatever he was doing, she caught him with a glance now and then, and it seemed to the big fellow from the southland that the steady eyes looked through and through him and found out his guilty secret.
In the meantime, fresh tides of life and uproarious noise began to invade the house. From the cheerless bunkhouse, where they were drowsing on this unhappy Christmas Eve, most melancholy of all nights to the wanderers, the cowpunchers of the Neilan outfit were roused and brought to the big house itself—an unprecedented act of hospitality on the part of the rancher, for since the disappearance of Johnny hardly half a dozen strangers had succeeded in getting past the door of the house.
They came haltingly, prepared to find it a false invitation which Chung had extended to them. But they found, instead of a chilling reception, open arms! Mrs. John Neilan with color as high as a girl of eighteen floated here and there among them, making them at home. And Mary Thomas, with fewer words, was an even more effective worker. The resources of the kitchen were called upon. The big dining table was spread again. From the depths of the cellar heavily cobwebbed bottles of sherry—how long, long ago they had been stored there and for twelve years been untouched—were brought up. One by one they disappeared. It was like turning a hose on the desert, save that the dry throats of the cowboys gave some return. They opened in song. They toasted old John Neilan until even his hard eyes began to twinkle. And they gave a tremendous rouse for the returned prodigal. And then they all stood up and sang for Mary Thomas and drank to her. It was a very great occasion. It was an evening when no one could remember anything that was said. But all were riotously happy.
Gifts were found for all. One robust cowpuncher received a fine revolver, another a watch, another a saddle—and so on until everyone had his share. This was wild liberality, but old John Neilan cared not for possessions on such a night as this.