The Way Of The West

by Elmer Kelton

  ‘I’d better be going,’ said Vasa.

  And he stood up. He added suddenly: ‘Darned if I ain’t sorry, Ingram. I didn’t think you were the sort that would let any—’

  He stopped himself, turned upon his heel and was gone. Ingram closed the church and went home again.

  Delicacy which had kept the women from the church that morning? There was no more delicacy in Billman and its people than there was in the birds and the insects of the desert around them. They were walled away from him now by the most profound contempt.

  By the middle of the afternoon, he knew what he must do, and he walked down to the telegraph office. He met a hundred people on the way, but not a single pair of eyes. They turned away when they saw him coming. They slipped this way and that so that they might not have to encounter him. Only a pair of boys ran out of a gate and after him, laughing, yelling, calling out words suggested to them by the fiend that inhabits boys.

  At the telegraph office he wrote a telegram:

  My usefulness at Billman ended; suggest that you send a new man and an old one for this post; will wait till his arrival if necessary.

  He signed that message and directed it to those who had dispatched him on this distant mission. Then he walked back down the street toward his shack once more.

  He wanted to hurry, but he made himself walk with a deliberate step. He wanted to skulk around the backyards to get to his destination, but he checked himself and held on his way through the thick of men and women. More boys came out to mock at him. And he heard a mother sharply scold her offspring.

  ‘Let the poor, good-for-nothin’ creature alone, can’t you, boys?’

  That was for him!

  He got to his shack again, and remembered suddenly for the second time that day that it was the Sabbath. So he took up his Bible and began to read, forcing his eyes to consider the words until a shadow fell through the doorway and across the floor to his feet.

  It was the Dominican.

  He came in and held out his hand. Ingram failed to see it.

  Then Brother Pedrillo said: ‘I guessed at a good many things, brother. But this thing I didn’t guess at. I thought that it would be simply a matter of guns. I didn’t imagine that it could be anything worse!’

  He added, after a moment: ‘Brother, I understand. The rest have not seen the truth. You hate them now. Afterward, you will remember that they are like children. Forgive them if you can. Not today. It would be too hard. But tomorrow.’

  This he said, and afterward withdrew as quietly as he had come, and went down the street with a fat man’s waddling step.

  In due time, he passed Vasa’s house, and found the busy matron in the garden, snatching a moment from her housekeeping to improve the vegetables. He leaned on the picket fence to talk with her.

  ‘And how’s Astrid?’

  ‘That girl’s in bed,’ said Mrs. Vasa. ‘Pretty sick, too.’

  ‘Sick?’ queried the friar. ‘What does the doctor say about it?’

  ‘Oh, it ain’t a thing for doctors to know about. Doctors ain’t much help sometimes, Brother.’

  Pedrillo wandered on down the street. He passed the hotel, where he was hailed jovially by the idlers, and drinks of various kinds and sizes were suggested. He refused them all, not that he was above having a glass of beer—or pulque as the case might be—but because he drank in a house, not in a saloon. And at the farther corner of the hotel he fairly ran into Red Moffet.

  Red hailed him. The friar walked on in silence, and the tall cow-puncher instantly was at his side.

  ‘Look here, Pedrillo. What’s the matter? Didn’t you see me?’

  ‘I don’t want to talk to you, Red,’ said the friar. ‘Because if I start talking, my temper may get the best of me.’

  ‘You mean Ingram, I suppose,’ said the big fellow.

  ‘I mean Ingram.’

  ‘Well, what would you have me do? Use a gun on him instead?’

  ‘May I tell you what I think, Red?’

  ‘Fire away, old fellow. You can say whatever you please.’

  ‘Then I’ll tell you what I firmly believe—that if a scruple didn’t stand in his way, Ingram could thrash any two men in this town!’

  ‘What kind of a joke is that?’ asked Moffet.

  ‘It’s not a joke, but the coldest kind of hard fact.’

  ‘Why, Brother, the man’s yellow!’

  ‘Don’t tell me that, Red. He’s simply keeping himself in hand. He won’t fight on principle—not for the sake of his own hide. And just now, you are on the crest and he’s in the trough. But I shouldn’t be surprised if he turned the tables on you one of these days!’

  ‘He’ll have to make it quick,’ said Red. ‘The quitter has had enough. He’s wired to be taken from the town.’

  ‘Has he done that?’

  ‘Yep, he’s hollered for help.’

  And Red grinned with malicious content.

  ‘Very well’ said the Dominican. ‘He’s asking to be relieved because he thinks he no longer can do good here—after the way you disgraced him. But I’ll tell you, Red, that this is going to be no short story for you. It is apt to be a very, very long one!’

  He went on without further words, and with a very dark brow, leaving Red Moffet deep in thought behind him.

  On across the creek to the poorer section of the town went the friar, until he found himself in the quarters of his compatriots. There the theme was the same as that which occupied the Americans in the more prosperous section of Billman.

  And a lame fellow fresh from the hospital said to the Dominican: ‘Our friend, Señor Ingram, he is not much of a man, Brother?’

  ‘Who has told you that?’ snapped Pedrillo.

  ‘Look! He has been whipped like a dog!’

  ‘Shall I tell you a thing, my friend?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It is a great secret, amigo.’

  ‘Then tell me, Brother.’

  ‘This Señor Ingram is a quiet man. But also when the time comes, it will be seen that he is muy diablo.’

  There is no way to translate that phrase—muy diablo. It means ‘much devil’ or’very devil. ‘And then it has other meanings as well. One can say that a maverick is muy diablo. Also one may use the expression concerning a stick of dynamite. The peon listened to the friar and opened his eyes. Never for a moment did it occur to him to doubt.

  ‘I shall keep the secret!’ said he. ‘But when will Señor Ingram act?’

  ‘That is with God and his conscience. He will act in good time!’

  And he watched the peon hurry away. He knew that in half an hour the whole town would be apprised of the secret that Señor Ingram, the minister, in some mysterious way, was muy diablo. Brother Pedrillo was content.

  X

  The Mystery of Work

  Rumor in Billman, as in all small Western towns, moved with the speed and the subtlety of a serpent. And so the tale rapidly went the rounds that Ingram, despite his fall at the hands of Red Moffet, was stronger than he seemed to be; that he was, in fact, muy diablo. He was biding his time. Before long, something would happen to reveal him to the people as he was in truth.

  The cow-punchers, hearing the tale, shrugged their shoulders and were inclined to laugh. But afterward, they remembered and pondered the matter. There had been something in the unflinching manner with which big Ingram walked their streets the very day after his disgrace that gave them pause. They turned the matter in their minds and became more serious. The story came to the ears of Astrid Vasa and made her sit up suddenly in bed, her eyes shining.

  Who could tell?

  In five minutes she was dressed. In five minutes more she was on the street, hurrying to Ingram.

  She found him in his shack, with a telegram in his hand, which told him that there was no possibility of replacing him at once in Billman, and that he would have to remain at his post for an indefinite period. In the meantime, he must write all details of what had happened.

  Wh
en Astrid called, he came out into the sun and stood there with his head lowered and thrust forward a little, like a fighter prepared to receive a blow. She was abashed.

  So she stood by the gate, guiltily hoping that no one would see her there.

  ‘I only wanted to say, Reggie, that I wrote that note without thinking. I hope that I didn’t hurt you—I mean—I thought—’

  He lifted his eyes to her face. Astrid uttered a little cry.

  ‘I should never have written it!’ she pleaded. ‘I’m sorry. And I didn’t know that you would—that you—’

  And she added suddenly: ‘Won’t you say something?’

  No, not a word. She did not feel that his was the sulky silence of a child. Rather it was a considerate silence, as of a man who needs a quiet moment for thinking. But it was as though she were thrust away from him by a long arm. It was as though she never could have been near him.

  Astrid began to regret, and to regret bitterly. Not that she knew just what was in the mind of Mr. Ingram, or what he was as a man—but that she felt he was something different from any other man who had ever been in Billman. And Astrid loved novelties!

  ‘You won’t forgive me!’ moaned Astrid suddenly.

  ‘Forgive you?’ repeated the deep voice. ‘Oh, yes, I forgive you!’

  No passion in it. No more than if he were reading the words out of a book, and somehow that was more to Astrid Vasa than the bitterest denunciation. She shrank away down the street and hurried to her home.

  Her father was not there.

  She rushed to his shop, and there she found him. The forge was sending up masses of smoke, for the fuel had just been freshened; smoke wreathed all the shadowy cave in which the forge flame was darting like a snake’s tongue. In the midst stood Vasa, his shirt off, the top of his hairy chest and his wonderful arms, loaded down with muscles, exposed. He had donned a leather apron. In one hand he swayed a fourteen-pound sledge tentatively.

  ‘Dad!’ cried Astrid, ‘I want to speak to you!’

  ‘Hey—you! Get out of here!’ called her father fiercely.

  She had walked into the grime and the heavy, impure air. And with the unceremonious wave of his arm her father sent her staggering back to the door.

  She was furious, for no human being ever had treated her after this fashion. Not since she had first been called by her full name of Astrid.

  She saw the two assistants bear the great beam of iron from the forge fire, each of them toiling with a pair of huge pincers. She saw the beam laid across the anvil. Then the sledge in the hands of her father began to sweep through the air in rapid circles, and at each stroke a thousand rays of liquid fire darted to every corner of the shop, lighting up all its cobwebbed angles and showing the smoke, thick as milk, which hovered against the beams of the roof.

  The assistants winced under those showers of sparks and shrank away; the blows fell more rapidly. She heard her father bellowing orders, and saw the iron being turned, moved here and there on the anvil according to his directions. And then, half disgusted and half afraid, she saw that all this noise and smoke and fury was merely for the sake of putting a bend in that massive bit of iron, a right-angle bend, and also to round the iron about the angle point.

  Then she saw her father seize the iron beam with one pincer and with one hand plunge it into the tempering tub. With one hand—that burden for two strong men!

  There was a frightful hissing, as though a vast cauldron filled with rattlesnakes had been threatened with death. A billow of steam rolled out and all within the shop was lost in fog. At length, parting the mist before him with his hand, Vasa carne toward Astrid and towered above her.

  ‘Well, honey, what you want?’

  She did not answer. She only stared.

  ‘I was kind of rough, Astie, dear,’ said he. ‘Don’t be mad with me!’

  It was not his roughness that amazed her, but his sudden gentleness. And Astrid began to guess at vastly new thoughts, and vastly large ones. That bending of the iron in itself was not so important, perhaps. The iron would become a part of a stupid machine. But what was important was that a man with fire and hammer to aid him had turned that strong iron as though it had been wax, melted and molded it, and given it a new shape!

  So thought Astrid. And she could understand the roughness with which her father had greeted her. For she had come between him and his work—that mystery of work! She had been nothing—merely an annoyance! She had felt, before this, that nothing so important as herself could come into the life of some chosen man. But now she guessed that the more worthwhile the man, the more his work would mean to him, and the less the winning of a woman. Would she, then, be pushed into the background? Was it right?

  Right or wrong, with terrible suddenness the girl realized that she never could care truly for any man save for one capable of elevating his labor into a god in this fashion. Even if it were no more than the shaping of iron beams. Yes, even that work could be great and important if it were approached in the right manner. And it was this which gave a certain surety and significance to her father. He was all that she had ever thought him—gross, careless, slovenly—but also worthy of respect.

  So thought Astrid, and accordingly she greeted her father as she never had greeted him before, with a touch of awe.

  ‘Can you spare me a minute, dear Dad?’ she said.

  ‘A minute?’ he asked, amazed. ‘Sure, kid! Or an hour; now what you want? What’s botherin’ you? You look sort of upset!’

  He took her by the elbows and lifted her to the top of a great packing case. She would have cried out, at another time, because his hands were smudging her dress. But now she merely smiled down at him, a rather uncertain, frightened smile.

  ‘You tell your old dad!’

  ‘You remember that note you took to Reggie Ingram?’

  ‘Aye, I remember.’

  ‘I told him in that note—that I didn’t have any more use for him!’

  ‘Hello! That was kind of hard!’

  ‘Dad, I’d got myself engaged to him before that.’

  ‘You did!’

  ‘And then I threw him over.’

  ‘What else could you do? A gent that lets himself—’

  ‘No!’

  He was silent.

  ‘You tell me, then,’ he said at last.

  ‘I want him back! Dad, you got to get him back for me!’

  Mr. Vasa combed his hair with fingers covered with the black of iron.

  ‘What am I gunna do, honey? Get down on my knees and beg him to marry you after all? Look here, I’ll bring him to the house. You got to do the rest; but, sis, ain’t you a little crazy to want to take a man that’s been—’

  ‘No!’ cried she.

  He was silent again. And she wondered that with all his force he should submit so easily to her desires. It was as though he felt that her intelligence was worth more than his in this affair.

  ‘I can’t talk to him!’ said Astrid, with a sob. ‘I’ve just been to see him and tried, but he only looked at me and said nothing until I asked him to forgive me, and then he said that he would; but he’s put me out of his life—and I can’t stand it! I can’t stand it, Dad!’

  ‘So? So?’ murmured the big blacksmith.

  He lifted her down to the ground and dried her eyes.

  ‘I’m gunna do what I can’ said he. ‘But I dunno! It looks pretty bad. Though there’s a yarn going around the town that after all he’s not what we think—that this Ingram is muy diablo, sis. Have you heard that?’

  She answered fiercely: ‘You wait and see! You wait and see!’

  Vasa nodded, and she went slowly back home.

  It had been a day of wreckage and disaster to her old idea, and the new idea was not yet firmly established in her mind, so she felt weak, and frightfully uncertain. She only guessed that there were such forces loose in the world of men as she never before had dreamed of.

  And then, at the door of her home, she met Red Moffet, who was grinning, and
looking both shamefaced and proud of himself, like a child who expects to be praised.

  She shrank from him.

  ‘I’ve got a headache; I can’t talk to you, Red,’ she told him truthfully enough. ‘I’ve got to be alone!’

  And she walked straight past him.

  Now Red was a man among men, and he was intelligent enough to prospect for gold-bearing ore, and find it and work it. But he did not understand the ways of women. Men usually are like that. The more brave and bold and successful they are in their own fields, the more obtuse, clumsy and inept they are with the women who enter their lives. Perhaps there never was a universal favorite with women who was not a bit effeminate, or something of a charlatan. One needs a dainty touch with women. A conversation with them is like a surgical operation upon nerves. The slightest slip of the hand or a cut a shade too deep and the result is total failure. The light-tongued jugglers of words—they are the successful ones.

  But poor Red did not know this.

  All he was sure of was that he loved this girl, and that he felt he had eliminated from the competition his one dangerous rival. But instead of reaping the fruits of victory, he was received with open weariness and disgust.

  So he followed her to the door and even touched her shoulder.

  She whirled around at him, shrinking as if his touch were a contamination.

  ‘I want to know,’ began Red, ‘what’s happened to make you so very—’

  ‘You bully!’ she cried.

  It staggered Red, and he fell back.

  ‘Bully?’ he said, amazed.

  ‘You cowardly, great, hulking, worthless bully!’ cried Astrid, following him.

  He could not stand his ground. He retreated through the door, forgetting his hat.

  She threw it after him.

  ‘I hope I never see you again!’ cried Astrid.

  XI

  ‘Without Losing No Dignity’

  Nothing offends us so much as the illogical. We do not demand a great deal from the world. But we wish for our logical rewards—and a little bit more. If a child has cut up your best hat in order to make an ashtray for you, you must not scold him, no matter how your heart is bleeding. He expects a bit of praise, and praise he must have. Or if you point out to him, with care, that he has been in most frightful error and really deserves a whipping, then he is mortified, ashamed, shrinks from you, and presently hates the entire world.