The Young Adult Award-Winners Megapack

by Emily Cheney Neville

  But both were alert in an instant at the sound of the long, metallic peal from the telephone downstairs. Sayre felt Rene tremble. Then with a bound the red-haired girl was out of bed, turning on the light, slipping into mules and bath robe, and throwing toward Sayre another long, loose garment of silk in soft shades of green and blue. “Put this on. There’s no one home but Mother.”

  A moment later they were tumbling pell-mell down the stairs. In the hall below, Rene’s tall mother stood at the ‘phone. She half turned, the receiver at her ear. “It’s long distance. Your father.”

  Rene sank down on the bottom step, a little, huddled figure, taut and quivering. Sayre, on the step above, leaned over the banister, looking down. After an eternity the connection came. Both girls saw Mrs. Osgood start alert with attention. With silent concentration their eyes fastened on her listening face. There was no kindling of joy in it. That they both detected at once. Rene sprang to her feet, hovered a moment behind her mother almost as if she would snatch the receiver away. “What does he say, Mother? What makes you keep us waiting so long?” The tone was querulous with petulance; the implication of delay, absurdly unjust.

  But Mrs. Osgood seemed to understand. Without taking mouth or ear from the telephone, she managed to repeat in rapid asides the words that were coming to her over the wire.

  “They’ve found the car—Frank’s—turned over in a ditch, completely covered—buried under snow, a part of a big snowdrift, blankets all gone, and coats, no trace of the boys. The stock-judging cups and other awards—Frank’s and Charley’s and the team’s—all safe in the back part of the roadster, just where they were packed for the home-coming. Your father—back on the morning train—bringing the trophies with him, for display, to the town, in the Hoskins store window. Mr. Hoskins wants it. He’ll stay himself—to carry on—the search.” Mrs. Osgood’s voice trailed into silence. But she was listening more intently than ever.

  Rene still hovered close to her. Suddenly the girl reached up to throw an arm around the tall woman’s shoulders, pushed her a little to one side, and herself bent an ear so close to her mother’s that the girl could not fail to catch most of the incoming words. She in turn began to repeat them aloud, so mechanically at first that the repetition seemed an unconscious act rather than one intended for Sayre’s benefit. “About a hundred and eighty miles from here, about fifty from Metropolis, the loneliest section in this whole part of Wyoming, hit hardest by the storm, most snow, fiercest wind, evidently—biggest drifts. If—” Rene’s voice grew slower. It seemed difficult for her to utter the words. Twice she moistened her lips. But when sound came she spoke mechanically. “If—the boys’ bodies—are under some big drifts—there’ll be—no finding them—until—the snow—has disappeared.”

  Rene broke away from her mother, turned back a step or two toward the other waiting girl, and looked up full at her. “Sayre,” she cried in one long, stunned wail of finality, “he hasn’t one bit of hope!”

  Somehow that night passed. Rene’s mother insisted that the girls go back to bed. There they lay, hour after hour, each absorbed at first in her own grief and her own thoughts.

  If only she were home, Sayre kept thinking over and over. But she could not ask for the Osgood car to go alone over that back-country road this time of night, not after Mr. Kitchell’s landlady had ‘phoned soon after Mr. Osgood had rung off, that Mr. Kitchell had asked her to let Sayre know that he too had received the news and had already set out to tell her father. There was nothing to do but to lie there and think, to try to realize what everybody believed had happened.

  Charley and Frank Hoskins, those two, lost together, dying together! What had there been between them at the last? How little, little, little all their friction, their rivalry, their bitterness toward each other must have seemed in the face of eternity!

  Life did things like that—queer, cruel, dreadful things—things that meant the wreck of hopes and hearts and dreams and all that other people had to live for, just as Charley’s death would mean—she checked her thought and changed its phrasing: just as, if Charley were really gone, it would mean to Dad and—

  Dad! If only she were home with him now. If only she were home in that cramped, shabby, unplastered little bedroom she called her own instead of in this dainty, spacious place. If only she could feel the comfort of gathering Hitty’s precious self close into her arms, of feeling the little sister snuggle into them in that sweet, confiding way she had. If only she could hold the child there, forever, safe, so that nothing like this that had come to Charley could ever happen to the only one left!

  It was not Hitty who was creeping into her arms. It was Rene Osgood’s nervously shaking, sob-racked form. “Oh, Sayre, you frighten me, you’re so still. How can you be so quiet? You haven’t even cried.”

  Sayre’s answer surprised herself. It seemed to come from a part of her so fundamental that she wasn’t even really conscious of it. “No, and I shan’t. Not until I absolutely know. I haven’t given up hope yet, not by any means. And what’s more, I’m not going to.”

  Rene’s thin arms tightened around her convulsively. “Sayre Morgan, you’re the bravest girl I know, and the most true blue. And because you are, there are things I am going to tell you this very night. It’ll be a comfort to tell them because they are about me and Frank and Charley and you. And if you despise me when I’m through, it’ll break my heart, if I’ve got any heart left to break, because I need you now as I never needed anybody in all my life. Just the same, even if it does make you despise me, I—I’ve got to tell you. I—I’ve simply got to get straight with you. I—I admire you so much.”

  It took Rene a long time to begin what she had to say. Sayre waited patiently, her mind remote. When the words did come, they startled Sayre. She had already forgotten to expect them.

  “First, I want to explain some things about Frank. If you and Charley could only have known these things always, the way I have, everything might have been different. You’d have understood better.

  “It’s his father, Sayre—the kind of man he is. He’s just got to be the big person, the important one, in everything he’s in. As long as he’s that, he’s nice. But whenever it looks as if somebody else were going to be bigger than he, he can’t stand it. He gets so jealous that he just has to ‘cut the other fellow’s head off.’ That’s what my father calls it. I’ve heard him talk to my mother about it lots of times. I’ve heard him tell her that’s why this new country was the place for a man like Mr. Hoskins to find his chance, of being the big man, I mean. You see, my father understands him. They do lots of business together, but Father never makes any noise about his part. He doesn’t care. He’s willing to let it all look as if Mr. Hoskins were really the important one. I don’t know when I first began to understand this, but it’s a good while ago now. I think knowing it has made me kind of horrid. I don’t mean on Father’s account, but on Frank’s, because of the way his father’s being like that has made Frank be.”

  “I see,” Sayre encouraged softly. She was listening now, not because what Rene was saying seemed important, but because her listening comforted Rene a little.

  “Frank’s been my best friend ever since we were babies. We never talk about his father, but Frank knows I understand when nobody else does and it makes him tell me things he never tells anybody else. As for me—well, th-there isn’t anything I—w-wouldn’t do for Frank.”

  Rene pressed the sodden ball of her handkerchief against her lips to control their trembling. “Mr. Hoskins really thinks a lot of Frank, you know. Is so crazy about him that he wants for Frank just what he wants for himself, to be the big person, always on the top, in his crowd. Sayre, you can’t imagine how Mr. Hoskins drives Frank, nags him, pushes him on about everything. Frank never complains even to me, but there’ve been times when his father just makes his life miserable. It’s been worse ever since that first football season after Charley came, and lots worse, ever since the spreader. I don’t believe Mr. Hoskins realizes, hi
mself, how he’s been. He gets nervous and worried about other things, and takes it out in nagging Frank.

  “And his father’s being that way hasn’t been good for Frank, either. I can’t help knowing that. Thinking a lot of a person doesn’t mean you can’t see his faults. It’s made Frank have that sort of important and yet grouchy way he has. How could he help it? And yet it’s that that’s kept people from really liking him, isn’t it? It was all right though, till Charley came. Everybody looked up to Frank before that. He was bright and a fine football player, and his father was important around here, and there wasn’t any other one boy who could really get ahead of Frank at anything for long enough to count.

  “And then Charley came, with that way he has, so friendly and good-natured and unselfconscious, though he hasn’t been like that this winter. Magnetic, my mother called it. You know all the rest. Frank, I suppose, was a good deal like his father. Mother’s always said he had the same nature, and it’s made me mad every time she’s said it. Yet I guess it’s true. But he could have made himself different if his father’d ever let him try for one minute. Oh, I know he could. As it is—oh, Sayre,” Rene’s voice dropped to a frightened whisper, “it—it’s made him do some dreadful things and—and—it’s made me do them, too. It’s that that I’ve got to tell you, and I d-don’t see how I ever can.” The whisper faded out into silence as Rene buried her face under Sayre’s arm.

  Sayre, not knowing what response to make, made none at all.

  Presently Rene’s disheveled head bobbed up again. “But I’ve got to,” she affirmed with a defiance directed against herself, “because n-now, with things as they are, you’re not going to believe a minute longer one thing that isn’t true against Frank Hoskins.” The girl sat half up in bed. “Sayre Morgan. I—I—I’m a criminal. I never hear one of those nasty gossips use that word—you know what I mean: about the hay and the two boys, and those awful insinuations—that I don’t think right away that I’m just as much a criminal as the guiltiest of them, perhaps even worse. And there’s no more terrible feeling in this whole world. A girl like you simply can’t know how terrible it is.”

  “Rene! What on earth do you mean?”

  “Just what I say. I—I’m a thief. I stole your prize turkey cockerel.”

  20

  Rene Talks

  “You!” Sayre’s tone held only wonder. She, the quick to anger and speech in situations like this, now felt only detached surprise. For what did it matter, what did anything matter, if what that man had said tonight over the telephone were true?

  Rene interpreted Sayre’s apathy wrongly. She lay down again. “Don’t take your arms away from me, Sayre. Please don’t take your arms from me. I only did it because I had to, or because I thought I had to. And I’ve been punished enough. Don’t ever think doing a thing that’s wrong is being anybody’s friend, Sayre. It never is. I’ve learned that, all right. I’ve learned it hard.

  “Look at all what’s happened because of what I did. There’d never have been that fight between Charley and Frank if it hadn’t been for my stealing. And if there hadn’t been that fight, people wouldn’t have got quite so down on Frank as they did, everybody thinking he didn’t fight fair and that he deliberately lied. Charley was the only one who didn’t feel sure Frank lied. I’ve always remembered that about Charley. And if people hadn’t got so down on Frank, he and his father wouldn’t have been so keen to get back at Charley. About the weevilly hay, you know. Never believing or letting anybody else believe that Charley hadn’t done it on purpose.

  “Of course, though, there were other things besides the turkey stealing. There was that man Charley brought to the water users’ meeting to try to show Frank’s father up in public as a crook, when he was just a mistaken man who really meant right. That was an awful nasty mean thing to do, Sayre. You’ve got to admit that.”

  Sayre’s lips parted; then met again. She was glad Rene’s rapid speech did not give her time to answer.

  “And that was what Frank cared about most. He never could forgive Charley a thing like that. It was Charley’s doing that most of all made Frank want to get even. And I couldn’t manage him. Oh, Sayre, if you only knew how miserable I’ve been all winter!”

  Out of Rene’s incoherence two or three facts were becoming clear to Sayre. “I can’t imagine you coming way out to our place alone at that time of night to snare that cockerel, Rene. Weren’t you afraid?”

  “I was never so scared in all my life. I could only do it because I thought I had to. I left the car (Father and Mother were away that night) on the back road and waded down the ditch to your place. You know the rest. When Charley fired that gun, and called out to me from that tree—oh, Sayre!” Rene’s body trembled into an uncontrollable shaking.

  Instinctively Sayre sought to soothe her. “And you gave the cockerel to Frank?”

  “I had to. I—I didn’t know how to get rid of it. But after the fight I wanted to tell. It would have been better, if only Frank had let me. But he w-w-wouldn’t. He simply wouldn’t. He said that if I did h-he’d tell a lot of other things that I couldn’t bear to have him tell. But maybe it would have been better all ’round if I’d told, anyway, and let him tell. Maybe, too, he wouldn’t have, after all. Only he said if I told he’d say everywhere that I lied, that he’d been the one who did it, and I was lying to shield him.”

  “And weren’t you? Not lying, I mean. But shielding him. You’re doing it now.”

  Rene’s shaking ceased with startling suddenness. “I shouldn’t have tried to tell you tonight. I’m not fit. I can’t tell things straight.” The words were a cry of distress.

  “Then just answer my questions.” Sayre’s voice was soft with pity. “Tell me the truth, Rene, please—please. You can trust me. Truly you can. You say you had to do it. Was it because you knew Frank would do it if you didn’t? Because he had done it before?”

  “Oh, Sayre, I didn’t know what he’d do. He was so furious at Charley after that meeting, so set on getting even. I knew he was trying to think out a way. And some things he’d said kind of gave me a hint. About how doing things to you made Charley maddest. (Charley was so proud of you and always got on his dignity so at anybody’s even criticizing you, for being in the Ag class or anything like that.) And about how he could spoil your turkey business for you. Yes, Sayre, he had done the stealing before. And I knew it.

  “He’d got the idea from some little fellows who did it to his flock when his birds were tiny. He caught them at it. Only they were doing real fishing with a line that had five hooks on it, baited with worms. The boys waited until every hook had caught a chick. Then they pulled the five chicks slowly across the yard under the fence. Frank told those youngsters he’d let them off if they’d never tell about it. He thought it an awful cute trick, and wanted to try it himself.

  “He did, too, on your chicks early one evening when he had learned you wouldn’t be home. When he told me about it, I let him know I didn’t see anything funny in it. He laughed at me. Said stealing chicks was like stealing apples, not really stealing at all. Everybody thought it a joke.

  “That first time his doing it was mostly just a prank. Later, those other times, I couldn’t feel it was. They didn’t come until after his father had told him he simply wouldn’t have a girl beating Frank at the poultry business, that Frank would have to beat you, honestly if he could, and if not, beat you anyway. Not that Mr. Hoskins really said that in words, but that’s what he meant, just the same. That’s how things were when Mr. Kitchell discovered your prize turkey cockerel, said what a perfect bird it was. It didn’t seem as if Frank had any chance then at beating you. Frank was kind of brooding about it, and I knew it—and—and—I was afraid.

  “So I thought, maybe, if I could just get that prize cockerel for him, things would be all right. He’d feel better and wouldn’t keep thinking so much about getting even with Charley. Perhaps getting that cockerel would be enough to satisfy him. S-so I got it.”

  “I neve
r could see how you managed, right off, to get that particular bird.”

  “I didn’t manage really. It was just the purest luck. He happened to be the farthest bird out on that limb. I was only practising on him. Learning how to manage that rod and grappling hook. I thought the second bird I was after might be the prize cockerel, not the first. But anyhow, as I told Frank, I did get him.

  “And, Sayre, Frank didn’t like it. He was mad about it. Oh, he didn’t say so right out. Frank’s always been good to me. But I could tell how he felt. He did say I ought to have known I never could manage a performance like that without being caught, the birds being the size they were. When I tried to explain how I’d planned it all, just like a premeditated crime in the mystery stories, he simply wouldn’t listen.

  “I knew, of course, those turkeys were too big and heavy to be fished for like trout with line and hook even in the daytime the way the little chicks had been. I knew, too, that those other times Frank himself had used some sort of grappling hook. I couldn’t ask him for his, of course. I had to fix one of my own. And I knew the rod I attached the hook onto must be an awful strong one to lift those big poults. That’s why I took that pole of Mr. Hoskins’. It was stronger than any Dad or I had. It’s one Mr. Hoskins doesn’t use often, but he takes it with him when he goes to the Park to fish in Yellowstone Lake. And it happened to be in our car. He’d left it there after the last time he and Dad had gone on a trip together.

  “Then that night I got scared and excited and made that awful mess of things, leaving the pole behind and all. No wonder Frank was mad. Who wouldn’t be?

  “Still, what really made him maddest was that he knew I’d done it to try to stop his doing anything else. It did for a while, too. But it kept him from telling me things after that the way he always had before. And my stealing made things worse than if Frank had done something himself. And too, it made him more set than ever to get even with Charley. He kept thinking and thinking about it in that black way of his. And that black thinking had been what I’d so wanted to stop. But perhaps after all, Sayre, all he did do was think. He may really never have actually done a thing.”