by Max Brand
“How was I to guess what you was doing, Ross?” asked Andy Hale. “I knew that you had enough money to keep your boy back East in an expensive way and pay for his fine clothes and his tuition and all the rest that he was spending like water. Should I guess that any man would spend everything on a... ?”
“You seen me cut down my trees and sell them. You seen me cart my furniture away and sell it. You know that I whittled my land up and sold away more than half of it. You knew that I was covered up with mortgages. And you never offered me nothing.”
“I give you the best advice in the world.”
“Hell is paved with good advice. You would’ve seen me go down the whole way before you so much as offered me a penny.”
“I had my own business. How was I to stay awake at night wondering how you might be getting on?”
“Well, you didn’t do it. And now, Andy, you come here whining to me, and you ask me to call off Peter and talk to him rough because he sees fit to talk sweet to Ruth McNair.”
“She’s engaged to his cousin. It’s criminal for him to start flirting with a girl like that, him with his fine education and his soft way of yarning about things.”
“Curse it!” shouted Ross Hale. “You had your choice. You raised your son among the cattle, and I raised mine among the men. Now let your bull of a son try his own way with Ruth McNair. I tell you that I think you’re right. I think that Peter is going to go after Ruth. I think that he’s going to get her, too. I hope he does. And when he has the McNair millions, I’m gonna ride up to your house, Andy, and laugh at you. I’m gonna laugh so loud that it will start the dogs barking.”
Ross Hale was a reasonably hot-tempered man, but he was much more gentle than Andy. Yet there was this difference between them — while Ross had to break out with every thought that entered his mind, Andy ruled himself with a hand of iron and kept his tongue strictly in order.
He ruled himself now, but his face turned white with passion as he listened to the outburst of his brother. “Very well,” Andy said. “I’ve heard what you’ve got to say today. I’m going away and wait for what you may have to say tomorrow.” And he was as good as his word.
He got his horse. Ruth McNair was brought from the shed and Charlie called in from the pasture. The party went away, leaving Ross Hale wildly excited, filled with vague regrets that he had talked so freely. But he said not a word to Peter. He felt, somehow, that the less he talked with Peter on this point, the better it would be for both of them.
Here was a point on which Andy Hale was hardly so discreet, for he felt that the very ground had been shaken beneath his feet. To be sure, he had accomplished some good things and some big things in his life. No one could say that his ranch was not a triumph. At the same time, all that he had ever done in the past was as nothing compared with this grand opportunity to strike gold by marrying his son to Ruth McNair. And if that chance were lost — it would be like death itself to Andy Hale.
As the girl, handsome, smiling Charlie, and he rode over the hills toward the McNair house, and saw the rolling acres of the rich rancher, all dotted over with little colored spots where the cattle were feeding, it seemed to him that this was a veritable kingdom. Surely there was no youth in the range more worthy of this inheritance.
Who should dare to take the kingdom away from him? Peter, the cripple? Let Peter guard his head well before he contemplated such an attempt.
CHAPTER XIV
HE DETERMINED THAT he would try one expedient before anything else — to speak to old McNair himself. He left Charlie and Ruth on the back verandah and went out to find McNair sitting on the top rail of the corral, chewing tobacco and squinting at a group of newly purchased two-year-olds.
“I want to talk to you, Mac.”
“Talk about cows then. Look at the backs on them heifers, Andy. Sweet, eh?”
“I got a word to say about Ruth.”
“What about Ruth? Them cows’ll have calves that’ll weigh a ton. What about Ruth?”
“Mac, I think that Peter is laying his eye on her.”
“He’s a sensible boy, then. She’s worth looking at, ain’t she?”
“Mac, she’s engaged to my son.”
“Why do you bother me about it? Let her marry who she wants to. I’ll never bother my head. My old man tried to bother his head about me and my affairs. But heck, Andy, what did I do? Run off with Ruth’s ma, not because I wasn’t able to live without her, but just to show my old man that I had a mind of my own.” He chuckled. “My gal has got a mind of her own, too. I’m not going to get her into a foolish way of thinking. I don’t want her to marry above herself. That’s all. Lot rather have her marry beneath. Don’t want some dude to marry her for her money and her pretty face and treat her like a dog so soon as she hadn’t nothing left but wrinkles and foolishness the way that most women get after a time. No, sir. I like your boy Charlie as a husband for her. He’d do very fine. Not too smart... got enough head on his shoulders, though. He can take care of cows, and he could take care of a wife, too. Good cowman ought to make a good husband. Well, I’d like Peter as a husband for her, too.”
“Mac, a cripple like that?”
“I say that I’d like Peter for a husband for her, too. He had too much education and he was a lot too smart for her. But when he lost the use of his legs... that made him about even with her. Now it would be safe enough for him to marry her. She ain’t bright, but she’s brave. She ain’t quick, but she’s faithful. Like her ma before her. A sweet face and an empty head. Well, that’s the kind of a woman that makes the best sort of a wife, and the best sort of a ma, too. I don’t like ’em when they start in thinking too much.”
Andy Hale had heard enough. There was nothing to be gained in this direction. Therefore he started talking about the heifers, and, in truth, they were a likely lot.
Presently a heavy step came down the path, and the voice of a stranger said: “Hello, Dad. It’s about time that we slid out for home, ain’t it?”
He turned sharply about. This deep, stern, crisp voice came from his own boy, Charlie, but, nevertheless, it came from a stranger. The voice was altered, and the face of Charlie had turned grave and sober, and the eye of Charlie was filled with alternate fire and shadow.
McNair said: “What’s wrong, Charlie? You had a fight with my girl?”
“Not exactly a fight,” said Charlie. “We just had a...”
“Shut up, Charlie,” broke in his father. “You let this rest till tomorrow and...”
“I only want to say...”
“You leave it unsaid,” commanded Andy Hale. “So long, Mac. I’ll see you soon.” And he quickly hurried away with Charlie.
“You should’ve let me tell McNair,” said Charlie. “It was something that he had ought to know.”
“About what?”
“About Ruth.”
Andy Hale turned very pale. “Ah, son,” he said, “don’t you tell me that you’ve been doing anything rash.”
“I didn’t do a thing. It was her. And she’s through with me, Dad. Would you guess what done it?”
“It was Peter,” Mr. Hale declared.
“You guessed that, eh?” said his son with a sharp glance at him. “You guessed that, Father? Well, it was Peter, right enough. She didn’t waste no words. I asked her how could she make up her mind about a thing like this so sudden. She said that one minute with Peter had been about all that she had needed to tell her where she stood. She didn’t need nothing more. She knew that she loved him, and wouldn’t never love anybody else.”
“The impudent young...”
“Don’t blame her,” Charlie Hale warned. “Don’t you blame her. It was Peter. Look at what he knows. Look at the way that he can talk. Make himself as simple as a baby, one minute... and the next minute he can talk like a regular governor of a state. It’s him that’s done the trick to me. He’s turned me around his finger. And I’m going to...”
“What?” his father asked hastily. “You’re going t
o do what, Charlie?”
“Get out on the range and ride herd... and... read sign... because that’s about the only thing that you ever educated me to do... and...”
He broke off with something that was close to a groan and close to a sob, also. For, after all, Charlie was very young. Then he spurred his horse into a racing gallop and fled away down the road.
His father watched the dust cloud lift and roll away across the willows that followed the creek and the road that wound beside it. Then he shook his head and sighed deeply. It had never seemed to him, in the past, that his son would ever be able to reproach him for the thing that he had received in the place of a college education. Yet he knew that there was nothing but rage and shame and grief in the heart of Charlie. What would Charlie do now — content himself, indeed, by riding out onto the range to forget his troubles? Andy Hale doubted that.
Peter was in the blacksmith shop. Indeed, he spent more time there than in any other portion of the ranch that he was revamping so swiftly and so successfully. He had always had a love for tools. On the ranch, in the early days, he had spent much time in rough carpentering and in watching at the blacksmith shops of Sumnertown. There was always something by way of information to be picked up by a hungry eye. There was always something to be learned by a few adroit questions, here and there. Above all, there was the love of experimentation that never left him.
Then, when he went away to beautiful Huntley School, he had found there a well- developed manual-training department, for the headmaster believed in such things as handicraft for boys. In that department of the school Peter had chiefly reveled. If he won happy moments on the athletic fields of the school, he won glorious hours of contentment at the turning lathe and, above all, at the forge.
Now everything was equipped on the ranch to suit his crippled condition. In the smithy he could lift himself easily to the swinging seat that stood high up and between the forge and the fire, with the handle of the bellows wheel near and all the clustering tools in reaching distance, while the tempering tub was where he could dip the blackening iron and pluck it out again with a long- handled pincers. He already had made himself more at home in the blacksmith shop, therefore, than in the rest of the ranch.
On the day following the historic visit of Charlie and Ruth McNair, Peter was propped up, swinging his own peculiar sledge. Although he used only one hand for its management, he had the hammer made with a full twelve-pound weight in its head, and with a shortened handle, thick enough to fill his ample grasp. Hammer strokes are not delivered by brute force alone, and those who looked in to see Peter at his work were always amazed by the ease with which he wielded this ponderous tool. The vast shoulders and the long, powerful arms were not a sufficient explanation. Something more was needed, and that was the rhythmic grace with which the work was done.
He was molding a great bar of iron, as thick as his wrist. His face was blackened with soot and reddened with the heat of the fire. The ringing hammer strokes echoed out of the little shop, passing in clangorous waves far over the corral and across the road, where people checked their horses as they rode or drove past, and they said to one another:
“There’s Peter Hale in his blacksmith shop. There’s nobody like him in these parts. And look what he’s done to the ranch, already.”
You may be sure that Peter guessed at some of these hearty compliments. How could he help but do so? There was an atmosphere of pity and of respect and of admiration which surrounded him here on the ranch even more strongly than it had surrounded him in his university, where he had been a known man. Peter, for all the hardness that was in him, was tender enough to recognize and rejoice in these things.
In the midst of the shower of hammer blows, there was a faint alteration in the light to his left. He dropped the hammer and, jerking out a Colt, whirled around in the spinning seat in time to cover with his gun the portly form of Mr. Mike Jarvin, as that gentleman pushed open the little side door of the shop.
CHAPTER XV
IT HAD BEEN arranged that — when the shop was too choked with smoke that would not blow up through the chimney or through the front door — the side door could be opened, and this would make a cleansing draft. Now the little door was used by Mr. Mike Jarvin to peek in at the big cripple; the instant that he saw the barrel of the Colt leveled upon him, Jarvin hastily dropped something into his coat pocket and hoisted his hands above his head.
“Why, here you are,” said Jarvin. “Here you are, youngster, and it seems that a gent can’t drop in on you without having a gun pointed at his head. Be reasonable, young man, and tell me why you take the drop on me like this?”
“Be reasonable, Jarvin,” said Peter, “and tell me why you come sneaking through my side door?”
“Because,” Jarvin said instantly, “I wanted to see you at your work without letting you know that I was here.”
“Did you?” Peter smiled.
“Yes. We’re all hearing a lot about the neat way that you can sling a sledge around. Just point that Colt another way, son, will you?”
“Come closer,” said Peter.
“Closer?”
“Do what I say. And mind that you come slowly and keep your hands up. I would hate to harm you, but I’ll have to sink a bullet in you, Jarvin, if you make any queer-looking moves.”
“By heaven,” Jarvin said, “I think that you’d murder me.”
“You’re overdue,” said Peter. “Long overdue for a murder, Jarvin. How you’ve managed to escape so long, I can’t make out. Nobody else could make out, either, I’m sure. As a matter of fact, I think that I’d collect a vote of thanks, with the sheriff the first one to congratulate me, if I were to kill you, Jarvin.”
“Well, well,” said Mike Jarvin, beaming suddenly and broadly. “I suppose that you would, at that. And now, what do you want with me?”
He stepped obediently closer, and, as he did so, Peter reached into the side pocket of the big man’s coat, bringing forth a handsome gun. He dangled it before the eyes of Mr. Jarvin, his thick forefinger thrust through the trigger guard.
“There you are, Jarvin. There’s enough reason to keep you covered. You had this gat in your hand when you stood outside of the little door, yonder, and you hoped that you would be able to push that door open, send a slug of lead through me, and then walk away, though why the devil you should want to murder me, I can’t guess.”
“You’re wrong, Peter,” said the fat man.
“Do you know me well enough to call me Peter?”
“Oh, yes, and you might as well call me Mike.”
“Are we old friends?”
“We’re going to be the best of old friends before we’re through with each other. That’s what I hope, Peter.”
“Jarvin, you’re a rare old scoundrel.”
“An old scoundrel is no worse than a young one, Peter. But leave this rough talk be and let’s be friends.”
“Why,” Peter said, narrowing his eyes a little, “I’ll do as you say, about that.”
“Thanks. Only, I wanted to tell you that I didn’t come here to kill you, my son. I simply came here to have a little private talk with you.”
“With a gun pointed at my head?”
“Exactly!” exclaimed the fat man, and he smiled with the greatest unction.
“Humph,” muttered Peter. “You are very frank. But go on with this matter and tell me more. I’m interested, Jarvin.”
“I came in to talk with you, feeling that it would be a good thing if I had a slight advantage of you, while we was changing words. And I thought that that advantage might as well be in the shape of a gun leveled at you.”
“Thanks,” said Peter, “but why come at all?”
“I’ll tell you,” said Jarvin, “a good deal quicker than I had intended to. The fact is, Hale, that I know everything.”
The eye of Peter neither darkened nor brightened. It remained calmly fixed upon the face of the other, “You know everything?” he said. “Good. Very few peopl
e have said that before you. They’ve usually been put in padded cells. But you know everything, then?”
Mr. Jarvin broke into the softest laughter. “I knew it,” he said. “Cursed if I didn’t guess that you would take it this way. I knew that you’d be cool and that you’d give nothing away. I knew that. But it’s no good, Pete. I admire you for your crust, but it’s too late. I’ve got the lowdown on you.”
“You have?”
“I have.”
“You talk like a very confident man,” said Peter.
“Come, come. We ain’t a pair of kids. I got gray hairs, and you never was less than about forty years old... too old for the good of some folks.”
“Too old for the good of some?”
“That’s what I said.”
“You might give me an example, however.”
“I’ll give you a couple of them.”
“Go ahead.”
“The Buttrick boys. You know a good deal too much for them, Pete. Eh? Well, I have you there, eh?” And he broke into huge laughter, his enormous body quivering and quaking with his mirth like a mountainous jellyfish.
When he had ended his laughter he said: “And what do you say to that, Pete? Come, come, you ain’t gonna play the dumb man any more, are you?”
“You can put your hands down,” Peter said.
“That’s right. Be sensible. And give me back that gun.”
“I like this gun very well. I may add it to my collection.”
“All right, son. You add it to your collection. I won’t let a little thing like that stand between us. But now I tell you straight... I know everything and I can prove everything. You hear me?”
“Go on talking,” said Peter. “You have a pleasant voice.”
“Now, kid, I like you. In the first place, I got a fancy to any man that can handle the two Buttrick boys the way that you done. A cripple like you. When I got onto the trail and found out who it was that had done the trick, I wouldn’t hardly believe it, all at once. Only, I knew that it must of been an amateur crook, in a way.”