by Max Brand
“Is there any news with you, Charlie?” his uncle asked wearily, his eyes turning impatiently forward to the McNair house.
“Not much,” said Charles, “except that I’m to marry Ruth on Friday.”
He rode on, smiling at the white face of Ross Hale. The latter remained for a moment, stunned. Then he let his horse wander slowly on until it paused automatically at the McNair hitching rack.
“You got a touch of sun, Ross?” sang out McNair.
Ross dismounted and went to the verandah.
“Now what’s on your mind?” asked McNair. “I hear that you been thinking of buying the Weston forty acres next to your back land?”
“I was thinking about that, maybe.” Ross Hale sighed. “Matter of fact... “ He fell again into his sad daydream.
“Set down and rest yourself,” said the rancher gently.
But Hale did not appear to understand.
Said McNair, still in the same, soothing tone: “Have you been hearing any news, Ross?”
“No news. He stays up yonder.” He turned his eyes toward the blue hills and squinted through the heat waves, while his hand slowly drew a letter from his pocket.
“That’s from Peter, then?”
“Yes, it’s from my Peter.”
“He’s making out pretty well, then?”
“He says that he’s feeling fit.”
The heavy silence fell between them again. Mr. McNair stirred in his seat. “Perhaps it’s Ruth that you want?”
Hale started. “Matter of fact, I do.”
“Ring the bell and send on of the Negroes for her.”
So Ruth Hale rang the bell, and still, like a man standing in a dream, he gave his message to the servant. There was a little pause, and, after a minute, feet hurrying on the stairs inside — and then a drawling voice: “Miss Ruth... she says that she’s mighty sorry... she’s got a terrible headache. Can’t even stand up. Would you give me a message for her?”
“Hey!” yelled McNair.
The servant jumped. “Yes, Mister McNair?”
“Go up and fetch down that fool girl, will you? I want her, y’understand?”
Footsteps scurried away inside the house.
“Why,” said Hale, “I ain’t wanting to drag down Ruth if she’s sick, old man.”
“Don’t you talk foolish, Ross. Set down and rest yourself. Have a chew? No? You still keep to them cigarettes, eh? I tell you what I got against cigarettes. So dirty. Always spilling tobacco dust all over a man while he smokes. A good, clean chew... that’s what I take to. I been watching that hawk, over yonder, hanging over the Mitchell chicken yard. Ain’t it a pretty thing, Ross, the way that it sails up ag’in’ the wind?”
There was no answer from Ross Hale. Still like a stricken man he turned his worn face toward the distant blueness of the hills and where their lower ranges turned brown as they advanced nearer. There his gaze fastened, and he sighed again.
Other footfalls sounded, and then the screen door creaked.
“Did you send for me, Dad? Hello, Mister Hale. How’s things over your way?”
“Fair,” Ross Hale, looking blankly at her.
“A terrible headache... ,” began the girl faintly.
“Shut up that fool clatter, Ruth, will you?” broke in her father. “Here’s the dad of the mightiest heman and two-gun fighter that’s been in the range for a long time. Here he’s given you the honor of coming over to call on you, and you let a headache stand between you and a talk with him? You fetch him into the house and give him a cup of coffee, and set him down where it’s cool. He’s got something terrible important to say to you, and terrible private, too.”
There was nothing left for the girl to do. She ushered Ross Hale into the dim coolness of the parlor and obediently brought him a cup of coffee. But he let it steam, unregarded, on the table beside his chair. The letter was still in his hand.
“Is it something about that letter?” Ruth asked a last.
“Ah?” murmured the other. “Letter? Well, well... “ His mind drifted away again and returned to him with: “I been seeing Charles... “ He paused and looked wistfully at her.
“Yes,” Ruth McNair said, coloring a little.
“Why,” said Ross Hale, “Charlie is a right fine boy.”
He was silent again, and suddenly Ruth stood up and slipped into a chair close beside his chair. She took his great, gnarled hand in both of her tender ones.
“You didn’t come all the way over here to talk about Charles, I think.”
“Why, honey, no, I didn’t. But you see... “ He stumbled again and paused to search the brightness of her eyes and to wonder at the tears in them. “Now, the truth of it is that I once had hopes. No matter about what. I’ve come over here, wondering if you’d help me, Ruth?”
“Yes,” she said, “with all my heart!”
“Would you tell me, first... was it that affair over to the creek?”
She nodded, and looked down. But then she forced herself to meet his gaze.
“Oh, I understand,” said Ross Hale. “The things that he done there would be enough to scare any girl”
“If he would write to me,” she broke out. “If he’d give me any explanation... but just to go away... and suddenly begin to go rushing around the country with that beast, that Jarvin. Oh, Uncle Ross, how could I stand it? Sitting here at home... and not knowing... and eating my heart out.”
“Ah, yes,” said the rancher. “That’s it. Eating the heart out. Good heavens, how lonesome a house can be. Worse than a grave, a lot. There was a time when I was sorry for the dead folks. But that was when I was young. But speaking about Peter, you know, there’s no power that I got over him. I’ve wrote and I’ve wrote. And back comes the answers, always gentle and nice.” He paused again.
“Yes?” whispered the girl.
“Well, sir,” murmured the father, “it’s a funny thing, what a bad hand he writes... and him a college graduate. With honors, you know. You look here how bad he writes down this address.” He showed the envelope.
“Yes,” gasped Ruth. “Oh... “ And she burst into a flood of tears.
CHAPTER XXXIX
ROSS WENT BACK to the verandah and sat down, in more of a stupor than ever. For half an hour no word passed between his host and him. Finally McNair remarked: “You didn’t have a long talk with Ruth, old-timer.”
Said Ross Hale: “You can’t ask a girl to cry and talk at the same time, can you?”
“Cry about what?” said Mr. McNair.
“I don’t know,” murmured Mr. Hale. “I was showing her this letter, and just remarking on how bad my boy writes...”
His voice trailed away, and Mr. McNair offered no further comment. But for another hour, his keen eyes rolled from time to time toward the face of his guest. Finally the other rose. And leaning a moment against the wooden pillar that supported the verandah roof, he remarked: “This here is the first good, long talk that we’ve had in quite a spell, Mac. I’ll have to be going.”
“So long,” McNair said, and fell to whittling a stick. “Come over and tell me all the news again, some time soon,” he said as Ross Hale mounted his horse. But he did not look up from his whittling until his friend was a small dust cloud disappearing down the road. “Watching a gent out of sight is bad luck,” Mr. McNair muttered.
That night he sat at a silent dinner table.
When he came to pie — there was always pie for Mr. McNair at least twice a day — he remarked: “You been going outside without no hat on, Ruth. That’s what I call throwing away money.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” said the faint voice of Ruth.
“Your eyes is all red,” McNair said, his voice muffled by his mouthful. “Chop me off another wedge of that pie, will you?”
She obeyed. “Why do you say it’s throwing money away, Father?”
“Which?” he snapped.
“Dad, I mean... ,” she corrected herself.
“Why, you send away for a fanc
y lot of cold creams and smear ’em all over your face and get good and greasy, and start in to turn white like bleached cloth. Getting complexion, is what you call turning sickly, like that. And then here you go out in the sun and get reddened up again... waste of time and money, I call it.”
“It wasn’t the sun, really,” said the girl.
“Hey?”
“I was... I had a headache,” she said.
“Does a headache make red eyes?”
“Perhaps it was neuralgia,” she suggested hopefully, looking down at her plate.
“Not in this here weather... not neuralgia. Guess again.”
“The fact is, Dad, that I was a little upset.”
“By what?”
She was silent, biting her lip in thought.
Her father smashed his great hand on the table and roared: “Upset, how?”
“I... I think I may have cried a little.”
“Ho! Cried? About what?”
“Mister Hale upset me a little.”
“He did, hey?” said the father, pushing back his chair. “Dog-gone me if I ain’t gonna go to the telephone and ring him up and give him a piece of my mind.”
“No, no, Dad!”
He rose and turned toward the door. “I’m gonna let Ross Hale know what I think of him.”
There was a flurry of skirts; a hand caught his arm. “No, Dad, please!”
“What the devil does Ross Hale mean?” he cried.
“It was only a letter, really.”
“What business has he writing letters to you?”
“Not from him... I mean... he showed me a letter.”
“About what, then?”
“From Peter,” whispered the girl.
“What did Peter have to say, Ruth?”
“Nothing. I don’t know. I only saw the address.”
“Go back and sit down,” said McNair. “I understand all about it.”
She returned willingly enough to her chair, and he to his second piece of pie.
“I see just what’s been bothering you, honey. Here you go and get yourself engaged to a fine, upstanding young gent like Charlie Hale, eh?”
Her head bowed suddenly.
“And then along comes somebody and reminds you of all the bad blood that there is in the Hale family...”
“Bad blood?” interrupted the girl, lifting her head in surprise.
“Oh, I know all about the way that you feel,” McNair said gently. “A girl, when she wants to marry, has got to begin to think about the sort of children that she’ll have. And now suppose that your children... they was to turn out like you and Charlie. Why, that would be fine and we wouldn’t ask for no more than that. But what’s the facts? That behind Charlie there is a lot of bad blood that might be inherited, and, the first thing that you know, you would be raising children so dog-gone mean. and wicked and bad that it would about bust your heart. I know that’s what you’re thinking about, Ruth.”
“No, no!” she protested. “That wasn’t...”
“Don’t you tell me,” said her father, “because I know. I can see right through that wise little head of yours. Thinking about nothing but the future. That’s what you’re doing, old girl. And suppose that one of your sons was to turn out like Peter.” He threw up his hands, rolled up his eyes, and shook his head in great consternation. But when he looked at her again, he found that she was sitting, stiff and straight, with a certain fire in her eye that he had often seen there before — in her — and in his own mirror.
She said: “I don’t see just what you’re driving at. Because I don’t really see what’s wrong with Peter Hale.”
“What!”
She sat stiffer than ever. “Well?” she snapped.
He relaxed into sneering irony. “You don’t see anything wrong with him? Well, honey, I do! In a gent that stands up and shoots down other gent...”
“Who has he ever killed?” asked his daughter sharply.
“Look here... would you deny, Ruth, that he’s a gunfighter?” She hesitated, and her eyes shifted. “He is not the only man who wears guns in this range, and you know it, Dad.”
“Guns? Ornaments, that’s all that they are,” said her father with an airy wave of his hand. “Friendly ornaments. That’s all. Look at the way I’m peaceable and plumb...”
“Dad! Why, it was only three years ago...”
“You mean that Indian from Okla... ?”
“And before that, only two years, when you...”
“You mean that overbearing, cross-eyed, mean, troublemaking gent from New York? It was only because...”
“And every time that you went away when I was little... wasn’t my mother frightened almost to death? And just for fear that you would get into a gunfight before you...”
“Now, your ma was a good woman, Ruth. But flighty and scary was no name for what she was. Just naturally she had more nerves than she could use.”
“Besides,” said Ruth, “what Peter did in Lawson Creek was just... just... brave!”
“Oh, it was, was it? Just brave to scare a whole town pretty nearly to death? Just brave, was it, to make hundreds of good, law-abidin’ citizens climb fences and dive for cellar doors? Is that what you call just brave?”
“He... he really... killed nobody,” Ruth said, some of her color leaving her face.
“Turnin’ the hair of folks white... I seen Jud McCruder. Plumb gray... effect of that terrible lot of inferno that Peter raised in Lawson Creek.”
“Nonsense! He’s been gray for three years.”
“And besides, herding up and down the streets of a town... and even knocking down his own cousin, real rough.”
“Charles is large enough to take care of himself.”
“And then seeing a whole crowd of two or three hundred gents that had hold of a crook and was going to lynch him... and save the law a lot of time and trouble and expense and snatching that crook away from them, and saving him and the ripping along and knocking down twenty or thirty other men, all good, strong, hard-fighting gents, and taking a worthless Negro away from them, just as they was about to wring his neck. You call them actions good, do you?”
She was standing on her feet, her hands clenched at her sides. “I defend everyone of those actions!” cried Ruth McNair.
“And then smashing along through the night and tearing up a bridge and pitching it down into a river just to keep back them same peaceable, lawabiding gents.”
“Who would have lynched poor Peter! You know it! You know it!”
“And don’t he deserve lynching, I ask you?”
“Dad!”
“Don’t you yap at me like that! I tell you that I’m looking right inside of your heart and telling you what’s really there!”
“Dad, you don’t know one single thing about what’s in my heart!”
“And raising all that deviltry in Lawson Creek for the sake of just amusing himself!”
“No, no, no! But to save the lives of two friends...”
“That’s it! You’re naming it now. For the sake of two friends. The worst, most sneaking crook in the range is one of them friends, and a manslaughtering, worthless Negro is the other.”
“Dad, you said yourself that Soapy must have fought like a hero to get through that wild crowd.”
“A crook and a murdering Negro. Those are his friends!”
“Dad, I won’t listen.”
CHAPTER XL
LEANING FORWARD, MR. McNair beat upon the table with his fist so that the dishes jumped and clattered. “What is the actual fact, honey? Birds of a feather, they hunt together. You can’t get behind that.”
“Dad, will you listen?”.
“You can’t get behind what I’ve said.”
“Ah, there’s no wonder that poor Peter is misjudged.”
“Misjudged, eh? I tell you what the womenfolks do over to Lawson Creek. When they want to throw a scare into a naughty kid, they just say... ‘Peter Hale’ll get you, if you don’t watch out.’”
>
“They don’t!” cried the girl. “It’s no such thing!”
“Ain’t it? It was told me first-hand by a gent that was in Lawson Creek.”
“I don’t care, and I won’t believe a word of it! Of all the gentle, quiet, thoughtful men in the world...”
“Hypocrisy,” said her father. “That’s the worst part of him. Hypocrite!”
“No!”
“Sure, soft, and smooth speaking. Must take in a lot of folks. But thank heaven, we know the facts about him.”
“You won’t open your eyes to the facts... the real facts, Dad. You just won’t. You know perfectly well that Peter came back from college... a cripple... a poor cripple.”
“Having his father think for three years that he was a regular athlete.”
“He had been, and a grand one, and you know it. And he didn’t want to break his father’s heart, because poor, dear, silly, muddle-headed Ross Hale thought that football was more important than studies.”
“What studies?” asked her father. “What did he learn?”
“I don’t know... except that it was something fine. Because he wouldn’t learn cheap, low things.”
“Cheap, low things that would make his bread and butter, eh?”
“Can you really say that? You know that you and everybody else expected poor Peter to sit down on the ranch with his father and slowly starve to death. But he didn’t. He went to work. He made things. He made everything. He got money. He started the ranch booming along. Until... you’ve said yourself that he made that ranch so perfect that nobody... not even Ross Hale... could run it without making fine money out of it. You said that yourself.”
“He worked to pull the wool over our eyes. All the time the wildness was inside of him, and busting to get out. And now it’s busted and we know what he really is.”
“I say that it will all be explained. You just won’t wait for an explanation to...”
“And that man... didn’t he dare to talk to you like he was sort of fond of you?”