“He was a-sparkin’ Ellie Elton,” added Tansey, grinning; “yew owe him a few for that, too, Byram.”
Byram turned white, but made no movement. McCloud laughed.
“Wait,” said the game-warden, sitting behind the stove; “jest wait awhile; that’s all. No man can fire me into a ditch full o’ stinging nettles an’ live to larf no pizened larf at me!”
“Dingman,” said McCloud, contemptuously, “you’re like the rest of them here in Foxville — all foxes who run to earth when they smell a Winchester.”
He flung his rifle carelessly into the hollow of his left arm; the muzzle was in line with the game-warden, and that official promptly moved out of range, upsetting his chair in his haste.
“Quit that!” bawled the storekeeper, from behind his counter.
“Quit what — eh?” demanded McCloud. “Here, you old rat, give me the whiskey bottle! Quick! What? Money to pay? Trot out that grog or I’ll shoot your lamps out!”
“He’s been a-drinkin’ again,” whispered the game-warden. “Fur God’s sake, give him that bottle, somebody!”
But as the bottle was pushed across the counter, McCloud swung his rifle-butt and knocked the bottle into slivers. “Drinks for the crowd!” he said, with an ugly laugh. “Get down and lap it up off the floor, you fox cubs!”
Then, pushing the fly-screen door open with one elbow, he sauntered out into the moonlight, careless who might follow him, although now that he had insulted and defied the entire town there were men behind who would have done him a mischief if they had dared believe him off his guard.
He walked moodily on in the moonlight, disdaining to either listen or glance behind him. There was a stoop to his shoulders now, a loose carriage which sometimes marks a man whose last shred of self-respect has gone, leaving him nothing but the naked virtues and vices with which he was born. McCloud’s vices were many, though some of them lay dormant; his virtues, if they were virtues, could be counted in a breath — a natural courage, and a generous heart, paralyzed and inactive under a load of despair and a deep resentment against everybody and everything. He hated the fortunate and the unfortunate alike; he despised his neighbors, he despised himself. His inertia had given place to a fierce restlessness; he felt a sudden and curious desire for a physical struggle with a strong antagonist — like young Byram.
All at once the misery of his poverty arose up before him. It was not unendurable simply because he was obliged to endure it.
The thought of his hopeless poverty stupefied him at first, then rage followed. Poverty was an antagonist — like young Byram — a powerful one. How he hated it! How he hated Byram! Why? And, as he walked there, shuffling up the dust in the moonlight, he thought, for the first time in his life, that if poverty were only a breathing creature he would strangle it with his naked hands. But logic carried him no further; he began to brood again, remembering Tansey’s insults and the white anger of young Byram, and the threats from the dim group around the stove. If they molested him they would remember it. He would neither pay taxes nor work for them.
Then he thought of the path-master, reddening as he remembered Tansey’s accusation. He shrugged his shoulders and straightened up, dismissing her from his mind, but she returned, only to be again dismissed with an effort.
When for the third time the memory of the little path-master returned, he glanced up as though he could see her in the flesh standing in the road before his house. She was there — in the flesh.
The moonlight silvered her hair, and her face was the face of a spirit; it quickened the sluggish blood in his veins to see her so in the moonlight.
She said: “I thought that if you knew I should be obliged to pay your road-tax if you do not, you would pay. Would you?”
A shadow glided across the moonlight; it was the collie dog, and it came and looked up into McCloud’s shadowy eyes.
“Yes — I would,” he said; “but I cannot.”
His heart began to beat faster; a tide of wholesome blood stirred and flowed through his veins. It was the latent decency within him awaking.
“Little path-master,” he said, “I am very poor; I have no money. But I will work out my taxes because you ask me.”
He raised his head and looked at the spectral forest where dead pines towered, ghastly in the moon’s beams. That morning he had cut the last wood on his own land; he had nothing left to sell but a patch of brambles and a hut which no one would buy.
“I guess I’m no good,” he said; “I can’t work.”
“But what will you do?” she asked, with pitiful eyes raised.
“Do? Oh, what I have done. I can shoot partridges.”
“Market-shooting is against the law,” she said, faintly.
“The law!” he repeated; “it seems to me there is nothing but law in this God-forsaken hole!”
“Can’t you live within the law? It is not difficult, is it?” she asked.
“It is difficult for me,” he said, sullenly. The dogged brute in him was awaking in its turn. He was already sorry he had promised her to work out his taxes. Then he remembered the penalty. Clearly he would have to work, or she would be held responsible.
“If anybody would take an unskilled man,” he began, “I — I would try to get something to do.”
“Won’t they?”
“No. I tried it — once.”
“Only once?”
He gave a short laugh and stooped to pat the collie, saying, “Don’t bother me, little path-master.”
“No — I won’t,” she replied, slowly.
She went away in the moonlight, saying good-night and calling her collie, and he walked up the slope to the house, curiously at peace with himself and the dim world hidden in the shadows around.
He was not sleepy. As he had no candles, he sat down in the moonlight, idly balancing his rifle on his knees. From force of habit he loaded it, then rubbed the stock with the palm of his hand, eyes dreaming.
Into the tangled garden a whippoorwill flashed on noiseless wings, rested a moment, unseen, then broke out into husky, breathless calling. A minute later the whispering call came from the forest’s edge, then farther away, almost inaudible in the thickening dusk.
And, as he sat there, thinking of the little path-master, he became aware of a man slinking along the moonlit road below. His heart stopped, then the pulses went bounding, and his fingers closed on his rifle.
There were other men in the moonlight now — he counted five — and he called out to them, demanding their business.
“You’re our business,” shouted back young Byram. “Git up an’ dust out o’ Foxville, you dirty loafer!”
“Better stay where you are,” said McCloud, grimly.
Then old Tansey bawled: “Yew low cuss, git outer this here taown! Yew air meaner ‘n pussley an’ meaner ‘n quack-root, an’ we air bound tew run yew into them mountings, b’ gosh!”
There was a silence, then the same voice: “Be yew calculatin’ tew mosey, Dan McCloud?”
“You had better stay where you are,” said McCloud; “I’m armed.”
“Ye be?” replied a new voice; “then come aout o’ that or we’ll snake ye aout!”
Byram began moving towards the house, shot-gun raised.
“Stop!” cried McCloud, jumping to his feet.
But Byram came on, gun levelled, and McCloud retreated to his front door.
“Give it to him!” shouted the game-warden; “shoot his windows out!” There was a flash from the road and a load of buckshot crashed through the window overhead.
Before the echoes of the report died away, McCloud’s voice was heard again, calmly warning them back.
Something in his voice arrested the general advance.
“I don’t know why I don’t kill you in your tracks, Byram,” said McCloud; “I’ve wanted the excuse often enough. But now I’ve got it and I don’t want it, somehow. Let me alone, I tell you.”
“He’s no good!” said the warden, distinctly. Byram crept
through the picket fence and lay close, hugging his shot-gun.
“I tell you I intend to pay my taxes,” cried McCloud, desperately. “Don’t force me to shoot!”
The sullen rage was rising; he strove to crush it back, to think of the little path-master.
“For God’s sake, go back!” he pleaded, hoarsely.
Suddenly Byram started running towards the house, and McCloud clapped his rifle to his cheek and fired. Four flashes from the road answered his shot, but Byram was down in the grass screaming, and McCloud had vanished into his house.
Charge after charge of buckshot tore through the flimsy clapboards; the moonlight was brightened by pale flashes, and the timbered hills echoed the cracking shots.
After a while no more shots were fired, and presently a voice broke out in the stillness:
“Be yew layin’ low, or be yew dead, Dan McCloud?”
There was no answer.
“Or be yew playin’ foxy possum,” continued the voice, with nasal rising inflection.
Byram began to groan and crawl towards the road.
“Let him alone,” he moaned; “let him alone. He’s got grit, if he hain’t got nothin’ else.”
“Air yew done for?” demanded Tansey, soberly.
“No, no,” groaned Byram, “I’m jest winged. He done it, an’ he was right. Didn’t he say he’d pay his taxes? He’s plumb right. Let him alone, or he’ll come out an’ murder us all!”
Byram’s voice ceased; Tansey mounted the dark slope, peering among the brambles, treading carefully.
“Whar be ye, Byram?” he bawled.
But it was ten minutes before he found the young man, quite dead, in the long grass.
With an oath Tansey flung up his gun and drove a charge of buckshot crashing through the front door. The door quivered; the last echoes of the shot died out; silence followed.
Then the shattered door swung open slowly, and McCloud reeled out, still clutching his rifle. He tried to raise it; he could not, and it fell clattering. Tansey covered him with his shot-gun, cursing him fiercely. “Up with them hands o’ yourn!” he snarled; but McCloud only muttered and began to rock and sway in the doorway.
Tansey came up to him, shot-gun in hand. “Yew hev done fur Byram,” he said; “yew air bound to set in the chair for this.”
McCloud, leaning against the sill, looked at him with heavy eyes.
“It’s well enough for you,” he muttered; “you are only a savage; but Byram went to college — and so did I — and we are nothing but savages like you, after all — nothing but savages—”
He collapsed and slid to the ground, lying hunched up across the threshold.
“I want to see the path-master!” he cried, sharply.
A shadow fell across the shot riddled door snow-white in the moonshine.
“She’s here,” said the game-warden, soberly.
But McCloud had started talking and muttering to himself.
Towards midnight the whippoorwill began a breathless calling from the garden.
McCloud opened his eyes.
“Who is that?” he asked, irritably.
“He’s looney,” whispered Tansey; “he gabbles to hisself.”
The little path-master knelt beside him. He stared at her stonily.
“It is I,” she whispered.
“Is it you, little path-master?” he said, in an altered voice. Then something came into his filmy eyes which she knew was a smile.
“I wanted to tell you,” he began, “I will work out my taxes — somewhere — for you—”
The path-master hid her white face in her hands. Presently the collie dog came and laid his head on her shoulder.
Contents
IN NAUVOO
THE long drought ended with a cloud-burst in the western mountains, which tore a new slide down the flank of Lynx Peak and scarred the Gilded Dome from summit to base. Then storm followed storm, bursting through the mountain-notch and sweeping the river into the meadows, where the haycocks were already afloat, and the gaunt mountain cattle floundered bellowing.
The stage from White Lake arrived at noon with the mail, and the driver walked into the post-office and slammed the soaking mail-sack on the floor.
“Gracious!” said the little postmistress.
“Yes’m,” said the stage-driver, irrelevantly; “them letters is wetter an’ I’m madder ‘n a swimmin’ shanghai! Upsot? Yes’m — in Snow Brook. Road’s awash, meadders is flooded, an’ the water’s a-swashin’ an’ a-sloshin’ in them there galoshes.” He waved one foot about carelessly, scattering muddy spray, then balanced himself alternately on heels and toes to hear the water wheeze in his drenched boots.
“There must be a hole in the mail-pouch,” said the postmistress, in gentle distress.
There certainly was. The letters were soaked; the wrappers on newspaper and parcel had become detached; the interior of the government’s mail-pouch resembled the preliminary stages of a paper-pulp vat. But the postmistress worked so diligently among the débris that by one o’clock she had sorted and placed in separate numbered boxes every letter, newspaper, and parcel — save one.
That one was a letter directed to
“James Helm, Esq.
“Nauvoo, via White Lake.”
and it was so wet and the gum that sealed it was so nearly dissolved that the postmistress decided to place it between blotters, pile two volumes of government agricultural reports on it, and leave it until dry.
One by one the population of Nauvoo came dripping into the post-office for the mail, then slopped out into the storm again, umbrellas couched in the teeth of the wind. But James Helm did not come for his letter.
The postmistress sat alone in her office and looked out into her garden. It was a very wet garden; the hollyhocks still raised their flowered spikes in the air; the nasturtiums, the verbenas, and the pansies were beaten down and lying prone in muddy puddles. She wondered whether they would ever raise their heads again — those delicate flower faces that she knew so well, her only friends in Nauvoo.
Through the long drought she had tended them, ministering to their thirst, protecting them from their enemies the weeds, and from the great, fuzzy, brown-and-yellow caterpillars that travelled over the fences, guided by instinct and a raging appetite. Now each frail flower had laid its slender length along the earth, and the little postmistress watched them wistfully from her rain-stained window.
She had expected to part with her flowers; she was going away forever in a few days — somewhere — she was not yet quite certain where. But now that her flowers lay prone, bruised and broken, the idea of leaving them behind her distressed her sorely.
She picked up her crutch and walked to the door. It was no use; the rain warned her back. She sat down again by the window to watch her wounded flowers.
There was something else that distressed her too, although the paradox of parting from a person she had never met ought to have appealed to her sense of humor. But she did not think of that; never, since she had been postmistress in Nauvoo, had she spoken one word to James Helm, nor had he ever spoken to her. He had a key to his letter-box; he always came towards evening.
It was exactly a year ago to-day that Helm came to Nauvoo — a silent, pallid young fellow with unresponsive eyes and the bearing of a gentleman. He was cordially detested in Nauvoo. For a year she had watched him enter the post-office, unlock his letter-box, swing on his heel and walk away, with never a glance at her nor a sign of recognition to any of the village people who might be there. She heard people exchange uncomplimentary opinions concerning him; she heard him sneered at, denounced, slandered.
Naturally, being young and lonely and quite free from malice towards anybody, she had time to construct a romance around Helm — a very innocent romance of well-worn pattern and on most unoriginal lines. Into this romance she sometimes conducted herself, blushing secretly at her mental indiscretion, which indiscretion so worried her that she dared not even look at Helm that evening when h
e came for his mail. She was a grave, gentle little thing — a child still whose childhood had been a tragedy and whose womanhood promised only that shadow of happiness called contentment which comes from a blameless life and a nature which accepts sorrow without resentment.
Thinking of Helm as she sat there by the window, she heard the office clock striking five. Five was Helm’s usual hour, so she hid her crutch. It was her one vanity — that he should not know that she was lame.
She rose and lifted the two volumes of agricultural reports from the blotters where Helm’s letter lay, then she carefully raised one blotter. To her dismay half of the envelope stuck to the blotting-paper, leaving the contents of the letter open to her view.
On the half-envelope lay an object apparently so peculiarly terrifying that the little postmistress caught her breath and turned quite white at sight of it. And yet it was only a square bit of paper, perfectly blank save for half a dozen thread-like lines scattered through its texture.
For a long while the postmistress stood staring at the half-envelope and the bit of blank paper. Then with trembling fingers she lighted a lamp and held the little piece of paper over the chimney — carefully. When the paper was warm she raised it up to the light and read the scrawl that the sympathetic ink revealed:
“I send you a sample of the latest style fibre. Look out for the new postmaster at Nauvoo. He’s a secret-service spy, and he’s been sent to see what you are doing. This is the last letter I dare send you by mail.”
There was no signature to the message, but a signature was not necessary to tell the postmistress who had written the letter. With set lips and tearless eyes she watched the writing fade slowly on the paper; and when again the paper was blank she sank down by the window, laying her head in her arms.
A few moments later Helm came in wrapped in a shining wet mackintosh. He glanced at his box, saw it was empty, wheeled squarely on his heels, and walked out.
Towards sunset the rain dissolved to mist; a trail of vapor which marked the course of an unseen brook floated high among the hemlocks. There was no wind; the feathery tips of the pines, powdered with rain-spray, rose motionless in the still air. Suddenly the sun’s red search-light played through the forest; long, warm rays fell across wet moss, rain-drenched ferns dripped, the swamp steamed. In the east the thunder still boomed, and faint lightning flashed under the smother of sombre clouds; but the storm had rolled off among the mountains, and already a white-throated sparrow was calling from the edge of the clearing. It promised to be a calm evening in Nauvoo.
Works of Robert W Chambers Page 1133