The One-Way Trail: A story of the cattle country

Peter scratched his rough, gray head. His mild, blue eyes twinkled gently in the lamplight from within the house.

“Well, seeing you were up– But there, I’m glad it’s nothing. I’ll pass on.” Then he added: “You see, when a pretty girl gets standing in the doorway late at night–and such a lovely summer night–and she’s just–just engaged, I don’t guess she wants the company of six foot three of a misspent life. Good-night, Eve, my dear. My best congratulations.”

But the girl wanted him. Now he was here she wanted to talk to him particularly.

“Don’t go, Peter,” she said. “Something is the matter with Elia. He is ill–very ill. He’s had the worst fit I’ve ever known him to have, and–and I don’t know if he’s going to pull round when he wakes up. He was out late this evening, and I don’t know where he’s been, or–or what happened to him while he was out. Something must have happened to him. I mean something to upset him–either to anger him, or to terrify him. I wish I knew. It would help me perhaps when he wakes.”

Peter’s smile had gone. His eyes were full of sympathy. There was also a shadow of trouble in them, too. But Eve did not see it, or, if she did, her understanding was at fault. They stood there for some moments in silence, he so massive yet so gentle, she so slight and pretty, yet so filled with a concern which harassed her mind and heart. Peter was thinking very hard, and though he could have told her all she wanted to know, though his great heart ached for her at the knowledge which was his, he refrained from saying a word that could have betrayed the boy’s secret, and the hideous aspect he had witnessed of the man she was going to marry.

“You had the Doc to him?” he inquired.

“Yes, oh yes. Doc dosed him to make him sleep. Annie Gay’s been with me helping.”

“Ah, she’s a good woman.”

“Yes, she’s more than that. She’s as near an angel as human nature will let her be.” Then Eve abruptly changed her tone, and it became almost appealing. “Tell me, Peter, what do you think could have happened to Elia? I mean, to shock him so. I’ve tried and tried, but I can’t think–nor can Annie. You know all the boys, you go amongst them, you may have heard?”

But Peter was ready, and answered her with such simple sincerity that she could not question him further.

“I guess, Eve, if the boy has had any trouble, or shock, he’ll tell you of it when he wakes–if he wants you to know. I don’t reckon if I did know that I’d have a right to speak while he–he was asleep. I say–if I did know.”

“I see.” Then the girl smiled up into his face a little whimsically. “You men have a curious code of honor in your dealings with each other. Quite different to us women.”

Peter nodded.

“Yep,” he said, “we haven’t the same perspective.”

The eastern horizon was lighting with a golden shadow and the sky-line was faintly silhouetted against it. It was the soft, effulgent light which heralded the full, rising moon. Eve watched it in silence for some moments. Peter followed the direction of her eyes while he went on speaking.

“When are you getting married, Eve?”

The question came hesitatingly.

“Then you know. Of course you know. You always seem to know, and yet you don’t seem to nose about like Anthony Smallbones. I’m going to be married in two months.”

The man’s mild eyes were kept intently fixed on the lightening horizon.

“Two months,” he said, pondering. “And Elia? What of him?”

The girl started. She turned on him, and her pretty eyes were wide with astonishment.

“It will make no difference,” she said, with a sudden coldness she could not have accounted for. “What do you mean?”

Peter’s great shoulders shrugged.

“Why, nothing,” he said. “It kind of seemed a natural question.”

The tone brought immediate contrition to the girl’s warm heart. This man was always kind to her. It would have been difficult to remember a single week since she had lived in Barnriff which had not witnessed at least one small kindness from him. Her eyes wandered over her garden. He had not long finished digging it over for her.

“Of course it was a natural question,” she exclaimed, “only I–well, it doesn’t seem to me as if there could be any question about Elia. Wherever I am, he will be.”

“Just so, just so. He’ll still live with you–you and Will. Y’see, I was only thinking. If–if you wanted a home for him for a while, while you and Will were–honeymooning, now. Why, he’d be real welcome in my shack. He’d want for nothing, and I’d look after him same as–well, not perhaps as well as you could, but I’d do my best. Y’see, Eve, I like the boy. And, and his very weakness makes me want to help him. You know he’d get good food. I’m rather particular about my food, and I cook it myself. He’d have eggs for breakfast, and good bacon, not sow-belly. And there’s no hash in my shanty. The best meat Gay sells, and he could have all the canned truck he liked. Oh, I’d feed him well. And I’ve always got a few dollars for pocket money. Y’see, Eve, folks honeymooning don’t want a third party around, even if he’s a sick boy. I’d take it a real favor if you said ‘yes,’ I would, true. I can look after–”

The man felt one of her warm hands squeezing his arm with the tenderest pressure. There was a moisture in her eyes as she sought his, but she shook her head.

“Peter, Peter, I don’t know where you come from, I don’t know why you’re here, unless it is to help us all to be better folks. I know why you want to take Elia off my hands. I know, and the matter has troubled me some. Elia doesn’t like Will. I know that. But Elia is my care, he’s more–he’s my life. He will be with me as long as we both live, even–yes, even if I had to give Will up. I can’t tell you, Peter, what my poor weakly brother is to me. If anything happened to him I think it would break my heart. And it seems so strange to me that everybody, that is everybody but Jim Thorpe and you, dislikes him. Even Will does a little, I–I’m afraid.”

“Yes. You can’t say how it is,” Peter nodded. “But folks can’t be blamed for their likes and dislikes. Maybe Will will get over it. Y’see he’s just a wild sort of Irish boy. He’s just quicksilver. Yes, yes, he’ll maybe grow to be as fond of the lad as you, Eve. But any time you find you’d like me to have him for a bit–I mean–sort of–two’s company, you know–you’ll just be making me a happy man–eh?”

It was a cheery voice behind him that caused his exclamation. Annie Gay stepped briskly up the path.

“Why, it’s Peter!” she declared. “Now if it had been Will,” she added slyly. “But there, young engaged girls think they’re safe from scandalous tongues like mine. Going, Peter? I’ve just been down to the meat store and stolen an elegant bit of tripe. Now, if Eve’s only sensible and got some onions, why there’s a lunch fit for the President.”

“Oh yes, I’ve got onions,” Eve reassured her. Then she turned to the man. “Good-bye, Peter,” she said, as he edged away, “and thank you–”

But Peter would have no thanks.

“No thanks, Eve, I’d take it a favor.”

And he vanished in the darkness leaving Annie looking at Eve, who instantly began to explain as they went indoors.

“He thinks Elia will be in the way when Will and I are married,” she said. “He wants to look after him. Isn’t he kind?”

“Well?” Annie’s merry eyes were deadly serious.

“Of course I couldn’t think of it. I could never let him go. I–”

“Eve Marsham, you’re a–fool, and now I’ve said it. Do you know why Peter wants–?”

She broke off in confusion. But she had successfully aroused Eve’s curiosity.

“Well? Go on,” she demanded.

But Annie shook a decided head.

“It don’t matter. I was only thinking my own thoughts, and they began one way and finished another.”

“How did they finish?” Annie’s manner was quaintly amusing and Eve found herself smiling.

“I’d just called you a fool, an’–I’d forgot to include myself.”

Nor could she be induced to speak further on the matter.

CHAPTER X

AN EVIL NIGHT

Peter lumbered heavily away from the house. He had known the futility of his request beforehand. Yet he had to make it even on the smallest chance. And now, more than ever, in spite of his disappointment, he saw how imperative it was that some one should stand by to help any one of these three. Old “saws” were not for him. The world-old advice to the would-be interferer might be for those of less thought, less tact. Besides, he had no intention of interfering. He only meant to “stand by.” That was the key-note of his whole nature, his whole life.

And the night had revealed so much to him. His horizon was bounded by storm-clouds threatening unconscious lives. There they were banking, banking, low down, so as to be almost invisible, and he knew that they were only waiting a favoring breeze to mount up into the heavens into one vast black mass. And then the breaking of the storm. His calm brain was for once feverishly at work. Those three must somehow be herded to shelter; and he wondered how. His first play had proved abortive, and now he wondered.

It was his intention to return to his hut for the night, and he stood for a moment contemplating the dark village. His busy thoughts decided for him that there was nothing further to be done to-night. He told himself that opportunity must be his guide in the riddle with which he was confronted. He must rush nothing, and he felt, somehow, that the opportunity would come. He turned his eyes in the direction of his home, and as he was about to move off he became aware of a footstep crossing the market-place toward him. He waited. The sound came from the direction of the saloon, and, as he gazed that way, he saw the lights in the building go out one by one. The person approaching was one of the “boys” homeward bound.

He was half inclined to continue on his way and thus avoid the probably drunken man, but something held him, and a moment later he was glad when he saw the figure of Jim Thorpe loom up. As they came into view of each other Thorpe hesitated. Nor was it till he recognized the huge outline of Peter that he came close up.

“That you, Peter?” he said.

And Peter, listening, recognized that Jim was sober.

“Yes,” he replied, “just going home.”

“Me, too.”

There was a brief pause after that, and both men were thinking of the same thing. It was of the scene recently enacted at the saloon. Peter was the one to break the silence, and he ignored that which was in his thoughts.

“Goin’ to the ranch on foot, and by way of Eve’s shack,” he said in his gently humorous fashion.

“Ye-es,” responded Jim after a moment’s thought. Then he added with a conscious laugh, “My ‘plug’ is back there at Rocket’s tie-post, waiting, saddled.” Then he went on, becoming suddenly earnest. “Peter, I’m going for good. That is, I’m going to quit McLagan’s, and get out. You see, I just wanted to have a look at her shack–for the last time. I–I don’t feel I can go without that. She won’t see me, and–”

“Sort of final look round before you quit the–sinking ship, eh?”

The quiet seriousness of the big man’s tone sounded keenly incisive in the stillness of the dark night. Jim started, and hot blood mounted to his head. He had been through so much that day that his nerves were still on edge.

“What d’ye mean?” he demanded sharply. “Who’s deserting a sinking ship–where’s the sinking ship?”

Peter pointed back at Eve’s home.

“There,” he said.

But Jim shook his head.

“I’ve drunk a lot to-day. Maybe my head’s not clear. Maybe–”

Peter’s voice broke in.

“It doesn’t need much clearness to understand, if you know all the facts. I’m not going to tell all I’ve seen and heard to-day either. But I’m going to say a few words to you, Jim, because I know you and like you, and because, in spite of a few cranks in your head, you’re a man. Just now you’re feeling reckless. Nothing much matters to you. You’re telling yourself that there’s no particular reason keeping straight. You have no interest, and when the end comes you’ll just shut out your lights and–well, there’s nothing more to it. That’s how you’re thinking.”

“And what’s my thoughts to do with quitting a sinking ship?” Jim asked a trifle impatiently. “I don’t deny you’re likely right. I confess I don’t see that there’s much incentive to–well, to stick to a straight and narrow course. I’ll certainly strike a gait of my own, and I don’t know that it’ll be a slow one. It’ll be honest though. It’ll be honest as far as the laws of man go. As for the other laws, well, they’re for my personal consideration as far as my life is concerned. But this sinking ship. I’d like to know.”

“You love Eve?” Peter abruptly demanded.

“For G–’s sake, what are you driving at?”

“You love her?” Peter’s demand would admit of no avoidance.

“Better than my life.”

Jim’s answer was deep down in his voice; his whole soul was in his reply.

“Then don’t quit McLagan’s, boy,” Peter went on earnestly. “Don’t quit Barnriff. Jim, boy, you can’t have her, but you can help her to happiness by standing by. I’m going to stand by, too, for she’s going to need all the help we can both give her.”

“But how can I ‘stand by’ with Will–her husband?”

“You must stand by because he’s her husband.”

“God!”

“Jim, can’t you try to forget things where he’s concerned? Can’t you try to forget that shooting match and its result? Can’t you? Think well. Can’t you, outwardly at least, make things up with him? It’ll help to keep him right, and help toward her happiness. Jim, I ask you to do this for her sake, lad. I know what you don’t know, and I can’t tell you. It’s best I don’t tell you. It would do worse than no good. You say you love her better than life. Well, boy, if Eve’s to be made happy we must help to keep Will right. He’s got a devil in him somewhere, and anything that goes awry with him sets that devil raging. Are you going to help Eve, Jim?”

It was some moments before any answer was forthcoming. It was the old battle going on of the man against himself. All that was human in Jim was tearing him in one direction, while his better side–his love for Eve–was pulling him in the opposite. He hated Will now. He had given way in this direction completely. The man’s final outrage at the saloon had killed his last grain of feeling for him. And now he was called upon to–outwardly, at least–take up his old attitude toward him, a course that would help Will to give the woman he had robbed him of the happiness which he himself was not allowed to bestow. Was ever so outrageous a demand upon a man? He laughed bitterly, and aloud.

“No, no, Peter; it can’t be done. I’m no saint. I’d hate to be a saint. Will can go hang–he can go to the devil! And I say that because I love Eve better than all else in the world.”

“And the first sacrifice for that love you refuse?”

“Yes. I refuse to give my friendship to Will.”

“You love her, yet you will not help her to happiness?”

“She shall never lack for happiness through me.”

Peter smiled in the darkness. A sigh of something like satisfaction escaped him. He knew that, in spite of the man’s spoken refusal, his appeal was not entirely unavailing.

“You won’t leave McLagan’s then?” he said.

“Not if Eve needs me.”

“Then don’t.”

But Jim became suddenly impatient.

“For G–’s sake, man, can’t you speak out?”

“For Eve’s sake, I won’t,” was the quiet rejoinder.

“Then, Peter, I’m going right on to the ranch now. I’ll remain. But, remember, I am no longer a friend of Will’s–and never will be again. I’ll never even pretend. But if I can help Eve you can call on me. And–I put no limit on the hand I play. So long.”

“So long.”

CHAPTER XI

A WEDDING-DAY IN BARNRIFF

If signs and omens meant anything at all, Eve Marsham and Will Henderson were about to embark on a happy and prosperous married life. So said the women of Barnriff on the day fixed for the wedding. The feminine heart of Barnriff was a superstitious organ. It loved and hugged to itself its belief in forebodings and portents. It never failed to find the promise of disaster or good-fortune in the trivialities of its daily life. It was so saturated with superstition that, on the morning of the wedding, every woman in the place was on the lookout for some recognized sign, and, finding none, probably invented one.

And the excitement of it all. The single-minded, wholesome delight in the thought of this wedding was as refreshing as the crisp breezes of a first bright spring day. To a woman they reveled in the thought. It was the first wedding actually to take place in the village for over seven years. Everybody marrying during that period had elected to seek the consummation of their happiness elsewhere. And as a consequence of this enthusiasm, there was a surplus of help in getting the meeting-room suitably clad for the occasion, and the preparations for the “sociable” and dance which were to follow the ceremony.

Was there ever such a day in Barnriff? the women asked each other. None of them remembered one. Then look at the day itself. True it was the height of summer; but then who had not seen miserable weather in summer? Look at the sun gleaming out of a perfect azure.

Mrs. Crombie, a florid dame of adequate size, if of doubtful dignity to fill her position as spouse of Barnriff’s first citizen, dragged Mrs. Horsley, the lay preacher’s wife, through the door of the Mission Room, in which, with the others, they were both working at the decorations, to view the sky.

“Look at it, my dear!” she cried enthusiastically. “Was there ever a better omen for the poor dear? Not a cloud anywhere. Not one. And it’s deep blue, too; none of your steel blues, or one of them fady blues running to white. Say, ain’t she lucky? Now, when Crombie took me the heavens was just pouring. Everybody said ‘Tears’ prompt enough, and with reason. That’s what they said. But me and Crombie has never shed a tear; no, not one. We’ve just laffed our way clear through to this day, we have. Well, I won’t say Crombie does a heap of laffing, but you’ll take my meaning.”

And Carrie Horsley took it. She would have agreed to anything so long as she could get a chance to empty her reservoirs of enthusiasm into the Barnriff sea.

“You sure are a lucky woman, Kate. Maybe the rain wasn’t an omen for you at all. Maybe it was for the folks that didn’t marry on that day. You see, it’s easy reading these things wrong. Now I never read omens wrong, an’ the one I see this morning when I was bathin’ my little Sammy boy was dead sure. You see, I got to bathe him every morning for his spots, which is a heap better now. And I’m real glad, for Abe has got them spots on his mind. He guessed it was my blood out of order. Said I needed sulphur in my tea. I kicked at that, an’ said he’d need to drink it, too. An’, as he allowed he’d given up tea on account of his digestion, nothing come of it. Of course I knew Sammy boy’s spots was on’y a teething rash, but men is so queer; spechully if the child’s the first, and a boy. Now what–”

“And the omen, dear?” inquired Mrs. Crombie, who had all a woman’s interest in babies, but was just then ensnared in the net of superstition which held all Barnriff.

“The omen? Oh, yes, I was coming to that. You see, as I said I can read them, an’ this is one that never fails, never. I’ve proved it. When you prove an omen, stick to it, I says–and it pays. Now, this morning I set my stockings on the wrong–ahem–legs, and not one, but both of them was inside out. There’s bad luck, as you might say. And folks say that to escape it you must keep ’em that ways all day. But I changed ’em! Yes, mam, I changed ’em right in the face of misfortune, as you might say. And why? you ask. Because I’ve done it before, and nothing come of it. And how did I change ’em? you ask. Why, I stood to my knees in Sammy’s bath water, an’ then told Abe I’d got my feet wet bathing him. He says change ’em right away, Carrie, he says, and, him being my man, why I just changed ’em, seein’ I swore to obey him at the altar.”

“Very wise,” observed Kate Crombie, sapiently. “But this omen for Eve–?”

“To be sure. I was just coming to it. Well, it wasn’t much, as you might say, but I’ve proved it before. It come when I was ladling out Abe’s cereal–he always has a cereal for breakfast. He says it eases his tubes when he preaches for the minister–well, it come as I was ladling out his cereal; it was oatmeal porridge, Scotch–something come over me, an’ my arm shook. It was most unusual. Well, some of the cereal dropped right on to the floor. Kate Crombie, that porridge dropped, an’ when I looked there was a ring on the floor, a ring, my dear. A wedding-ring of porridge, as you might say. Did I call Abe’s attention to it? I says, ‘Abe,’ I says, ‘look!’ He looked. And not getting my meaning proper, he says, ‘Call the dog an’ let him lick it up!’ With that I says, ‘Abe, ain’t you got eyes?’ And he being slow in some things guessed he had. Then seeing I was put about some, he says, ‘Carrie,’ he says, ‘what d’ye mean?’ I see he was all of a quiver then, and feeling kind of sorry for his ignorance I just shrugged at him. ‘Marriage bed!’ says I. ‘And,’ I says, feeling he hadn’t quite got it, ‘in Barnriff.’ If that wasn’t Eve’s good luck, why, I ask you.”

“And when you were bathing–”

“Oh, that–that was another,” Carrie replied hastily. “I’ll tell you–”

But Kate heard herself called away at that moment, and hurried back into the hall. Her genius for administration was the ruling power in the work of decoration, and the enthusiasm of the helpers needed her controlling hand to get the work done by noon, which was the time fixed for the wedding.

But omen was the talk everywhere; it was impossible to avoid it. Every soul in the place had her omen. Jane Restless had a magpie. That very morning the bird had stolen a leaden plummet belonging to Restless and carried it to her cage, where she promptly set to work to hatch it out. And she fought when Zac went to take it away. She made such a racket when it was gone that Jane was sorry, and picked out a small chicken’s egg and put it into the bird’s cage. “And, my dears,” she concluded triumphantly, “the langwidge that bird used trying to cover up all that egg was simply awful. What about that for luck? A magpie sittin’ on a wedding-day!”

But, perhaps, of the whole list of omens that happened that morning, Pretty Wilkes, the baker’s wife, held the greatest interest for them all. She was a woman whose austerity was renowned in the village, and Wilkes was generally considered something of a hero. Her man had won seventy dollars at poker the previous night, and had got very drunk in the process. And being well aware of the vagaries of his wife’s sense of conjugal honor, had, with a desperate drunken cunning, bestowed it over night in the coal-box, well knowing that it was one of his many domestic pleasures to have the honor of lighting the cook-stove for his spouse every morning. “And would you believe it, girls?” she cried ecstatically. “If it hadn’t have been Eve’s wedding-day, and I’d got to bake cakes for the sociable, and so had to be up at three this very morning, while he was still dreaming he was a whiskey trust or some other drunken delusion, I’d sure never have seen that wad nor touched five cents of it, he’s that close. Say, girls,” she beamed, “I never said a word to Jake for getting soused, not a word. And I let him sleep right on, an’ when he woke to light fires, and start baking, I just give him a real elegant breakfast with cream in his coffee, an’ asked him if he’d like a bottle of rye for his head. But say, I never see him shovel coal harder in my life than he did in that coal-box after breakfast. I’d like to gamble he’s still shovelin’ it.”

It certainly was a gala day in Barnriff. The festivity had even penetrated to the veins of Silas Rocket, and possessed him of an atmosphere which “let him in” to the extent of three rounds of drinks to the boys before eleven o’clock. The men for the most part took a long time with their morning ablutions. But the effect was really impressive and quite worth the extra trouble. The result so lightened up the dingy village, that some of them, one realized, had considerable pretensions to good looks. And a further curious thing about this cleansing process was that it affected their attitude toward each other. Their talk became less familiar, a wave of something almost like politeness set in. It suggested a clean starched shirt just home from the laundry. They walked about without their customary slouch, and each man radiated an atmosphere of conscious rectitude that became almost importance. Peter Blunt, talking to Doc Crombie, said he’d never seen so many precise creases in broadcloth since he’d lived in Barnriff.