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

He laughed silently, while his sister stared at him in amazement.

Finally she checked his amusement sharply.

“Yes? Well?”

“Well, then she see me, an’ she turned on me like a wildcat, an’ I was ’most scairt to death. She said, ‘What you doin’ here, you imp o’ Satan? Who’s done this? Tell me! Tell me an’ I’ll lay for ’em! I’ll shoot ’em down like vermin.’ I knew she wasn’t really talkin’ to me, so then I wasn’t scairt. She was jest blowin’ off steam. Then I got around an’ looked close at ’em–the checkens, I mean–and I see just where the knife had cut their necks off. It was an elegant way of killing ’em, and say, how they must have flapped around after they’d got clear of their silly heads.” He laughed gleefully again. “I looked up after that and see her watchin’ me. Guess her eyes was kind of funny lookin’, so I said, ‘You don’t need to take on, mam,’ I said. ‘They’ll make elegant roasts, an’ you can get busy and hatch out some more.’ And somehow she got quiet then, and I watched her gather them checkens up, an’ take ’em into the house. Then when she came out an’ see me again, she says, ‘Light you right out o’ here, you imp o’ Satan! I fair hates the sight o’ you.’ So I lit out. Say, Eve,” he added, after a reflective pause, “why does folks all hate me so much?”

The girl sighed and shook her head. Then she came over to him, and, bending down, kissed his fair waving hair.

“Never mind, dear. I don’t hate you,” she said. “Perhaps it is you offend folks somehow. You know you do manage to upset folks at times. You seem to say–say queer things to them, and get them mad.” She smiled down upon the boy a little wistfully. She knew her brother was disliked by most in the village, and it pained her terribly that it should be so. They tried to be outwardly kind to him, but she always felt that it was solely for her sake and never for his. As Elia had never spoken of it before, she had lived in the hope that he did not understand their dislike. However, it was as well that he should know. If he realized it now, as he grew older he might endeavor to earn their good-will in spite of present prejudice.

“Guess it must be, sis. You see I don’t kind of mean to say things,” he said almost regretfully. “Only when they’re in my head they must come out, or–or I think my head would jest bust,” he finished up naively.

The girl was still smiling, and one arm stole round the boy’s hunched shoulders.

“Of course you can’t help saying those things you know to be true–”

“But they most generally ain’t true.”

The innocent, inquiring eyes looked straight up into hers.

“No,” he went on positively, “they generally ain’t. I don’t think my head would bust keepin’ in the truth. Now, yesterday, Will Henderson was down at the saloon before he came up to see you. He came and sort of spoke nice to me. I know he hates me, and–and I hate him worse’n poison. Well, he spoke nice to me, as I said, an’ I wanted to spit at him for it. And I jest set to and tho’t and tho’t how I could hurt him. And so I said, right out before all the boys, ‘Wot for do you allus come hangin’ around our shack? Eve’s most sick to death with you,’ I said; ‘it isn’t as if she ast you to get around, it’s just you buttin’ in. If you was Jim Thorpe now–’”

“You never said all that, Elia,” cried Eve, sternly. All her woman’s pride was outraged, and she felt her fingers itching to box the boy’s ears.

“I did sure,” Elia went on, in that sober tone of decided self-satisfaction. “And I said a heap more. And didn’t the boys jest laff. Will went red as a beet, and the boys laffed more. And I was real glad. I hate Will! Say, he was up here last night. Wot for? He was up here from six to nigh nine. Say, sis, I wish you wouldn’t have him around.”

Eve did not respond. She was staring out at the rampart of hills beyond, where Will worked. She was thinking of Will, thinking of–but the boy was insistent.

“Say, I’d have been real glad if it had been Jim Thorpe. Only he don’t come so often, does he? I like him. Say, Jim’s allus good to me. I don’t never seem to want to hurt him. No, sure. Jim’s good. But Will– Say, sis, Will’s a bad lot; he is certain. I know. He’s never done nuthing bad, I know, but I can see it in his face, his eyes. It’s in his head, too. Do you know I can allus tell when bad’s in folks’ heads. Now, there’s Smallbones. He’s a devil. You’ll see it, too, some day. Then there’s Peter Blunt. Now Peter’s that good he’d break his neck if he thought it ’ud help folks. But Will–”

“Elia,” Eve was bending over the boy’s crooked form. Her cheek was resting on his silky hair. She could not face those bland inquiring eyes. “You mustn’t say anything against Will. I like him. He’s not a bad man–really he isn’t, and you mustn’t say he is. Will is just a dear, foolish Irish boy, and when once he has settled down will be–you wait–”

The boy abruptly wriggled out of his sister’s embrace. His eyes sought hers so that she could no longer avoid them.

“I won’t wait for anything to do with Will Henderson–if that’s what you mean. I tell you he’s no good. I hate him! I hate him! And–and I hope some one’ll kill all the checkens he’s left in your care down at that old shack of his.” He scrambled to his feet and hobbled away, vanishing round the corner of the house in a fury of fierce resentment.

He had been roused to one of his dreaded fits of passion, and Eve was alarmed. In a fever of apprehension she was about to follow him up and soothe him, when she saw a horseman galloping toward the house. The figure was unmistakable, besides she knew the horse’s gait and color. It was Jim Thorpe, riding in from the AZ ranch.

In a few moments he drew rein at the gate of her vegetable patch. He flung the reins over his horse’s head and removed the bit from its mouth. Then he let it wander grazing on the tawny grass of the market-place.

Eve waited for him to come up the garden path, and for the moment the boy was forgotten. She welcomed him with the cordiality of old friendship. There was genuine pleasure in her smile, there was hearty welcome in her eyes, and in the soft, warm grip of her strong young hand, but that was all. There was no shyness, no avoiding the honest devotion in his look. The radiant hope shining in his clear, dark eyes was not for her understanding. The unusual care in his dress, the neatly polished boots under his leather chaps, the creamy whiteness of his cotton shirt, the store creases of the new silk handkerchief about his neck, none of these things struck her as being anything out of the ordinary.

And he, blind soul, took courage from the warmth of her welcome. His heart beat high with a hope which no ordinary mundane affairs could have inspired. All the ill-fate behind him was wiped off the slate. The world shone radiant before eyes, which, at such times, are mercifully blinded to realities. An Almighty Providence sees that every man shall live to the full such moments as were his just then. It is in the great balance of things. The greater the joy, the harder– But what matters the other side of the picture!

“Eve,” he exclaimed, “I was hoping to find you–not busy. I’ve ridden right in to yarn with you–’bout things. Say, maybe you’ve got five minutes?”

“I’ve always got five minutes for you, Jim,” the girl responded warmly. “Sit right down here on this seat, and get–going. How’s things with the ‘AZ’s’?”

“Bully! Dan McLagan’s getting big notions of doing things; he’s heaping up the dollars in plenty. And I’m glad, because with him doing well I’m doing well. I’ve already got an elegant bunch of cows and calves up in the foot-hills. You see I make trade with him for my wages. I’ve done more. Yesterday I got him to promise me a lease of grazing, and a big patch for a homestead way up there in the foot-hills. In another two years I mean to be ranching on my own, eh? How’s that?”

The girl’s eyes were bright with responsive enthusiasm. She was smiling with delight at this dear friend’s evident success.

“It’s great, Jim. But how quiet you’ve been over it. You never even hinted before–”

The man shook his head, and for a moment a shadow of regret passed across his handsome face.

“Well, you see I waited until I was sure of that lease. I’ve come so many falls I didn’t guess I wanted to try another by anticipating too much. So I just waited. It’s straight going now,” he went on, with a return to his enthusiasm, “and I’m going to start building.”

“Yes, yes. You’ll get everything ready for leaving the ‘AZ’s’ in–”

“Two years, yes. I’ll put up a three-roomed shack of split logs, a small barn, and branding corrals. That’ll be the first start. You see”–he paused–“I’d like to know about that shack. Now what about the size of the rooms and things? I–I thought I’d ask you–”

“Me?”

The girl turned inquiring eyes upon him. She was searching his face for something, and that something came to her as an unwelcome discovery, for she abruptly turned away again, and her attention was held by those distant hills, where Will Henderson worked.

“I don’t know,” she said seriously. The light of enthusiasm had died out of her eyes, leaving them somehow sad and regretful. “You see, I don’t know a man’s requirements in such things. A woman has ideas, but that is chiefly for herself. You see, she has the care of the house generally.”

“Yes, yes; that’s it,” Jim broke in eagerly. Then he checked himself. Something in Eve’s manner gave him pause. “You see I–I wanted a woman’s ideas. I don’t want the house for a man. I–”

He did not finish what he had to say. Somehow words failed him. It was not that he found it difficult to put what he wanted to say into words. Something in the girl’s manner checked his eagerness and drove him to silence. He, too, suddenly found himself staring out at the hills, where–Will worked.

For one fleeting instant Eve turned her gentle eyes upon the face beside her. She saw the strong features, the steady look of the dark eyes, the clean-cut profile and determined jaw. She saw, too, that he was thinking hard, and her woman’s instinct came to her aid. She felt that she must be the first to speak. And on what she said depended what would follow.

“Why not leave the house until toward the end of the two years? By that time you will have been able to talk it over with–the right person.”

“That’s what I want to do now.”

Jim’s eagerness leaped again. He thought he saw an opening. His eyes had in them the question he wanted to ask. All his soul was behind his words, all his great depth of feeling and love looked out at the rounded oval of her sweet face. He hungrily took in the beauty of her hair, her eyes, her cheeks; the sweet richness of her ripe lips, the chiseled roundness of her beautiful neck. He longed to crush her to his heart where they sat. He longed to tell her that she and she only of all women could ever occupy the hut he intended to build; he longed to pour into her ears his version of the old, old story, and so full was his great, strong heart, so overwhelming was his lover’s madness, that he believed he could tell that story as it had never been told before. But the question never reached his lips. The old story was not for his telling. Nor did he ask himself why. It was as though a power which was all-mastering forbade him to speak further.

“Have you seen Will to-day?” Eve suddenly inquired, with apparent irrelevance. “I half expected to–” And she broke off purposely.

The look in Jim’s eyes hardened to one of acute apprehension.

“You were–expecting him?”

“Well, not exactly, Jim.” She withdrew her gaze from the distant hills, and, gently smiling, turned her eyes upon him. They were full of sympathy and profound kindness. “You see, he came here last night. And, well, I thought he said something about–”

Jim started. A shiver passed through his body. He suddenly felt cold in that blazing sun. His eyes painfully sought the girl’s face. His look was an appeal, an appeal for a denial of what in his heart he feared. For some seconds he did not speak. There was no sound between them, but of his breathing, which had become suddenly heavy.

“Will–Will was here last night?” he said at last.

His voice was husky and unusual. But he dropped his eyes before the innocent look of inquiry in the girl’s.

“Why, yes; he spent the evening with me.”

In lowering his eyes Jim found them staring at the girl’s hands, resting in her lap. On one of them he noticed, for the first time, a gold band. It was the inside of a ring. It was on the third finger of the left hand. He had never seen Eve wearing rings before. Suddenly he reached out and caught her hands in his. He turned them over with almost brutal roughness. Eve tried to withdraw them, but he held them fast.

“That ring!” he exclaimed, hoarsely. It was in full view now. “It is Will’s. It was my father’s signet ring. I gave it to him. Where?–How–? But no, you needn’t tell me, I guess.” He almost flung her hands from him. And a wave of sickness swept over him as he thought.

Then in a moment all the passion of his heart rose uppermost in him, and its scorching tide swept through his body, maddening him, driving him. A torrent of words surged to his lips, words of bitterness, cruel words that would hurt the girl, hurt himself, words of hateful intensity, words that might ease his tortured soul at the expense of those who had always occupied foremost place in his heart.

But they were not uttered. He choked them back with a gasp, and seized himself in an iron grip of will. And, for some moments, he held on as a drowning man may cling to the saving hand. He must not hurt the girl, he must not wound her love by betraying his cousin. If Will had not played the game, at any rate he would. Suddenly, he spoke again, and no one would have suspected the storm raging under his calm exterior. Only his voice was hoarse, and his lips were dry, and the usually clear whites of his eyes were bloodshot.

“The boy has asked you, then?” he said slowly. And he waited for the death-knell of all his hopes, his love.

“Yes.” Eve’s voice was very low. Her gentle woman’s heart ached, for her instinct told her of the pain she was causing. “Last night he asked me to be his wife, and I–I love him, Jim, and so I consented.”

“Yes, yes.” There was weariness in the man’s voice now. It sounded almost as though he were physically weary. “I hope you will be happy, dear. Will’s–a good boy–”

“Yes, and I asked him if you knew anything about it. And he said, ‘No.’ He said it would be a little surprise for you– You are not going?” Jim had suddenly started to his feet. “Won’t you wait for Will? He’s staying in the village. He said he’d be up to see me this morning–before he went out to the hills.”

Jim could stand no more.

“I’m glad you told me, Eve,” he said, almost harshly. “Will’s not good at surprises. No, I won’t stay. I’ll get right back, after I’ve done some business in the village.” He stood, glancing thoughtfully down at the village for some moments. Then he turned again, and a shadowy smile lit his sombre eyes.

“I’ve given out a contract for that homestead,” he went on. “Well, I’m going to cancel it. Good-bye, little girl.”

“Oh, Jim, I–”

But the man shook his head.

“Don’t you be sorry. Get all the happiness you can. Maybe Will will be a real good husband to you.”

He moved away and strode after his horse. The beast was well out on the market-place, and Eve watched him catch it and clamber into the saddle. Then she turned away with a sigh, and found herself looking into the beautiful face of her brother. He had silently crept up to her side.

“You’ve hurt him, sis; you’ve hurt him real bad. Did you see? It was all inside. Inside here;” the boy folded his delicate hands over his hollow breast. “I know it because I feel it here, too. It’s as though you’d taken right hold of a bunch of cords here, and were pulling ’em, tearing ’em, an’ someway they’re fixed right on to your heart. That’s the way you’ve hurt him, an’ it hurts me, because I like him–he’s good. You don’t know what it feels when a man’s hurt. I do. It’s elegant pain. Gee!” His calm face was quite unlit by the emotion he described. “It don’t stop at your heart. It gets right through to your muscles, and they tingle and itch to do something, and they mostly want to hurt, same as you’ve been hurt. Then it gets to the head, through the blood. That’s it; the blood gets hot, and it makes the brain hot, an’ when the brain’s hot it thinks hot thoughts, an’ they scorch an’ make you feel violent. You think hurt for some one, see? It’s all over the body alike. It’s when men get hurt like that that they want to kill. Gee! You’ve hurt him.”

The boy paused a little breathlessly. His tense nerves were quivering with some sort of mental strain. It was as though he were watching something that was going on inside himself, and the effort was tremendous, physically and mentally. But, used as Eve was to his vagaries, she saw none of this. She was thinking only of Jim. Thinking of the suffering which her brother had said she had caused him. Woman-like, she felt she must excuse herself. Yet she knew she had nothing to blame herself with.

“I only told him I had promised to marry Will.”

The boy uttered a little cry. It was a strange sound, unlike anything human. He rushed at her, and his thin hands seized upon her wrists, and clutched them violently.

“You’re goin’ to marry Will? You! You! And you’ve hurt him–to marry Will?” Then, with the force of his clutch upon her wrists, he drew her down toward him till her face was near to his, and his placid eyes looked coldly into hers. “You’ve–hurt–me–too,” he hissed into her face, “and I almost–hate you. No, it’s not you–but I hate Will worse’n I ever hated anything in my life.”

CHAPTER V

TO THE RED, DANCING DEVIL

Jim Thorpe dashed the vicious rowels of his Mexican spurs into the flanks of his horse. Such unaccustomed treatment sent the willing beast racing headlong across the market-place, while the guiding hand mechanically directed toward the saloon.

A storm of bitterness wrung the man’s heart. A murky pall of depression hung over his brain, deadening his sense of proportion for all those things that matter. For the time, at least, it crushed down in his heart that spirit of striving, which was one of his best characteristics, and utterly quenched the warm fires of his better nature. All thought was buried in a fog of wrath, which left him a prey to instincts utterly foreign to his normal condition. He had left Eve Marsham’s presence in a furious state from which no effort seemed able to clear him. Nothing gripped his understanding–nothing save the knowledge of what he had lost, and the conviction of the low-down trick that had been played upon him by one whom he regarded as a dear, younger brother.

He drew rein at the saloon and flung out of the saddle. He mechanically hitched his horse to the tie-post. Then, with unconscious aggressiveness, he strode up to the building and pushed his way through the swing doors.

The bar was empty, an unusual enough circumstance at that time of the day to draw comment from any one who knew the habits of the men of Barnriff; but Thorpe did not notice it. His eyes were on the man behind the counter standing ready to serve him. He strode over to him and flung down a ten-dollar bill, ordering a drink of whiskey, and a bottle of the spirit to take away with him. He was promptly served, and Silas Rocket, the proprietor, civilly passed the time of day. It elicited no responsive greeting, for Jim gulped down his drink, and helped himself to another. The second glass of the fiery spirit he swallowed greedily, while Rocket looked on in amazement. As he proceeded to pour out another the man’s astonishment found vent.

“A third?” he said stupidly.

Jim deigned no answer, but drank the liquor down, and set the glass forcefully upon the counter.

The saloon-keeper quickly recovered himself. Nor was he slow to comment.

“Feelin’ mean, some?” he observed, with a sympathetic wink. He cared little how his visitor took his remark. He was used to the vagaries of his customers, and cared not a snap of the fingers for them.

Jim’s reply came swiftly.

“Yes, mean enough to need your hogwash,” he said shortly.

Silas Rocket’s eyes snapped. He was never a man to take things sitting down.

“Hogwash it is when a feller o’ your manners swills it. Mebbe it’ll clear some o’ the filth off’n your measly chest. Have one on me; I’d be real glad to help in the cleanin’ process.”

There was a subtle threat underlying his last words. But Jim cared nothing for what he said.

“I’ll pay for all I need,” he retorted, turning from the counter, and bearing his bottle away over to the window.

Rocket shrugged and turned to his work of setting some sort of order among his bottles. But, as Jim stood at the window with his back turned, his narrow eyes frequently regarded him and his busy brain speculated as to his humor. The ranchman was well liked in Barnriff, but his present attitude puzzled the worthy host.

However, the object of all this attention was wholly unaware of it. Even if it had been otherwise, it is doubtful if Thorpe would have cared in the least. He was lost in a rushing train of thought. His brain had cleared under the stimulating potions of raw whiskey, and, just as before his chaotic state had made him unable to grasp things fully, now it was equally chaotic in an opposite direction. His brain was running riot with a clearness and rapidity that showed only too plainly the nervous tension under which he was laboring. He was piecing this latest trick of fortune with the ill-luck which seemed to be ever pursuing him. Under the influence of the burning spirit he seemed to have lost the sting of the actual wrong to himself, and in its place a morbid train of thought had been set working.

It was a persecution that was steadily dogging him. When his early misfortunes had come he had accepted them stoically, believing them to be part of the balance of things, beginning on the wrong side, no doubt, but which would be leveled up later on. Time and again he had received these buffets, and he had merely smiled, a little grimly perhaps, and started to “buck the game” afresh.

Then, when things eventually turned slightly in his favor, very slightly, out here on the prairie amongst the derelicts, the flotsam of the grassy ocean, he had found a brief breathing space. He had begun to think the balance had really turned. Hope dawned, and life offered fresh possibilities. And now–now he had been let down afresh. Before, the attack had been directed against the worldly hopes of a man, such as all see crushed at some time in life, but now it was his spirit that was aimed at. It was that strong, living soul which was the mainspring of his moral existence.

He had lost the woman he loved; that was something he could face, something he could live down. But it was the manner of it. It was the fact of Will’s treachery that had opened the vital wound.

The thought chilled his heart, it crushed him. Yet his anger was not all for the man who had so rankly betrayed his trust, his bitterness was not all for the fact itself. It was the evidence it afforded of the merciless hand of an invisible foe at work against him, and with which he was powerless to contend. The subtlety of it–to his exaggerated thought–was stupendous.

Slowly his bitterness resolved itself to an unutterable pessimism; the acuteness of the stimulant was wearing off. There was an unhealthy streak in his mind somewhere, a streak that was growing under these blows which had been so liberally dealt him. Where was the use in struggling? he began to ask himself. And the poison of the thought acted like a sedative. He grew strangely calm; he almost experienced pleasure and comfort under its influence. Why struggle? Nothing could go right with him. Nothing. He was cursed–cursed with an ill-starred fortune. This sort of thing was his fate. Fate. That was it. Why struggle against it?

He had but this one short life to live. He would live it. He would live it in the way he chose, without regard to the ethics of civilization. What mattered if he shortened it by years, or if he lived to what might be looked upon as an honored old age? And what was there afterward? He even began to doubt if there was anything before–if there was any just– He paused and shivered as the thought came to him. And he was glad he paused. To question the Deity was to rank himself at once with a sect he had always despised as self-centred fools, and pitied them as purblind creatures who were in some degree mentally deficient.