A Young Man in a Hurry, and Other Short Stories Part 42

"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 gra.s.s.

With an oath Tansey flung up his gun and drove a charge of buckshot cras.h.i.+ng 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 moons.h.i.+ne.

"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.

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 hayc.o.c.ks 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-swas.h.i.+n' an'

a-slos.h.i.+n' 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 debris 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 p.r.o.ne 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 appet.i.te. 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 p.r.o.ne, 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, blus.h.i.+ng secretly at her mental indiscretion, which indiscretion so worried her that she dared not even look at Helm that evening when he 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.