Bunch Grass Part 18

"You're wet through, mother," said Mrs. Swiggart, "and all of a tremble."

"Yes, Alviry, I've had a close call. This young man saved my life."

"Nonsense," said Ajax gruffly. "I did nothing of the sort, Mrs.

Skenk."

"Yes, you did," she insisted, grimly obstinate.

"Any ways," said Mrs. Swiggart, "you'll lose what has been saved, mother, if you stand there in the rain."

For five days it rained steadily. Our creek, which for eleven months in the year bleated sweetly at the foot of the garden, bellowed loudly as any bull of Bashan, and kept us prisoners in the house, where we had leisure to talk and reflect. We had been robbed and humbugged, injured in pride and pocket, but the lagging hours anointed our wounds. Philosophy touched us with healing finger.

"If we prosecute we advertise our own greenness," said Ajax. "After all, if Laban did fleece us, he kept at bay other ravening wolves. And there is Mrs. Skenk. That plucky old soul must never hear the story.

It would kill her."

So we decided to charge profit and loss with five hundred dollars, and to keep our eyes peeled for the future. By this time the skies had cleared, and the cataract was a creek again. The next day Mrs.

Swiggart drove up to the barn, tied her horse to the hitching-post, and walked with impressive dignity up the garden path. We had time to note that something was amiss. Her dark eyes, beneath darker brows, intensified a curious pallor--that sickly hue which is seen upon the faces of those who have suffered grievously in mind or body. Ajax opened the door, and offered her a chair, but not his hand. She did not seem to notice the discourtesy. We asked if her mother had suffered from the effects of her wetting.

"Mother has been very sick," she replied, in a lifeless voice. "She's been at death's door. For five days I've prayed to Almighty G.o.d, and I swore that if He'd see fit to spare mother, I'd come down here, and on my bended knees"--she sank on the floor--"ask for your forgiveness as well as His. Don't come near me," she entreated; "let me say what must be said in my own way. When I married Laban Swiggart I was an honest woman, though full o' pride and conceit. And he was an honest man. To- day we're thieves and liars."

"Mrs. Swiggart," said Ajax, springing forward and raising her to her feet. "You must not kneel to us. There--sit down and say no more. We know all about it, and it's blotted out so far as we're concerned."

Her sobs--the vehement, heart-breaking sobs of a man rather than of a woman--gradually ceased. She continued in a softer voice: "It began 'way back, when I was a little girl. Mother set me on a pedestal; p'r'aps I'd ought to say I set myself there. It's like me to be blaming mother. Anyways, I just thought myself a little mite cleverer and handsomer and better than the rest o' the family. I aimed to beat Sarah and Samanthy at whatever they undertook, and Satan let me do it.

Well, I did one good thing. I married a poor man because I loved him.

I said to myself, 'He has brains, and so have I. The dollars will come.' But they didn't come. The children came.

"Then Sarah and Samanthy married. They married men o' means, and the gall and wormwood entered into my soul, and ate it away. Laban was awful good. He laughed and worked, but we couldn't make it. Times was too hard. I'd see Samanthy trailin' silks and satins in the dust, and --and my underskirts was made o' flour sacks. Yes--flour sacks! And me a Skenk!"

She paused. Neither Ajax nor I spoke. Comedy lies lightly upon all things, like foam upon the dark waters. Beneath are tragedy and the tears of time.

"Then you gentlemen came and bought land. They said you was lords, with money to burn. I told Laban to help you in the buyin' o' horses, and cattle, and barb-wire, and groceries. He got big commissions, but he kept off the other blood-suckers. We paid some of our debts, and Laban bought me a black silk gown. I couldn't rest till Samanthy had felt of it. She'd none better. If we'd only been satisfied with that!

"Well, that black silk made everything else look dreadful mean. 'Twas then you spoke to Laban about choosin' a brand. Satan put it into my head to say--S. It scart Laban. He was butcherin' then, and he surmised what I was after; I persuaded him 'twas for the children's sake. The first steer paid for Emanuel's baby clothes and cradle. They was finer than what Sarah bought for her child. Then we killed the others--one by one. Laban let 'em through the fence and then clapped our brand a-top o' yours. They paid for the tank and windmill. After that we robbed you when and where we could. We put up that bacon scheme meanin' to s.h.i.+p the stuff to the city and to tell you that it had spoiled on us. We robbed none else, only you. And we actually justified ourselves. We surmised 'twas fittin' that Britishers should pay for the support o' good Americans."

"I've read some of your histories," said Ajax drily, "and can understand that point of view."

"Satan fools them as fool themselves, Mr. Ajax. But the truth struck me and Laban when we watched by mother. She was not scared o' death.

And she praised me to Laban, and said that I'd chosen the better part in marryin' a poor man for love, and that money hadn't made Christian women of Sarah and Samanthy. She blamed herself, dear soul, for settin' store overly much on dollars and cents. And she said she could die easier thinking that what was good in her had pa.s.sed to me, and not what was evil. And, Mr. Ajax, that talk just drove me and Laban crazy. Well, mother ain't going to die, and we ain't neither--till we've paid back the last cent, we stole from you. Laban has figgered it out, princ.i.p.al and interest, and he's drawn a note for fifteen hundred dollars, which we've both signed. Here it is."

She tendered us a paper. Ajax stuck his hands into his pockets, and I did the same.

She misinterpreted the action. "You ain't going to prosecute?" she faltered.

Ajax nodded to me. Upon formal occasions he expects me, being the elder, to speak. If I say more or less than he approves I am severely taken to task.

"Mrs. Swiggart," I began, lamely enough, "I am sure that your husband can cure hams----"

Ajax looked at me indignantly. With the best of motives I had given a sore heart a grievous twist.

"We bought that ham," she said sadly, "a-purpose."

"No matter. We have decided to go into this packing business with your husband. When--er--experience goes into partners.h.i.+p with ignorance, ignorance expects to pay a premium. We have paid our premium."

She rose, and we held out our hands.

"No, gentlemen; I won't take your hands till that debt is cancelled.

The piano and the team will go some ways towards it. Good-bye, and-- thank you."

VIII

AN EXPERIMENT

My brother and I had just ridden off the range, when Uncle Jake told us that a tramp was hanging about the corrals and wished to speak with us.

"He looks like h.e.l.l," concluded Uncle Jake.

We found him, a minute later, curled up on a heap of straw on the shady side of our big barn. He got up as we approached, and stared at us with a curious derisive intentness of glance, slightly disconcerting.

"You are Englishmen," he said quietly.

The man's voice was charming, with that unmistakable quality which challenges attention even in Mayfair, and enthrals it in the wilderness. We nodded, and he continued easily: "It is late, and some twenty-six miles, so I hear, to the nearest town. May I spend the night in your barn. I don't smoke--in barns."

While he was speaking, we had time to examine him. His appearance was inexpressibly shocking. Dirty, with a ragged six weeks' growth of dark hair upon his face, out at heel and elbows, s.h.i.+rtless and s.h.i.+ftless, he seemed to have reached the nadir of misery and poverty. Obviously one of the "broken brigade," he had seemingly lost everything except his manners. His amazing absence of self-consciousness made a clown of me. I blurted out a gruff "All right," and turned on my heel, unable to face the derisive smile upon the thin, pale lips. As I walked towards the house, I heard Ajax following me, but he did not speak till we had reached our comfortable sitting-room. Then, as gruffly as I, he said, "Humpty Dumpty--after the fall!"

We lit our pipes in silence, sensible of an extraordinary depression in the moral atmosphere. Five minutes before we had been much elated.

The spring round-up of cattle was over; we had sold our bunch of steers at the top price; the money lay in our small safe; we had been talking of a modest celebration as we rode home over the foothills.

Now, to use the metaphor of a cow county, we had been brought up with a sharp turn! Our prosperity, measured by the ill-fortune of a fellow- countryman, dwindled. Ajax summed up the situation: "He made me feel cheap."

"Why?" I asked, conscious of a similar feeling. Ajax smoked and reflected.

"It's like this," he answered presently. "That chap has been to the bottom of the pit, but he bobs up with a smile. Did you notice his smile?"

I rang the bell for Quong, our Chinese servant. When he came in I told him to prepare a hot bath. Ajax whistled; but as Quong went away, looking rather cross, my brother added, "Our clothes will fit him."

The bath-house was outside. Quong carried in a couple of pails full of boiling water; we laid out shaving tackle, an old suit of grey flannel, a pair of brown shoes, and the necessary under-linen. A blue bird's-eye tie, I remember, was the last touch. Then Ajax shrugged his shoulders and said significantly, "You know what this means?"

"Rehabilitation."

"Exactly. It may be fun for us to rig out this poor devil, but we must do more than feed and clothe him. Have you thought of that?"

I had not, and said so.

"This is an experiment. First and last, we're going to try to raise a man from the dead. If we get him on to his pins, we'll have to supply some crutches. Are you prepared to do that?"