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

CHAPTER XII
THE QUEST OF PETER BLUNT

The crisp air of summer early morning, so fragrant, so invigorating, eddied across the plains, wafting new life to the lungs, and increased vigor to jaded muscles. The sun was lifting above the horizon, bringing with it that expansion to the mind which only those whose lives are passed in the open, and whose waking hours are such as Nature intended, may know.

The rustling grass, long, lean at the waving tops, but rich and succulent in its undergrowth, spoke of awakening life, obeying that law which man, in his superiority, sets aside to suit his own artificial pleasures. The sparkling morning haze shrouding the foot-hills was lifting, yielding a vision of natural beauty unsurpassed at any other time of the day. The earth was good–it was clean, wholesome, purified by the long restful hours of night, and ready to yield, as ever, those benefits to animal life which Nature so generously showers upon an ungrateful world.

Peter Blunt straightened up from his camp-fire which he had just set going. He stretched his great frame and drank in the nectar of the air in deep gulps. The impish figure of Elia sat on a box to windward of the fire, watching his companion with calm eyes. He was enjoying himself as he had rarely ever enjoyed himself. He was free from the trammels of his sister’s loving, guiding hand–trammels which were ever irksome to him, and which, somewhere inside him, he despised as a bondage to which his sex had no right to submit. He was with his friend Peter, helping him in his never-ending quest for gold. Hunting for gold. It sounded good in the boy’s ears. Gold. Everybody dreamed of gold; everybody sought it–even his sister. But this–this was a new life.

There were Peter’s tools, there was their camp, there was the work in process. There was his own little A tent, which Peter insisted that he should sleep in, while, for himself, he required only the starry sky as a roofing, and good thick blankets, to prevent the heat going out of his body while he slept. Yes; the boy was happy in his own curious way. He was living on “sow-belly” and “hardtack,” and extras in the way of “canned truck,” and none of the good things which his sister had ever made for him had tasted half so sweet as the rough cooking of this wholesome food by Peter. Something like happiness was his just now; but he regretted that it could only last until his sister returned to Barnriff. The boy’s interest in the coming day’s work now inspired his words.

“We go on with this sinking?” he inquired; and there was a boyish pride in the use of the plural.

Peter nodded. His eyes were watching the fire, to see that it played no trick on him.

“Yep, laddie,” he said, in his kindly way. “We’ve got a bully prospect here. We’ll see it through after we’ve had breakfast. Sleepy?”

Elia returned him an unsmiling negative. Smiling was apparently unnatural to him. The lack of it and the lack of expression in his eyes, except when stirred by terror, showed something of the warp of his mind.

“You aren’t damp, or–or anything? There’s a heap of dew around.” The man was throwing strips of “sow-belly” into the pan, and the coffee water was already set upon the flaming wood.

“You needn’t to worry ’bout them things for me, Peter,” Elia declared peevishly. “Wimmin folks are like that, an’ it sure makes me sick.”

The other laughed good-naturedly as he took a couple of handfuls of the “hardtack” out of a sack.

“You’d be a man only they won’t let you, eh? You’ve the grit, laddie, there’s no denying.”

The boy felt pleased. Peter understood him. He liked Peter, only sometimes he wished the man wasn’t so big and strong. Why wasn’t he hump-backed with a bent neck and a “game” leg? Why wasn’t he afraid of things? Then he never remembered seeing Peter hurt anything, and he loved to hurt. He felt as if he’d like to thrust a burning brand on Peter’s hand while he was cooking, and see if he was afraid of the hurt, the same as he would be. Then his mind came back to things of the moment. This gold prospecting interested him more than anything else.

“How far are we from Barnriff?” he asked abruptly.

“Twenty odd miles west. Why?”

“I was kind o’ wonderin’. Seems we’ve been headin’ clear thro’ fer Barnriff since we started from way back there on the head waters. We sunk nine holes, hain’t we? Say, if we keep right on we’ll hit Barnriff on this line?”

“Sure.” The man’s blue eyes were watching the boy’s face interestedly.

“You found the color o’ gold, an’ the ledge o’ quartz in each o’ them holes, ain’t you?”

“Yep.”

“Well, if we keep on, an’ we find right along, we’re goin’ to find some around Barnriff.”

“Good, laddie,” Peter replied, approving his obvious reasoning. “I’m working on those old Indian yarns, and, according to them, Barnriff must be set right on a mighty rich gold mine.”

The calm eyes of the boy brightened. Barnriff on a gold mine!

“An’ when you find it?”

Peter’s eyes dropped before the other’s inquiring gaze. That was the question always before him, but it did not apply to material gold. And when he should find it, what then? Simply his quest would have closed at another chapter. His work for the moment would be finished; and he would once more have to set out on a fresh quest to appease his restless soul. He shook his head.

“We haven’t found it yet,” he said.

“But when you do?” the boy persisted.

Peter handed him his plate and his coffee, and sat down to his own breakfast. But the boy insisted on an answer.

“Yes?”

“Well, laddie, it’s kind of tough answering that. I can’t rightly tell you.”

“But a gold mine. Gee! You’ll be like a Noo York millionaire, with dollars an’ dollars to blow in at the saloon.”

Again Peter shook his head. His face seemed suddenly to have grown old. His eyes seemed to lack their wonted lustre. He sighed.

“I don’t want the dollars,” he said. “I’ve got dollars enough; so many that I hate ’em.”

Elia gaped at him.

“You got dollars in heaps?” he almost gasped. “Then why are you lookin’ for more?”

Peter buried his face in a large pannikin of coffee, and when it emerged the questioning eyes were still upon him.

“Folks guess you’re cranked on gold, an’ need it bad,” the puzzled boy went on. “They reckon you’re foolish, too, allus lookin’ around where you don’t need, ’cause there ain’t any there. I’ve heerd fellers say you’re crazy.”

Peter laughed right out.

“Maybe they’re right,” he said, lighting his pipe.

But Elia shook his head shrewdly.

“You ain’t crazy. I’d sure know it. Same as I know when a feller’s bad–like Will Henderson. But say, Peter,” he went on persuasively, “I’d be real glad fer you to tell me ’bout that gold. What you’d do, an’ why? I’m real quick understanding things. It kind o’ seems to me you’re good. You don’t never scare me like most folks. I can’t see right why–”

“Here, laddie”–Peter leaned his head back on his two locked hands, and propped himself against the pack saddle–“don’t you worry your head with those things. But I’ll tell you something, if you’re quick understanding. Maybe, if other folks heard it–grown folks–they’d sure say I was crazy. But you’re right, I’m not crazy, only–only maybe tired of things a bit. It’s not gold I’m looking for–that is, in a way. I’m looking for something that all the gold in the world can’t buy.”

His tone became reflective. He was talking to the boy, but his thoughts seemed suddenly to have drifted miles away, lost in a contemplation of something which belonged to the soul in him alone. He was like a man who sees a picture in his mind which absorbs his whole attention, and drifts him into channels of thought which belong to his solitary moments.

“I’m looking for it day in day out, weeks and years. Sometimes I think I find it, and then it’s gone again. Sometimes I think it don’t exist; then again I’m sure it does. Yes, there’ve been moments when I know I’ve found it, but it gets out of my hand so quick I can’t rightly believe I’ve ever had it. I go on looking, on and on, and I’ll go on to my dying day, I s’pose. Other folks are doing much the same, I guess, but they don’t know they’re doing it, and they’re the luckier for it. What’s the use, anyway–and yet, I s’pose, we must all work out our little share in the scheme of things. Seems to me we’ve all got our little ‘piece’ to say, all got our little bit to do. And we’ve just got to go on doing it to the end. Sometimes it’s hard, sometimes it’s so mighty easy it sets you wondering. Ah, psha!”

Then he roused out of his mood, and addressed himself more definitely to the boy.

“You see, laddie, I don’t belong to this country. But I stay right here till I’ve searched all I know, and so done my ‘piece.’ Then I’ll up stakes and move on. You see, it’s no use going back where I belong, because what I’m looking for don’t exist there. Maybe I’ll never find what I’m looking for–that is to keep and hold it. Maybe, as I say, I’ll get it in driblets, and it’ll fly away again. It don’t much matter. Meanwhile I find gold–in those places folks don’t guess it’s any use looking. Do you get my meaning?”

The quizzical smile that accompanied his final question was very gentle, and revealed something of the soul of the man.

Elia didn’t answer for some moments. He was trying to straighten out the threads of light which his twisted mind perceived. Finally he shook his head. And when he spoke his words showed only too plainly how little he was interested in the other’s meaning, and how much his cupidity was stirred.

“And that gold–in Barnriff? When you’ve found it?”

Peter laughed to think that he had expected the boy to understand him. How could he–at his age?

“I’ll give it to you, laddie–all of it.”

“Gee!”

Elia’s cold eyes lit with sudden greed.

“But you’d best say nothing to the folks,” Peter added slyly. “Don’t let ’em know we’re looking for anything.”

“Sure,” cried the boy quickly, with a cunning painful to behold. “They’d steal it. Will Henderson would.”

Peter thought for a moment, and relit his pipe, which had gone out while he was talking.

“You don’t like Will, laddie,” he said presently, and so blundered into the midst of the boy’s greedy reverie.

“I hate him!”

Any joy that the thought of the promised gold might have given him suddenly died out of the dwarf’s vindictive heart, and in its place was a raging storm of hatred. Such savage passion was his dominating feature. At the best there was little that was gentle in him.

“You hate him because of that night–about the chickens?”

But no answer was forthcoming. Peter waited, and then went on.

“There’s something else, eh?”

But the eyes of the boy were fixed upon the now smouldering fire, nor could the other draw them. So he went on.

“Will’s your sister’s husband now. Sort of your–brother. Your sister’s been desperate good to you. You’ve had everything she could give you, and mind, she’s had to work for it–hard. She loves you so bad, she’d hate to see you hurt your little finger–she’s mighty good to you. Gee, I wish I had such a sister. Well, now she’s got a husband, and she loves him bad, too. I was wondering if you’d ever thought how bad she’d feel if she knew you two were at loggerheads? You’ve never thought, have you? Say, laddie, it would break her up the back. It would surely. She’d feel she’d done you a harm–and that in itself is sufficient–and she’d feel she was upsetting Will. And between the two she’d be most unhappy. Say, can’t you like him? Can’t you make up your mind to get on with him right when he comes back? Can’t you, laddie?”

The boy’s eyes suddenly lifted from the fire, and the storm was still in them.

“I hate him!” he snarled like a fierce beast.

“I’m sorry–real sorry.”

“Don’t you go fer to be sorry,” cried the boy, with that strange quickening of all that was evil in him. “I tell you Will’s bad. He’s bad, an’ he sure don’t need to be, ’cause it’s in him to be good. He ain’t like me, I guess. I’m bad ’cause I’m made bad. I don’t never think good. I can’t. I hate–hate–allus hate. That’s how I’m made, see? Will ain’t like that. He’s made good, but he’s bad because he’d rather be bad. He’s married my sister because she’s a fool, an’ can’t see where Jim Thorpe’s a better man. Jim Thorpe wanted to marry her. He never said, but I can see. An’ she’d have married him, on’y fer Will comin’ along. She was kind o’ struck on Jim like, an’ then Will butts in, an’ he’s younger, an’ better lookin’, an’ so she marries him. An’–an’ I hate him!”

“But your sister? What’s poor Eve going to do with you always hating Will? She’ll get no happiness, laddie, and you’d rather see her happy. Say, if you can’t help hating Will, sure you can hide it. You needn’t to run foul of him. You go your way, and he can go his. Do you know I’m pretty sure he’ll try and do right by you, because of Eve–”

“Say, Peter, you’re foolish.” The boy had calmed, and now spoke with a shrewd decision that was curiously convincing. “Will’ll go his way, and Eve won’t figger wuth a cent with him. I know. Eve’ll jest have to git her toes right on the mark, same as me. He’s a devil, and I know. Will’ll make Eve hate herself, same as he’ll make me. Say, an’ I’ll tell you this, Eve’ll hev to work for him as well as me. I know. I can see. You can’t tell me of Will, nor of nobody that’s bad–’cause I ken see into ’em. I’m bad, an’ I ken see into folks who ’re bad.”

There was no argument against such an attitude as the boy took. Besides, Peter began to understand. Here was an unique study in psychology. The boy either fancied he possessed–or did possess–such unusual powers of observation that they almost amounted to the prophetic, where that which was bad was concerned. He saw Will in a light in which no one else saw him, although already he, Peter, and Jim had witnessed unpleasant dashes of that side of the man’s character which Elia seemed to read like an open book. However, he could not abandon his task yet, but he changed his tactics.

“Maybe you’re right, laddie,” he said. “I was thinking of poor Eve. I was wondering if you wouldn’t like to try and make her happy, seeing she’s always been so good to you. I do believe you’d rather she was happy.”

The boy nodded his head, and an impish light crept into his eyes.

“And you’re going to try and make her–happy?”

Peter was smiling with simple eager hope. The impish light deepened in the boy’s eyes.

“Maybe,” he said. “Guess I’ll do what I ken. When Will treats me fair I’ll treat him fair. I can’t do a heap of work, seein’ I’m as I am, but if he wants me to do things I’ll do ’em–if he treats me fair. I’ll do what I ken, but I hate him. Maybe you’re guessin’ that’ll be makin’ things fair for Eve. You best guess agin.” Then the impish light left his eyes, and they became quite serious again. “Say, tell me some more ’bout that gold?”

But Peter laughed and shook his head.

“Time enough, laddie,” he said, pleased with the result of his first essay on behalf of peace between Elia and Will. “You’re going to get that gold when we find it, sure, so come right along and let’s get to work–and find it.”

CHAPTER XIII
AFTER ONE YEAR

Scandal was rampant in Barnriff. But it was not of an open nature. That is to say, it was scandal that passed surreptitiously from lip to lip, and was rarely spoken where more than two people foregathered. For small as Barnriff was, ignorant as were the majority of its people, scandal was generally tabooed, and it was only in bad cases where it was allowed to riot.

The reason of this restraint was simple enough. It was not that the people of the village were any different to those of other small places. They loved gossip as dearly as anybody else–when to gossip was safe. But years ago Barnriff had learned that gossip was not always safe in its midst.

The fact was that the peace laws of the place were largely enforced by a process which might be called the “survival of the strong.” There were no duly authorized peace officers, and the process had evolved out of this condition of things. Quarrels and bloodshed were by no means frequent in the village, rather the reverse, and this was due to the regulations governing peace.

If two men quarreled it was on the full understanding of the possible and probable consequences; namely, a brief and effective life and death struggle, followed by a sudden and immediate departure from the fold of the survivor. Hence, scandal was held in close check, and traveled slowly, with the slow twistings and windings of a venemous snake. But for this very reason it was the more deadly, and was the more surely based upon undeniable fact. The place was just now a-simmer with suppressed scandal.

And its object. It was only a year since Eve and Will Henderson’s marriage. A sufficiently right and proper affair, said public opinion. There were of course protestors. Many of the women had expected Eve to marry Jim Thorpe. But then they were of the more mature section of the population, those whose own marriages had taught them worldly wisdom, and blotted out the early romance of their youths. It had been a love match, a match where youth runs riot, and the madness of it sweeps its victims along upon its hot tide. Now the tide was cooling, some said it was already cold.

After their brief honeymoon the young people had returned to the village. The understanding was that Eve should again take up her business, while Will continued his season up in the hills, hunting with his traps and gun. He was to visit Barnriff at intervals during the season, and finally return and stay with Eve during the months when the furs he might take would be unfit for the market. This was the understanding, and in theory it was good, and might well have been carried out satisfactorily. All went passably well until the close of the fur season.

Eve returned to the village a bright and happy woman. She took up her business again, and, perhaps, the novelty of her married state was the reason that at first her trade increased. Then came Will’s visits. At first they were infrequent, with the arranged-for laps of time between them. But gradually they became more frequent and their duration longer. The women wagged their heads. “He is so deeply in love, he can’t stay away,” they said. And they smiled approval, for they were women, and women can never look on unmoved at the sight of a happy love match. But against this the men shrugged their shoulders. “He’s wastin’ a heap o’ time,” they said; “pelts needs chasin’ some, an’ y’ can’t chase pelts an’ make love to your own wife or any one else’s, for that matter.” And this was their way of expressing a kindly interest.

The men were right and the women were wrong. Will did more than waste time. He literally pitched it away. He prolonged his stays in the village beyond all reason, and as Eve, dutifully engaged upon her business, could not give him any of her working hours, he was forced to seek his pleasures elsewhere. That elsewhere, in a man prone to drink, of necessity became the saloon. And the saloon meant gambling, gambling meant money. Sometimes he won a little, but more often he lost.

Being a reckless player, fired by the false stimulation of Rocket’s bad whiskey, he began to plunge to recoup himself, and, as ever happens in such circumstances, he got deeper into the mire. At first these heavy losses had a salutary effect upon him, and he would “hit the trail” for the hills, and once more ply his trade with a feverish zest.

This sort of thing went on until the close of his fur season. Then he made up his bales of pelts, and, to his horror, discovered that his year’s “catch” was reduced by over fifty per cent., while, in place of a wad of good United States currency in his hip pocket, he had floated a perfect fleet of I. O. U.’s, each in itself for a comparatively small amount, but collectively a total of no inconsiderable magnitude. And each I. O. U. was dated for payment immediately after he had marketed his pelts.

This stress, and the life he had been living in Barnriff, caused his mercurial temper to suffer. And as his nature soured, so all that was worst in him began to rise to the surface. He did not blame himself. Did ever one hear of a man blaming himself when things went wrong? No. He blamed the fur season. The hills were getting played out. The furs were traveling north, and, in consequence were scarce. Besides, how could he be in Barnriff and the hills at the same time? The position was absurd. Eve must join him and give up her business, and they must make their home up in the hills where she could learn to trap. Or they must live in Barnriff and he must find fresh employment.

Yes, he would certainly find out how Eve’s business was prospering. If she had shown a better turnover than he, perhaps it would be as well for him to go into Barnriff for good. The idea rather pleased him. Nor could he see any drawback to it except those confounded I. O. U.’s.

The next news that Barnriff had was that Will and Eve were settled for good in the village, and that he had no intention of returning to the hills. Barnriff’s comment was mixed. The women said, “Poor dears, they can’t live apart.” Again the men disagreed. Their charity was less kind, especially amongst those who had yet to collect the payment of their I. O. U.’s. They said with sarcastic smile, “Wants to live on his woman, and play ‘draw.’” And time soon showed them to be somewhere near the mark.

Will sold his furs, paid his debts, sighed his relief, and settled down to a life in Barnriff. A month later he found to his profound chagrin that the small margin of dollars left over after paying off his I. O. U.’s had vanished, and a fresh crop of paper was beginning to circulate. Whiskey and “draw” had got into his blood, and all unconsciously he found himself pledged to it.

It was during this time that scandal definitely laid its clutch upon the village. But it was not until later that its forked tongue grew vicious. It was at the time that word got round the village that there was trouble in Eve’s little home that the caldron began to seethe. No one knew how it got round; yet it surely did. Scandal said that Eve and Will quarreled, that they quarreled violently, that Will had struck her, that money was the bottom of the trouble, that Will had none to meet his gambling debts, and that Eve, who had been steadily supplying him out of her slender purse, had at last refused to do so any more.

It went on to say that Will was a drunken sot, that his methods at cards were not above suspicion, and that altogether he was rapidly becoming an undesirable.

Peter Blunt heard the scandal; he had watched things himself very closely. Jim Thorpe heard, but, curiously enough, rumor about these two did not seem to reach the “AZ” ranch easily.

However, what did reach Jim infuriated him almost beyond words. It was this last rumor that sent him riding furiously into the village late one night, and drew him up at Peter Blunt’s hut.

He found the gold seeker reading a well-known history of the Peruvian Aztecs, but without hesitation broke in upon his studies.

“What’s this I hear, Peter?” he demanded, without any preamble. “I mean about the–the Hendersons.”

His dark eyes were fierce. His clean-cut features were set and angry. But these signs didn’t seem to hurry Peter’s answer. He laid his book aside and folded his hands behind his head, while he searched the other’s face with his calm blue eyes.

“We’ve just got it out on the ranch,” Jim went on. “He’s–he’s knocking her about–they say.”

“And so you’ve come in. What for?”

The big man’s words had a calming effect.

“Peter, can’t you tell me?” Jim went on, with a sudden change of manner that became almost pleading. “It’s awful. I can’t bear to think of Eve suffering. Is it, as they say, money? Has he–gone to the dogs with drink and gambling? Peter,” he said, with sudden sternness, his feelings once more getting the better of him, “I feel like killing him if–”

But the other’s face was cold, and he shook his head.

“I’m not going to talk this scandal,” he said. “You’ve no right to feel like that–yet.” And his words were an admission of his own feelings on the subject.

Peter’s eyes wandered thoughtfully from his friend to the book shelves; and after a moment the other stirred impatiently. Then his eyes came back to Jim’s face. He watched the passionate straining in them, that told of the spirit working within. Nor could he help thinking what a difference there might have been had Eve only married this man.

“You better go back to the ranch,” he said presently.

But the light that suddenly leaped to Jim’s eyes gave him answer without the words which followed swiftly.

“I can’t,” he cried. “I can’t without seeing her, and learning the truth from her own lips.”

“That you’ll never do, boy, if I know Eve.”

But Jim became obstinate.

“I’ll try,” he declared, with an ugly threat in his passionate eyes. “And if it’s Will–if he’s–”

“You’re talking foolish.” The sharpness of Peter’s voice silenced him. But it was only for a moment, and later he broke out afresh.

“It’s no use, Peter, I can’t and won’t listen to reason on this matter. Eve is before all things in my life. I can’t help loving her, even if she is another’s wife, and I wouldn’t if I could. See here,” he went on, letting himself go as his feelings took fresh hold of him, “if Eve’s unhappy there must be some way of helping her. If he’s ruining her life he must be dealt with. If he’s brutal to her, if he’s hurting her, I mean knocking her about, Peter, I’ll–I’ll–smash him, if I swing for it! She’s all the world to me, and by Heavens I’ll rid her of him!”

Peter suddenly drew out his watch; he seemed wholly indifferent to the other’s storming.

“We’ll go and see her now,” he said. “Will ’ll be down at the saloon playing ‘draw.’ He don’t generally get home till Rocket closes down. Come on.”

And the two passed out into the night.