The One-Way Trail: A story of the cattle country. Cullum Ridgwell
nor made the least demur, but forthwith began his story.
“Sure I will,” he said, with a curious, uncanny laugh. “Old Ma Restless is just raving her fat head off. I was around this morning and heard her. Gee! She was sayin’ things. She was cussin’ and cussin’ like mad. So I jest turned in the yard to see. It was just as funny as a circus. She stood there, her fat sides all of a wabble, an’ a reg’lar waterfall pourin’ out of her eyes. He! He! But what made me laff most was to see those checkens around her on the ground. There was ten of ’em lying around, and somebody had choppened off all their heads. Say, the blood was tricklin’, an’–well, there, you never did see such a mess. It was real comic, an’ I–well, to see her wringin’ her fat hands, and cussin’. Gee! I wonder she wasn’t struck for it, an’ her a woman an’ all.”
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