Heart's Kindred. Gale Zona
across the way, one of the meaner places, and on this night of plenty almost unfrequented. He sat down at a table in range with the doors of the Inn, and drank reflectively. That day that he had had her, what if he had galloped away with her to the foothills, to the camp, to the other side of somewhere? He sat thinking of her, wondering why he had not dared it, playing at what might have been.
On the table lay a San Francisco newspaper, three days old. As he drank he glanced at the headlines. “War May Last Another Year,” he read. “Reserves of Three Nations to be Called Out Within the Month.”
The thought had come to him before, since the money came. To-night he turned to it in a kind of relief: Why not go there? There was fighting worth a man’s hand. Drunken Indians, an outlaw or two, a horse thief strung up in a wink and all over – these were all that he knew of warfare. Was he to die with no more understanding than this of how a man might live and die? The thing was happening now – the adventure of the great guns and the many deaths. Yet he, a man like other men, sat here idle. He closed his eyes and lay with those men in the trenches, or leapt up to kill again and again at fifty yards, saw the men roll in torture, saw them red and grovelling in red… A lust of the thing came on him. He wanted it, as he wanted no other thing that his mind had ever played with. He forgot Jem Moor’s daughter in that imaginary desert. He swallowed and tasted and opened his eyes as on a forgotten world. He pounded the table for more liquor.
“Why don’t you go to the war, you scared, snivelling Pale-liver?” he demanded of the shuffling bartender.
The small man’s little red-rimmed and red-shot eyes lighted, and his lips drew back over black teeth.
“If I was a young dog like you, I’d be there stickin’ in the lead, you bet,” he said. “What you ’fraid of?”
“Nothin’,” said the Inger, suddenly; “I’m goin’!”
“Plough some of ’em up prime for me,” begged the old man. “I croaked two men myself afore I was your age. It were in a sheriff’s raid, though,” he regretfully added.
The Inger looked at him thoughtfully. It occurred to him that though he was credited with it, he himself had never killed a man in his life. Yet killing was a man’s job, and over there was the war, and he had the means to get to it. There was need of more to kill – and to be killed. And he had been hanging on a shelf of Whiteface for all these months!
He drained his glass and went to the door, as if the need to do something at once were upon him. He saw that the wedding guests were filling the streets, and moving into the Inn. All of Inch was out there – the women gorgeous in all that they had, and even some of the men dressed in the clothes which they wore on a journey. Already some were drunken, and all were loud with merriment, which they somehow felt was required of them, like eating three times a day or scorning a stranger. Everywhere there were children, who must needs go where the grown folk went or be left alone. “Parents Must Keep Children Off the Floor,” was posted on the walls of the Inch public dance halls.
Next to the office door, the door of the hotel bar stood open now, and by the array of cut colored paper hanging from the chandeliers, he guessed that the wedding was to be solemnized in there. This was natural – the bar was the largest room in the house, and the most magnificent in the town – the only bar, in fact, with a real mirror at the back. Moreover, Bunchy’s barkeeper was a man of parts, being a bass singer and a justice of the peace. With his apron laid aside, he was to give a tune while the guests assembled, and afterward it was he who was to perform the ceremony. Nobody thought of expecting the ceremony to be held in Jem Moor’s ’dobe.
It was Jem Moor himself who, while the wedding guests were still noisily passing in the hotel, the Inger saw coming down the street. He was neatly dressed in the best he had, and though one trouser leg had crept to the top of a boot, and his red cravat was under an ear, still he bore signs of a sometime careful toilet. He broke into an uneven run – the running of a man whose feet are old and sore – and disappeared in the doorway of the Inn office.
The Inger’s look followed him, speculatively.
“But one more drink and I could be over there makin’ more kinds of hell than usual,” he said to himself, and went back to the bar.
He was draining his glass when the sound of confused talk and movement came to him, and, as he wheeled, he saw that across the street the interior of the Inn bar and office were in an uproar. The wedding guests were rising, there were shouts and groans, and a shrill scream or two. Some came running to the street, and over all there burst occasional great jets of men’s laughter.
“’S up?” asked the old barkeeper behind him.
The Inger did not answer. He stood in the doorway waiting for something. He did not know what he waited for, but the imminent thing, whatever it was, held him still. A hope, which he could not have formulated, came shining slowly toward him, in him.
In a moment, Jem Moor emerged from the office door, still brokenly running, seeking to escape from those who crowded with him, questioning him. The Inger strolled from the doorway, across the street, took his way through the little group which fell back for him, and brought his hand down on the old man’s shoulder.
“Anything wrong?” he inquired.
Jem Moor looked up at him. He was pinched and the lines of his nose were drawn, and his lips were pulling.
“She’s skipped,” he said. “I’m in for ’Leven Hundred odd, to Bunchy.”
Something in the Inger leaped out and soared. He stood there, saying what he had to say, conscious all the time that as soon as might be he should be free to soar with it.
“Alone?” he demanded.
Jem Moor held out a scrap of paper. The Inger took it and read, the others peering over his arms and shoulders.
“Dad,” it said, “I can’t go Bunchy. I know what this’ll do to you, but I can’t never do it – I can’t. I’ve gone for good. Dear old Dad, don’t you hate me.
The tears were running down Jem Moor’s face.
“‘Leven Hundred odd,” said he, “and I ain’t a red. Not a red.”
The Inger threw up his head.
“Lord Harry,” he cried. “Why didn’t I think of it before? Buck up!” he cried, bringing down his hand on Jem’s little shoulder. “And drink up! Come along in!”
He led the way to the Mission Saloon, and bade the man take orders for everybody. Then he went to the back of the place, and found for himself ink and a pen, and tore a leaf from a handy account book. When he had filled in the name of his bank, he wrote and signed:
“Pay to Bunchy Haight, Twelve Hundred Dollars and be damned to him.”
Then he wrote out a receipt to Jem Moor, with a blank for the sum and for Bunchy’s signature.
When he could, he drew Jem in a corner and thrust at him the papers. The little man stared at them, with a peculiarly ugly, square dropping of his jaw, and eyes pointed at top.
“Don’t bust,” said the Inger, “and don’t think it’s you. It ain’t you. The check isn’t drawn to you, is it? I want to hell-and-devil Bunchy some, that’s all. Shut up your mouth!” he added, when Jem tried gaspingly to thank him.
Then he got out of the place, where sharp music was beginning and the ten or twelve women were dancing among the tables, and went down the street, thronged now with the disappointed guests, intent on forcing the ruined evening to some wild festivity. When they called to him to join them, he hardly heard. He went straight through the town and shook it from him and met the desert, and took his own trail.
The night was now one of soft, thick blackness, on which the near stars pressed. The air had a sharp chill – as if it bore no essence of its own but hung empty of warmth when the daylight was drained from it. The stillness was insistent. In a place of water, left from the rains, and still deep enough to run in ripples over the sedge, frogs were in chorus.
There was a sentinel