The Enchanted Canyon. Honoré Morrow
didn't want to make anything out of women. I want to get even with 'em, blank blank 'em all," cried Nucky with sudden fury. And he burst into an obscene tirade against the sex that utterly astonished the guide. He lay with his chin supported on his elbow, staring at the boy, at his thin, strongly marked features, and at the convulsive working of his throat as he talked.
"Here! Dry up!" Frank cried at last. "I'll bet these canyon walls never looked down on such a rotten little cur as you are in all their history. You gambling, indecent little gutter snipe, isn't there a clean spot in you?"
"You were a gambler yourself!" shrieked Nucky.
"Yes, sir, I know cards and I know women, and that's why I know just what a mess of carrion your lovely young soul is. Any kid that can see the glory o' God that you've seen to-day and then sit down and talk like an overflowing sewer isn't fit to live. I didn't know that before I came out to this country, but I know it now. You get to bed. I don't want to hear another word out of you to-night. Pull your boots off. That's all."
Half resentful, half frightened, Nucky obeyed. For a while, with nerves and over-tired muscles twitching, he lay watching the fire. Then he fell asleep.
It was about midnight when he awoke. He had kicked the blankets off and was cold. The fire was out but the full moon sailed high over the gorge. Frank, rolled in his blankets, his feet to the dead fire, slept noisily. Nucky sat up and pulled his blankets over him, but he did not lie down again. He sat staring at the wonder of the Canyon. For a long half hour he was motionless save for the occasional moistening of his lips and turning of his head as he followed the unbelievable contour of the distant silvered peaks. Then of a sudden he jumped from his bed and, stooping over Frank, shook him violently.
"Wake up!" he cried. "Wake up! I gotta tell somebody or the Canyon'll drive me crazy. I'll tell you why I'm bad. It's because my mother was bad before me. She was Luigi's mistress. She was a bad lot. It was born in me."
Frank sat up, instantly on the alert. "How old were you when she died?" he demanded.
"Six," replied Nucky.
"Shucks! you don't know anything about it, then! Who told you she was bad?"
"Luigi! I guess he'd know, wouldn't he?"
"Maybe he did and maybe he didn't. At any rate, I wouldn't take the oath on his deathbed of a fellow who ran a joint like Luigi's and taught a kid what he's taught you. He told you that, of course, to keep a hold on you."
"But she lived with him. I remember that myself."
"I can't help that. I'll bet you my next year's pay, she wasn't your mother!"
"Not my mother?" Nucky drew himself up with a long breath. "Certainly she was my mother."
Frank uncovered some embers from the ashes and threw on wood. "I'll bet she wasn't your mother," he repeated firmly. "Seaton told me that that policeman friend of yours said she might and might not be your mother. Seaton and the policeman both think she wasn't, and I'm with 'em."
"But why? Why?" cried Nucky in an agony of impatience.
"For the simple reason that a fellow with a face like your's doesn't have a bad mother."
In the light of the leaping flames Nucky's face fell. "Aw, what you giving us! Sob stuff?"
"I'm telling you something that's as true as God. You can't see Him or talk to Him, but you know He made this Canyon, don't you?"
Nucky nodded quickly.
"All right, then I'm telling you, every line of your face and head says you didn't come of a breed like the woman that lived with Luigi. I'll bet if you show you have any decent promise, Seaton will clear that point up. A good detective could do it."
"I never thought of such a thing," muttered Nucky. He continued to stare at Frank, his pale boy's face tense with conflicting hope and fear. The guide picked up his blanket, but Nucky cried out:
"Don't go to sleep for a minute, please! I can't stand it alone in this moonlight. I never thought such thoughts in my life as I have down here, about God and who I am and what a human being is. I tell you, I'm going crazy."
Frank nodded, and began to fill his pipe. "Sit down close to the fire, son. That's what the Canyon does to anybody that's thin skinned. I went through it too. I tell you, Nucky, this life here in the Canyon and the thoughts you think here, are the only real things. New York and all that, is just the outer shell of living. Understand me?"
The boy nodded, his eyes fixed on Frank's with pitiful eagerness.
"It's clean out here. This country isn't all messed up with men and women's badness. Everybody starts even and with a clean slate. Lord knows, I was a worthless bunch when I struck here, fifteen years ago. I'd been expelled from Yale in my senior year for gambling. I'd run through the money my father'd left me. I'd gotten into a woman scrape and I'd alienated every member of my family. Just why I thought a deck of cards was worth all that, I can't tell you. But I did. Then I came down here to see what the Canyon could do for my asthma and it cured that, and by the Eternal, it cured my soul, too. Now listen to me, son! You go back and lie down and put yourself to sleep thinking about your real mother. Boys are apt to take their general build from their mothers, so she was probably a big woman, not pretty, but with an intellectual face full of character. Go on, now, Enoch! You need the rest and we've got a full day to-morrow."
Nucky passed his hand unsteadily over his eyes, but rose without a word, and Frank tucked him into his blankets, then sat quietly waiting by the fire. It was not long before deep breaths that were pathetically near to sobs told the guide that Nucky was asleep. Then he rolled himself in his own blankets. The moon passed the Canyon wall and utter darkness enwrapped the Canyon and the river which murmured harshly as it ran.
Nucky wakened the next morning to the smell of coffee. He sat up and eyed Frank soberly.
"Hello, New York! This is the Grand Canyon!" Frank grinned as he lifted the coffee pot from the fire.
Nucky grinned in response. Shortly after, when he sat down to his breakfast the grin had disappeared, but with it had gone the look of sullenness that had seemed habitual.
"Frank," said Nucky, when breakfast was over, "do you care if I talk to you some more about—you know—you know what you said last night? I never talked about it to any one but Luigi, and it makes me feel better."
"Sure, go ahead!" said Frank.
"My mother—" began Nucky.
"You mean Luigi's wife," corrected the guide.
"Luigi's wife was crazy about me. She loved me just as much as any mother could. Luigi's always been jealous about it. That's why he treated me so rotten."
"Bad women can be just as fond of kids as good women," was Frank's comment. "What did she look like? Can you remember?"
"I don't know whether I remember it or if it's just what folks told me.
She had dark blue eyes and dark auburn hair. Luigi said she was
Italian."
"If she was, she was North Italian," mused the guide. "Did any one ever give you any hints about your father?"
A slow, painful red crept over Nucky's pale face. "I never asked but once. Maybe you can guess what Luigi said."
"If Luigi were in this part of the country," growled Allen, "I'd lead a lynching party to call on him." He paused, eying Nucky's boyish face closely, then he asked, "Did you love your mother?"
"I suppose I did. But Luigi kept at me so that now I hate her and all other women. Mrs. Seaton seemed kind of nice, but I suppose she is like the rest of 'em."
"Don't you think it! And did you know that Seaton thinks you were kidnapped?"
Nucky drew a quick breath and the guide went on, "I think so too. You never belonged to an Italian. I can't tell you just why I feel so certain. But I'd take my oath you are of New England