Part 13 (2/2)
”For what he meant and tried to do. I seen it in his eye. The devil that wanted him incited him to play with me and tell me lies about my wife.
She scorned the brute and he took his mean revenge. He kep' back her letter, and he says to me, leerin' at me out of his wicked eyes, 'Your livestock seems to be the strayin' kind. The man she went off with give me that,'--he lugged a gold piece out of his clothes and showed me,--'give me that,' he says, 'to keep it quiet.' He kep' it quiet! Half starved and sick's I was, the strength was in me. But vengeance in the hand of a man, it cuts both ways, my son! His bunk had a sharp edge to it like this. He fell acrost it with my weight on top of him and he never raised up again. There wasn't a mark on him. His back was broke.
He died slow, his eyes mocking me.
”'You fool,' he says. 'Go look in that coat hangin' on the wall.' I found her letter there inside of one from Granger. He watched me read it and he laughed. 'Now, go tell her you've killed a man!' He knew I didn't come of a killin' breed. There was four hours to think it over. Four hours! I thought hard, I tell you! 'T was six of one and half a dozen of t' other 'twixt him and me, but I worked it back 'n' forth a good long while about her. First, taking her away from her father, an old man whose bread I'd eat. She was like a child of my own raising. I always had felt mean about that. We'd had bad luck from the start,--my luck,--and now disgrace to cap it all. Whether I hid it or told her and stood my trial, I'd never be a free man again. There he lay! And a sin done in secret, it's like a drop of nitric acid: it's going to eat its way out--and in!
”I knew she'd have friends enough, once she was quit of me. That was the case between us. The thing that hurt me most was to put her letter back where I found it, and leave it, there with him. Her little cry to me--and I couldn't come! I read the words over and over, I've said 'em to myself ever since. I've lived on them. But I had to leave the letter there to show I'd never come back. I put it back after he was dead.
”The sins of the parents shall be visited,--when it's in the blood! But I declare to the Almighty, murder wa'n't in my blood! It come on me like a stroke of lightning hits a tree, and I had a clear show to fall alone.
”That's the answer. Maybe I didn't see all sides of it, but there never was no opening to do different, after that night. Now, you've had an education. I should be glad to hear your way of looking at it?”
”I should think you might stand your trial, now, before any judge or jury, in this world or the next,” Paul answered.
”There is only one Judge.” The packer smiled a beautiful quiet smile that covered a world of meanings. ”What a man re'ly wants, if he'd own up it, is a leetle shade of partiality. Maybe that's what we're all going to need, before we git through.”
Paul was glad to be saved the necessity of speech, and he felt the swift discernment with which the packer resumed his usual manner. ”Got any more of that stuff you call soup? Divide even! I won't be made no baby of.”
”We might as well finish it up. It's hardly worth making two bites of a cherry.”
”Call this 'cherry'! It's been a good while on the bough. What's it mostly made of?”
”Rind of bacon, snow water,--plenty of water,--and a tablespoonful of rice.”
”Good work! Hungry folks can live on what the full bellies throw away.”
”Oh, I can save. But there comes a time when you can't live by saving what you haven't got.”
”That's right! Well, let's talk, then, before the bacon-rind fades out of us.”
The packer's face and voice, his whole manner, showed the joy of a soul that has found relief. Paul was not trying now to behave dutifully; they were man to man once more. The quaint, subdued humor a.s.serted itself, and the narrator's speech flowed on in the homely dialect which expressed the man.
”I stayed out all that winter, workin' towards the coast. One day, along in March, I fetched a charcoal burner's camp, and the critter took me in and nursed my frost-bites and didn't ask no questions, nor I of him. We struck up a trade, my drivin' stock, mostly skin and bone, for a show in his business. He wa'n't gettin' rich at it, that was as plain as the hip bones on my mules. I kep' in the woods, cuttin' timber and tendin' kiln, and he hauled and did the sellin'. Next year he went below to Portland and brought home smallpox with him. It broke out on him on the road. He was a terrible sick man. I buried him, and waited for my turn. It didn't come. I seemed kind o' insured. I've been in lots of trouble since then, but nothing ever touched me till now. I banked on it too strong, though.
I sure did! My pardner was just such another lone bird like me. If he had any folks of his own he kep' still about them. So I took his name--whether it was his name there's no knowing. Guess I've took full as good care of it as he would. 'Hagar?' folk would say, sort o' lookin'
me over. 'You ain't Jim Hagar.' No, but I was John, and they let it go at that.
”I heard of your mother that summer, from a prospector who came up past my camp. He'd wintered in Mountain Home. He told me my own story, the way they had it down there, and what straits your mother was in. I had sc.r.a.ped up quite a few dollars by then, and was thinking how I'd shove it into a bank like an old debt coming to Adam Bogardus. I was studying how I was going to rig it. There wasn't any one who knew me down there, so I felt safe to ventur' a few inquiries. What I heard was that she'd gone home to her folks and was as well off as anybody need be. That broke me all up at first. I must have had a sneakin' notion that maybe some day I could see my way to go back to her, but that let me out completely. I quit then, and I've stayed quit. The only break I made was showin' up here at the 'leventh hour, thinking I could be some use to my son!”
”It was to be,” said Paul. ”For years our lives have been shaping towards this meeting. There were a thousand chances against it. Yet here we are!”
”Here we are!” the packer repeated soberly. ”But don't think that I lay any of my foolishness on the Almighty! Maybe it was meant my son should close my eyes, but it's too dear at the price. Anybody would say so, I don't care who.”
”But aside from the 'price,' is it something to you?”
”More--more than I've got words to say. And yet it grinds me, every breath I take! Not that I wish you'd done different--you couldn't and be a man. I knew it even when I was kickin' against it. Oh, well! It ain't no use to kick. I thought I'd learned something, but I ain't--learned--a thing!”
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