The Desert and The Sown

M >> Mary Hallock Foote >> The Desert and The Sown

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14

Mrs. Bogardus rose. She did not offer to comfort her child with caresses,
but in her eyes as she looked at her there was a profound, inalienable,
sorrowing tenderness, a depth of understanding beyond words.

"I know so well," the dark eyes seemed to say, "how you came to be the
poor thing that you are!"

The constraint which she felt towards her mother threw Chrissy back upon
Moya. Being a lesser power, she was always seeking alliances. Moya had put
aside their foolish tiff as unworthy of another thought; she was
embarrassed when at bedtime Christine came humbly to her door, and putting
her arms around her neck implored her not to be cross with her "poor
pussy." It was always the other person who was "cross" with Christine.

"Nobody is cross with anybody, so far as I know," said Moya briskly. A
certain sort of sentimentality always made her feel like whistling or
singing or asserting the commonplace side of life in some way.

X

THE WHITE PERIL

Mrs. Bogardus received many letters, chiefly on business, and these she
answered with manlike brevity, in a strong, provincial hand. They took up
much of her time, and mercifully, for it was now the last week in November
and the young men did not return.

The range cattle had been driven down into the valleys, deer-tracks
multiplied by lonely mountain fords; War Eagle and his brethren of the
Owyhees were taking council under their winter blankets. The nights were
still, the mornings rimy with hoarfrost. Fogs arose from the river and cut
off the bases of the mountains, converting the valley before sunrise into
the likeness of a polar sea.

"You have let your fire go out," said the colonel briskly. He had invaded
the sitting-room at an unaccustomed hour, finding the lady at her letters
as usual. She turned and held her pen poised above her paper as she looked
at him.

"You did not come to see about the fire?" she said.

"No; I have had letters from the north. Would you step into my study a
moment?"

Moya was in her father's room when they entered. She had been weeping, but
at sight of Paul's mother she rose and stood picking at the handkerchief
she held, without raising her eyes.

"Don't be alarmed at Moya's face," said the colonel stoutly. "Paul was all
right at last accounts. We will have a merry Christmas yet."

"This is not from Paul!" Mrs. Bogardus fixed her eyes upon a letter which
she held at arm's length, feeling for her glasses. "It's not for
me--'_Miss_ Bogardus.'"

"Ah, well. I saw it was postmarked Lemhi--Fort Lemhi, you know. Sit down,
madam. Suppose I give you Mr. Winslow's report first--Lieutenant Winslow.
You heard of his going to Lemhi?"

"She doesn't know," whispered Moya.

"True. Well, two weeks ago I gave Mr. Winslow a hunter's leave, as we call
it in the army, to beat up the trail of those boys. I thought it was time
we heard from them, but it wasn't worth while to raise a hue and cry. He
started out with a few picked men from Lemhi, the Indian Reservation, you
know. I couldn't have sent a better man; the thing hasn't got into the
local papers even. My object, of course, has been to save unnecessary
alarm. Mr. Winslow has just got back to Challis. He rounded up the Bowen
youths and the cook and the helper, in bad shape, all of them, but able to
tell a story. The details we shall get later, but I have Mr. Winslow's
report to me. It is short and probably correct."

"Was Paul not with them?" his mother questioned in a hard, dry voice.
"Where is he then?"

"He is in camp, madam, in charge of the wounded."

"Dear father! if you would speak plain!" Moya whispered nervously.

"Certainly. There is nothing whatever to hide. We know now that on their
last day's hunt they met with an accident which resulted in a division of
the party. A fall of snow had covered the ice on the trails, and the
guide's horse fell and rolled on him--nature of his injuries not
described. This happened a day's journey from their camp at Ten-Mile
cabin, and the retreat with the wounded man was slow and of course
difficult over such a trail. They put together a sort of horse-litter made
of pine poles and carried him on that, slung between two mules tandem. A
beastly business, winding and twisting over fallen timber, hugging the
canon wall, near a thousand feet down--'Impassable' the trail is marked,
on the government military maps. This first day's march was so
discouraging that at Ten Mile they called a council, and the packer spoke
up like a man. He disposed of his own case in this way. If he were to
live, they could send back help to fetch him out. If not, no help would be
needed. The snows were upon them; there was danger in every hour's delay.
It was insane to sacrifice four sound men for one, badly hurt, with not
many hours perhaps to suffer."

A murmur from the mother announced her appreciation of the packer's
argument.

"It was no more than a man should do; but as to taking him at his word,
why, that's another question." The colonel paused and gustily cleared his
throat. "They were up against it right then and there, and the party split
upon it. Three of them went on,--for help, as they put it,--and Paul
stayed behind with the wounded man."

"Paul stayed--alone?" Mrs. Bogardus uttered with hoarse emphasis. "Was not
that a very strange way to divide? Among them all, I should think they
might have brought the man out with them."

"Their story is that his injuries were such that he could not have borne
the pain of the journey. Rather an unusual case," the colonel added dryly.
"In my experience, a wounded man will stand anything sooner than be left
on the field."

"I cannot understand it," Mrs. Bogardus repeated, in a voice of indignant
pain. "Such a strange division! One man left alone--to nurse, and hunt,
and cook, and keep up fires! Suppose the guide should die!"

"Paul was not _left_, you know," the colonel said emphatically. "He
_stayed_. And I should be thankful in your place, madam, that my son was
the man who made that choice. But setting conduct aside, for we are not
prepared to judge, it is merely a matter of time our getting in there, now
that we know where he is."

"How much time?" Mrs. Bogardus opened her ashen lips to say.

The colonel's face fell. "Mr. Winslow reports heavy snows for the past
week,--soft, clogging snow,--too deep to wade through and too soft to
bear. A little later, when the cold has formed a crust, our men can get in
on snowshoes. There is nothing for it but patience, Mrs. Bogardus, and
faith in the boy's endurance. The pluck that made him stay behind will
help him to hold out."

Moya gave a hurt sob; the colonel stepped to the desk and stood there a
moment turning over his papers. Behind his back the mother sent a glance
to Moya expressive of despair.

"Do you know what happened to his father? Did he ever tell you?" she
whispered.

Moya assented; she could not speak.

"Twice, twice in a lifetime!" said the older woman.

With a gesture, Moya protested against this wild prophecy; but as Paul's
mother left the room she rushed upon her father, crying: "Tell _me_ the
truth! What do you think of it? Did you ever hear of such a dastardly
thing?"

"It was a rout," said the colonel coolly. "They were in full flight before
the enemy."

"What enemy? They deserted a wounded comrade, and a servant at that!"

"The enemy was panic,--panic, my dear. In these woods I've seen strong men
go half beside themselves with fear of something--the Lord knows what!
Then, add the winter and what they had seen and heard of that. Anyway, you
can afford to be easy on the other boys. The honors of the day are with
Paul--and the old packer, though it's all in the day's work to him."

"And you are satisfied with Paul, father?"

"He didn't desert his command to save his own skin." The colonel smiled
grimly.

"When the men of the Fourth discovered those other fellows they had
literally sat down in the snow to die. Not a man of them knew how to pack
a mule. Their meat pack slipped, going along one of those high trails, and
scared the mule, and in trying to kick himself free the beast fell off the
trail--mule and meat both gone. They got tired of carrying their stuff and
made a raft to float it down the river, and lost that! Paul has been much
better off in camp than he would have been with them. So cheer up, my
girl, and think how you'd like to have your bridegroom out on an Indian
campaign!"

"Ah, but that would be orders! It's the uselessness that hurts. There was
nothing to do or to gain. He didn't want to go. Oh, daddy dear, I made fun
of his shooting,--I did! I laughed at his way with firearms. Wretched fool
and snob that I was! As if I cared! I thought of what other people would
say. You remember,--he went shooting up the gulch with Mr. Lane, and when
he hit but didn't kill he wouldn't--couldn't put the birds out of pain.
Jephson had to do it for him, and he told it in barracks and the men
laughed."

"How did you know that! And what does it all amount to! Blame yourself all
you like, dear, if it does you any good, but don't make him out a fool!
There's not much that comes to us straight in this world--not even orders,
you'll find. But we have to take it straight and leave the muddles and the
blunders as they are. That's the brave man's courage and the brave
woman's. Orders are mixed, but duty is clear. And the boy out there in the
woods has found his duty and done it like a man. That should be enough for
any soldier's daughter."

An hour passed in suspense. Moya was disappointed in her expectation of
sharing in whatever the letter from Fort Lemhi might contain. Christine
was in bed with a headache, her mother dully gave out, with no apparent
expectation that any one would accept this excuse for the girl's complete
withdrawal. The letter, she told Moya, was from Banks Bowen. "There was
nothing in it of consequence--to us," she added, and Moya took the words
to mean "you and me" to the unhappy exclusion of Christine.

Mrs. Bogardus's face had settled into lines of anxiety printed years
before, as the creases in an old garment, smoothed and laid away, will
reappear with fresh wear. Her plan was to go back to New York with
Christine, who was plainly unfit to bear a long siege of suspense. There
she could leave the girl with friends and learn what particulars could be
gathered from the Bowens, who would have arrived. She would then return
alone and wait for news at the garrison. That night, with Moya's help, she
completed her packing, and on the following day the wedding party broke
up.

XI

A SEARCHING OF HEARTS

Fine, dry snowflakes were drifting past the upper square of a window set
in a wall of logs. The lower half was obscured by a white bulk that
shouldered up against the sash in the likeness of a muffled figure
stooping to peer in.

Lying in his bunk against the wall, the packer watched this sentinel
snowdrift grow and become human and bold and familiar. His deep-lined
visage was reduced to its bony structure. The hand was a claw with which
he plucked at the ancient fever-crust shredding from his lips: an
occupation at once so absorbing and so exhausting that often the hand
would drop and the blankets rise upon the arch of the chest in a sigh of
retarded respiration. The sigh would be followed by a cough, controlled,
as in dread of the shock to a sore and shattered frame. The snow came
faster and faster until the dim, wintry pane was a blur. Millions of atoms
crossed the watcher's weary vision, whirling, wavering, driven with an
aimless persistence, unable to pause or to stop. And the blind white
snowdrift climbed, fed, like human circumstance, from disconnected atoms
impelled by a common law.

There were sounds in the cabin: wet wood sweating on hot coals; a step
that went to and fro. Outside, a snow-weighted bough let go its load and
sprang up, scraping against the logs. Some heavy soft thing slid off the
roof and dropped with a _chug_. Then the door, that hung awry like a
drooping eyelid, gave a disreputable wink, and the whole front gable of
the cabin loomed a giant countenance with a silly forehead and an evil
leer. Now it seemed that a hand was hurling snow against the door, as a
sower scatters grain,--snow that lay like beach sand on the floor, or
melted into a crawling pool--red in the firelight, red as blood!

These and other phantasms had now for an unmeasured time been tenants of
the packer's brain, sharing and often overpowering the reality of the
human step that went to and fro. To-day the shapes and relations of things
were more natural, and the step aroused a querulous curiosity.

"Who's there?" the sick man imagined himself to have said. A croaking
sound in his throat, which was all he could do by way of speech, brought
the step to his bedside. A young face, lightly bearded, and gaunt almost
as his own, bent over him. Large, black eyes rested on his; a hand with
womanish nails placed its fingers on his wrist.

"You are better to-day. Your pulse is down. I wouldn't try to talk."

"Who's that--outside?"

"There is no one outside," Paul answered, following the direction of his
patient's eyes. "That? That is only a snowdrift. It grows faster than I
can shovel it away."

The packer had forgotten his own question. He dozed off, and presently
roused again as suddenly as he had slept. His utterance was clearer, but
not his meaning.

"What--you want to fetch me back for?"

"Back?" Paul repeated.

"I was most gone, wa'n't I?"

"Back to life, you mean? You came back of yourself. I hadn't much to do
with it."

"What's been the matter--gen'ly speaking?"

"You were hurt, don't you remember? Something like wound fever set in. The
altitude is bad for fevers. You have had a pretty close call."

"Been here all the time?"

"Have I been here?--yes."

"'Lone?"

"With you. How is your chest? Does it hurt you still when you breathe?"

The sick man filled his lungs experimentally. "Something busted inside, I
guess," he panted. "'Tain't no killing matter, though."

Nourishment, in a tin cup, warm from the fire was offered him, refused
with a gesture, and firmly urged upon him. This necessitated another rest.
It was long before he spoke again--out of some remoter train of thought
apparently.

"Family all in New York?"

"My family? They were at Bisuka when I left them."

"You don't _live_ West!"

"No. I was born in the West, though. Idaho is my native state."

The patient fell to whimpering suddenly like a hurt child. He drew up the
blanket to cover his face. Paul, interpreting this as a signal for more
nourishment, brought the sad decoction,--rinds of dried beef cooked with
rice in snow water.

"Guess that'll do, thank ye. My tongue feels like an old buckskin glove."

"When I was a little fellow," said the nurse, beguiling the patient while
he tucked the spoonfuls down, "I was like you: I wouldn't take what the
doctor ordered, and they used to pretend I must take it for the others of
the family,--a kind of vicarious milk diet, or gruel, or whatever it was.
'Here's a spoonful for mother, poor mother,' they would say; and of course
it couldn't be refused when mother needed it so much. 'And now one for
Chrissy'"--

"Who?"

"My sister, Christine. And then I'd take one for 'uncle' and one for each
of the servants; and the cupful would go down to the health of the
household, and I the dupe of my sympathies! Now you are taking this for
me, because it's nicer to be shut up here with a live man than a dead one;
and we haven't the conveniences for a first-class funeral."

"You never took a spoonful for 'father,'--eh?"

Paul answered the question with gravity. "No. We never used that name in
common."

"Dead was he?"

"I will tell you some time. Better try to sleep now."

Paul returned the saucepan to the fire, after piecing out its contents
with water, and retired out of his patient's sight.

Again came a murmur, chiefly unintelligible, from the bunk.

"Did you ask for anything?"

The sick man heaved a worried sigh. "See what a mis'rable presumptuous
piece of work!" he muttered, addressing the logs overhead. "But that
Clauson--he wa'n't no more fit to guide ye than to go to heaven! Couldn't
'a' done much worse than this, though!"

"He has done worse!" Paul came over to the bunk-side to reason on this
matter. "They started back from here, four strong men with all the animals
and all the food they needed for a six weeks' trip. We came in in one. If
they got through at all, where is the help they were to send us?"

"Help!" The packer roused. "They helped themselves, and pretty frequent. I
said to them more than once--they didn't like it any too well: 'We can't
drink up here like they do down to the coast. The air is too light. What a
man would take with his dinner down there would fit him out with a
first-class jag up here, 'leven thousand above the sea!'"

"It's a waste of breath to talk about them--breath burns up food and we
haven't much to spare. We rushed into this trouble and we dragged you in
after us. We have hurt you a good deal more than you have us."

The sick man groaned. He flung one hand back against the logs, dislodging
ancient dust that fell upon his corpse-like forehead. It was carefully
wiped away. Helpless tears stole down the rigid face.

"John," said Paul with animation, "your general appearance just now
reminds me of those worked-out placer claims we passed in Ruby Gulch, the
first day out. The fever and my cooking have ground-sluiced you to the
bone."

John smiled faintly. "Don't look very fat yourself. Where'd you git all
that baird on your face?"

"We have been here some time, you know--or you don't know; you have been
living in places far away from here. I used to envy you sometimes. And
other times I didn't."

"You mean I was off my head?"

"At times. But more of the time you were dreaming and talking in your
dreams; seeing things out loud by the flash-light of fever."

"Talking, was I? Guess there wa'n't much sense in any of it?" The hazard
was a question.

"A kind of sense,--out of focus, distorted. Some of it was opium. Didn't
you coax a little of his favorite medicine out of the cook?"

Packer John apologized sheepishly, "I cal'lated I was going to be left.
You put it up on me--making out you were off with the rest. _That_ was all
right. But I wa'n't going to suffer it out; why should I? A gunshot would
have cured me quicker, perhaps. Then some critter might 'a' found me and
called it murder. A word like that set going can hang a man. No, I just
took a little to deaden the pain."

"The whole discussion was rather nasty, right before the man we were
talking about," said Paul. "I wanted to get them off and out of hearing.
Then we had a few words."

At intervals during that day and the next, Paul's patient expended his
strength in questions, apparently trivial. His eyes, whenever they were
open, followed his nurse with a shrinking intelligence. Paul was on his
guard.

"What day of the month do you make it out to be?"

"The second of December."

"December!" The packer lay still considering. "Game all gone down?"

"I am not much of a pot-hunter," said Paul. "There may be game, but I
can't seem to get it. The snow is pretty deep."

"Wouldn't bear a man on snowshoes?"

"He would go out of sight."

"Snowing a little every day?"

"Right along, quietly, for I don't know how many days! I think the sky is
packed with it a mile deep."

"How much grub have we got?"

Paul gave a flattering estimate of their resources. The patient was not
deceived.

"Where's it all gone to? You ain't eat anything."

"I've eaten a good deal more than you have."

"I was livin' on fever."

"You can't live on fever any longer. The fever has left you, and you'll go
with it if you don't obey your doctor."

"But where's all the stuff _gone_ to?"

"There were four of them, and they allowed for some delay in getting out,"
Paul explained, with a sickly smile.

"Well, they was hogs! I knew how they'd pan out! That was why"--He wearied
of speech and left the point unfinished.

On the evening following, when the two could no longer see each other's
faces in the dusk, Paul spoke, controlling his voice:--

"I need not ask you, John, what you think of our chances?"

"I guess they ain't much worth thinking about." The fire hissed and
crackled; the soft subsidence of the snow could be heard outside.

"We are 'free among the dead,' how does it go? 'Like unto them that are
wounded and lie in the grave.' What we say to each other here will stop
here with our breath. Let us put our memories in order for the last
reckoning. I think, John, you must, at some time in your life, have known
my father, Adam Bogardus? He was lost on the Snake River plains,
twenty-one years ago this autumn."

Receiving no answer, the pale young inquisitor went on, choosing his words
with intense deliberation as one feeling his way in the dark.

"Most of us believe in some form of communication that we can't explain,
between those who are separated in body, in this world, but closely united
in thought. Do I make myself clear?"

There was a sound of deep breathing from the bunk; it produced a similar
conscious excitement in the speaker. He halted, recovered himself, and
continued:--

"After my father's disappearance, my mother had a distinct
presentiment--it haunted her for years--that something had happened to him
at a place called One Man Station. Did you ever know the place?"

"I might have." The words came huskily.

"Father had left her at this place, and to her knowledge he never came
back. But she had this intimation--and suffered from it--that he did come
back and was foully dealt with there--wronged in body or mind. The place
had most evil associations for her; it was not strange she should have
connected it with the great disaster of her life. As you lay talking to
yourself in your fever, you took me back on that lost trail that ended, as
we thought, in the grave. But we might have been mistaken. Is there
anything it would not be safe for you and me to speak of now? Do you know
any tie between men that should be closer than the tie between us? Any
safer place where a man could lay off the secret burdens of his life and
be himself for a little while--before the end answers all? I know you have
a secret. I believe that a share of it belongs to me."

"We are better off sometimes if we don't get all that belongs to us," said
John gratingly.

"It doesn't seem to be a matter of choice, does it? If you were not meant
to tell me--what you have partly told me already--where is there any
meaning in our being here at all? Let us have some excuse for this
senseless accident. Do you believe much in accidents? How foolish"--Paul
sighed--"for you and me to be afraid of each other! Two men who have
parted with everything but the privilege of speaking the truth!"

The packer raised himself in his bunk slowly, like one in pain. He looked
long at the listless figure crouching by the fire; then he sank back again
with a low groan. "What was it you heared me say? Come!"

"I can't give you the exact words. The words were nothing. Haven't you
watched the sparks blow up, at night, when the wind goes searching over
the ashes of an old camp-fire? It was the fever made you talk, and your
words were the sparks that showed where there had been fire once. Perhaps
I had no right to track you by your own words when you lay helpless, but I
couldn't always leave you. Now I'd like to have my share of that--whatever
it was--that hurt you so, at One Man Station."

"You ought to been a lawyer," said the packer, releasing his breath. There
was less strain in his voice. It broke with feeling. "You put up a mighty
strong case for your way of looking at it. I don't say it's best. There,
if you will have it! Sonny--my son! It--it's like startin' a snow-slide."

The sick man broke down and sobbed childishly.

"Take it quietly! Oh, take it quietly!" Paul shivered. "I have known it a
long time."

Hours later they were still awake, the packer in his bunk, Paul in his
blankets by the winking brands. The pines were moving, and in pauses of
the wind they could hear the incessant soft crowding of the snow.

"When they find us here in the spring," said the packer humbly, "it won't
matter much which on us was 'Mister' and which was 'John.'"

"Are you thinking of that!" Paul answered with nervous irritation. "I
thought you had lived in the woods long enough to have got rid of all that
nonsense!"

"I guess there was some of it where you've been living."

"We are done with all that now. Go to sleep,--Father." He pronounced the
word conscientiously to punish himself for dreading it. The darkness
seemed to ring with it and give it back to him ironically. "Father!"
muttered the pines outside, and the snow, listening, let fall the word in
elfin whispers. Paul turned over desperately in his blankets. "Father!" he
repeated out loud. "Do _you_ believe it? Does it do you any good?"

"I wouldn't distress myself, one way or t' other, if it don't come
natural," the packer spoke, out of his corner in the darkness. "Wait till
you can feel to say it. The word ain't nothing."

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14