The Best Short Stories of 1915

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EDWARD J. O'BRIEN

SOUTH YARMOUTH, MASSACHUSETTS
Twelfth Night, 1916

THE BEST SHORT STORIES OF 1915

THE WATER-HOLE[1]

BY MAXWELL STRUTHERS BURT

From _Scribner's Magazine_

[1] Copyright, 1915, by Charles Scribner's Sons. Copyright, 1916, by
Maxwell Struthers Burt.

Some men are like the twang of a bow-string. Hardy was like that--short,
lithe, sunburned, vivid. Into the lives of Jarrick, Hill, and myself,
old classmates of his, he came and went in the fashion of one of those
queer winds that on a sultry day in summer blow unexpectedly up a city
street out of nowhere. His comings excited us; his goings left us
refreshed and a little vaguely discontented. So many people are gray.
Hardy gave one a shock of color, as do the deserts and the mountains he
inhabited. It was not particularly what he said--he didn't talk much--it
was his appearance, his direct, a trifle fierce, gestures, the sense of
mysterious lands that pervaded him. One never knew when he was coming to
New York and one never knew how long he was going to stay; he just
appeared, was very busy with mining companies for a while, sat about
clubs in the late afternoon, and then, one day, he was gone.

Sometimes he came twice in a year; oftener, not for two or three years
at a stretch. When he did come we gave him a dinner--that is, Jarrick,
Hill, and myself. And it was rather an occasion. We would procure a
table in the gayest restaurant we could find, near, but not too near,
the music--Hill it was who first suggested this as a dramatic bit of
incongruity between Hardy and the frequenters of Broadway--and the
most exotic food obtainable, for a good part of his time Hardy, we
knew, lived upon camp fare. Then we would try to make him tell about
his experiences. Usually he wouldn't. Impersonally, he was entertaining
about South Africa, about the Caucasus, about Alaska, Mexico, anywhere
you care to think; but concretely he might have been an illustrated
lecture for all he mentioned himself. He was passionately fond of
abstract argument. "Y' see," he would explain, "I don't get half as
much of this sort of thing as I want. Of course, one does run across
remarkable people--now, I met a cow-puncher once who knew Keats by
heart--but as a rule I deal only with material things, mines and
prospects and assays and that sort of thing." Poor chap! I wonder
if he thought that we, with our brokering and our writing and our
lawyering, dealt much with ideas! I remember one night when we sat
up until three discussing the philosophy of prohibition over three
bottles of port. I wonder how many other men have done the same thing!

But five years ago--no, it was six--Hardy really told us a real
story about himself. Necessarily the occasion is memorable in our
recollections. We had dined at Lamb's, and the place was practically
empty, for it was long after the theatre hour--only a drowsy waiter
here and there, and away over in one corner a young couple who, I
suppose, imagined themselves in love. Fancy being in love at Lamb's!
We had been discussing, of all things in the world, bravery and
conscience and cowardice and original sin, and that sort of business,
and there was no question about it that Hardy was enjoying himself
hugely. He was leaning upon the table, a coffee-cup between his relaxed
brown hands, listening with an eagerness highly complimentary to the
banal remarks we had to make upon the subject. "This is talk!" he
ejaculated once with a laugh.

Hill, against the combined attack of Jarrick and myself, was maintaining
the argument. "There is no such thing as instinctive bravery," he
affirmed, for the fifth time at least, "amongst intelligent men. Every
one of us is naturally a coward. Of course we are. The more imagination
we've got the more we can realize how pleasant life is, after all, and
how rotten the adjuncts of sudden death. It's reason that does the
trick--reason and tradition. Do you know of any one who is brave when
he is alone--except, that is, when it is a case of self-preservation?
No! Of course not. Did you ever hear of any one choosing to go along
a dangerous road or to ford a dangerous river unless he had to--that
is, any one of our class, any man of education or imagination? It's
the greater fear of being thought afraid that makes us brave. Take a
lawyer in a shipwreck--take myself! Don't you suppose he's frightened?
Naturally he is, horribly frightened. It's his reason, his mind, that
after a while gets the better of his poor pipe-stem legs and makes them
keep pace with the sea-legs about them."

"It's condition," said Jarrick doggedly--"condition entirely. All has to
do with your liver and digestion. I know; I fox-hunt, and when I was
younger--yes, leave my waist alone!--I rode jumping races. When you're
fit there isn't a horse alive that bothers you, or a fence, for that
matter, or a bit of water."

"Ever try standing on a ship's deck, in the dark, knowing you're going
to drown in about twenty minutes?" asked Hill.

Hardy leaned forward to strike a match for his cigarette. "I don't agree
with you," he said.

"Well, but--" began Hill.

"Neither of you."

"Oh, of course, you're outside the argument. You lead an adventurous
life. You keep in condition for danger. It isn't fair."

"No." Hardy lit his cigarette and inhaled a puff thoughtfully. "You
don't understand. All you have to say does have some bearing upon
things, but, when you get down to brass tacks, it's instinct--at the
last gasp, it's instinct. You can't get away from it. Look at the
difference between a thoroughbred and a cold-blooded horse! There you
are! That's true. It's the fashion now to discount instinct, I know;
well--but you can't get away from it. I've thought about the thing--a
lot. Men are brave against their better reason, against their
conscience. It's a mixed-up thing. It's confusing and--and sort of
damnable," he concluded lamely.

"Sort of damnable!" ejaculated Hill wonderingly.

"Yes, damnable."

I experienced inspiration. "You've got a concrete instance back of
that," I ventured.

Hardy removed his gaze from the ceiling. "Er--" he stammered. "Why,
yes--yes. That's true."

"You'd better tell it," suggested Hill; "otherwise your argument is not
very conclusive."

Hardy fumbled with the spoon of his empty coffee-cup. It was a curious
gesture on the part of a man whose franknesses were as clean-cut as his
silences. "Well--" he began. "I don't know. Perhaps. I did know a man,
though, who saved another man's life when he didn't want to, when there
was every excuse for him not to, when he had it all reasoned out that
it was wrong, the very wrongest possible thing to do; and he saved him
because he couldn't help it, saved him at the risk of his own life,
too."

"He did!" murmured Hill incredulously.

"Go on!" I urged. I was aware that we were on the edge of a revelation.

Hardy looked down at the spoon in his hand, then up and into my eyes.

"It's such a queer place to tell it"--he smiled deprecatingly--"here,
in this restaurant. It ought to be about a camp-fire, or something
like that. Here it seems out of place, like the smell of bacon or
sweating mules. Do you know Los Pinos? Well, you wouldn't. It was
just a few shacks and a Mexican gambling-house when I saw it. Maybe
it isn't there any more, at all. You know--those places! People build
them and then go away, and in a year there isn't a thing, just desert
again and shifting sand and maybe the little original old ranch by the
one spring." He swept the table-cloth with his hand, as if sweeping
something into oblivion, and his eyes sought again the spoon. "It's
queer, that business. Men and women go out to lonely places and build
houses, and for a while everything goes on in miniature, just as it does
here--daily bread and hating and laughing--and then something happens,
the gold gives out or the fields won't pay, and in no time nature is
back again. It's a big fight. You lose track of it in crowded places."
He raised his head and settled his arms comfortably on the table.

"I wasn't there for any particular purpose. I was on a holiday. I'd been
on a big job up in Colorado and was rather done up, and, as there were
some prospects in New Mexico I wanted to see, I hit south, drifting
through Santa Fe and Silver City, until I found myself way down on the
southern edge of Arizona. It was still hot down there--hot as blazes--it
was about the first of September--and the rattlesnakes and the scorpions
were still as active as crickets. I knew a chap that had a cattle outfit
near the Mexican border, so I dropped in on him one day and stayed two
weeks. You see, he was lonely. Had a passion for theatres and hadn't
seen a play for five years. My second-hand gossip was rather a godsend.
But finally I got tired of talking about Mary Mannering, and decided to
start north again. He bade me good-by on a little hill near his place.
'See here!' he said suddenly, looking toward the west. 'If you go a
trifle out of your way you'll strike Los Pinos, and I wish you would.
It's a little bit of a dump of the United Copper Company's, no good, I'm
thinking, but the fellow in charge is a friend of mine. He's got his
wife there. They're nice people--or used to be. I haven't seen them for
ten years. They say he drinks a little--well, we all do. Maybe you could
write me how she--I mean, how he is getting on?' And he turned red. I
saw how the land lay, and as a favor to him I said I would.

"It was eighty miles away, and I drifted in there one night on top
of a tired cow-horse just at sundown. You know how purple--violet,
really--those desert evenings are. There was violet stretching away
as far as I could see, from the faint violet at my stirrups to the
deep, almost black violet of the horizon. Way off to the north I
could make out the shadow of some big hills that had been ahead of
me all day. The town, what there was of it, lay in a little gully.
Along its single street there were a few lights shining like small
yellow flowers. I asked my way of a Mexican, and he showed me up to
where the Whitneys--that name will do as well as any--lived, in a
decent enough sort of bungalow, it would seem, above the gully. He
left me there, and I went forward and rapped at the door. Light shone
from between the cracks of a near-by shutter, and I could hear voices
inside--a man's voice mostly, hoarse and high-pitched. Then a Chinaman
opened the door for me and I had a look inside, into a big living-room
beyond. It was civilized all right enough, pleasantly so to a man
stepping out of two days of desert and Mexican adobes. At a glance I
saw the rugs on the polished floor, and the Navajo blankets about,
and a big table in the centre with a shaded lamp and magazines in
rows; but the man in riding-clothes standing before the empty fire-place
wasn't civilized at all, at least not at that moment. I couldn't see the
woman, only the top of her head above the back of a big chair, but as
I came in I heard her say, 'Hush!--Jim!--please!' and I noticed that
what I could see of her hair was of that fine true gold you so seldom
find. The man stopped in the middle of a sentence and swayed on his
feet, then he looked over at me and came toward me with a sort of
bulldog, inquiring look. He was a big, red-faced, blond chap, about
forty, I should say, who might once have been handsome. He wasn't now,
and it didn't add to his beauty that he was quite obviously fairly
drunk. 'Well?' he said, and blocked my way.

"'I'm a friend of Henry Martin's,' I answered. 'I've got a letter for
you.' I was beginning to get pretty angry.

"'Henry Martin?' He laughed unsteadily. 'You'd better give it to my wife
over there. She's his friend. I hardly know him.' I don't know when I'd
seen a man I disliked as much at first sight.

"There was a rustle from the other side of the room, and Mrs. Whitney
came toward us. I avoided her unattractive husband and took her hand,
and I understood at once whatever civilizing influences there were
about the bungalow we were in. Did you ever do that--ever step out
of nowhere, in a wild sort of country, and meet suddenly a man or a
woman who might have come straight from a pleasant, well-bred room
filled with books and flowers and quiet, nice people? It's a sensation
that never loses its freshness. Mrs. Whitney was like that. I wouldn't
have called her beautiful; she was better; you knew she was good and
clean-cut and a thoroughbred the minute you saw her. She was lovely,
too; don't misunderstand me, but you had more important things to think
about when you were talking to her. Just at the moment I was wondering
how any one who so evidently had been crying could all at once greet a
stranger with so cordial a smile. But she was all that--all nerve; I
don't think I ever met a woman quite like her--so fine, you understand."

Hardy paused. "Have any of you chaps got a cigarette?" he asked; and I
noticed that his hand, usually the steadiest hand imaginable, trembled
ever so slightly. "Well," he began again, "there you are! I had tumbled
into about as rotten a little, pitiful a little tragedy as you can
imagine, there in a God-forsaken desert of Arizona, with not a soul
about but a Chinaman, a couple of Scotch stationary engineers, an Irish
foreman, two or three young mining men, and a score of Mexicans. Of
course, my first impulse was to get out the next morning, to cut it--it
was none of my business--although I determined to drop a line to Henry
Martin; but I didn't go. I had a talk with Mrs. Whitney that night,
after her attractive husband had taken himself off to bed, and somehow I
couldn't leave just then. You know how it is, you drop into a place
where nothing in the world seems likely to happen, and all of a sudden
you realize that something _is_ going to happen, and for the life of you
you can't go away. That situation up on top of the hill couldn't last
forever, could it? So I stayed on. I hunted out the big Irish foreman
and shared his cabin. The Whitneys asked me to visit them, but I didn't
exactly feel like doing so. The Irishman was a fine specimen of his
race, ten years out from Dublin, and everywhere else since that time;
generous, irascible, given to great fits of gayety and equally
unexpected fits of gloom. He would sit in the evenings, a short pipe in
his mouth, and stare up at the Whitney bungalow on the hill above.

"'That Jim Whitney's a divvle,' he confided to me once. 'Wan of these
days I'll hit him over th' head with a pick and be hung for murther.
Now, what in hell d'ye suppose a nice girl like that sticks by him for?
If it weren't for her I'd 'a' reported him long ago. The scut!' And I
remember that he spat gloomily.

"But I got to know the answer to that question sooner than I had
expected. You see, I went up to the Whitneys' often, in the afternoon,
or for dinner, or in the evening, and I talked to Mrs. Whitney a great
deal; although sometimes I just sat and smoked and listened to her play
the piano. She played beautifully. It was a treat to a man who hadn't
heard music for two years. There was a little thing of Grieg's--a spring
song, or something of the sort--and you've no idea how quaint and sad
and appealing it was, and incongruous, with all its freshness and
murmuring about water-falls and pine-trees, there, in those hot,
breathless Arizona nights. Mrs. Whitney didn't talk much; she wasn't
what you'd call a particularly communicative woman, but bit by bit I
pieced together something continuous. It seems that she had run away
with Whitney ten years before--Oh, yes! Henry Martin! That had been a
schoolgirl affair. Nothing serious, you understand. But the Whitney
matter had been different. She was greatly in love with him. And the
family had disapproved. Some rich, stuffy Boston people, I gathered. But
she had made up her mind and taken matters in her own hands. That was
her way--a clean-cut sort of person--like a gold-and-white arrow; and
now she was going to stick by her choice no matter what happened; owed
it to Whitney. There was the quirk in her brain; we all have a quirk
somewhere, and that was hers. She felt that she had ruined his career;
he had been a brilliant young engineer, but her family had kicked up the
devil of a row, and, as they were powerful enough, and nasty enough, had
more or less hounded him out of the East. Of course, personally, I never
thought he showed any of the essentials of brilliancy, but that's
neither here nor there; she did, and she was satisfied that she owed him
all she had. I suppose, too, there was some trace of a Puritan
conscience back of it, some inherent feeling about divorce; and there
was pride as well, a desire not to let that disgusting family of hers
know into what ways her idol had fallen. Anyway, she was adamant--oh,
yes, I made no bones about it, I up and asked her one night why she
didn't get rid of the hound. So there she was, that white-and-gold
woman, with her love of music, and her love of books, and her love of
fine things, and her gentleness, and that sort of fiery, suppressed
Northern blood, shut up on top of an Arizona dump with a beast that got
drunk every night and twice a day on Sunday. It was worse even than
that. One night--we were sitting out on the veranda--her scarf slipped,
and I saw a scar on her arm, near her shoulder." Hardy stopped abruptly
and began to roll a little pellet of bread between his thumb and his
forefinger; then his tense expression faded and he sat back in his
chair.

"Let me have another cigarette," he said to Jarrick. "No. Wait a minute!
I'll order some."

He called a waiter and gave his instructions. "You see," he continued,
"when you run across as few nice women as I do that sort of thing is
more than ordinarily disturbing. And then I suppose it was the setting,
and her loneliness, and everything. Anyway, I stayed on, I got to be
a little bit ashamed of myself. I was afraid that Mrs. Whitney would
think me prompted by mere curiosity or a desire to meddle, so after
a while I gave out that I was prospecting that part of Arizona, and
in the mornings I would take a horse and ride out into the desert. I
loved it, too; it was so big and spacious and silent and hot. One day
I met Whitney on the edge of town. He was sober, as he always was when
he had to be; he was a masterful brute, in his way. He stopped me and
asked if I had found anything, and when I laughed he didn't laugh back.
'There's gold here,' he said. 'Lots of gold. Did you ever hear the story
of the Ten Strike Mine? Well, it's over there.' He swept with his arm
the line of distant hills to the north. 'The crazy Dutchman that found
it staggered into Almuda, ten miles down the valley, just before he
died; and his pockets were bulging with samples--pure gold, almost. Yes,
by thunder! And that's the last they ever heard of it. Lots of men have
tried--lots of men. Some day I'll go myself, surer than shooting.' And
he let his hands drop to his sides and stared silently toward the north,
a queer, dreamy anger in his eyes. I've seen lots of mining men, lots of
prospectors, in my time, and it didn't take me long to size up that look
of his. 'Aha, my friend!' I said to myself. 'So you've got another vice,
have you! It isn't only rum that's got a hold on you!' And I turned my
horse into the town.

"But our conversation seemed to have stirred to the surface something
in Whitney's brain that had been at work there a long time, for after
that he would never let me alone about his Ten Strike Mine and the
mountains that hid it. 'Over there!' he would say, and point to the
north. From the porch of his bungalow the sleeping hills were plainly
visible above the shimmering desert. He would chew on the end of a
cigar and consider. 'It isn't very far, you know. Two days--maybe
three. All we need's water. No water there--at least, none found. All
those fellows who've prospected are fools. I'm an expert; so are you.
I tell you, Hardy, let's do it! A couple of little old pack-mules! Eh?
How about it? Next week? I can get off. God, I'd like money!' And he
would subside into a sullen silence. At first I laughed at him; but
I can tell you that sort of thing gets on your nerves sooner or later
and either makes you bolt it or else go. At the end of two weeks I
actually found myself considering the fool thing seriously. Of course,
I didn't want to discover a lost gold-mine, that is, unless I just
happened to stumble over it; I wanted to keep away from such things;
they're bad; they get into a man's blood like drugs; but I've always
had a hankering for a new country, and those hills, shining in the heat,
were compelling--very compelling. Besides, I reflected, a trip like that
might help to straighten Whitney up a little. I hadn't much hope, to be
sure, but drowning men clutch at straws. It's curious what sophistry you
use to convince yourself, isn't it? And then--something happened that
for two weeks occupied all my mind."

Hardy paused, considered for a moment the glowing end of his cigarette,
and finally looked up gravely; there was a slight hesitation, almost
an embarrassment, in his manner. "I don't exactly know how to put it,"
he began. "I don't want you chaps to imagine anything wrong; it was
all very nebulous and indefinite, you understand--Mrs. Whitney was a
wonderful woman. I wouldn't mention the matter at all if it wasn't
necessary for the point of my story; in fact, it is the point of my
story. But there was a man there--one of the young engineers--and
quite suddenly I discovered that he was in love with Mrs. Whitney,
and I think--I never could be quite sure, but I think she was in love
with him. It must have been one of those sudden things, a storm out
of a clear sky, deluging two people before they were aware. I imagine it
was brought to the surface by the chap's illness. He had been out riding
on the desert and had got off to look at something, and a rattlesnake
had struck him--a big, dust-dirty thing--on the wrist, and, very faint,
he had galloped back to the Whitneys'. And what do you suppose she had
done--Mrs. Whitney, that is? Flung herself down on him and sucked the
wound! Yes, without a moment's hesitation, her gold hair all about his
hand and her white dress in the dirt. Of course, it was a foolish thing
to do, and not in the least the right way to treat a wound, but she had
risked her life to do it; a slight cut on her lip--you understand; a
tiny, ragged place. Afterward, she had cut the wound crosswise, so, and
had put on a ligature, and then had got the man into the house some way
and nursed him until he was quite himself again. I dare say he had been
in love with her a long while without knowing it, but that clinched
matters. Those things come overpoweringly and take a man, down in places
like that--semitropical and lonely and lawless, with long, empty days
and moonlit nights. Perhaps he told Mrs. Whitney; he never got very far,
I am sure. She was a wonderful woman--but she loved him, I think. You
can tell those things, you know; a gesture, an unavoidable look, a
silence.

"Anyway, I saw what had happened and I was sorry, and for a fortnight
I hung around, loath to go, but hating myself all the while for not
doing so. And every day Whitney would come at me with his insane scheme.
'Over there! It isn't very far. Two days--maybe three. How about it?
Eh?' and then that tense sweep of the arm to the north. I don't know
what it was, weariness, disgust, irritation of the whole sorry plan
of things, but finally, and to my own astonishment, I found myself
consenting, and within two days Whitney had his crazy pack outfit ready,
and on the morning of the third day we set out. Mrs. Whitney had said
nothing when we unfolded our intentions to her, nor did she say anything
when we departed, but stood on the porch of the bungalow, her hand up
to her throat, and watched us out of sight. I wondered what she was
thinking about. The Voodoos--that was the name of the mountains we were
heading for--had killed a good many men in their time."

Hardy took a long and thoughtful sip from the glass in front of him
before he began again. "I've knocked about a good deal in my life," he
said; "I've been lost--once in the jungle; I've starved; I've reached
the point where I've imagined horrors, heard voices, you understand, and
seen great, bearded men mouthing at me--a man's pretty far gone when
that happens to him--but that trip across the desert was the worst I've
ever taken. By day it was all right, just swaying in your saddle, half
asleep a good part of the time, the smell of warm dust in your nose, the
three pack-mules plodding along behind; but the nights!--I tell you,
I've sat about camp-fires up the Congo and watched big, oily black men
eat their food, and I once saw a native village sacked, but I'd rather
be tied for life to a West Coast nigger than to a man like Whitney. It
isn't good for two people to be alone in a place like that and for one
to hate the other as I hated him. God knows why I didn't kill him; I'd
have to get up and leave the fire and go out into the night, and, mind
you, I'd be shuddering like a man with the ague under that warm, soft
air. And he never for a minute suspected it. His mind was scarred with
drink as if a worm had bored its slow way in and out of it. I can see
him now, cross-legged, beyond the flames, big, unshaven, heavy-jowled,
dirty, what he thought dripping from his mouth like the bacon drippings
he was too lazy to wipe away. I won't tell you what he talked about;
you know, the old thing; but not the way even the most wrong-minded of
ordinary men talks; there was a sodden, triumphant deviltry in him that
was appalling. He cursed the country for its lack of opportunity of a
certain kind; he was like a hound held in leash, gloating over what he
would do when he got back to the kennels of civilization again. And all
the while, at the back of my mind, was a picture of that white-and-gold
woman of his, way back toward the south, waiting his return because she
owed him her life for the brilliant career she had ruined. It made you
sometimes almost want to laugh--insanely. I used to lie awake at night
and pray whatever there was to kill him, and do it quickly. I would have
turned back, but I felt that every day I could keep him away from Los
Pinos was a day gained for Mrs. Whitney. He was a dangerous maniac, too.
The first day he behaved himself fairly well, but the second, after
supper, when we had cleaned up, he began to fumble through the packs,
and finally produced a bottle of brandy.

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