The Benevolent Liar/Chapter 6
CHAPTER VI.
“Well, Tommy, I found out who owned the place where the camp of Bonanza used to be, and I bought the whole blamed place for a thousand cash,” the prospector jubilated at the table on the following noon. “And this afternoon we'll walk over and take a look at her. The feller says there's a cabin there with a fireplace in it, that he built two or three years ago when he was trying to scratch a livin' by workin' some old pay dumps.”
“Then I suppose we may as well take your outfit right over?” suggested Tom, in an inquiring tone.
Much to his surprise, the prospector said not until they had looked the ground over, and perhaps not until they had found the old shaft. Tom wondered at this piece of executive planning, failing to see the advisability of walking three miles each way daily; but Josh insisted that he liked the hotel, the company, and the sights of Shingle.
“Besides,” he added, “we're in no such terrible rush that we can't afford to take the walk mornin's and evenin's.”
The man who had sold them the property conducted them to it by a trail that was nearly overgrown, and they looked down into a little valley with nothing to indicate the former camp save here and there a slate or stone fireplace that stood, sentinellike, above the heaps of rotten logs.
“It's a mighty pretty place, anyhow,” exclaimed the new owner. “If we don't find nothin', it's still all right. If we do find somethin', it's goin' to be a paradise, and we must do the fair thing by the feller I bought it from. I told him why I was buyin' it, because it didn't seem right to take it from him on the blind, and he said he'd heard that yarn but didn't take stock in it.”
They inspected the cabin, and with that also Josh was highly pleased.
“She's sure some little home,” he said. “I never had but one cabin with three whole rooms before, and I always did want one. By crackey! If we find anything, me and you'll just add an L onto this for a kitchen and eatin' room, and then we'll put a little lean-to on that for a cook's bedroom, ard she'll sure be a palace. Then we'll put a big, deep porch around the whole inside of that L and one end of the buildin', and we'll get some flowers growin' when we ain't got nothin' else to do, and”
He stopped and frowned when he discovered that his enthusiasm was not being responded to, and thought to himself: “Great Scott! What can I do to make this Tom Rogers quit broodin' over things and get interested?”
They traveled over the little flat, examining it carefully, but could find no trace whatever of the old shaft. Not even a remnant of a waste dump was there to indicate its existence. It was nearly time for the evening meal when they retraced their way to Shingle, the prospector still perturbed by his companion's reticence and depression.
After the meal was finished, Josh stepped out into the long street that was now being traversed by men whose day's work was finished and by swarms of children who played boisterously in the dusk. He wondered why so many traveled in one direction, and so joined the stream: It led him to the post office that seemed to be a gathering place. Behind the crude glass partition he heard the steady “thump, thump” of the cancellation stamp, then the window flew open and a line formed. He envied those who expected mail, and particularly those who received so many letters that they rented a box.
“Ah, good evening, Mr. Price,” said a cheery, girlish voice behind him, and he turned, blinking his eyes in surprise that any woman should address him.
“Oh!” he said, thrusting out his brown hand. “You're Frank Barnes' little girl, ain't you?”
“Yes,” she said, smiling with amusement, “I'm Edith Barnes.”
“Gosh almighty! You look to me as if you'd growed more, or done something to yourself since day before yesterday,” he said, staring at her slowly from the top of her head down to her boots. “Anyhow, you've got big enough since then to get into long dresses,” he added.
“Oh,” she laughed, “that was my riding skirt. I remember now.”
“Short ones do make a heap of difference,” Josh agreed. “I reckon I'd of paid more attention to you if I'd thought for a minute you were a real, growed-up woman. I thought you was just a kid.”
He laughed so heartily and so infectiously that all those near by smiled and stared at him, seeing in him a great giant of a man from the hills with good humor and kindliness written in every wrinkle of his rugged face. Then, as if suddenly recalling something, his face sobered and he looked at her thoughtfully.
“You're about eighteen year old, ain't you?” he asked, with his customary frankness.
“Me?” Her eyebrows lifted above her violet eyes, bringing a whimsical little line between them, and she smiled, showing white, even, and beautiful teeth. “Eighteen? Why, I shall be twenty-three next month.”
“Goin' on twenty-three, eh? Let's see; goin' on twenty-three from goin' on twenty-six is three years. Um-m-mh! I'm pretty close to sixty. By Jehosophat, that's it! I'm too old to interest young folks a whole lot. Sure as shootin' I got it!”
Edith Barnes looked at him in bewilderment as he reckoned aloud, and wondered if he was trying to make a joke, but was perplexed by the intensely serious look in his eyes.
“Say, Miss Edith,” he said, “I'd like to walk a piece with you. I got somethin' I want to talk about.”
“Certainly. Glad to have you,” she assented, turning toward the door with the bundle of mail in her hands. “I am going home, and I know how glad father would be to have you visit him. He has told me ever so many things about you since we met the other day.”
“Oh, Lord, I hope not!” exclaimed the prospector, with signs of distress.
“Oh, nothing to frighten you,” she said a little maliciously. “My father likes and admires you, so doubtless he has been discreet; but—you have had a very exciting, peculiar life, Mr. Price.”
“Josh, to my friends,” he objected. “I ain't used to being called mister by anybody, and I don't call nobody I like mister, either,” he explained, as they passed out into the street. He talked perfunctorily until they had left the main street of Shingle and started down the shadowy length of another that, bisecting it, led its way through the only pretentious residential district in the camp, and now he tuned his fine voice to a shade of thoughtful melancholy suited to his aims.
“I told you back there in the post office,” he said, “that I wanted to talk to you about something, and—well, it's mighty confidential, Miss Edith, and I hardly know how to begin.”
“Heavens! Sounds almost like a proposal,” she exclaimed in pretended alarm; but, looking up at his face, she saw that it was very grave and unsmiling.
“It ain't about me exactly,” he hastened to explain. “Not that I don't know how to propose to a girl, but—it's a long time since I did, and—Miss Edith, there won't be any more as far as I'm concerned, because I've had a heap of sorrer in my life.”
She became grave and attentive, quite curious to know what this strange adventurer had to confide.
“Nope! It ain't about me,” Josh said, after waiting to get due effect of sorrow. “And maybe I'm doin' wrong in tellin' you something that I ain't no business to tell, and that'd make a certain friend of mine terribly cut up if he knew I'd ever told it. But, you see, I can't help it. It's about that young pardner of mine, Tommy Rogers,” he said quietly. He paused and added, almost to himself: “Tommy Rogers! As nice a young feller as ever lived. Like a son to me, he is! Tommy Rogers, that's dying from a broken heart.”
There was an immense pathos in his tone, and, oddly enough, it was genuine, too. Its sincerity won. With the sense of magnetism possessed by great actors, great orators, and great liars alike, he knew that he had her, for she stopped abruptly and with parted lips and sympathetic eyes looked up at his face, at his puckered brows, and grave eyes. He did not waver. He was the embodiment of crude, unfaltering truth.
“It's true,” he asserted. “Dying of a broken heart, that boy that is like a son to me; willed to me by as fine a man as ever lived, for whom I'm a guardian appointed by the dying, who has not another soul in all this big world to help him and back him and fight for him but me—that boy will either go mad from suffering or die, if I can't get him to forget. And, Miss Edith, I can't! I'm an old man; I ain't educated like him. We don't think the same, or about the same things. He's a college man. I never was to school after I was ten years old, and am an old, ignorant, hard-workin', stupid, thick-brained prospector. Good company for mules and roughnecks and them that can't read, write, nor talk. He knows books. I don't. He can read 'em without follerin' the lines with his finger and gettin' stuck on big words. Tommy gets books—Latin books; those funny-lookin' Greek books —and he reads 'em, Miss Edith. Then he makes figures—lots of 'em, strings of 'em—figures that don't count nothin' to a ignorant old cuss like me. Why, do you know what the head professor down at Berkeley University told me after Tommy left?”
He stopped and looked down at her while she waited.
“'Mister Price,' says he, 'I do hate to have you let Thomas Alfred Rogers leave this seat of learnin', I do,' says he, 'because that young man is certainly the brightest and most promisin' student we've ever had in the engineerin' course. You should keep him here till he's finished.' And, Miss Edith, bein' an old fool and stubborn and ignorant, I held back his own money from him—money his dying father had left me to educate him with, because I thought he knew enough and ought to have the money to start out with.”
He noted with satisfaction that she drew away from him as if repelled by the knowledge of his hideous shortcomings. He played, with his rare knowledge of human nature, upon her heart-strings as adroitly as a harpist might finger his wires. He spoke in a hoarse undertone:
“I didn't know. I stood in his way. In the way of the right thing. He was dead right and I was dead wrong, and I'd made a blunder that I can't ever undo, and that I'd give my life to square up. I—yes, me, Miss Edith, just me—stole from that lad a career. Why, I don't know what he might have been. Maybe another John Hays Hammond, who can smell gold under a mountain ten mile high.”
He thrilled when he felt her hand impulsively laid upon his arm, as he stood with eyes fixed upon the path at his feet as if unable to lift them above his humiliation. She was sorry for him. She tried to comfort him.
“Don't grieve over it,” she said, in her rich young voice, filled with sympathy to the point of overflowing. “You did make a mistake. But you did what you thought was right, and perhaps, after all, it was as well.”
In the face of her undoubted distress and her wasted regret, he was ashamed of himself for an instant, but pursued his way toward his object. He must so impress her, there and then, that she should be welded to his need.
“And that was but the beginnin' of it all,” he declared remorsefully. “He come down to Val Verde and he went to work. There's mighty few such industrious fellers as Tommy is, I may tell you, Miss Edith. He was makin' good at the big mine as an engineer. And then he falls in love with a girl. She ain't got nothin' in the way of money, but a home stake in the way of looks. She's a school-teacher. She's about the finest girl I ever knowed. She's a regular angel. Well, I've an idea, although, mind you, I ain't sure about this, and I don't want to talk about things I ain't certain about—but I got an idea that they was waitin' till they got a little older to get married. Then one night there's a fire. Whish! Up it goes! It's in the boardin' house where she lived, and it was a big, tall lumber buildin' that burned like it was full of pitch and tar and paint and oil and all that sort of stuff. My Tommy runs down the street to it with fear makin' his eyes hang out, and, he asks a fireman if everybody's safe. The fireman tells him he thinks so. Just then up comes a woman who's wringin' her hands and cryin'. 'Miss Brown!' she says. 'Minnie's not here! She lived on the top floor!' Tom busted past the fireman and into the house. 'That guy's a goner,' says the fireman. 'A salamander couldn't run in there and ever run out again alive.' And he tried to stop Tom, and they bring another hose and the fire chief yells, and there's all sorts of trouble in about a minute; but my boy Tom has gone.”
For a moment he wondered whether he had gone too far, but concluded from her strained attitude and twisted fingers that she was terribly alive to his story.
“Well,” he continued, in a lower voice, “the fireman was wrong, because Tom did come out, on the roof. And in his arms he carried somethin' wrapped in a bedquilt, somethin' that didn't move. Somethin' that lay quite limp and quiet. He stood there on the roof, with the light flamin' up about him, as if dazed. He'd fought to the end, you see. He was all in! He'd gone just as far as he could. He'd got her; put all there was ahead of him was to finish—with her in his arms. Her that he loved. the little school-teacher of Val Verde!”
He paused to draw a deep breath.
“Miss Edith, I know it's a lot of fun to make jokes about firemen in these small towns, but don't you believe it!, They're just as brave men as them that fights in the big towns. They saw them two up on the roof, up there alone, and they put their ladders against the burnin' walls, climbed through the hot flames that lapped 'em in their eyes and faces; climbed still higher when they felt the sides of the buildin' quiverin' and tremblin' and just about to fall, and—they brought 'em down, Tommy Rogers and the thing he carried in his arms; the thing that had been alive just a little while before; the thing that had danced and sung and laughed and done its best; all that was left of the little school-teacher—and the man that tried to save her. Sometimes I think the heart of Tommy Rogers died with her that night at the foot of the ladder, lighted by the flames and with the crashing of the wooden walls behind him.”
He paused, and suffered a stab of remorse when he saw that she had dropped the bundle of letters on the board walk, and was holding her handkerchief to her eyes and sobbing with sympathy. He blinked at the white spots at her feet, for his imagination had swept forward until he, too, had felt and suffered all that of which he had so freely lied. For an instant he almost believed in the truth of his purely fictitious story, and his own eyes were moist.
“That was more than two years ago,” he said, in a thoughtful, reminiscent tone. “Two years ago, and he ain't never been the same since. He does what I ask him to. He works hard and faithful, but he never goes out anywhere. No woman can interest him more'n a half an hour or so. He sits around, when he thinks I ain't watchin', with his head in his hands—leanin' on his knees. He studies his books sometimes, and then brushes 'em away and looks a long way off—backward, Miss Edith—back at what's gone and can't never come back again no more.”
He stopped, stooped, and picked up the letters. He shifted and sorted them to a compact bundle and held them in his hands, waiting for her to speak.
“Poor, poor boy!” she said brokenly. “Poor, poor Tom Rogers! But what can I do? Tell me.”
She turned and looked up at him as he towered above her with his straight neck, his confidently poised head, and his broad shoulders. His conscience hurt him a trifle as he looked down on her white, upturned face.
“I'm not sure that you can do anything,” he said gravely. “Girls ain't interested him none since then. He's like a man that has lost the only thing that keeps the world and all that's in it movin' and liftin' its head and strainin' its muscles and forever tryin' that thing we call hope. I don't know nothin' but this, that it beats me; that I can't make him forget; that—that I can't make him see the stars again. And I thought that maybe if you, that's his kind, the kind that reads books and can talk about 'em, and think of things that us ignorant fellers don't know nothin' about—that if you was to try, you could.”
He stopped, forgot his lie, and abruptly spoke the truth with all the fervor that truth reveals and nothing else can simulate or conceal.
“Miss Edith,” he said, “I feel that I'm to blame for what Tom Rogers is. If I'd tried harder, it wouldn't have happened, and he wouldn't be this way. He'd be happy—just the happy son of his father that I loved, old Bill Rogers, my pardner. It's not right for the soul of a man to shiver when he's but twenty-five, and to think that the greatest game of all, the game of life, is done, and him barred from any further playin' on its so many numbers. I can't brace him up. Help me, won't you? You're his kind. You've got the young heart and the young mind. Help me make Tommy Rogers forget. Help me to get him interested in what's doin' to-day and to-morrow and forgettin' all about yesterday. I want you and me to be pardners in a mighty big work—somethin' more worth while than I've ever done before—the makin' of a man!”
He held his hands toward her in open appeal. She dropped hers into them. She looked up at him, still under the spell of his imagination.
“If I can help your friend to forget and to 'brace up,' as you say, you may depend upon me. I don't know that I can. But it does seem as if I could help. Now what must I do?”
“Just be nice to him,” the prospector said. “Make him feel that there's a lot of things to be done yet, and that the game's never out and finished till the player's finished and played out.”
“I'll do it, Mr. Price”
“Josh, to my friends!”
“I'll do it. You bring him up to the house. I'll see that he makes friends with a lot of others. If there's any way to make him forget that horrible experience, I'll do it.”
“Horrible experience? Horrible experience?” questioned the prospector, forgetting for the moment to what she referred.
“The loss of—the fire, I mean,” she said, taking the parcel of letters from his hand.
“Good Lord!” said Josh, aghast. “Whatever you do, don't ever say nothin' about that! Don't let him have an idea you ever know about it, because if you did, so help me Moses, you'd never see him again! He's an awful sensitive cuss about his past, miss. Never did know nobody like him. He'll try to cover it all up. Why, do you know, he might even make you think, by what he says, that he's only knowed me—yes, even me!—for no more'n a, few days? True! Sure's you're born it is. He's that sensitive that I never speak about nothin' that happened more'n a week ago. Don't ever let him talk about amything that's done with. It sets him right back, it does. He gets to thinkin' and studyin' and broodin', and he don't get over it for days. Sabe?”
“Yes,” she said, “I understand, and I shall be careful. You leave it to me. I'll do my best. And if I can help that poor man out, I'm going to! Bring him up to our house to-morrow evening. I shall be there. Perhaps I can have a friend or two in also.”
“That,” said Josh, “is what I call bein' a good girl! Now I reckon we'd better be hikin' along with that mail for your paw.”