The Steadfast Heart/Chapter 2
CHAPTER TWO
Half an hour later, drowsing in the twilight with his back against the lofty oak which reared its top above the yard, Angus Burke heard his mother singing. So rapid are the changes from despair to contentment when one is aided by black pills! The song Angus heard was not only his mother’s favorite, it was her sole musical possession, and its subject was characteristic of the woman. It had to do with the exploits and demise of a certain famous outlaw whose crimes have been embellished with legendary glamor, and the song told of them in many verses which limped forward on maimed and mangled feet. When sung at night it filled Angus with vague terror.
“One dark and stormy night
When the moon was shining bright
The Denver stage was ro-o-obbed”
the woman sang; then she hummed a few bars gloatingly before she brought her full voice to bear on the overworked refrain:
“And they laid Jesse James in his grave.”
Further along there was a bit of choice phrasing and of poetic sentiment about—
“That dirty little coward
Who shot down Major Howard.
And they laid Jesse James in his grave.”
Angus arose and went into the house, where the vague light of the dusty lantern seemed to offer greater security from the menace of evening shadows. His eyes were extraordinarily bright and staring, and he shivered with terror at the image of Mr. James and his exploits conjured up. Mr. James was very actual to him, in spite of the death of that gentleman reported in the ballad. Angus looked back over his shoulder at the gathering night fearsomely, and then crept into a corner where he crouched, watching his mother with furtive, hunted eyes…. Mrs. Burke continued to sing.
She, like many another of her class, was obsessed by a morbid passion for criminals and for their professional activities. She rather specialized and was a connoisseur in grotesque crime, and was a sort of encyclopedic authority upon the gruesome details of every outstanding murder of the past decade, its perpetrators, their conversations following apprehension, but more especially their last words upon the scaffold. Last words upon the scaffold, when the noose was fast, held for her an unsightly fascination. They were her specialty…. When her miserable body was given a false life by the black pills, she, delighted to delve into her store and to recount in a tense, strained voice the horrifying particulars of crime after crime, until she worked herself into a state of unreasoning terror which verged upon madness…. Crouching over a smoking lantern, whose flicker caused uncanny shadows to move upon the somber walls, she would recount to Angus dreadful tales which frightened the boy so that he would sit panting and sobbing with fear, yet held him fascinated so that he could not wrench himself away…. She was teaching him the unnatural pleasure of terror….
Ceasing her melody suddenly, Mrs. Burke leaned toward Angus with a jerky, alert, listening movement and asked in the hoarse whisper of caution, “Angy—Angy, have you seen any men lurking about—any strange men?”
Though the boy did not realize it, there were moments in which his mother spoke with another tongue than Angus Burke’s; spoke with precision and correctness, used words in the manner of the cultivated. But Angus did not realize. In the world there existed but two sorts of people, so far as he knew, and they were himself and his family on the one side and a great, ever-shifting multitude whose hand was forever raised against them. He was afraid of every living soul except his mother, and what his feelings were toward her it would have been impossible to discover. Perhaps he had no feelings toward her. She existed, he existed—that was all….
Angus knew what was to follow now, recognized the question as a preamble, a part of his mother’s artistry…. He could not speak, but with wide eyes fixed upon her face, he shook his head in the negative.
“This is a lonely spot,” said Mrs. Burke in a whisper, “and your father had money—a great deal of money…. You saw it. He might have shown it to others.” As she fanned her terror to cold flame, it was to be noted that slovenliness of speech was discarded, elisions and colloquialisms were omitted, and she made use of the diction of education. “If robbers knew about that money!…” She sucked in her breath ecstatically, but drew closer to the light of the lantern and her pallid hand fluttered to her throat…. She was acting, yet she was not acting…. Silently she imagined for moments, then, suddenly, she clutched her son’s arm and whispered, “Hush—did you hear something then?”
She listened fearsomely; Angus listened, and his teeth rattled together. He was not imagining, could not, with his dulled, stunted, frozen mind, achieve to the heights of imagination. To him was nothing but stark actuality. She continued.
“There are robbers in Michigan as desperate as any in Missouri,” she confided to him. “They’re cruel…. When they rob they leave nobody alive to tell the tale…. They kill you in awful ways… when you live far from neighbors as we do—and nobody can hear your screams….” She paused again, and then pounced upon the next words with awful enjoyment., “Sometime they’ll come here—to this house…. We’ll hear them prowl about—and then they’ll rap on the door like this!” She shot the last word at Angus fiercely and illustrated with her knuckles on the table top…. Angus uttered a squeal of terror.
“They’ll rap like this with the hilt of a big knife—and then—and then—what will we do?”
With parched tongue Angus tried to moisten his livid lips; he could not have spoken to save his life.
“They may come to-night—with masks over their faces…. Maybe they’re on their way—after your father’s money…. We—we must defend ourselves. We must be ready.” Again a pause before she almost screamed the words, “Bar the door!… Get down your father’s gun.”
Angus crawled to the door and shot the bolt. He moved against it a wooden bench…. Then he took from its pegs his father’s rifle and dragged it along the floor to the table where his mother crouched.
“It’s loaded,” she whispered, and moved Angus’s chair to face the door, placing the table between. “Lay the gun across the table. Aim at the door…. If anybody comes and I say shoot—shoot!”
Mrs. Burke's terror now equaled her son’s. No longer was she gruesomely play-acting. The play had become actual. They were in danger of their lives from lurking robbers, flesh and blood miscreants who besieged them in their shanty, lusting for their blood…. The woman’s mouth sagged, the whites of her eyes showed under distended lids, and her voice rattled in her throat. She retreated to a murky corner jibbering, leaving Angus on guard…. It is to be noted that he remained on guard, finger on trigger, eyes upon the door. Even though he was beside himself with fear, he did not desert his post, did not cower in a corner as his mother cowered…. He could hear her jibbering and mouthing behind him.
“They’re coming. I know they’re coming…. Riding down the road…. It’s that money. Robbers always hear of money. When I say shoot you pull the trigger…. Oh, help, help, help!” Then she fell to moaning and to repeating over and over and over endlessly the miserable monosyllable, “Oh, oh, oh, oh….” until the word seemed to bore tiny, icy holes in Angus’s soul.
So passed an hour, the woman crouching, cowering in her corner, a squalid, unhuman sight; the little boy on guard, facing the door, waiting, listening, clutching the heavy stock of his father’s rifle until his fingers ached and cramped. He had not moved…. Of a sudden Mrs. Burke lifted her unkempt head and listened. “They’ve come,” she squalled, “They’ve come!”
To Angus’s ears came the sound of approaching horses, and a spasm of terror wracked him. He wanted to scream, to burrow, to hide his face…. Then came the sound of men’s voices, hushed, muffled, stealthy, menacing—and the noise of men leaping to the ground and moving about cautiously…. There was a pause of subdued conversation; then footsteps moved toward the house.
“Robbers!” Mrs. Burke tried to scream the word, but only a whisper came. “The robbers have come…. The light! The light!” She crawled along the floor to the table and pushed off the lantern, where, chimney broken, it gasped and expired, leaving the room in utter blackness…. Again she slunk to her corner.
Angus was aware that those without had circled the house. There were several of them, all silent now. The boy leaned forward, as though striving to pierce the walls with his eyes, but made no sound…. He was terrified beyond sound.
A heavy foot fell on the one unsteady step before the door and a rude hammering made the door tremble in its untrustworthy hinges…. It was exactly as his mother said it would be. The robbers were demanding admission, rapping with the pommel of a great knife. The rapping was repeated imperatively.
“Open the door,” roared a horrid voice. To Angus it was savage, bloodthirsty. There was a brief pause, then another thunderous knock and a second summons to open. Mrs. Burke screamed once and then became silent.
“I hear you inside there,” shouted the voice. “Open up before I bust in the door….”
Mrs. Burke turned her eyes toward her son in the blackness; her face was distorted, inhuman, her eyes glittered with the light of insanity. “Shoot!” she hissed. “Shoot! Shoot! Shoot!”
Angus pressed the butt of the rifle against his chest; its muzzle covered the door. He tugged at the trigger with fingers scarcely adequate to the task—tugged, so it seemed to him, for hours. Then, suddenly, the trigger gave; there was a horrible, ear-splitting crash and roar that mingled with the piercing shriek of his mother…. Then all was silence, a dazed, stunned silence, while the room filled with the stinging fumes from the exploded cartridge.
Someone seemed to fumble uncertainly at the door; there was a moan; a scraping and scratching, followed by the thud of a falling body…. Angus, immovable, kept his eyes on the door—he could not have withdrawn them.
After the stunned silence came a chorus of shouts and cries and exclamations, then more silence, and a voice said hysterically, “My God, boys, he’s killed the sheriff!”