In the Shadow of the Hills Part 48

He had been there with his father for a week, and now must go. He was chopping wood that morning, with his father looking on. Steele had cast a measuring glance at the pile of wood cut, then wiped the fine dew of perspiration from his brow, buried the ax blade in the chopping-log and seated himself upon a sawn block. A smile shaped itself upon his lips. Though he never chopped wood now except on these rare visits to his recluse father's cabin here on the forested mountain side, his tall lean figure was as tough and wiry as ever, his arm as tireless, his eye as true to cut the exact line. There was yet no softening of his fibers or fat on his ribs, and there would be neither if he had anything to say about it.

From the little Idaho town in the valley below, which he viewed through the clearing before the cabin, his gaze came around to his father seated on the doorstep. Taciturn and brooding the latter had always been, but the pity and sorrow struck at the son's heart as he perceived what a mere sh.e.l.l of a man now sat there, gray-haired, bent, fleshless, consumed body and soul by the destroying acid of some dark secret. Even when a lad Steele Weir had sensed the mystery clouding his father's life. Like an evil spell it had condemned them to solitude here in the mountains, until Steele's youth at last rebelled and he had departed, hungry for schooling, for human society and for a wider field of action.

What that secret might be he had for years not allowed himself to speculate. Unbidden at times the memory of certain revealing looks or acts of his father's floated into his mind:--a dread if not terror that on occasion dilated the elder man's eyes, and a steadfast driving of himself at work as if to obliterate painful and despairing thoughts, and an uneasy, furtive vigilance when forced to visit town.

Once when a stranger, a short heavy-set bearded man, had unexpectedly appeared at the door, his father had leaped for the revolver hanging in its holster on the wall.

On catching a second view of the chance visitor he had exclaimed, "Not Burkhardt after all!" With which he burst into a wild laugh, the shrill mirthless laugh of a man suddenly freed of a terrible fear.

However, as he returned the gun-belt to its place, his hand shook so that he pawed all around the nail on which it was accustomed to hang.

Steele Weir would never forget that moment of panic, his father's spring to the wall and following laugh--the only laugh he had heard from those lips; and though but twelve years old at the time he could not misread the episode. On another occasion he found his father kneeling at the grave under the giant pine beyond the cabin--the grave of the gentle mother of whom Steele had but dim recollections--and his father's hands were clasped, his head bowed.

With an infinite yearning he had longed to creep forward and comfort him by his presence, by a clasp of the hand, but the recollection of his father's habitual chill reserve daunted him and he stole away.

On his own life the mystery had left its gloomy impress. A solitary and joyless boyhood, overhung by he knew not what danger, haunted by a parent's lurking fear and anguish, had made him a silent, cold, ever watchful man, never entirely free from the expectation that his father's sealed past at some instant would open and confront him with the terrible facts. For that reason he felt that the success he had gained as an engineer, a success won by relentless toil and solid ability, rested on a quicksand. For that cause he had welcomed engineering projects full of danger and by his indifference to that danger gained his name "Cold Steel."

Now on this day with his father he once again put the question he always asked on his visits, and with no more hope of a consenting reply than before.

"I must be going to-morrow. Won't you come along with me this time, father? I want you to live with me, so that I can look after you and be with you. We can fix up a good cabin at the engineering camp.

You're not so strong as you were; you could fall sick here and die and never a person know it. I doubt if you spend, making yourself comfortable, one dollar in ten of the money I send you. You would be interested in the building of this big irrigation project I'm to direct."

His father appeared to shudder.

"No, no," he muttered. "I've lived here and I'll die here."

"That's what I'm afraid of," Steele responded. "Afraid you may become sick and die for lack of care."

"No. I'll remain, my son."

That was conclusive. It was the answer of not only thirty years of living at the spot, but of his secret dread. Steele saw once more the stark fear in his eyes, the fear of contact with men, of venturing out into the world, of precipitating fate.

For a time his father plucked his white unkempt beard with unsteady hand.

"Where's the place you're going this time?" he presently inquired, without real interest.

"New Mexico."

On the elder's face appeared suddenly a gray shadow as if the blood were ebbing from his heart.

"Where in New Mexico?" he whispered.

"The town of San Mateo."

His father struggled to his feet. With one hand he clutched the doorframe for support. The skin of his cheeks had gone a sickly white.

"San Mateo--San Mateo!" he gasped. "Not there, not there, Steele! Keep away, keep away, keep away! My G.o.d, not San Mateo--you!"

He swayed as if about to fall full length, gesturing blindly before his face as if to sweep away the thought, while his son ran towards him.

"Father, you're sick," Steele exclaimed, putting an arm about the other. And, in truth, the elder man seemed fainting, ready to collapse. "Come, let me help you in so you can lie down. I must bring a doctor."

Steele almost carried him to the bed. On it his father sank, remaining with closed eyes and scarcely breathing.

"No doctor; bring no doctor," he said painfully, at last. "I feel--I feel as if dying."

"I must bring a doctor. And I have a flask of whiskey; let me pour you a little to revive your heart."

The change the words wrought from pa.s.sivity to action was startling.

The elder Weir arose suddenly on elbow, glaring fiercely.

"Whiskey, never! It brought me to this, it d.a.m.ned my life. If it had not been for whiskey----" Without finishing the words he fell back on the bed.

The loathing, the hatred, the utter horror of his exclamation, banished from his son's mind further thought of using this stimulant.

"But the doctor?" he inquired, gently.

"No use, Steele. I've been the same as a dead man for days. Just ashes. I want to die; I want to lie by your mother there under the big pine. And maybe I'll have peace--peace."

Steele took in his own the wasted hand hanging from the bed. He held it tight, with a feeling of infinite tragedy.

"You'll be yourself again soon," he said comfortingly, though without faith in the a.s.surance.

His father's lips moved in a whisper.

"No; my time is here at last," said he. "But don't go to San Mateo, Steele,--don't go, don't go. Oh, my G.o.d, spare me that!"

"Would you have me break my word? I never have to any man, father. I accepted this offer and signed a contract. I'm morally bound; these men are depending on me. Were you ever at San Mateo? Was it something that happened there that makes you fearful to have me go? San Mateo is a thousand miles from here."

The face before him became like the face of a corpse. For an instant Steele's heart went cold in the belief that his father had died under the effect of his declaration. But at last the eyelids raised, the eyes gazed at him. And all at once the features of the harsh visage seemed softened, changed, lightened by a dim illumination.

"I see you now as you are, a man, stronger than I ever was," he murmured. "I lived in fear, but my fear was not for myself. Had I been alone, nothing would have mattered after your mother died. But my fear was for you--and of you. I was afraid your life would be blasted; I was in terror lest you should hate and despise me when you learned the truth. So I sought to conceal it."

"You had no need to fear that."

"I see it now. Tell me everything or nothing as you wish about your going to San Mateo to work; it will frighten me no longer."

Steele briefly spoke of his new work there, of the magnitude of the project and the desire he had had that his father might be with him.

"I'm proud of you," his father said. "G.o.d knows I have not been the parent I would or should have been."

"It's enough for me if your heart's easy now."

"I feel as if I were gaining peace at last and--and I must speak. In San Mateo--ah, Steele, you will hear of me there,--you may have to fight the d.a.m.ning influence of my name and past, but I know now you'll come through it. And all I pray for is that you can retain a little love for me despite everything."

"Whatever it is I shall hear of my father, I should rather hear it from his lips than from strangers'."

The hand in his closed spasmodically. For a long time nothing was said, and the only sound in the room was the ticking of the tin clock on the shelf busily measuring off the seconds of the old man's failing span. To Steele it was as if his father was slowly summoning the few remaining shreds of his fort.i.tude to reveal the cancer of his past.

"I'm a branded murderer," he said at last, gasping.