Lin McLean Part 25

That school-yard slur about his mother was as dim to his understanding as to the offender's, yet mysterious nature had bid him go to instant war! How foreseeing in Lin to choke the unfounded jest about his relation to Billy Lusk, in hopes to save the boy's ever awakening to the facts of his mother's life! "Though," said the driver, an easygoing cynic, "folks with lots of fathers will find heaps of brothers in this country!" But presently he let Billy hold the reins, and at the next station carefully lifted him down and up. "I've knowed that woman, too,"

he whispered to me. "Sidney, Nebraska. Lusk was off half the time. We laughed when she fooled Lin into marryin' her. Come to think," he mused, as twilight deepened around our clanking stage, and small Billy slept sound between us, "there's scarcely a thing in life you get a laugh out of that don't make soberness for somebody."

Soberness had now visited the pair behind us; even Lin's lively talk had quieted, and his tones were low and few. But though Miss Jessamine at our next change of horses "hoped" I would come inside, I knew she did not hope very earnestly, and outside I remained until Buffalo.

Journeying done, her face revealed the strain beneath her brave brightness, and the haunting care she could no longer keep from her eyes. The imminence of the jail and the meeting had made her cheeks white and her countenance seem actually smaller; and when, reminding me that we should meet again soon, she gave me her hand, it was ice-cold.

I think she was afraid Lin might offer to go with her. But his heart understood the lonely sacredness of her next half-hour, and the cow puncher, standing aside for her to pa.s.s, lifted his hat wistfully and spoke never a word. For a moment he looked after her with sombre emotion; but the court-house and prison stood near and in sight, and, as plain as if he had said so, I saw him suddenly feel she should not be stared at going up those steps; it must be all alone, the pain and the joy of that reprieve! He turned away with me, and after a few silent steps said, "Wasted! all wasted!"

"Let us hope--" I began.

"You're not a fool," he broke in, roughly. "You don't hope anything."

"He'll start life elsewhere," said I.

"Elsewhere! Yes, keep starting till all the elsewheres know him like Powder River knows him. But she! I have had to sit and hear her tell and tell about him; all about back in Kentucky playin' around the farm, and how she raised him after the old folks died. Then he got bigger and made her sell their farm, and she told how it was right he should turn it into money and get his half. I did not dare say a word, for she'd have just bit my head off, and--and that would sure hurt me now!" Lin brought up with a comical chuckle. "And she went to work, and he cleared out, and no more seen or heard of him. That's for five years, and she'd given up tracing him, when one morning she reads in the paper about how her long-lost brother is convicted for forgery. That's the way she knows he's not dead, and she takes her savings off her railroad salary and starts for him. She was that hasty she thought it was Buffalo, New York, till she got in the cars and read the paper over again. But she had to go as far as Cincinnati, either way. She has paid every cent of the money he stole." We had come to the bridge, and Lin jerked a stone into the quick little river. "She's awful strict in some ways. Thought Buffalo must be a wicked place because of the shops bein' open Sunday.

Now if that was all Buffalo's wickedness! And she thinks divorce is mostly sin. But her heart is a shield for Nate."

"Her face is as beautiful as her actions," he added.

"Well," said I, "and would you make such a villain your brother-in-law?"

He whirled round and took both my shoulders. "Come walking!" he urged.

"I must talk some." So we followed the stream out of town towards the mountains. "I came awful near asking her in the stage," said he.

"Goodness, Lin! give yourself time!"

"Time can't increase my feelings."

"Hers, man, hers! How many hours have you known her?"

"Hours and hours! You're talking foolishness! What have they got to do with it? And she will listen to me. I can tell she will. I know I can be so she'll listen, and it will go all right, for I'll ask so hard.

And everything'll come out straight. Yu' see, I've not been spending to speak of since Billy's on my hands, and now I'll fix up my cabin and finish my fencing and my ditch--and she's going to like Box Elder Creek better than Shawhan. She's the first I've ever loved."

"Then I'd like to ask--" I cried out.

"Ask away!" he exclaimed, inattentively, in his enthusiasm.

"When you--" but I stopped, perceiving it impossible. It was, of course, not the many transient pa.s.sions on which he had squandered his substance, but the one where faith also had seemed to unite. Had he not married once, innocent of the woman's being already a wife? But I stopped, for to trench here was not for me or any one.

And my pause strangely flashed on him something of that I had in my mind.

"No," he said, his eyes steady and serious upon me, "don't you ask about the things you're meaning." Then his face grew radiant and rather stern. "Do you suppose I don't know she's too good for me? And that some bygones can't ever be bygones? But if you," he said, "never come to look away up to a woman from away down, and mean to win her just the same as if you did deserve her, why, you'll make a turruble mess of the whole business!"

When we walked in silence for a long while, he lighted again with the blossoming dawn of his sentiment. I thought of the coa.r.s.e yet taking vagabond of twenty I had once chanced upon, and hunted and camped with since through the years. Decidedly he was not that boy to-day! It is not true that all of us rise through adversity, any more than that all plants need shadow. Some starve out of the sunshine; and I have seen misery deaden once kind people to everything but self--almost the saddest sight in the world! But Lin's character had not stood well the ordeal of happiness, and for him certainly harsh days and responsibility had been needed to ripen the spirit. Yes, Jessamine Buckner would have been much too good for him before that humiliation of his marriage, and this care of young Billy with which he had loaded himself. "Lin," said I, "I will drink your health and luck."

"I'm healthy enough," said he; and we came back to the main street and into the main saloon.

"How d'ye, boys?" said some one, and there was Nate Buckner. "It's on me to-day," he continued, shoving whiskey along the bar; and I saw he was a little drunk. "I'm setting 'em up," he continued. "Why? Why, because"--he looked around for appreciation--"because it's not every son-of-a-gun in Wyoming gets pardoned by Governor Barker. I'm important, I want you to understand," he pursued to the cold bystanders. "They'll have a picture of me in the Cheyenne paper. 'The Bronco-buster of Powder River!' They can't do without me! If any son-of-a-gun here thinks he knows how to break a colt," he shouted, looking around with the irrelevant fierceness of drink--and then his challenge ebbed vacantly in laughter as the subject blurred in his mind. "You're not drinking, Lin,"

said he.

"No," said McLean, "I'm not."

"Sworn off again? Well, water never did agree with me."

"Yu' never gave water the chance," retorted the cow-puncher, and we left the place without my having drunk his health.

It was a grim beginning, this brag attempt to laugh his reputation down, with the jail door scarce closed behind him. "Folks are not going to like that," said Lin, as we walked across the bridge again to the hotel.

Yet the sister, left alone here after an hour at most of her brother's company, would pretend it was a matter of course. Nate was not in, she told us at once. He had business to attend to and friends to see he must get back to Riverside and down in that country where colts were waiting for him. He was the only one the E. K. outfit would allow to handle their young stock. Did we know that? And she was going to stay with a Mrs. Pierce down there for a while, near where Nate would be working.

All this she told us; but when he did not return to dine with her on this first day, I think she found it hard to sustain her wilful cheeriness. Lin offered to take her driving to see the military post and dress parade at retreat, and Cloud's Peak, and Buffalo's various sights; but she made excuses and retired to her room. Nate, however, was at tea, shaven clean, with good clothes, and well conducted. His tone and manner to Jessamine were confidential and caressing, and offended Mr. McLean, so that I observed to him that it was scarcely reasonable to be jealous.

"Oh, no jealousy!" said he. "But he comes in and kisses her, and he kisses her good-night, and us strangers looking on! It's such oncontrollable affection, yu' see, after never writing for five years. I expect she must have some of her savings left."

It is true that the sister gave the brother money more than once; and as our ways lay together, I had chances to see them both, and to wonder if her joy at being with him once again was going to last. On the road to Riverside I certainly heard Jessamine beg him to return home with her; and he ridiculed such a notion. What proper life for a live man was that dead place back East? he asked her. I thought he might have expressed some regret that they must dwell so far apart, or some intention to visit her now and then; but he said nothing of the sort, though he spoke volubly of himself and his prospects. I suppose this spectacle of brother and sister had rubbed Lin the wrong way too much, for he held himself and Billy aloof, joining me on the road but once, and then merely to give me the news that people here wanted no more of Nate Buckner; he would be run out of the country, and respect for the sister was all that meanwhile saved him. But Buckner, like so many spared criminals, seemed brazenly unaware he was disgraced, and went hailing loudly any riders or drivers we met, while beside him his sister sat close and straight, her stanch affection and support for the world to see. For all she let appear, she might have been bringing him back from some gallant heroism achieved; and as I rode along the travesty seemed more and more pitiful, the outcome darker and darker.

At all times is Riverside beautiful, but most beautiful when the sun draws down through the openings of the hills. From each one a stream comes flowing clearly out into the plain, and fields spread green along the margins. It was beneath the long-slanted radiance of evening that we saw Blue Creek and felt its coolness rise among the shifting veils of light. The red bluff eastward, the tall natural fortress, lost its stern masonry of shapes, and loomed a soft towering enchantment of violet and amber and saffron in the changing rays. The cattle stood quiet about the levels, and horses were moving among the restless colts. These the brother bade his sister look at, for with them was his glory; and I heard him boasting of his skill--truthful boasting, to be sure. Had he been honest in his dealings, the good-will that man's courage and dashing appearance beget in men would have brought him more employment than he could have undertaken. He told Jessamine his way of breaking a horse that few would dare, and she listened eagerly. "Do you remember when I used to hold the pony for you to get on?" she said. "You always would scare me, Nate!" And he replied, fluently, Yes, yes; did she see that horse there, near the fence? He was a four-year-old, an outlaw, and she would find no one had tried getting on his back since he had been absent. This was the first question he asked on reaching the cabin, where various neighbors were waiting the mail-rider; and, finding he was right, he turned in pride to Jessamine.

"They don't know how to handle that horse," said he. "I told you so.

Give me a rope."

Did she notice the cold greeting Nate received? I think not. Not only was their welcome to her the kinder, but any one is glad to witness bold riding, and this chance made a stir which the sister may have taken for cordiality. But Lin gave me a look; for it was the same here as it had been in the Buffalo saloon.

"The trick is easy enough," said Nate, arriving with his outlaw, and liking an audience. "You don't want a bridle, but a rope hackamore like this--Spanish style. Then let them run as hard as they want, and on a sudden reach down your arm and catch the hackamore short, close up by the mouth, and jerk them round quick and heavy at full speed. They quit their fooling after one or two doses. Now watch your outlaw!"

He went into the saddle so swift and secure that the animal, amazed, trembled stock-still, then sprang headlong. It stopped, vicious and knowing, and plunged in a rage, but could do nothing with the man, and bolted again, and away in a straight blind line over the meadow, when the rider leaned forward to his trick. The horse veered in a jagged swerve, rolled over and over with its twisted impetus, and up on its feet and on without a stop, the man still seated and upright in the saddle. How we cheered to see it! But the figure now tilted strangely, and something awful and nameless came over us and chilled our noise to silence. The horse, dazed and tamed by the fall, brought its burden towards us, a wobbling thing, falling by small shakes backward, until the head sank on the horse's rump.

"Come away," said Lin McLean to Jessamine and at his voice she obeyed and went, leaning on his arm.

Jessamine sat by her brother until he died, twelve hours afterwards, having spoken and known nothing. The whole weight of the horse had crushed him internally. He must have become almost instantly unconscious, being held in the saddle by his spurs, which had caught in the hair cinch; it may be that our loud cheer was the last thing of this world that he knew. The injuries to his body made impossible any taking him home, which his sister at first wished to do. "Why, I came here to bring him home," she said, with a smile and tone like cheerfulness in wax. Her calm, the unearthly ease with which she spoke to any comer (and she was surrounded with rough kindness), embarra.s.sed the listeners; she saw her calamity clear as they did, but was sleep-walking in it. It was Lin gave her what she needed--the repose of his strong, silent presence.

He spoke no sympathy and no advice, nor even did he argue with her about the burial; he perceived somehow that she did not really hear what was said to her, and that these first griefless, sensible words came from some mechanism of the nerves; so he kept himself near her, and let her tell her story as she would. Once I heard him say to her, with the same authority of that first "come away"; "Now you've had enough of the talking. Come for a walk." Enough of the talking--as if it were a treatment! How did he think of that? Jessamine, at any rate, again obeyed him, and I saw the two going quietly about in the meadows and along the curving brook; and that night she slept well. On one only point did the cow-puncher consult me.

"They figured to put Nate on top of that bald mound," said he. "But she has talked about the flowers and shade where the old folks lie, and where she wants him to be alongside of them. I've not let her look at him to-day, for--well, she might get the way he looks now on her memory.

But I'd like to show you my idea before going further."

Lin had indeed chosen a beautiful place, and so I told him at the first sight of it.

"That's all I wanted to know," said he. "I'll fix the rest."

I believe he never once told Jessamine the body could not travel so far as Kentucky. I think he let her live and talk and grieve from hour to hour, and then led her that afternoon to the nook of sunlight and sheltering trees, and won her consent to it thus; for there was Nate laid, and there she went to sit, alone. Lin did not go with her on those walks.

But now something new was on the fellow's mind. He was plainly occupied with it, whatever else he was doing, and he had some active cattle-work.

On my asking him if Jessamine Buckner had decided when to return east, he inquired of me, angrily, what was there in Kentucky she could not have in Wyoming? Consequently, though I surmised what he must be debating, I felt myself invited to keep out of his confidence, and I did so. My advice to him would have been ill received, and--as was soon to be made plain--would have done his delicacy injustice. Next, one morning he and Billy were gone. My first thought was that he had rejoined Jessamine at Mrs. Pierce's, where she was, and left me away over here on Bear Creek, where we had come for part of a week.

But stuck in my hat-band I found a pencilled farewell.

Now Mr. McLean constructed perhaps three letters in the year--painful, serious events--like an interview with some important person with whom your speech must decorously flow. No matter to whom he was writing, it froze all nature stiff in each word he achieved; and his bald business diction and wild archaic penmanship made doc.u.ments that I value among my choicest correspondence; this one, especially:

"Wensday four a. m.

"DEAR SIR this is to Inform you that i have gone to Separ on important bisness where i expect to meet you on your arrival at same point. You will confer a favor and oblidge undersigned by Informing Miss J. Buckner of date (if soon) you fix for returning per stage to Separ as Miss J. Buckner may prefer company for the trip being long and poor accommodations.