Lin McLean Part 4

If you journey in a Pullman from Mesa to Omaha without a waistcoat, and with a silk handkerchief knotted over the collar of your flannel shirt instead of a tie, wearing, besides, tall, high-heeled boots, a soft, gray hat with a splendid brim, a few people will notice you, but not the majority. New Mexico and Colorado are used to these things. As Iowa, with its immense rolling grain, encompa.s.ses you, people will stare a little more, for you're getting near the East, where cow-punchers are not understood. But in those days the line of cleavage came sharp-drawn at Chicago. West of there was still tolerably west, but east of there was east indeed, and the Atlantic Ocean was the next important stopping-place. In Lin's new train, good gloves, patent-leathers, and silence prevailed throughout the sleeping-car, which was for Boston without change. Had not home memories begun impetuously to flood his mind, he would have felt himself conspicuous. Town clothes and conventions had their due value with him. But just now the boy's single-hearted thoughts were far from any surroundings, and he was murmuring to himself, "To-morrow! tomorrow night!"

There were ladies in that blue plush car for Boston who looked at Lin for thirty miles at a stretch; and by the time Albany was reached the next day one or two of them commented that he was the most attractive-looking man they had ever seen! Whereas, beyond his tallness, and wide-open, jocular eyes, eyes that seemed those of a not highly conscientious wild animal, there was nothing remarkable about young Lin except stage effect. The conductor had been annoyed to have such a pa.s.senger; but the cow-puncher troubled no one, and was extremely silent. So evidently was he a piece of the true frontier that curious and hopeful fellow-pa.s.sengers, after watching him with diversion, more than once took a seat next to him. He met their chatty inquiries with monosyllables so few and so unprofitable in their quiet politeness that the pa.s.sengers soon gave him up. At Springfield he sent a telegram to his brother at the great dry-goods establishment that employed him.

The train began its homestretch after Worcester, and whirled and swung by hills and ponds he began to watch for, and through stations with old wayside names. These flashed on Lin's eye as he sat with his hat off and his forehead against the window, looking: Wellesley. Then, not long after, Riverside. That was the Charles River, and did the picnic woods used to be above the bridge or below? West Newton; Newtonville; Newton.

"Faneuil's next," he said aloud in the car, as the long-forgotten home-knowledge shone forth in his recollection. The traveller seated near said, "Beg pardon?" but, turning, wondered at the all-unconscious Lin, with his forehead pressed against the gla.s.s. The blue water flashed into sight, and soon after they were running in the darkness between high walls; but the cow-puncher never moved, though nothing could be seen. When the porter announced "Boston," he started up and followed like a sheep in the general exodus. Down on the platform he moved along with the slow crowd till some one touched him, and, wheeling round, he seized both his brother's hands and swore a good oath of joy.

There they stood--the long, brown fellow with the silk handkerchief knotted over his flannel shirt, greeting tremendously the spruce civilian, who had a rope-colored mustache and bore a fainthearted resemblance to him. The story was plain on its face to the pa.s.sers-by; and one of the ladies who had come in the car with Lin turned twice, and smiled gently to herself.

But Frank McLean's heart did not warm. He felt that what he had been afraid of was true; and he saw he was being made conspicuous. He saw men and women stare in the station, and he saw them staring as he and his Western brother went through the streets. Lin strode along, sniffing the air of Boston, looking at all things, and making it a stretch for his sleek companion to keep step with him. Frank thought of the refined friends he should have to introduce his brother to; for he had risen with his salary, and now belonged to a small club where the paying-tellers of banks played cards every night, and the head clerk at the Parker House was president. Perhaps he should not have to reveal the cow-puncher to these shining ones. Perhaps the cow-puncher would not stay very long. Of course he was glad to see him again, and he would take him to dine at some obscure place this first evening. But this was not Lin's plan. Frank must dine with him, at the Parker House. Frank demurred, saying it was he that should be host.

"And," he added, "they charge up high for wines at Parker's." Then for the twentieth time he shifted a sidelong eye over his brother's clothes.

"You're goin' to take your grub with me," said Lin. "That's all right, I guess. And there ain't any 'no' about it. Things is not the same like as if father was livin'--(his voice softened)--and here to see me come home. Now I'm good for several dinners with wines charged up high, I expect, nor it ain't n.o.body in this world, barrin' just Lin McLean, that I've any need to ask for anything. 'Mr. McLean,' says I to Lin, 'can yu' spare me some cash?' 'Why, to be sure, you bet!' And we'll start off with steamed Duxbury clams." The cow-puncher slapped his pocket, where the coin made a m.u.f.fled c.h.i.n.king. Then he said, gruffly, "I suppose Swampscott's there yet?"

"Yes," said Frank. "It's a dead little town, is Swampscott."

"I guess I'll take a look at the old house tomorrow," Lin pursued.

"Oh, that's been pulled down since--I forget the year they improved that block."

Lin regarded in silence his brother, who was speaking so jauntily of the first and last home they had ever had.

"Seventy-nine is when it was," continued Frank. "So you can save the trouble of travelling away down to Swampscott."

"I guess I'll go to the graveyard, anyway," said the cow-puncher in his offish voice, and looking fixedly in front of him.

They came into Washington Street, and again the elder McLean uneasily surveyed the younger's appearance.

But the momentary chill had melted from the heart of the genial Lin.

"After to-morrow," said he, laying a hand on his brother's shoulder, "yu' can start any lead yu' please, and I guess I can stay with yu'

pretty close, Frank."

Frank said nothing. He saw one of the members of his club on the other side of the way, and the member saw him, and Frank caught diverted amazement on the member's face. Lin's hand weighed on his shoulder, and the stress became too great. "Lin," said he, "while you're running with our crowd, you don't want to wear that style of hat, you know."

It may be that such words can in some way be spoken at such a time, but not in the way that these were said. The frozen fact was irrevocably revealed in the tone of Frank's voice.

The cow-puncher stopped dead short, and his hand slid off his brother's shoulder. "You've made it plain," he said, evenly, slanting his steady eyes down into Frank's. "You've explained yourself fairly well. Run along with your crowd, and I'll not bother yu' more with comin' round and causin' yu' to feel ashamed. It's a heap better to understand these things at once, and save making a fool of yourself any longer 'n yu'

need to. I guess there ain't no more to be said, only one thing. If yu'

see me around on the street, don't yu' try any talk, for I'd be liable to close your jaw up, and maybe yu'd have more of a job explainin' that to your crowd than you've had makin' me see what kind of a man I've got for a brother."

Frank found himself standing alone before any reply to these sentences had occurred to him. He walked slowly to his club, where a friend joked him on his glumness.

Lin made a sore failure of amusing himself that night; and in the bright, hot morning he got into the train for Swampscott. At the graveyard he saw a woman lay a bunch of flowers on a mound and kneel, weeping.

"There ain't n.o.body to do that for this one," thought the cow-puncher, and looked down at the grave he had come to see, then absently gazed at the woman.

She had stolen away from her daily life to come here where her grief was shrined, and now her heart found it hard to bid the lonely place goodbye. So she lingered long, her thoughts sunk deep in the motionless past. When she at last looked up, she saw the tall, strange man re-enter from the street among the tombs, and deposit on one of them an ungainly lump of flowers. They were what Lin had been able hastily to buy in Swampscott. He spread them gently as he had noticed the woman do, but her act of kneeling he did not imitate. He went away quickly. For some hours he hung about the little town, aimlessly loitering, watching the salt water where he used to swim.

"Yu' don't belong any more, Lin," he miserably said at length, and took his way to Boston.

The next morning, determined to see the sights, he was in New York, and drifted about to all places night and day, till his money was mostly gone, and nothing to show for it but a somewhat pleasure-beaten face and a deep hatred of the crowded, scrambling East. So he suddenly bought a ticket for Green River, Wyoming, and escaped from the city that seemed to numb his good humor.

When, after three days, the Missouri lay behind him and his holiday, he stretched his legs and took heart to see out of the window the signs of approaching desolation. And when on the fourth day civilization was utterly emptied out of the world, he saw a bunch of cattle, and, galloping among them, his spurred and booted kindred. And his manner took on that alertness a horse shows on turning into the home road. As the stage took him toward Washakie, old friends turned up every fifty miles or so, shambling out of a cabin or a stable, and saying, in casual tones, "h.e.l.lo, Lin, where've you been at?"

At Lander, there got into the stage another old acquaintance, the Bishop of Wyoming. He knew Lin at once, and held out his hand, and his greeting was hearty.

"It took a week for my robes to catch up with me," he said, laughing.

Then, in a little while, "How was the East?"

"First-rate," said Lin, not looking at him. He was shy of the conversation's taking a moral turn. But the bishop had no intention of reverting--at any rate, just now--to their last talk at Green River, and the advice he had then given.

"I trust your friends were all well?" he said.

"I guess they was healthy enough," said Lin.

"I suppose you found Boston much changed? It's a beautiful city."

"Good enough town for them that likes it, I expect," Lin replied.

The bishop was forming a notion of what the matter must be, but he had no notion whatever of what now revealed itself.

"Mr. Bishop," the cow-puncher said, "how was that about that fellow you told about that's in the Bible somewheres?--he come home to his folks, and they--well there was his father saw him comin'"--He stopped, embarra.s.sed.

Then the bishop remembered the wide-open eyes, and how he had noticed them in the church at the agency intently watching him. And, just now, what were best to say he did not know. He looked at the young man gravely.

"Have yu' got a Bible?" pursued Lin. "For, excuse me, but I'd like yu'

to read that onced."

So the bishop read, and Lin listened. And all the while this good clergyman was perplexed how to speak--or if indeed to speak at this time at all--to the heart of the man beside him for whom the parable had gone so sorely wrong. When the reading was done, Lin had not taken his eyes from the bishop's face.

"How long has that there been wrote?" he asked.

He was told about how long.

"Mr. Bishop," said Lin, "I ain't got good knowledge of the Bible, and I never figured it to be a book much on to facts. And I tell you I'm more plumb beat about it's having that elder brother, and him being angry, down in black and white two thousand years ago, than--than if I'd seen a man turn water into wine, for I'd have knowed that ain't so. But the elder brother is facts--dead-sure facts. And they knowed about that, and put it down just the same as life two thousand years ago!"

"Well," said the bishop, wisely ignoring the challenge as to miracles, "I am a good twenty years older than you, and all that time I've been finding more facts in the Bible every day I have lived."

Lin meditated. "I guess that could be," he said. "Yes; after that yu've been a-readin', and what I know for myself that I didn't know till lately, I guess that could be."

Then the bishop talked with exceeding care, nor did he ask uncomfortable things, or moralize visibly. Thus he came to hear how it had fared with Lin his friend, and Lin forgot altogether about its being a parson he was delivering the fulness of his heart to. "And come to think," he concluded, "it weren't home I had went to back East, layin' round them big cities, where a man can't help but feel strange all the week. No, sir! Yu' can blow in a thousand dollars like I did in New York, and it'll not give yu' any more home feelin' than what cattle has put in a stock-yard. Nor it wouldn't have in Boston neither. Now this country here" (he waved his hand towards the endless sage-brush), "seein' it onced more, I know where my home is, and I wouldn't live nowheres else.

Only I ain't got no father watching for me to come up Wind River."

The cow-puncher stated this merely as a fact, and without any note of self-pity. But the bishops face grew very tender, and he looked away from Lin. Knowing his man--for had he not seen many of this kind in his desert diocese?--he forbore to make any text from that last sentence the cow-puncher had spoken. Lin talked cheerfully on about what he should now do. The round-up must be somewhere near Du Noir Creek. He would join it this season, but next he should work over to the Powder River country. More business was over there, and better chances for a man to take up some land and have a ranch of his own. As they got out at Fort Washakie, the bishop handed him a small book, in which he had turned several leaves down, carefully avoiding any page that related of miracles.

"You need not read it through, you know," he said, smiling; "just read where I have marked, and see if you don't find some more facts.

Goodbye--and always come and see me."