The Just and the Unjust Part 62

"At the brick slaughter-house," said Custer.

"I thought so; can't you get some one to help you?"

But Custer, his reasonable curiosity satisfied, was already on his way back to the road. "If only pa has not driven off!" But the senior Shrimplin had not moved from the spot where Custer had left him five minutes before.

"Is that you, son?" he asked, as Custer appeared at the fence.

"Come here, quick!" commanded the boy.

"For what?" inquired Mr. Shrimplin.

"You needn't be afraid, it's only a man who's fallen off the iron bridge. He's down in the bed of the slaughter-house run. I can't get him out alone!"

"I'll bet he's good and drunk!" said the little lamplighter.

"No, he ain't, and he's mighty badly hurt!" said the boy hotly.

"Of course, of course, Custer!" said Mr. Shrimplin. "He'd a been killed though if he hadn't been drunk."

He climbed out of his cart, and clambered over the fence. Something in Custer's manner warned him that any allusions of a jocular nature would prove highly distasteful to his son, and he followed silently as Custer led the way down to the brook.

"Here's where he is!" said the boy halting. "You get down beside him--you're strongest, and I'll stay here and help pull him up while you lift!"

"That's the idea, son!" agreed Mr. Shrimplin genially.

And he slid down into the bed of the brook where he struggled to get the injured man to his feet. The first and immediate result of his effort was that the latter swore fiercely at him, though in a whisper.

"We got to get you out of this, mister!" said the little lamplighter apologetically.

A second attempt was made in which they were aided by Custer from above, and this time the injured man was drawn to the top of the bank, where he collapsed in a heap.

"He's fainted!" said Custer. "Strike a match and see who it is!"

Mr. Shrimplin obeyed, bringing the light close to the b.l.o.o.d.y and disfigured face.

"Why, it's Marsh Langham!" he cried.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

FAITH IS RESTORED

"Custer--" began Mr. Shrimplin, and paused to clear his throat. He was walking beside wild Bill's head while Custer in the cart tried to support Langham, for the latter had not regained consciousness. "Custer, I'm mighty well satisfied with you; I may say that while I always been proud of you, I am prouder this moment than I ever hoped to be! How many boys in Mount Hope, do you think, would have the nerve to do what you just done? I love nerve," concluded Mr. Shrimplin with generous enthusiasm.

But Custer was silent, a sense of bitter shame kept him mute.

"Custer," said his father, in a timidly propitiatory tone, "I hope you ain't feeling stuck-up about this!"

"I wish it had never happened!" The boy spoke in an angry whisper.

"You wish what had never happened, Custer?"

"About you--I mean!"

Shrimplin gave a hollow little laugh.

"Well, and what about me, son--if I may be allowed to ask?"

"I wish you'd gone down to the crick bank like I wanted you to!"

rejoined the boy.

Again he felt the hot tears gather, and drew the back of his hand across his eyes. The little lamplighter had been wishing this, too; indeed, it would for ever remain one of the griefs of his life that he had not done so. He wondered miserably if the old faith would ever renew itself. His portion in life was the deadly commonplace, but Custer's belief had given him hours of high fellowship with heroes and warriors; it had also ministered to the b.l.o.o.d.y-mindedness which lay somewhere back of that quaking fear const.i.tutional with him, and which he could no more control than he could control his hunger or thirst. His blinking eyelids loosed a solitary drop of moisture that slid out to the tip of his hooked nose.

But though Mr. Shrimplin's physical equipment was of the slightest for the role in life he would have essayed, nature, which gives the hunted bird and beast feather and fur to blend with the russets and browns of the forest and plain, had not dealt ungenerously with him, since he could believe that a lie long persisted in gathered to itself the very soul and substance of truth. Another hollow little laugh escaped him.

"Lord, Custer, I was foolin'--I am always foolin'! It was my chance to see the stuff that's in you. Well, it's pretty good stuff!" he added artfully.

But Custer was not ready for the reception of this new idea; his father's display of cowardice had seemed only too real to him. Yet the little lamplighter's manner took on confidence as he prepared to establish a few facts as a working basis for their subsequent reconciliation.

"I'd been a little better pleased, son, if you'd gone quicker when you heard them calls Mr. Langham was letting out; you did hang back, you'll remember--it looked like you was depending on me too much; but I got no desire to rub this in. What you done was nervy, and what I might have looked for with the bringing-up I've given you. I shan't mention that you hung back." He shot a glance out of the corners of his bleached blue eyes in Custer's direction. "How many minutes do you suppose you was in getting out of the cart and over the fence? Not more than five, I'd say, and all that time I was sitting there shaking with laughter--just shaking with inward laughter; I asked you not to leave me alone! Well, I always was a joker but I consider that my best joke!"

Custer maintained a stony silence, yet he would have given anything could he have accepted those pleasant fictions his father was seeking to establish in the very habiliments of truth.

"I hoped you'd know how to take a joke, son!" said the little lamplighter in a hurt tone.

"Were you joking, sure enough?" asked Custer doubtingly.

"Is it likely I could have been in earnest?" demanded Shrimplin, hitching up his chin with an air of disdain. "What's my record right here in Mount Hope? Was it Andy Gilmore or Colonel Harbison that found old man McBride when he was murdered in his store?" And the little lamplighter's tone grew more and more indignant as he proceeded. "Maybe you think it was your disgustin' and dirty Uncle Joe? _I_ seem to remember it was Bill Shrimplin, or do I just dream I was there--but I ain't been called a liar, not by no living man--" and he twirled an end of his drooping flaxen mustache between thumb and forefinger. "Facts is facts," he finished.

"Everybody knows you found old Mr. McBride--" said Custer rather eagerly.

"I'm expecting to hear it hinted I didn't!" replied Mr. Shrimplin darkly. "I'm expecting to hear it stated by some natural-born liar that I set in my cart and bellered for help!"

"But you didn't, and n.o.body says you did," insisted the boy.

"Well, I'm glad you don't have to take my word for it," said Shrimplin.

"I'm glad them facts is a matter of official record up to the court-house. I don't know, though, that I care so blame much about being held up as a public character; if I hadn't a reputation out of the common, maybe I wouldn't be misjudged when I stand back to give some one else a chance!"

He laughed with large scorn of the world's littleness.

The epic of William Shrimplin was taking to itself its old high n.o.ble strain, and Custer was aware of a sneaking sense of shame that he could have doubted even for an instant; then swiftly the happy consciousness stole in on him that he had been weighed in the balance by this specialist in human courage and had not been found wanting. And his heart waxed large in his thin little body.

They were jogging along Mount Hope's deserted streets when Marshall Langham roused from his stupor.

"Where are you taking me?" he demanded of the boy.