Acres of Unrest (2 page)

The scholastic reports were not so flattering as the athletic ones. In the fall, Peter roamed across the gridirons and did great, flashing things. In the winter he was a member of the ice hockey team for the school. In the spring he was on the baseball nine, and in the hot summer days he was straining his back over an oar in the Huntley eight. All of these things he did surpassingly well, and now and then a flattering note came like air from heaven to the eye of Ross Hale, far off in the mountain desert.

In his studies, Peter was just a bit above average—below that, at first—but making slow, sure progress. He had his stumbling blocks. Terse and uncommunicative as his letters always were, they once contained a wail on account of Latin, the bane of his soul. Immediately afterward a greater curse entered—clad in strange garments—Greek! Between them, they were nearly the undoing of poor Peter, but he managed to struggle through.

When he came into his seventeenth year, everything seemed much better to Peter. Studies went more easily. On the athletic field he was triumphant, and in his eighteenth year he completed his course in a blaze of glory—football captain—crew stroke. He stood on a peak even in brilliant Huntley School.

Then came the fall, and the heart of Ross Hale
swelled with anticipation. He could not help writing to Peter:

Look here, Pete. I know that college is a place where you go to get an education. But I tell you what—I like to hear about you doing good in athletics. I can’t understand what tackling a Greek verb may be like. But I can understand what smashing up a football line may be. I’m proud of your studies, Pete, my boy, but I’m a lot prouder of what you’re doing in athletics—and most particular on the football field. Folks are reading a lot about you here in the papers—maybe you understand what I mean.

How hard it would have been for Peter really to understand. He could not know that another vast chunk of the old ranch had been sold to Andrew Hale, and that the remainder had been heavily mortgaged. And still there were three mortal years during which this education affair must be carried on.

The first college year brought more glory to Ross Hale. It was only freshman football; the Crimson would not take a player on the college eleven until his second year. But in that freshman team, Peter Hale roved up and down fields, breaking the hearts of opposing teams. They had made him an end. Eighteen-years-old and 190 pounds of him, but so lightning fast that he was always first down the field under a punt. And he was forever smashing through the other line to get at the ball carrier—to say nothing of the moments when he looped far out and speared passes out of the air, then zigzagging down the field, ripping the enemy apart as lightning divides the startled sky.

Track and crew also held his attention. He carved a name for himself in each. The heart of Ross Hale swelled big with expectation of the next fall, when his boy would stand in the varsity eleven. Then real fame would come to him.

The fall came, and there were no press notices about Peter Hale—only this strange line in one paper:

The Crimson is not so strong in advancing the ball as it was expected. Simpson failed in his studies and cannot represent the Crimson on the gridiron this fall. Above all, the brilliant Hale, of whom so much was expected after his grand work on the freshman team, has been thrown out by a severe accident.

That was all.

It made Ross Hale ride half the night to get to town and send off a telegram:

Are you badly hurt, and when can you play again?

Father

He did not get a reply for two days. The answer read:

Out for a month or two. Nothing serious.

Pete

That somewhat allayed the anxiety of Ross Hale. Still, an accident that put a boy out for a month or two must be a rather bad one. He waited a week. Then he rode over to tell Crowell what was worrying him.

“Why,” said Crowell, “don’t you know what happened to your boy?”

“Good heavens,” said the rancher, “you talk like it was serious, Mister Crowell!”

“Serious?” echoed Crowell, with a strange glance, Then he added hastily: “Now, I suppose it might have been worse.”

“Yes,” said the rancher, “it’ll only keep him out for a month or two.”

“Is that all he wrote to you?” Crowell asked.

“Yes,” said Hale.

Crowell murmured something and looked hastily away. He seemed a little moved.

But Ross Hale rode back to his ranch and went on waiting.

Late October came—November—and still there was no word of Peter in the line-up.

Well, it was a crushing blow, but there were still two years left of Peter’s varsity career, and perhaps it was all for the best. He would be bigger and stronger and better able, in every way, to make football history in the following fall. Therefore Ross Hale steeled himself with patience and endured for another year. Small consolations came to him along the way. Sweetest of all was the news in the early summer that Peter had done well—extremely well in his studies. The strangest part was that Peter had not appeared in the varsity crew—or in the varsity nine.

I am saving myself for football,
wrote Peter.

But the junior year brought not a bit of better luck. October came, and still there was no word of Peter in the college line-up. So Ross Hale wrote to the coach—to the famous Crossley himself—asking: Why doesn’t my boy make good, after the fine start
which he had? Doesn’t he measure up to your varsity standard?

In due time—but that was November and the big games were already played for the year—there came a bittersweet letter for Ross Hale. It was quite long and it was all written out in the hand of the great Crossley himself and signed with his very own name at the bottom of the last page.

It said in part:

Peter is good enough to play for the varsity. He is head and shoulders above any man on the team as it stands at present. It is a dreadful blow to us that we can’t play him. But his leg was never properly treated, and it gave way during practice again.

However, even if Peter were never to play a game of college football, you have a right to know that we who really watched him in action in his freshman year understand that he was a great athlete, one of the very finest, I think, that I ever saw break up a football line. In addition, he has a heart of oak. But you are his father, and doubtless you know that for yourself.

For my part I should like to add only this: That sometimes great disappointments, even in little things, will ripen a man and make him truly worthwhile.

There was much more to this kind letter. But the major fact remained that Peter had not played football this fall again.

Andy Hale said with a smile and a shrug: “Pete don’t seem to be tearing them up quite so much this year, Ross.”

“Wait till next year and you’ll see him break all records,” Ross said savagely.

Yet with the coming of the next fall there was still no word of Peter Hale in the line-up.

A poor team had taken the field for the great Crimson, and it was passing through a most disastrous season. The big fellows trampled it under foot, and the little fellows rose up and battled it on even terms. Surely, surely there was room on such an eleven for Peter Hale. His anxious father, reading Eastern sporting pages with an anxious heart, waited and waited, swearing to himself that life would be worthwhile if Peter could only stand in the Crimson line for a single period, for five minutes. But it was not to be. No college letter would come to Peter.

A dreadful winter followed. Twice Ross went to the banks, and twice the banks refused to talk to him. They had heard the old story before, and there was nothing in it to interest them. They did not care how great an amount of interest he was prepared to pay. He sold off almost all of his remaining stock. For his own part he lived on milk and bread and what rabbits he could reach with his rifle. He had furniture for two rooms—the kitchen, into which he had moved his own bed, and Peter’s room, kept exactly as it had been in the old days, when Peter left his home.

But the rest of the house had been denuded. It was true that it did not bring much when it was sold to the second-hand stores; yet it brought something. Even so, he could not get enough, it seemed.

“I am afraid, from the size of your last check, Dad,” said a letter from Peter, “that you haven’t been having as much luck as usual on the farm. Now, if you will say the word, I can easily raise
enough money to see me through commencement week.”

But Ross Hale had begun this thing eleven years before and he would see it through. He took his last dollar into a poker game and came out with a couple of hundred. Every penny of it he sent East. This would see his boy through. It was the last stroke and it crowned his work. Now he had only to sit back and reap the fruits of his labors.

Now you understand why it, was that the entire county knew that this was the day of Ross Hale. They knew, for one thing—for the papers had proclaimed it—that young Peter had graduated with honors, which seemed to mean a great deal more than football, at the Crimson, although not to sporting editors.

Here was a note from the great Crossley to Ross Hale.

Dear Mr. Hale: If we have missed your son mightily on the football field during the past three seasons, you now see for yourself that he has been doing a work that is a great deal finer for himself and for our college than anything that he could possibly have performed upon the football field!

I wish you joy of him. He is true blue—true-blue steel. There was never a finer fellow.

What a letter from the busy Crossley; how much heart in it; what an outpouring! It raised the head of Ross Hale into the clouds, and he almost forgave Peter for having failed in the football—owing to injuries of course. The great Crossley himself had pledged his word that was the reason. Did he not have that letter to show to the doubters?

The whole county was willing to believe—all except Andy Hale. He had reason to doubt—for it would not be long before he would have to let his boy stand at the side of big Peter Hale in front of the sheriff. And if Will Nast’s eyes had not suddenly grown dull, were they not apt to see something in the great athlete, the man who spoke so many languages, who read, at least, in two dead ones. He wondered how Charlie would stand this comparison.

Big and strong Charlie undoubtedly was, and straight in the back, and broad in the shoulders. At bulldogging a yearling, where was there his superior in the county? He had a good business head, too, and one day he would have all of his father’s rapidly growing estate to handle. Yet, in the eyes of Will Nast, would he be as valuable to the community as this startling Peter Hale, into whose well-being half the life and all the prosperity of Ross Hale had been poured?

Such an effort was worth a great crop. And it seemed as though one had surely grown from it. There were thousands of students picked from all parts of the country—hand-picked. Yet this Peter Hale had distinguished himself among them all. He had been great in athletics; he had been great in his studies—or far, far above the average, at the least.

As for Andy Hale, what was it that he had invested? In preparing an inheritance for his son, he had simply discovered the means of occupying himself more fully and happily than he had ever been able to do before. Ross Hale had completed his active life; he shrank, a weak and exhausted soul, from the business of life. But Andy was ready to attack life with more fervor than ever. He had used everyone of the past eleven years to push out his
boundaries. If he had begun the work in the interest of his boy, was it not true that in the end he had been completing the task for his own sake? But it was certain that he dreaded the day on which Peter Hale should reach his old home. Of all the people who streamed toward the station to await the incoming of the express, there was not one down-hearted spirit except that of Andy.

As for Charlie himself, his smile never varied on his brown face, and his eyes remained as bright and as clear as ever they had been. You would say that malice could not live in the heart of such a man. If the people looked with a pleasant expectancy down the track where the front of the express would soon show itself, they looked also with a very definite satisfaction at the son of Andy Hale.

Everyone knew the terms of the contest. And they felt a jealous interest in its outcome. They knew that Charlie Hale had had what every Western boy was apt to expect, except that he had a little more of it. He had been trained on a prosperous ranch under a clever father. He had a sharp head for business, a keen knowledge of cows, their ways, and how to make money out of them, and he knew how to use the range to the best advantage, summer and winter. In addition to this, he was big and handsome, rode well, shot straight, and feared no man. Peter Hale would have to be a fine fellow to take a mark above his Western rival.

Andy Hale, driving toward the station, found that the platform was already crowded, though it was well before train time. Still others were coming in haste to join the throng, but a way was made for him.

For instance, since there was a crowd of buggies
and buckboards at the nearest hitching rack, Tom Ransom backed his rig out and gave the place to the father of the returning hero. When Ross Hale climbed up the steps to the station platform, way was made for him, so that he walked through to the front. He paused here and there—to take a cigar from one friend, to shake hands with another, and to exchange a word with a third.

He felt the admiration in the eyes that were fixed upon him. They were quite willing to overlook the shabbiness of his clothes, as if they felt that this were proof of the sacrifices and the efforts that he had made to complete his boy’s education.

Now and then they looked from him to Andy Hale, and their faces darkened perceptibly. It was not that anyone could have a word to speak against Andy Hale, but, compared with the sterling example of his brother, it was felt that Andy had almost sold his soul to the devil. He had preferred to make money; Ross Hale, on the other hand, had preferred the mental welfare of his boy.

To be sure, Charlie Hale was as fine a looking fellow as could be found on the range; his hand was as strong and his heart was as steady—but to compare him with his cousin from the Eastern school would be a very silly thing, indeed.

Weaker and smaller men than Andy Hale and his son would perhaps have felt all of the implied criticisms in these glances, and melted from the crowd, but they endured it all with smiles. However, it should be remembered that prosperity, when it passes the common point, cannot be tolerated with complacency by others. The commonest cowpuncher could see that in the past eleven years Andy Hale had lifted himself fairly out of
their ranks, to a position in which the bankers smiled most cordially upon him, the officials of the county asked his opinion, and that opinion was liberally quoted by the county newspaper—where reputations were made and buried, also.

Here was old McNair with his keen blue eye and his bulldog jaw. He grinned at Ross Hale and wrung his hand with the paw of a giant.

“Look here, Ross,” he said. “You got the finest boy in the range, and I got the prettiest girl. How about making a match between them, eh?”

It was a sad thing to say in the very presence of his daughter. But Ross Hale noted that, although crimson flooded her throat and her face, it was rather with confusion than anger that she quickly turned to her father and shook her finger at him to keep him quiet.

“Darn it, Ruth,” said McNair, louder than before, “you
are
the prettiest girl, and I’ll see no man that dares to say that you ain’t. But they won’t make such fools of themselves to say that. Eh, lads?”

He looked about him with the eye of a bull but he met with smiles only. What would have been an intolerable speech from any other man could be endured, coming from the lips of McNair, because he was a known man. For that matter, Ruth McNair was a known girl, too, and it would be hard to bring from any man in that crowd a speech that would offend her in any way.

If she had to turn away to hide her color, Ross Hale passed on with a keen sense that the sun was warmer and more gently golden than he had ever known it to be. The very smell of tar from the tracks seemed to him more bitingly delicious than any fragrance of flowers.

Presently there was a faint humming of the rails. He looked east along the line above the hills, where the trees met with the pale blue of the sky, and he saw a streak of white smoke. It blended in with the glistening clouds in the sky. Then the whistle screeched twice, and here came the front of the engine, swaying around the long curve into view, and then straightening out, staggering with speed, as it sped on for the station.

Now the train was slowing. The brakes went on with a screech. Voices began to be raised around him, excited voices frankly and freely speaking, because they had the thunder of the engine and the roar of the grinding wheels to drown their noises. The more they talked, the more excitement grew. A buzz and a stir filled them, and all the Sumnertown people pressed a little forward on the station platform.

The great moment had come, and Ross Hale, as he saw the train slowing toward a halt, tried to see through the windows, but found that his eyes were misted over. The gasp and whisper of the crowd—which was all that was left of their rattling excitement of the moment before—sank still lower and went out. Silence swept through them, and it was as though a great searchlight had fallen upon Ross Hale and his boy.