Acres of Unrest (20 page)

Ross went back to the verandah and sat down, in more of a stupor than ever. For half an hour no word passed between his host and him. Finally McNair remarked: “You didn’t have a long talk with Ruth, old-timer.”

Said Ross Hale: “You can’t ask a girl to cry and talk at the same time, can you?”

“Cry about what?” said Mr. McNair.

“I don’t know,” murmured Mr. Hale. “I was showing her this letter, and just remarking on how bad my boy writes…”

His voice trailed away, and Mr. McNair offered no further comment. But for another hour, his keen eyes rolled from time to time toward the face of his guest. Finally the other rose. And leaning a moment against the wooden pillar that supported the verandah roof, he remarked: “This here is the first good, long talk that we’ve had in quite a spell, Mac. I’ll have to be going.”

“So long,” McNair said, and fell to whittling a stick. “Come over and tell me all the news again, some time soon,” he said as Ross Hale mounted his horse. But he did not look up from his whittling until his friend was a small dust cloud disappearing down the road. “Watching a gent out of sight is bad luck,” Mr. McNair muttered.

That night he sat at a silent dinner table.

When he came to pie—there was always pie for Mr. McNair at least twice a day—he remarked: “You been going outside without no hat on, Ruth. That’s what I call throwing away money.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” said the faint voice of Ruth.

“Your eyes is all red,” McNair said, his voice muffled by his mouthful. “Chop me off another wedge of that pie, will you?”

She obeyed. “Why do you say it’s throwing money away, Father?”

“Which?” he snapped.

“Dad, I mean…,” she corrected herself.

“Why, you send away for a fancy lot of cold creams and smear ’em all over your face and get good and greasy, and start in to turn white like bleached cloth. Getting complexion, is what you call turning sickly, like that. And then here you go out in the sun and get reddened up again…waste of time and money, I call it.”

“It wasn’t the sun, really,” said the girl.

“Hey?”

“I was…I had a headache,” she said.

“Does a headache make red eyes?”

“Perhaps it was neuralgia,” she suggested hopefully, looking down at her plate.

“Not in this here weather…not neuralgia. Guess again.”

“The fact is, Dad, that I was a little upset.”

“By what?”

She was silent, biting her lip in thought.

Her father smashed his great hand on the table and roared: “Upset, how?”

“I…I think I may have cried a little.”

“Ho! Cried? About what?”

“Mister Hale upset me a little.”

“He did, hey?” said the father, pushing back his chair. “Dog-gone me if I ain’t gonna go to the telephone and ring him up and give him a piece of my mind.”

“No, no, Dad!”

He rose and turned toward the door. “I’m gonna let Ross Hale know what I think of him.”

There was a flurry of skirts; a hand caught his arm. “No, Dad, please!”

“What the devil does Ross Hale mean?” he cried.

“It was only a letter, really.”

“What business has he writing letters to you?”

“Not from him…I mean…he showed me a letter.”

“About what, then?”

“From Peter,” whispered the girl.

“What did Peter have to say, Ruth?”

“Nothing. I don’t know. I only saw the address.”

“Go back and sit down,” said McNair. “I understand all about it.”

She returned willingly enough to her chair, and he to his second piece of pie.

“I see just what’s been bothering you, honey. Here you go and get yourself engaged to a fine, upstanding young gent like Charlie Hale, eh?”

Her head bowed suddenly.

“And then along comes somebody and reminds you of all the bad blood that there is in the Hale family…”

“Bad blood?” interrupted the girl, lifting her head in surprise.

“Oh, I know all about the way that you feel,” McNair said gently. “A girl, when she wants to
marry, has got to begin to think about the sort of children that she’ll have. And now suppose that your children…they was to turn out like you and Charlie. Why, that would be fine and we wouldn’t ask for no more than that. But what’s the facts? That behind Charlie there is a lot of bad blood that might be inherited, and, the first thing that you know, you would be raising children so dog-gone mean. and wicked and bad that it would about bust your heart. I know that’s what you’re thinking about, Ruth.”

“No, no!” she protested. “That wasn’t…”

“Don’t you tell me,” said her father, “because I know. I can see right through that wise little head of yours. Thinking about nothing but the future. That’s what you’re doing, old girl. And suppose that one of your sons was to turn out like Peter.” He threw up his hands, rolled up his eyes, and shook his head in great consternation. But when he looked at her again, he found that she was sitting, stiff and straight, with a certain fire in her eye that he had often seen there before—in her—and in his own mirror.

She said: “I don’t see just what you’re driving at. Because I don’t really see what’s wrong with Peter Hale.”

“What!”

She sat stiffer than ever. “Well?” she snapped.

He relaxed into sneering irony. “You don’t see anything wrong with him? Well, honey, I do! In a gent that stands up and shoots down other gent…”

“Who has he ever killed?” asked his daughter sharply.

“Look here…would you deny, Ruth, that he’s a gunfighter?” She hesitated, and her eyes shifted. “He is not the only man who wears guns in this
range, and you know it, Dad.”

“Guns? Ornaments, that’s all that they are,” said her father with an airy wave of his hand. “Friendly ornaments. That’s all. Look at the way I’m peaceable and plumb…”

“Dad! Why, it was only three years ago…”

“You mean that Indian from Okla…?”

“And before that, only two years, when you…”

“You mean that overbearing, cross-eyed, mean, troublemaking gent from New York? It was only because…”

“And every time that you went away when I was little…wasn’t my mother frightened almost to death? And just for fear that you would get into a gunfight before you…”

“Now, your ma was a good woman, Ruth. But flighty and scary was no name for what she was. Just naturally she had more nerves than she could use.”

“Besides,” said Ruth, “what Peter did in Lawson Creek was just…just…brave!”

“Oh, it was, was it? Just brave to scare a whole town pretty nearly to death? Just brave, was it, to make hundreds of good, law-abidin’ citizens climb fences and dive for cellar doors? Is that what you call just brave?”

“He…he really…killed nobody,” Ruth said, some of her color leaving her face.

“Turnin’ the hair of folks white…I seen Jud McCruder. Plumb gray…effect of that terrible lot of inferno that Peter raised in Lawson Creek.”

“Nonsense! He’s been gray for three years.”

“And besides, herding up and down the streets of a town…and even knocking down his own cousin, real rough.”

“Charles is large enough to take care of himself.”

“And then seeing a whole crowd of two or three hundred gents that had hold of a crook and was going to lynch him…and save the law a lot of time and trouble and expense and snatching that crook away from them, and saving him and the ripping along and knocking down twenty or thirty other men, all good, strong, hard-fighting gents, and taking a worthless Negro away from them, just as they was about to wring his neck. You call them actions good, do you?”

She was standing on her feet, her hands clenched at her sides. “I defend everyone of those actions!” cried Ruth McNair.

“And then smashing along through the night and tearing up a bridge and pitching it down into a river just to keep back them same peaceable, lawabiding gents.”

“Who would have lynched poor Peter! You know it! You know it!”

“And don’t he deserve lynching, I ask you?”

“Dad!”

“Don’t you yap at me like that! I tell you that I’m looking right inside of your heart and telling you what’s really there!”

“Dad, you don’t know one single thing about what’s in my heart!”

“And raising all that deviltry in Lawson Creek for the sake of just amusing himself!”

“No, no, no! But to save the lives of two friends…”

“That’s it! You’re naming it now. For the sake of two friends. The worst, most sneaking crook in the range is one of them friends, and a manslaughtering, worthless Negro is the other.”

“Dad, you said yourself that Soapy must have fought like a hero to get through that wild crowd.”

“A crook and a murdering Negro. Those are his friends!”

“Dad, I won’t listen.”

Leaning forward, Mr. McNair beat upon the table with his fist so that the dishes jumped and clattered. “What is the actual fact, honey? Birds of a feather, they hunt together. You can’t get behind that.”

“Dad, will you listen?”.

“You can’t get behind what I’ve said.”

“Ah, there’s no wonder that poor Peter is misjudged.”

“Misjudged, eh? I tell you what the womenfolks do over to Lawson Creek. When they want to throw a scare into a naughty kid, they just say…‘Peter Hale’ll get you, if you don’t watch out.’”

“They don’t!” cried the girl. “It’s no such thing!”

“Ain’t it? It was told me first-hand by a gent that was in Lawson Creek.”

“I don’t care, and I won’t believe a word of it! Of all the gentle, quiet, thoughtful men in the world…”

“Hypocrisy,” said her father. “That’s the worst part of him. Hypocrite!”

“No!”

“Sure, soft, and smooth speaking. Must take in a lot of folks. But thank heaven,
we
know the facts about him.”

“You
won’t
open your eyes to the facts…the
real
facts, Dad. You just won’t. You know perfectly well that Peter came back from college…a cripple…a poor cripple.”

“Having his father think for three years that he was a regular athlete.”

“He
had
been, and a grand one, and you know it. And he didn’t want to break his father’s heart, because poor, dear, silly, muddle-headed Ross Hale thought that football was more important than studies.”

“What studies?” asked her father. “What did he learn?”

“I don’t know…except that it was something fine. Because he wouldn’t learn cheap, low things.”

“Cheap, low things that would make his bread and butter, eh?”

“Can you really say that? You know that you and everybody else expected poor Peter to sit down on the ranch with his father and slowly starve to death. But he
didn’t
. He went to work. He made things. He made everything. He got money. He started the ranch booming along. Until…you’ve said yourself that he made that ranch so perfect that nobody…not even Ross Hale…could run it without making fine money out of it. You said that yourself.”

“He worked to pull the wool over our eyes. All the time the wildness was inside of him, and busting to get out. And now it’s busted and we know what he really is.”

“I say that it will all be explained. You just won’t wait for an explanation to…”

“And that man…didn’t he dare to talk to you like he was sort of fond of you?”

“Yes!”

“By heaven, when he knowed that you was as good as engaged…yes, you
was
engaged to Charlie. The skunk!”

“I won’t stay in this room to hear you speak like this.”

“You got to stay. A fine, clean, hard-working, industrious gent like Charles, that nobody has anything against.”

“Has he ever been tested? Has Charles ever been through the fire?”

“Mind you, nobody can speak a word ag’in’ Charlie. Except a mite of a word about him gambling high over in Lawson Creek”

“I tell you,” cried the girl, “that’s the only really good thing that I’ve ever heard about him!”

“Ruth, what’re you sayin’ to me?”

“I mean it! I mean it! I despise a man that wouldn’t risk his life…or his money…just for nothing, sometimes. It shows that he has a heart. And that’s the first flash that I’ve ever heard of from Charlie!”

“Ruth, you’re talkin’ about one of the most respected young gents in this here county. Nobody got a word…”

She stamped with fury. “I don’t want to hear about the good things that they say of him. Nobody with any fire and flesh and blood in him was ever able to get along, really, without making enemies. Look at you yourself! Haven’t you got three enemies for every friend, and haven’t you always gloried in it? Haven’t I heard you say that you have friends that would follow you to…to…”

“To the devil and back, yes, and they would. And so would I for them.”

His whole manner changed. He settled back in his chair, smiling faintly at her. “Now, you set down, Ruthie. You and me is gonna have a talk.”

She sat down on the edge of her chair, staring in
a rather frightened manner. “What…what do you mean, Father?”

“That I been stringin’ you along, honey, and now I know pretty much what I want to know. This here Peter, he told you that he let on to be fond of you.”

“He did more,” said the girl. “He told me I wish that the whole world knew it…that he loved me…that he loved me…that he loved me dearly. And that’s the most beautiful thing that ever happened in the world.”

“I think,” said Mr. McNair, “that maybe I would agree with you, Ruthie.”

“Dad, do you mean that?”

He said steadily: “I think that maybe that I could agree with you about that, because, from one way of looking at things, you might say that this here boy, Peter, he come back from college with his head full of book knowledge, and nothing else. And he found the old ranch busted and done for, loaded with mortgages. And he found his father just a wreck of a man…run all down like his ranch…and what did he do? Why, it looked like he got together and lifted that ranch right up. First we smiled, and then we started in wondering. And pretty soon, we seen that this here boy had brains. And we seen that a man didn’t live in his legs, but in his wits, eh? And more than that…in his heart!”

“Yes,” said the girl faintly, but smiling through tears. “Dear old Peter. How he did work. And how cheerfully. Do you remember…?”

“The fool way that he looked at you that day out in the shed where he was pretending to be fixing up furniture? Yes, I remember all of that. But what I was working toward saying is that, by the looks of
the thing, this here Peter was a fine, honest, brainy gent…and with the sort of a heart that made him friends and kept them.”

“Yes.”

“And by the look of things, you would say that he couldn’t go up there into the mountains and throw himself away on a crook like old man Jarvin without having a pretty good reason that was stronger than Peter.”

“No, no, no! You couldn’t! You couldn’t!”

“Then, after he got with Jarvin, he showed that he would fight like a hero…not for himself or for a good friend, but just for the sake of a sneaking gambler and a yaller man.”

“He did. Oh, he showed it,” Ruth said, and the tears of excitement and happiness began to stream down her cheeks.

“Very well,” said the voice of her father, raised from its gentleness and from its calm, “then why in the devil ain’t you engaged to marry that man?”

“God help me,” whispered Ruth. “Do you mean that?” “Ain’t you my daughter?” thundered McNair. “Ain’t you mine? Ain’t it my honest, mean blood that’s inside of you? Why, no, it ain’t. It can’t be. Because here you sit, whining like a sick cat. Why? Because this here Peter…this heart of oak, this clean-eyed, two-handed fighting man, this modest, kind, gentle, straight-shooting gent…this here Peter that tumbled you all in a heap of excitement when you seen him first, in spite of his crippled legs…why, you turn your back on him just because he ain’t been writing to you!”

“Dad…he left and gave me no word.”

“Girl, if there was something so terrible strong
in his life that it sent him to old man Jarvin, how could he come and explain himself to you?”

“But…do you mean that I could write to him?”

“Ruth, didn’t you learn how to do that when you was in that fool school?”

“But if I wrote…what could I say?”

“That you love him, you ninny!”

“Dad!”

“Sure, tell him that. Tell him that you love him. That you cry when you see his handwriting. That you lie awake at nights thinking of him. That you worship the ground that he walks on…that he don’t have to explain nothing about his devil-raising actions to you.”

“Dad, Dad. I’m engaged this day to Charlie.”

“Charlie? Who’s he? I dunno who you mean, unless it’s that stiff-backed son of that miserly Andy Hale.”

“Oh, and you
let
me become engaged to him.”

“You rattlehead! How was I to know that you was capable of loving a real man and not an imitation one?”

“Oh. I
shall
write. I think…”

“To who…?”

“To Charles, first.”

“Curse Charles! Let him read of it in the papers. That’s the best way for him. But don’t you start to fooling and wasting time. Because you got hold of the finest thing in the world. Love, honey. You got hold of that. And you take it quick and put your mark on it and make it yours for keeps. No, letters won’t do. You got to go straight to Peter yourself.”

“To Peter? Dad, I’d die”

“The devil you would. And if you won’t go, I’ll go myself.”

“You don’t mean that.”

“Don’t you fool yourself about what I mean. I say that I’m dead in earnest. Now, you mind that if you don’t go, I’ll go in your place, and when I get there…”

“What would you do?”

“Get down on my knees and beg Peter to come marry my fool girl that’s crying for him at home.”