Kitabı oku: «Winning the Wilderness», sayfa 20
Then, as an afterthought, Champers added:
“It’s so danged hot this afternoon I can’t get over to Grass River; and I got word to meet Jacobs over at the Little Wolf Ranch later, so I think I’ll take the crooked trail up to that place; it’s a lot the coolest road, and I’ll wait till the sun’s most down. I guess that three thousand dollar mortgage can wait over a day now, less you feel too cramped.”
Thomas Smith rose from his chair. His face was ashy and his small black eyes burned with a wicked fire. He gave one long, steady look into Champers’ face and slipped from the rear door like a shadow.
Darley Champers knew he had won the day, and no sense of personal danger had ever troubled him. He settled back in his chair, drew a long sigh of relief, and soon snored comfortably through his afternoon’s nap.
When he awoke it was quite dark, for the storm cloud covered the sky and the hot breath from the west was like the air from a furnace mouth.
“It’s not late, but it’s danged hot. I wonder why that Jew wanted me to meet him over there. Couldn’t he have come here? I’m wet with sweat now. How’ll I be by the time I get out to that ranch?” Champers stretched his limbs and mopped his hot neck with his handkerchief. “I reckon I’d better go, though. Jacobs always knows why he wants a thing. And he’s the finest man ever came out of Jewey. With him in town and Asher Aydelot on a farm, no city nor rural communities could be more blessed.”
Then he remembered Thomas Smith and a cold shiver seized his big, perspiring body.
“I wonder why I dread to go,” he said, half aloud. “The creek trail will be cool, but, golly, I’m danged cold right now.”
Again his mind ran to Smith’s face as he had seen it last. He put on his hat and started to take his long raincoat off the hook behind the rear door.
“Reckon I’d better take it. It looks like storming,” he muttered. “Hello! What the devil!”
For Rosie Gimpke, with blazing cheeks and hair dripping with perspiration, was hidden behind the coat.
“Oh, Mr. Champers, go queek and find Yon Yacob, but don’t go the creek roat. I coom slippin’ to tell you to go sure, and I hit when that strange man coom slippin’ in. I hear all you say, an’ I see him troo der crack here, an’ he stant out there a long time looking back in here. So I half to wait an’ you go nappin’ an’ I still wait. I wait to say, hurry, but don’t go oop nor down der creek trail. I do anything for Miss Shirley, an’ I like you for takin’ care off her goot name; goot names iss hardt to get back if dey gets avay. Hurry.”
“Heaven bless your good soul!” Champers said heartily. “But why not take the cool road? I’ve overslept and I’ve got to hurry and the storm’s hustling in.”
“Don’t, please don’t take it,” Rosie begged.
The next minute she was gone and as Champers closed and locked his doors he said to himself, “She does her work like a hero and never will have any credit for it, ’cause she’s not a pioneer nor a soldier. But she has saved more than one poor fellow snared into that joint I winked at for years.”
Then, obedient to her urging, he followed the longer, hotter road toward the Jacobs’ stock ranch bordering on Little Wolf Creek.
Meantime, John Jacobs inspected his property, forgetful of the intense heat and the coming storm, his mind full of a strange foreboding. At the top of the hill above where the road wound down through deep shadows he sat a long while on his horse. “I wonder what makes me so lonely this evening,” he mused. “I’m not of a lonely nature, nor morose, thank the Lord! There’s no telling why we do or don’t want to do things. I wonder where Champers is. He ought to be coming up pretty soon. I wonder if I hadn’t had that dream two nights ago about that picture I saw in a book, when I was a little chap, if I’d had this fool’s cowardice about being out here alone today. And what was it that made me look over all those papers in my vault box last night? I have helped Careyville some, and the library I built will have a good endowment when I’m gone, and so will the children’s park, and the Temperance Societies. Maybe I’ve not lived in vain, if I have been an exacting Jew. I never asked for the blood in my pound of flesh, anyhow. I wonder where Champers can be.”
He listened intently and thought he heard someone coming around the bend down the darkening way.
“That’s he, I guess, now,” he said.
Then he turned his face toward the wide prairie unrolling to the westward. Overhanging it were writhing clouds, hurled hither and thither, twisted, frayed, and burst asunder by the titanic forces of the upper air, and all converging with centripetal violence toward one vast maelstrom. Its long, funnel-shaped form dipped and lifted, trailing back and forth like some sensate thing. With it came an increasing roar from the clashing of timber up the valley. The vivid shafts of lightning and the blackness that followed them made the scene terrific with Nature’s majestic madness.
“I must get shelter somewhere,” Jacobs said. “I am sorry Champers failed me. I wanted his counsel before I slipped up on Wyker tonight. I thought I heard him coming just now. Maybe he’s waiting for me under cover. I’ll go down and see.”
The roar of the cyclone grew louder and the long swinging funnel lifted and dipped and lifted again, as the awful forces of the air hurled it onward.
Down at the sharp bend in the road Thomas Smith was crouching, just where the rift in the bank opened to the creek, and the face of the man was not good to look upon nor to remember.
“I’ll show Darley Champers how well my left hand works. There’ll be no telltale scar left on his face when I’m through, and he can tumble right straight down to the water from here and on to hell, and Wyker’s joint may bear the blame. Damned old Dutchman, to turn me out now. I set him up in business when I had money. Here comes Champers now.”
The storm-cloud burst upon the hill at that moment. John Jacobs’ horse leaped forward on the steep slope, slid, and fell to its knees. As it sprang up again the two men could not see each other, for a flash of lightning blinded them and in the crash of thunder that burst at the same instant, filling the valley with deafening roar, the sharp report of a double pistol-shot was swallowed up.
An hour later Darley Champers, drenched with rain, stumbled down the crooked trail in the semi-darkness. The cool air came fanning out of the west and a faint rift along the horizon line gave promise of a glorious April sunset.
As Darley reached the twist in the trail which John Jacobs always dreaded, the place Thaine Aydelot and Leigh Shirley had invested with sweet memories, he suddenly drew his rein and stared in horror.
Lying in the rift with his head toward the deep waters of Little Wolf Creek lay Thomas Smith, scowling with unseeing eyes at the fast clearing sky. While on the farther side of the road lay the still form of John Jacobs, rain-beaten and smeared with mud, as if he had struggled backward in his death-throes.
As Champers bent tenderly over him, the smile on his lips took away the awfulness of the sight, and the serenity of the rain-drenched face rested as visible token of an abundant entrance into eternal peace.
Grass River and Big Wolf settlements had never before known a tragedy so appalling as the assassination of John Jacobs at the hands of an “unknown” man. Hans Wyker had gone to Kansas City on the day before the event and Wykerton never saw his face again. Rosie Gimpke, who did not know the stranger’s name, and Darley Champers, who thought he did, believed nothing could be gained by talking, so they held their peace. And Thomas Smith went “unknown” back to the dust of the prairie in the Grass River graveyard.
The coroner tried faithfully to locate the blame. But as Jacobs was unarmed and was shot from the front, and the stranger had only one bullet in his revolver and was shot from behind, and as nobody lost nor gained by not untangling the mystery, the affair after a nine days’ complete threshing, went into local history, the place of sepulchre.
CHAPTER XXI
Jane Aydelot’s Will
Impulsive, earnest, prompt to act,
And make her generous thought a fact,
Keeping with many a light disguise
The secret of self-sacrifice,
O heart sore-tried! thou hast the best
That Heaven itself could give thee – rest.
– Snow Bound.
Darley CHAMPERS sat in his little office absorbed in business. The May morning was ideal. Through the front door the sounds of the street drifted in. Through the rear door the roomy backyard, which was Champers’ one domestic pleasure, sent in an odor of white lilac. By all the rules Champers should have preferred hollyhocks and red peonies, if he had cared for flowers at all. It was for the memory of the old mother, whom he would not turn adrift to please a frivolous wife, that he grew the white blossoms she had loved. But as he never spoke of her, nor seemed to see any other flowers, nobody noticed the peculiarity.
“I wonder how I missed that mail?” he mused, as he turned a foreign envelope in his hands. “I reckon the sight of that poor devil, Smith, dropping into town so suddenly five days ago upset me so I forgot my mail and went to see the Shirleys. And the hot afternoon and Smith’s coming in here, and – ”Darley leaned back in his chair and sighed.
“Poor Jacobs! Why should he be taken? Smith was gunning for me and mistook his man. Lord knows I wasn’t fit to go.”
He leaned his elbow heavily on the table, resting his head on his hand.
“If Jacobs went on in my place, sacrificed for my sins, so help me God, I’ll carry on his work here. I’ll fight the liquor business to the end of my days. There shan’t no joint nor doggery never open a door on Big Wolf no more. I’ll do a man’s part for the world I’ve been doin’ for my own profit most of my life.”
His brow cleared, and a new expression came to the bluff countenance. The humaneness within him was doing its perfect work.
“But about this mail, now.” He took up the letter again. “Carey says he ain’t coming back. Him and young Aydelot’s dead sure to go to China soon. An’ I’m to handle his business as per previous directions. This is the first of it. Somebody puttin’ on mournin’ style, I reckon.”
Champers took up a black-edged envelope, whose contents told him as Dr. Horace Carey’s representative that Miss Jane Aydelot of Cloverdale was no longer living and much more as unnecessary to the business of the moment as a black-bordered envelope is unnecessary to the business of life. Then he opened a drawer in his small office safe and took out a bundle of letters.
“Here’s a copy of her will. That’s to go to Miss Shirley to read. An’ a copy of old Francis Aydelot’s will. What’s the value of that, d’ you reckon? Also to be showed to Miss Leigh Shirley. An’ here’s – what?”
Darley Champers opened the last envelope and began to read. He stopped suddenly and gave a long surprised whistle.
Beautiful as the morning was, the man laid down the papers, carefully locked both doors and drew down the front blinds. He took up the envelope and read its contents. He read them a second time. Then he put down the neatly written pages and sat staring at nothing for a long time. He took them up at length for a third reading.
“Everything comes out at last,” he murmured. “Oh, Lord, I’m glad Doc Carey got hold of me when he did.”
Slowly he ran his eyes down the lines as he read in a half whisper:
I was walking down the National pike road toward Cloverdale with little Leigh in the twilight. Where the railroad crosses Clover Creek on the high fill we saw Tank Shirley and the young cashier, Terrence Smalley, who had disappeared after the bank failure. It seems Tank had promised to pay Smalley to stay away and to find Jim and get his property away from him. Evidently Tank had not kept his word, for they were quarreling and came to blows until the cashier’s face was cut and bleeding above the eye. There was a struggle, and one pushed the other over the bank into the deep water there. Little as Leigh was, she knew one of the men was her father, and we thought he had pushed Smalley into the creek. He had a sort of paralyzed arm and could not swim. I tried to make her forget all about it. I promised her my home and farm some day if she would never tell what she had seen. She shut her lips, but if she forgot, I cannot tell.
That night I went alone to the fill and found Terrence Smalley with a cut face and a twisted shoulder lying above the place where Tank went down. I helped him to my home and dressed his wounds. I may have done wrong not to deliver him to the authorities, but he had a bad story to tell of Tank’s bank record that would have disgraced the Shirley family in Ohio, so we made an agreement. He would never make himself known to Leigh, nor in any way disturb her life nor reveal anything of her father’s life to disgrace her name, if I let him go. And I agreed not to report what I had seen, nor to tell what I knew to his hurt. He promised me also never to show his face in Cloverdale again. He was a selfish, dishonest man, who used Tank Shirley’s hatred of his brother and his other sins to hide his own wrongdoing. But I tried to do my duty by the innocent ones who must suffer, when I turned him loose with his conscience. I do not know what has become of him, but, so far as I do know, he has kept the secret of Tank Shirley’s crooked dealing with the Cloverdale bank, and he has never annoyed Leigh, nor brought any disgrace to her name. This statement duly witnessed, etc.
Slowly Darley Champers read. Then, laying down the pages, he said as slowly: “‘Unknown’ in the Grass River graveyard. ’Unknown’ to Jim Shirley and Asher Aydelot, whose eyes he’d never let see him. I understand now, why. Known to me as Thomas Smith, an escaped defaultin’ bank cashier who didn’t commit suicide. Known to the late Miss Aydelot as Tank Shirley’s murderer. If the devil knows where to git on the track of that scoundrel an’ locate him properly in hell, he’ll do it without my help. By the Lord Almighty, I’ll never tell what I know. An’ this paper goes to ashes here. Oh, Caesar! If I could only burn up the recollection that I was ever low-down an’ money-grubbin’ enough to collute with such as him for business. I’m danged glad I had that quarter kep’ in Leigh’s name ’stead of Jim’s. That’s why Thomas Smith threatened and didn’t act. He didn’t dare to go against Leigh as long as Jane Aydelot was livin’.”
He stuck a blazing match to the letter and watched it crumple to ashes on the rusty stove-hearth. Then he carefully swept the ashes on a newspaper, and, opening his doors again, he scattered them in the dusty main street of Wykerton.
That afternoon Champers went again to the Cloverdale Ranch. Leigh was alone, busy with her brushes and paint-board in the seat on the lawn where Thaine Aydelot had found her on the summer day painting sunflowers. The first little sunflower was blooming now by the meadow fence.
“Don’t git up, Miss Shirley. Keep your seat, mom. I dropped in on a little business. I’m glad to set out here.”
Champers took off his hat and fanned his red face as he sat on the ground and looked out at the winding river bordered by alfalfa fields.
“Nice stand you got out there.” He pointed with his hat toward the fields. “Where’s Jim?”
“He and Asher Aydelot have gone to Careyville to settle some of John Jacobs’ affairs. They and Todd Stewart are named as trustees in the will,” Leigh replied.
She had laid aside her brushes and sat with her hands folded in her lap. Champers pulled up a spear of blue-grass and chewed it thoughtfully. At length he said:
“Yes, I knew that. Jacobs left no end of things in the way of property for me to look after. I’ll report to them now. I seem to be general handy man. Doc Carey left matters with me, too.”
“Yes?” Leigh said courteously.
“Well, referrin’ to that matter regardin’ your father we spoke of the other day, I find, through Doc Carey’s helpin’ an’ some other ways, that your father, Mr. Tank Shirley, was accidentally drowned in Clover Creek, Ohio, some years ago. So far as I can find out, he died insolvent. If I discover anything further, I’ll let you know.”
Leigh sat very still, her eyes on the far-away headlands that seemed like blue cloud banks at the moment.
“Had you heard of Miss Jane Aydelot’s demise? I reckon you had, of course. But do you know what her intentions were?”
Leigh looked steadily at her questioner. All her life she had had a way of keeping her own counsel, nor was it ever easy to know what her thoughts might be.
“Miss Shirley, the late Miss Jane Aydelot trusted Doc Carey to look after her affairs. Doc Carey, he trusted me to take his place. Can you trust me to be the last link of the chain in doin’ her business? My grammar’s poor, but my hands is clean now, thank the Lord!”
“Yes, Mr. Champers, I am sure of your uprightness.”
Leigh did not dream how grateful these words were to the man before her, honestly trying to beat back to better ideals of life.
“When I was a very little girl,” Leigh went on, “Miss Jane told me I was to be her heir.”
Darley gave a start, but as Leigh’s face was calm, he could only wonder how much she had remembered.
“All the years since I’ve lived in Kansas I’ve been kept in mind in many ways of her favor toward me. I came to know long ago that she was determined to leave me all the old Aydelot estate. And I knew also that it should have been Asher’s, not mine.”
Darley thought of Thaine, and, dull as he was, he read in a flash a romance that many a finer mind might have missed.
“Well, sufferin’ catfish!” he said to himself. “Danged plucky girl; forges along an’ bucks me into sellin’ her this ranch an’ sets it into alfalfy an’ sets up Jim Shirley for life, ’cause putterin’ in the garden an’ bein’ kind to the neighbors is the limit to that big man’s endurance. An’ this pretty girl, knowin’ that Aydelot property ought to be Thaine Aydelot’s, just turns it down, an’, by golly, I’ll bet she turns him down, too, fearin’ he wouldn’t feel like takin’ it. An’ he’s clear hiked to the edges of Chiny. Well, it’s a danged queer world. I’m glad I’ve only got Darley Champers to look out for. The day I see them two drivin’ out of Wykerton towards Little Wolf, the time she’d closed the Cloverdale ranch deal, I knowed the white lilac mother used to love was sweeter in my back lot.”
“I could not take Miss Jane’s property and be happy,” Leigh went on. “Besides, I can earn a living. See what my brushes can do, and see the secret I learned in the Coburn book.”
Leigh held up the sketch she was finishing, then pointed to the broad alfalfa acres, refreshingly green in the May sunlight.
“Well, I brought down a copy of the late Miss Aydelot’s will that she left with Doc Carey, who is goin’ to Chiny in a few days, him an’ Thaine Aydelot, Doc writes me. An’ you can look over it. I’ve got to go to Cloverdale next week an’ settle things there, an’ see that the probatin’s are straight. Lemme hear from you before I go. I must be gettin’ on. Danged fine country, this Grass River Valley. Who’d a’ thought it back in the seventies when Jim Shirley an’ Asher Aydelot squatted here? Goodday.”
Left alone, Leigh Shirley opened the big envelope holding the will of Francis Aydelot and read in it the stern decree that no child of Virginia Thaine should inherit the Aydelot estate in Ohio.
“That’s why Miss Jane couldn’t leave it to Asher’s son,” she murmured.
Then she read the will of the late Jane Aydelot. When she lifted her face from its pages, her fair cheeks were pink with excitement, her deep violet eyes were shining, her lips were parted in a glad smile. She went down to the meadow fence and plucked the first little golden sunflower from its stem, and stood holding it as she looked away to where the three headlands stood up clear and shimmering in the light of the May afternoon. That night two letters were hurried to the postoffice. One went no farther than Wykerton to tell Darley Champers that Leigh would heartily approve of any action he might take in the business that was taking him to Ohio.
