At the Crossroads Part 60

"They--they couldn't understand, anyway," Larry broke in. "They've got a fixed idea of me; they wouldn't know what it was that changed me, but you will.

"Everyone's kind. I haven't anything to complain of, but good G.o.d!

Northrup, I'm dying, and what's to be done--must be done quickly.

You--see how it is?"

"Yes, Rivers, I see." There could be no mercy in deceiving this desperate man.

"I knew you would. Day after day, lately, I've been saying that over in my mind. I remembered the night in the shack on the Point. I knew you would understand!"

"Perhaps your longing brought me, Rivers. Things like that happen, you know."

Northrup, moved by pity, laid his hand on the shrunken ones near him.

All feeling of antagonism was gone.

"It began the night I was shot," Larry's voice fell, "and Mary-Clare will not let me talk of those times. She thinks the memory will keep me from getting well! Good Lord! Getting well! Me!

"There were two of us that night, Northrup, two of us crawling away from the h.e.l.l in the dark. You know!"

"Yes, Rivers, I know."

"I'd never met him--the other chap--before, but we got talking to each other, when we could, so as to--to keep ourselves alive. I told him about Mary-Clare and Noreen. I couldn't think of anything else. There didn't seem to be anything else. The other fellow hadn't any one, he said.

"When help came, there was only room for one. One had to wait.

"That other chap," Larry moistened his lips in the old nervous fas.h.i.+on that Northrup recalled, "that other chap kept telling them about my wife and child--he said he could wait; but they must take me!

"G.o.d! Northrup, I think I urged them to take him. I hope I did, but I cannot remember--I might not have, you know. I can remember what he said, but I can't recall what I said."

"I think, Rivers, you played fair!"

"Why? Northrup, what makes you think that?" The haggard face seemed to look less ghastly.

"I've seen others do it at such a time."

"Others like me?"

"Yes, Rivers, many times."

"Well, there were weeks when nothing mattered," Larry went on, "and then I began to come around, but something in me was different. I wanted, G.o.d hearing me, Northrup, I wanted to make what that other chap had done for me--worth while.

"When I got to counting up what I'd gone through and holding to the new way I felt, I began to get well--and--then I came home. Came to my father's house, Northrup--that's what Mary-Clare said when she saw me.

"That's what it is--my father's house. You catch on?"

"Yes, Rivers, I catch on." Then after a pause: "Let me light the lamp." But Rivers caught hold of him.

"No, don't waste time--they may come back at any moment--there'll never be another chance."

"All right, go on, Rivers."

The soft autumn day was drawing to its close, but the west was still golden. The light fell on the two men near the window; one s.h.i.+vered.

"There isn't much more to say. I wanted you to know that I'm not going to be in the way very long.

"You and I talked man to man once back there in the shack. Northrup, we must do it now. We needn't be d.a.m.ned fools. I've got a line on Mary-Clare and yes, thank G.o.d! on you. I can trust you both. She mustn't know. When it's all over, I want her to have the feeling that she's played square. She has, but if she thought I felt as I do to-day, it would hurt her. You understand? She's like that. Why, she's fixed it up in her mind that I'm going to pull through, and she's braced to do her part to the end; but"--here Larry paused, his dull eyes filled with hot tears; his strength was almost gone--"but I wanted you to help her--if it means what it once did to you."

"It means that and more, Rivers."

Northrup heard his own words with a kind of shock. Again he and Rivers were stripped bare as once before they had been.

"It--it won't be long, Northrup--there's d.a.m.ned little I can do to--to make good, but--I can do this."

The choking voice fell into silence. Presently Northrup stood up.

Years seemed to have pa.s.sed since he had come into the room. It was a trick of life, in the Forest, when big things happened--they swept all before them.

"Rivers, you are a brave man," he slowly said. "Will you shake hands?"

The thin cold fingers instantly responded.

"G.o.d helping me, I will not betray your trust. Once I would not have been so sure of myself, but you and I have been taught some strange truths."

Then something of the old Larry flashed to the surface: the old, weak relaxing, the unmoral craving for another's solution of his problems.

"Oh, it always has to be someone to help me out," he said.

"You know about Maclin?"

"Yes, Rivers."

"Well, I did the turn for that d.a.m.ned scoundrel. I got the Forest out of his clutches."

"Yes, you did when you got your eyes opened, Rivers."

"They're open now, Northrup, but there always has to be--someone to help me out."

"Rivers, where is your wife?" So suddenly did Northrup ask this that Larry started and gave a quick laugh.

"She went to that cabin of hers--you know?"

"Yes, I know."

Both men were reliving old scenes.

Then Larry spoke, but the laugh no longer rang in his tone:

"She'll be coming, by now, down the trail," he whispered. "Go and meet her, tell her you've been here, that I told you where she was--nothing more! Nothing more. Ever!"

"That's right, never!" Northrup murmured. Then he added: