A Man in the Open Part 24

THE LOCKED HOUSE

_Jesse's Memoir_

The book of our adventures which we began together, was to go on through all our years. We were too young to think how it must some time finish at our parting, that one of us two was to be left, with only the broken end, the pity of Christ, and every word a stabbing memory.

Since I lost Kate is four years to-night, and in all that time till now, I never dared to enter the house where once she lived with me, her poor fool Jesse. To-day, I unlocked the door. The sunlight, glinting through c.h.i.n.ks in the boarded windows, fell in long dust-streaks on rat-eaten furniture, gray cobweb, scattered ashes. There was the puppy piano, green with mold, her work-basket, half eaten, her writing-table littered with rat-gnawed paper. The pages are yellow, the ink is rusty brown, but the past is alive in every line, the living past, the sunny warm-scented land of memory, all full of love and glory and delight, and agony which can not be taken from me.

If she were here with me in the old log cabin, she should not see me mourning, or afraid to face the past, or dreading to set an end to our book. She expected courage, and I will face it out, write the last chapter in our Book of Life, then bury it all, lest any one should see.

I warm and burn my hands at the fires of memory, and if the fine sweet pain were taken from me, what should I have left but cobweb, and ashes, dust, and the smell of rats.

How wonderful it is to think that a great lady, and this ignorant callous brute shown up in the rotted ma.n.u.script, should ever have been man and wife together! When I think of what I was--illiterate, slovenly, lazy, selfish, brutal, meanly jealous, ignorantly cruel, I see how it was right that she should leave me. It has taken me bitter lonely years to realize that I was unworthy to be her servant while she tamed me. So much the greater mystery is the love which made amends for my shortcomings, made her think me better than I was, a something for which she sacrificed herself, and in self-sacrifice became like the great angels which she saw in dreams.

Then came the letter from Polly herself, which sent me crazy, so that my lady read every word of it, without being warned.

"Opium, Jesse, an overdose of opium did the trick, and paint to make me look like a corpse, and blood from the butcher's shop poured over my face as I laid there. You was no husband for such as me with Brooke around, the man I'd kept. Shucks, did ye think I'd be such a puke as to set, with yer dead-line round me, screaming if men came near, with all Abilene grinning, and you drunk as Noah?

That was no way to treat a lady. That was no cinch for me as could buy cow-boys, all I'd a mind to. Pshaw, it makes me sick at the stummick to think I married you. I only done it for a joke.

"But you jest mark my words on the dead thieving, no foreign woman from London, England, shall have you while you're mine. I heerd of this Mrs. Trevor daring to call you her husband. She's not your wife, she's not Mrs. Jesse Smith, she's not a married woman, but a poor _thing_, and her child, _what's he_? I've had my revenge on her, and you, and I'm coming to rub it in. I'm at Ashcroft, I am, coming on the same coach as this letter, coming to live in your home. If I don't love you, no other woman shall. It's Fancy Brooke, the man you calls Bull Durham, what give you dead away, he, and the news he got by mail, since you let him get off alive, you _fool_.

That ought to splash yer.

"And if I didn't love, d'ye reckon that I'd care?

"Your deserted true wife, "POLLY SMITH.

"P. S.--I'll be to your ranch Monday."

_Kate's Narrative_

My husband was still at dinner when we heard a horseman come thundering in, the old cargador, Pete Mathson, spurring a weary horse across the yard. Jesse took the letter, and while he read, I had a strange awful impression of days, months, years pa.s.sing, a whirlwind of time. My man was growing old before my eyes, and it is true that within a few hours his hair was flecked with silver. When the letter fell from his hands he walked away, making no sound at all.

I sat on my little stool and took the letter. The paper felt like something very offensive, so that I had to force myself to read, and even then without understanding one word, I went and washed my hands and face, why I don't know, except that it was better not to make a scene. I came back to my stool.

Pete stood in the doorway very nervous about his hat, as though he tried to hide it away. I remember telling him quite gravely that I like to see a hat.

"Cap Taylor, ma'am," he was saying, "told me to get here first by the horse trail, so I rode h.e.l.l-for-leather. They'll be another hour comin'

by road."

"Another hour?"

"A stranger's driving. Mebbe more'n an hour."

Then Jesse came back.

_Jesse's Narrative_

I found my lady seated on her stool, that letter in her hands, while Pete, uneasy, clicked his spurs in the doorway. I asked if he'd take a message.

"Burning the trail," he said.

"Say, if she comes, I'll kill her."

"Not that," my lady whispered, so I knelt down by her, and she stroked my forehead.

"I didn't catch your words," said Pete.

"Promise," my lady whispered, "there must be no murder."

"Tell her, Pete," said I, "there'll be no murder. I can't let her off with that--give her fair warning."

Pete rode away slow.

"Wife," I whispered--we spoke in whispers, because it was the end of the world to us two--"you trust me?"

She kissed my forehead.

"Tell me," she said, "one thing. Polly was not dead?"

"She shammed dead. She's alive, Kate. She's coming here. Take David away. Take him to South Cave, to Father Jared's camp."

"What will you do?"

"Lock the house before it's defiled."

"And then, dear?"

"When she's gone, I'll come to the cave, too."

Kate took David, letting me kiss him, letting me kiss her, even knowing everything, let me take her into my arms. She was very white, very quiet. She even remembered to take her servant, and the two Chinamen, making some excuse to get them away. I locked the house and the old cabin. Then I made the long call to Ephrata, and went to the Apex Rock, calling until he answered from among the dog-tooth violets. He climbed straight up the steep rocks, whimpering, because I'd scarcely called him once in fourteen months. He rubbed against me, forgetting he hefted eleven hundred pounds, and I had to scratch his neck before we started up to the house, then to the left along the wagon track just past Cathedral Grove.

The wagon was swinging round the end of the grove at a canter, and when I let out a yell for the last warning, the woman only s.n.a.t.c.hed at the driver's whip to flog the team faster. Then I turned loose my bear, he rearing up nine feet or so to inspect that outfit.

The horses s.h.i.+ed into the air, then off at a gallop straight for the edge of the cliffs. The woman was shot out as the wagon overturned, the driver caught for a moment while his wagon went to match-wood. He lay in the wreckage stunned, but the horses went blind crazy, taking that twelve hundred feet leap into the Fraser Rapids. So I had aimed, and as I'd promised my lady to do no murder, I kept my bear beside me.

The driver was awake and staggering to his feet. He would have talked, only my bear was with me, hard to hold by the roach hair. The man needed no telling, and after he escaped from my ranch, I did not see him there in the years which followed.

The woman, standing in the wreckage of her trunks, wanted to talk. We herded her, Eph and I, to the foot of the pack-trail, which leads up by steep jags to the rim-rock of the upper cliffs, then on through the black pines to Hundred Mile. We herded her up the pack-trail, my bear and I, and pointed her on her way, alone, afoot. If she lived through that eighty miles, she would remember the way, the way which is barred.

_Kate's Narrative_

I was waiting for Jesse until the low sun shone into the cave. All that letter, which had been a blur of horror, cleared now before my mind, but Father Jared held me by the hands, drawing the pain away. He had given me tea, he had made me a very throne of comfort in front of his camp-fire. David slept in my lap, and now while the dear saint held my hands, and I looked through the smoke out toward the setting sun, he spoke of quaint sweet doings in his hermitage. He spoke as a worldly anchorite with a portable bath, of his clumsy attempts to patch a worn-out ca.s.sock, and how the squirrels tried to superintend his prayers at even-song. Then the sun caught the walls of the cave and the roof to glowing beryl and ethereal ruby, the smoke was a rose-hued thread of light, and the deep canon at our feet filled with a shadowy sea of flooding amethyst.