Читать книгу The Saint of the Speedway - Cullum Ridgwell - Страница 6

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THE woman was standing in the doorway of her log-built home. She was gazing out over the waters of the creek below her which flowed gently on to the distant Alsek River. A mood of quiet contemplative happiness was shining in her dark eyes. It was the mother soul in her that was stirred to a deep sense of happy satisfaction.

Rebecca Carver was a smallish, sturdy, vigorous creature something past the middle of life. She had lived hardly enough in the harsh Alaskan territory that had bred her and had always remained her home. And even now, with advancing years, and a body sometimes only barely equal to the onslaught of its pitiless climate, she had not even a momentary desire to leave it.

But then she had not lived unhappily. The years of her wifehood had been passed in the exciting, many-coloured, chequered life which ever falls to the lot of those who devote themselves to the crazy uncertainties of the quest of gold. No. Her life had never been monotonous. And besides the excitement of it all she had had her son, and daughter, and her man, and these alone would have been sufficient to keep an atmosphere of smiling contentment in her woman’s heart.

Now, however, her man had long since gone. Her son was far away, fending for them and himself as best he might. She only had her daughter remaining with her, but the girl was the pride and joy of her loyal heart; a blue-eyed, beautiful creature who never failed to remind her, to her contented satisfaction, of the cheerful, reckless, gambling husband who had been her strong support in the hard years of their life together.

Circumstances were hard-pressing with her now. They had pressed heavily ever since the death of her husband. The future was full enough of threat to depress the stoutest heart. But, for the moment, she was not concerned with these things. It was the thought of her boy, her first-born, that filled her yearning soul with happiness. Only that morning her daughter had brought her out a letter from Beacon Glory. It was a letter at long last from Jim. And the tidings it yielded were of the best.

The day was utterly grey with the herald of coming winter. There had been no sun to relieve the dark-hued forests on the hills which rose up on every side about her. The blistering summer heat had long since reduced all vegetation to the russet hues of fall, and even the great forests of jack-pine had lost something of the intensity of their evergreen hues. Somewhere behind her, hidden by a rampart of iron-bound coast, lay the open seas of the North Pacific. For the rest, to the North, and East, and South, lay the tattered world of broken foothills which were the fringe of the greater hills beyond. She knew it all by heart, this world of southern Alaska which had always been her home, and for all the overwhelming nature of it, for all the threat of the heavy grey sky, she feared nothing it could show her. And now, perhaps, less than ever.

She abruptly withdrew her gaze from the tumultuous scene of it all. She dived into the capacious pocket of her rough skirt. When her hand was withdrawn it was grasping the neatly folded pages of a letter in a big, scrawling handwriting. She unfolded them and became deeply absorbed. She almost knew the contents of the letter by heart, but somehow she felt she could never read it often enough.

The letter was vaguely headed “Australia.” It was without date, but this she had ascertained from its postmark, as she had also ascertained that it had been mailed in a city she had barely cognisance of, called “Perth.”

Dearest Mother:

We’ve made good. We’ve made so good I can’t begin to tell you about it.

Just for a moment a deep sigh of happiness escaped the mother’s lips, and something like tears of emotion half-filled her eyes. She brushed them aside promptly, however, and continued her reading.

I don’t know the date so I can’t hand it to you. I can’t hand you our whereabouts either, but for different reasons. What I can tell you is I’m setting right out for home as soon as Len gets along back, which’ll maybe in six weeks. He’s taking this letter with him, an’ will mail it, which’ll maybe in two or three weeks’ time. I’ll be setting out in a windjammer called the Imperial of Bristol. When you read the name you’ll wonder to see it in Len’s handwriting, but you see he’s taking the letter, and we don’t know the name of the ship till he gets to his destination and charters it, see? So he’ll have to fill the name in. This’ll all seem kind of mysterious to you, but it don’t matter. The thing is, I’m coming right along home to you, an’ll reach you in about six months’ time, with enough stuff so you’ll never have to worry a thing again ever.

The letter went on for several pages, filled to the brim with that kindly, intimate talk which never fails to stir the depths of a mother’s heart. And so Rebecca Carver read it all once again, revelling in the delight with which the words of her boy filled her.

Jim had made good! Jim was returning home! He was crazy to be with her and his sister Claire again. Oh, it was good, so good! The woman’s brown eyes were raised smiling whimsically at the sudden thought which her mood had inspired. Why, it was all so good that she would almost joyfully accept whatever offer Bad Booker might make for their last block of real estate in the city of Beacon Glory, which now represented their entire resources for the coming winter. Yes, never in her life had she been so thrilled. Never!

She remembered earlier thrills. She remembered those hard times when they had been well-nigh confronted with starvation. She remembered how her husband, that headlong gambler, had set out to the gaming tables of Beacon Glory with their last remaining dollars in his pocket. And she had sat at home with her half-fed children awaiting his return. Then the joy of his return with pockets bulging—yes, those had been great moments. But then he was a skilful gambler and rarely failed. This—this was something on a different plane. Something——

Her contemplative gaze had discovered movement on the hillside across the water. It was a horse-drawn vehicle moving rapidly, descending the precipitate slope diagonally at the break of the forest which gave way to the bald, wind-swept crest above. Its course would bring it down to the far side of the ford of the river directly opposite where she was standing.

Her smile deepened. It needed no second thought to tell her whose vehicle it was. Ivor McLagan, the oil man from the Alsek River, was on his way into Beacon Glory, which lay ten miles or so to the northeast of her home.

She awaited his arrival. He was a welcome enough visitor at all times. And he never failed to call in on his way, and leave her any newspapers he might chance to have. He was wealthy, and a man everybody esteemed. She had sometimes hoped—— But she knew that could never be. Claire was a girl of strong decision for all she was only twenty-one. She had already definitely refused to marry him. She liked him well enough. They all liked him. Especially had Jim liked him, but it was her woman’s understanding of the position that made her fear that Claire’s frank regard would never deepen to anything warmer.

The buckboard seemed to be almost falling down the precipitous slope under the man’s reckless handling. It was literally plunging headlong, but she understood—she knew. It was McLagan’s way with his Alaskan bronchos. There would be no disaster. And as she watched his progress she wanted to laugh, for such was the lightness of her mood.

The buckboard rattled, and shook, and jolted as it bustled down the hillside over a broken almost undefined trail. Its surefooted, well-fed team was utterly untiring. The shaggy creatures made no mistakes. Tough, hardy, they were bred to just such work as this, and they were in the hands of a super-teamster. So the creek came up to them with a rush and they plunged belly deep into the chill water of the ford. Then, moments later, they were reined in sharply at the door of the man’s familiar stopping place.

“Say, ma’am, this country’s one hell of a proposition for a quiet, decent, comfort-loving, ordinary sort of engineer.”

The man’s greeting was full of cheer, and his smiling eyes conveyed a quiet sense of dry humour. Ivor McLagan had no claims to good looks, and his manner ordinarily was sufficiently brusque to border on rudeness, but in this woman’s presence he had a way of displaying a side to his character that those who met him in business, those of his own sex, were never admitted to. No, McLagan had nothing in face or feature to thrill any woman’s artist soul, but what he lacked in that direction he made up in another. As he turned his buckboard wheels and leapt to the ground, he towered over the little woman in the doorway a figure of magnificent manhood.

Rebecca’s eyes smiled up at him responsively.

“It surely is, Ivor. But I don’t mind a thing. Jim’s coming right back to me. He’s made good, he and Len, an’ he’s coming home with stuff so we’ll never need to worry ever again.”

It was out. The mother had to tell her glorious news on the instant. And to this old friend of her Jim’s of all men.

Ivor nodded. Then came the quiet, conventional reply, “You don’t say?”

The woman’s excitement rose. “But I surely do,” she cried, holding up the bundled pages of her letter. “It’s all right here. This is mail I got from him this morning. Claire brought it out from Beacon, bless her! My, I—I sort of feel just anyhow. Ever feel that way? Ever feel you wanted to dance around an’ shout? Say—but come right in an’ get some coffee. It’s on the stove. I—I’m forgettin’ everything.”

Ivor shook his head.

“Don’t you worry, ma’am,” he said in a tone of sympathy one would never have associated with him. “Just get busy an’—shout. But tell me first, when’s Jim getting along?”

“Guess he’s right on the way now.” The woman’s eyes were alight, then a shadow crept into them. “He won’t be along for six months from the start. Maybe that’ll be three months an’ more from the coming of this letter.”

“Yes, it would be about that.”

The man’s eyes were serious as he regarded the letter bunched in Rebecca’s hand. Then he looked up and was smiling again.

“I’m just so glad for you, ma’am, I can’t say,” he said cordially. “Jim’s a great boy. He’s got elegant grit, too. He’s out for you an’ Claire all the time, and I’ll be real glad to have him around again for—for all your sakes. How does Claire feel? But there, I guess she’s crazy glad. Where is she?”

He craned, peering into the doorway expectantly. But the mother shook her head.

“She’s not inside,” she declared. “Glad? Why, it don’t say a thing, Ivor. You know her. She and Jim are kind of all in all to themselves. She went sort of white as a corpse when she read that letter. She didn’t say much, but if you’d seen her eyes! My! You can guess wher’ she is now. Ther’s only one place for Claire when Jim’s on the water sailin’ home. It’s right up on the headland back of here,” she jerked her greying head towards the back of the house. “She’s right up there where she can see the sea. An’ I guess she’s dreaming fool dreams of his home-coming.”

“Yes, I guess it’s kind of wonderful for you both,” Ivor said kindly.

“Wonderful? Sure it is. Ther’s another thing. We been kind of in bad shape an’ were selling out our last block in Beacon that my man left to us. Oh, I’m not really thinkin’ of the stuff he’s bringing. No,” Rebecca went on, as though she feared the man might think that sheer selfishness was the substance of her delight. “But it helps. And Claire’s been a heap worried dealing with Bad Booker, but it don’t matter a thing now. We’ll take what he offers an’ be thankful.”

Ivor had turned to his horses. He unloosed the halter shank of the nearside beast and secured it to the tying ring on the log wall of the house, then he drew out a bundle of well-read newspapers and held them out to Rebecca.

“Here, take these,” he said in his quick, rough way. “I’ll leave my plugs right here. They’ll be glad to stand. I’m just going up to get a word with Claire. I’ll bring her right along down.”

The mother took the papers and threw them on to the table in the room behind her. Somehow her usual interest in them was overwhelmed.

“Thanks, Ivor,” she said. “You never seem to forget us. I’ll sure be real glad to have you bring Claire down with you. She’s crazy glad, sure—we both are, but it don’t seem time to me to be dreaming around on any old hill-tops. I’ll set coffee an’ a bite to eat against you get back.”

She watched him hurry away, this great creature all height, and muscle, and plainness of feature. She realised his eagerness, and again there arose in her mother heart that hope which her better sense sought to deny her.

The girl was gazing out upon the distant sea. The iron-bound coast that lay immediately below her made no claim upon her, for all the wild beauty, the cruel austerity with which its ages-long battle with the merciless waters of a storm-swept ocean had endowed it. Neither had the panorama of tumultuous hills which rose about her, nor the distant snowy crests of the northern reaches of the Rocky Mountains any appeal. She only had eyes for the grey, far-off horizon where sky and sea met. She was searching for some sign of a sail, which, in fancy, she might translate into the wings of the vessel bringing home a beloved brother and—fortune.

She was beautifully tall and slim, for all her somewhat rough clothing which had little more than warmth and utility to recommend it. It was the best that the joint efforts of her mother and herself had been able to contrive out of their limited resources, and the girl was not given to grumbling. No, she was accustomed to hardships, and self-denial came easy to her. She was too strong and resolute, she was too frankly generous to harbour any petty resentment against her lot.

In twenty-one years she had grown to superb womanhood, healthy in mind, healthy in a wonderful degree in body. Her father had seen something of her splendid development before he died, but it was left to her mother to witness the final reality of it. To the latter her child was the most beautiful creature in all the world. Her wide blue eyes, and her wealth of flaming red hair, her shapely body, so tall, and vigorous, and straight; then her sun-tanned, rounded cheeks, and her well-chiselled nose, and broad, even brows; were they not all something of a reflection of the early youth of the man who had given her her own life’s happiness? Time and again her mother had rejoiced that she had had her christened with so choice a name as “St. Claire.” True, the “Saint” had been permitted to fall into disuse. But it still belonged to her, and nothing could rob her of it. And the mother only regretted that the girl herself refused to permit its revival.

Just now the girl had given herself up to idle moments of delicious dreaming. And why not? Difficulties and troubles had beset them for so long; oh, yes. She had no scruple in admitting the bald, hard truth. Not alone was her joy at the prospect of Jim’s return. He was returning with some sort of fortune, for them as well as himself.

It would mean so much to them. Her mother would know ease and peace of mind after all her heroic struggles with adversity. Jim would be freed from his great responsibility for their care. And she—she—well, there were so many great and wonderful things in the world she wanted to do and see.

And dreaming of all that this splendid return meant to them her mind went back to the interview she had had only that morning in Beacon Glory with the man everybody called “Bad” Booker, the chief real estate man in the city.

Her journey into town had been inspired by their necessity. Her mother still owned a small block of property in Beacon Glory, the last remaining asset left to her by her gambler husband. It was mortgaged to Booker, himself, but only lightly, and she had visited him to endeavour to sell it right out. Without Booker’s help they possessed less than twenty dollars with which to face the winter, and await Jim’s return. She took no account of the played-out gold claim on the creek below her. That had ceased to yield a pennyweight of gold more than two years back, a fact which had been the inspiration of her brother’s going.

She remembered Booker’s smiling fat face and bald head as she offered him her proposition. He always smiled, and it was a hateful, greasy, fixed sort of smile. She believed he was a Jew. But Jew or Gentile, he was a merciless money-spinner, ready to rob the world of its last dollar.

Her anger surged even now with her thought of the man. He had offered to take the block off her mother’s hands for two thousand dollars cash. It was the limit to which he would go. It was mortgaged for two thousand dollars to him. It was in the very centre of Beacon Glory, next to the Speedway Dance Hall. And even though the city was dead flat as a reaction from its early boom, the property was worth not a cent less than ten thousand dollars. It was maddening. It was a sheer “hold-up.” But she knew they were helpless in the man’s hands. Oh, if they could only tide over until Jim got back!

She had told her mother not a word of the man’s offer yet. Somehow she felt she had not the courage to tell her. Yet she would have to do so, and, worst of all, she knew they would have to accept the man’s offer or starve.

Well, she would have one slight consolation. Once the deed was signed, and the money was in her hands, she would tell “Bad” Booker all that was in her mind. She——

The sound of a footstep behind her broke up the half-fierce, almost tearful train of her thought. She turned sharply to discover Ivor McLagan breathing heavily after his climb.

“Say, Claire,” he cried, while he spread out his hands deprecatingly, and his smallish eyes twinkled humorously, “why in the name of everything holy make this darn country worse than it is? Why you need to climb a mile high to enjoy the thought of your Jim, boy, coming along, I just can’t see. I surely can’t!” Then he glanced quickly out to sea and took a deep breath. “My, but this is a swell spot!” he added soberly.

The girl’s bad time had passed. Her smile came on the instant.

“That’s quite a contradiction,” she said slily.

“Sure. Well, we’ll cut the first part right out.” McLagan’s twinkling gaze came back to the girl’s face, and he drank in the fresh beauty of it. “I couldn’t pass along into that nightmare city of ours without speaking my piece of gladness for your news. It’s bully! It certainly is. The boy’s made good. An’ for you folks, I guess, only just in time.”

The girl nodded as she looked up into the man’s plain face, and a flash of thoughtful regret for its plainness broke in on all the rest that preoccupied her.

“I doubt if it’s even that, Ivor,” she said, a little desperately.

“How?”

The man’s interrogation was a return to his roughness of manner.

“Why, Bad Booker’s got us right in his clutches, and we can’t even wriggle. He reckons to hand Mum two thousand on top of his two thousand mortgage for a block of stuff you could market free for ten thousand. It’s his two thousand or—or starve.”

The girl finished up with a smile that failed to hide her feelings, and McLagan’s eyes hardened.

“The man’s a swine,” he said, and his voice grated harshly.

“That don’t help.”

“No. Don’t accept, Claire. Don’t you sell.”

“But we’ve got to eat.”

“Sure, an’ you’re going to. Here.” Just for a second the man hesitated, and shifted his gaze from the beautiful urgent face that never more deeply appealed to him than now. Then it came back on the instant. “It’s no use,” he cried, and his tone was rough. “You’re not going to starve. You and your mother can have all the cash you need till Jim comes, and—and I want nothing in return. Do you get my meaning, Claire? If you take money on loan from me till Jim gets home you’ll never have need to worry. You can just shut it right out of your head and forget it—till Jim comes home. I mean that just plain an’ straight. And there isn’t a thing behind it.”

They stood eye to eye while the girl swiftly read the sheer honesty lying behind the man’s eyes. Then she shook her head.

“No,” she said, “I’m going to sell. I’m going to sell, and I’ll just wait around after, hoping for the day to come when the Aurora Clan will reckon that Bad Booker’s a sort of nightmare disease an’ needs plenty good med’cine. Thanks, Ivor. It’s just a real kind thought of yours, and the thing that makes me glad is I know you mean it just as you’ve said it. But I don’t want your money. I—I wouldn’t take it if it was that or—or starve.”

For all there was something of roughness in the girl’s choice of words for her refusal, there was none in her manner. Even her hope that one day Booker would receive his medicine at the hands of the secret Aurora Clan was without undue feeling. The man was deeply stirred.

They were great friends, these two. But for the man’s peace of mind the frank nature of their friendship was deplorable. He loved the girl with all the strength of his manhood. He held a big position with the Mountain Oil Corporation of Ohio as their consulting engineer, and his whole desire was to take this child of the northern wilderness away to his far-off home in the sunlit valleys of California. She had refused to marry him more than once. But somehow her refusal had left their friendship unaffected. She liked him whole-heartedly in a manner that to her precluded all possibility of regard of a deeper nature, but which in the man only contrived to strengthen his natural persistence.

The leaping fires of the man’s passion surged up in face of the rebuff. For a brief moment he contemplated the smiling eyes in their wonderful framing of vivid hair, which the slouch-brimmed hat she was wearing failed to conceal. Then his lips obeyed his impulse.

“Yes, I know, Claire,” he said, his voice harshened by emotion. “You won’t, you can’t accept my help. Why? I’ll tell you. Because I don’t belong to you. Because I want to marry you, am crazy with love for you, and you don’t feel like falling for my notion. So you can’t have the thing I want to do for you like I never wanted to do for anybody ever before. I guess you’re right enough in your own lights, sure you are. You’re not putting yourself under obligation to the feller you don’t fancy to marry. But why not marry me, Claire? Maybe I’m not a thing of beauty. But I guess I just love you to death. Maybe you don’t care a thing for the picture I make now, but you’ll get used to it. Sure you will.” He laughed a little bitterly. “I guess folks can get used to most things after a while.” Then his smile passed. “But, my dear, ther’s not a thing in the world I wouldn’t do to give you a real dandy life. These oil wells out here are going to pass me a fortune that I’m crazy to share with you. Won’t you? No. You won’t. I can see it in your eyes, the same as I’ve seen it before. But—but if I’ve still got to stand for that, there’s things I won’t stand for. You need help and I’ll raise all the hell I can to pass it you.”

Claire shook her head a shade impatiently.

“It’s no use, Ivor. Why—why can’t we be friends? True, I haven’t a thing against you in the world, not a thing, not even”—she smiled gently—“the looks which you don’t seem to set much stock by. No, it isn’t anything like that. True it isn’t. I like you, but—— Here, you don’t get the things lying back of my fool head. Guess I’m my father’s daughter. You knew him for what he was. He was a gambler. And maybe, in a way, I’m a gambler, too. I want life with all its chances. I want to reach out an’ hug it all. I want to take every chance coming, and do something, and be something in the game of it all. I don’t want to marry. Sure not yet. I don’t want to share in any man’s home, and—and grow on like a cabbage. There’s too much of the big adventure in life for me to miss it all. Maybe I’ll get sort of disillusioned later—maybe. I can’t help that. But I mean to take a hand in the game meanwhile.”

There was such a ring of final resolution in the girl’s smiling denial that the man realised his momentary defeat. So he offered no further protest. He made no attempt at argument. He shrugged his great shoulders, and the happy twinkle returned to his eyes.

“Don’t say another word, Claire,” he said gently. “Maybe I understand the thing lying back of your mind. Forget my break. It was a bad one, and I shouldn’t have made it, but—but I sort of just had to. I won’t do it again. There isn’t some other feller, is there?”

The girl laughed happily in her relief at his manner.

“Not a soul,” she cried, unhesitatingly.

“That’s all right.” The man’s eyes smiled responsively. “I can wait. I’m going to, and I’ll make no more bad breaks. And maybe when you’ve hit your adventures, and kind of tired of them, and feel you’d like the rest you’ll have maybe earned, why I’ll be waiting around, and I’ll surely be ready to hand it you when you raise a finger, a sign. An’ meanwhile, my dear, I’d be glad to have you feel ther’s no sort of trouble in the world so big I wouldn’t be glad to smooth out for you.” He suddenly spread out his muscular hands. “These two hands are for you, night or day, all the time, and I’ve two ears that’ll hear the faintest whisper of trouble that’s worrying you. Say, come along right down. Your mother’s crazy to talk your Jim to you and she asked me to bring you to home.”

The man’s whole manner was so gentle as to be irresistible. For all the thing that lay between them there had never been a moment when he had made so great an appeal to the girl. His normal roughness she knew to be but an unfortunate garment in which he clothed himself. Now, as times before, she was listening to the real man so surely hidden from the world that looked on. She was not without a shadow of regret that she could not see in him the man of her desire. Without a word of protest she permitted him to lead the way down from the bald crest of the headland.