Читать книгу The Transformation of Job - Frederick Vining Fisher - Страница 6

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Andrew Malden was in town that night, yet no one thought of asking him, the hardest-hearted man in Grizzly county. Rich, with acres to spare, a mill that turned out lumber by the wholesale, horses that could outstrip any Bucephalus in the county. Either from jealousy or some cause, the world about Gold City, Frost Creek, Chichilla, all hated Andy Malden.

No one noticed how he listened to the story, how he glanced more than once at the tired traveler, till they heard him order his horses at moon-up, order the landlord to wake the boy and feed him.

When, promptly at ten, he took the strange lad in his arms and put him in his buckboard, seized the reins and drove toward Spring Creek, the Pines and home, the whole town was more dumfounded than in years, and the landlord said he guessed old Andy was crazy. Only Yankee Sam seemed to understand, and the old man muttered to himself, as he turned once more to the saloon, "Well, now! Andy thinks it is his youngster come back again that I helped lay beneath the pines, coming thirty years now."

Sam was right. It was the dormant love of thirty long-gone years, all roused again, that stirred the old man that night. The lonely, homeless boy on the "Palace" doorstep had touched a heart that most men thought too hard to be broken in this world or the next.

Andrew Malden was not a bad man, if he was hard. The outward vices which had ruined most men who had come to Gold City to gain the world and lose their souls, never touched him. That craving for excitement, the natural heritage of hot-headed youth, which often in that old mining camp lasted long after the passionate days of young life and lit the glazed eyes of age with a wild, unnatural fire, never seemed a part of his nature. Other men fed the fires of passion with the hot stuff of the "Monte Carlo," and the midnight gaming table, till, tottering wrecks consumed of self, they lingered on the doorsteps of Gold City, the ghosts of men that were. The world of appetite was a foreign realm to him. He looked with contempt on men who lost themselves in its meshes. But he was a hard man, the people said, and selfishness and a cold heart were far worse vices in the eyes of the generous-hearted, rough miners who came and went among these hills, than what the polished, cold, calculating money-getters of the far-off city counted as sin. So Andrew Malden was more of a sinner in the estimation of Gold City than Yankee Sam. Perhaps the ethics of that mining camp were truer than the world thinks. Perhaps he who sins against society is worse than he who sins against self.

The fact was that, though Andrew Malden had grown old in Grizzly county, and no face was more familiar, no one knew him. He was a hard man, but not as the people meant. There are two kinds of stern men in this world: Those who are without hearts, who take pleasure in the suffering of others; and those who, repulsed sometime, somewhere, have closed the portals of their inmost souls and hid away within themselves. Such was the "Lord of Pine Tree Mountain," as the boys used to call him.

Once he was a merry, happy, strong mountain lad in the old Kentucky hills, where he had helped his father, a hardy New Englander, make a new home. He had a heart in those old days. He loved the hills and forests; loved the romping dogs that played around him as he drove the logging team to the river-mill; aye, more than that, he had loved Mary Moore. She was bright and sweet and pretty, a bewitching maid, who seemed all out of place on the frontier. He loved to hear her talk of Charleston Bay and the Berkshire Hills, and of the days when she danced the minuet on Cambridge Green. Once he asked her to marry him. It was the month the war broke out with Mexico. The frontiersmen were slinging down their axes and swinging their guns across their shoulders. She laughed, and said that if Andy would go and fight and come home a hero, she would marry him—perhaps.

So he went. Tramped over miles and miles of Mexican soil, fought at Monterey and Buena Vista, endured and almost died—men said for love of Yankeedom; he knew it was for Mary Moore.

The war over, he came back a hero, and Col. Malden was named with old Zach Taylor by tried, loyal men. But Mary Moore was gone. She had found another hero. Gone to Massachusetts, so they said.

That night, Andy Malden left the Kentucky hills forever. The news of gold in California was in the air. He would join the mad procession that, over plain and isthmus, was going hither. He would go as far from the old life as deserts and mountains would put him.

So he came to Gold City. With a diligence far more systematic than the others, he had washed the gold from Frost Creek and off Mormon Bar. Other men lost all they found in daylight over the gaming table at midnight. He never gambled. All the others who succeeded went below to the great city or back to the States to enjoy their gains. He cared naught for the city, he hated the States; he never went. In a solitary mountain spot amid immeasurable grandeur, he buried himself in his lonely cabin. Yet he was not a hermit. He mingled with the crowd; he sought its suffrage for public office; yet he was not of it. He was a mystery to all. They elected him to office and continued to do so; why, they never knew, unless it was because he could save for them when others could not.

At last he married a farmer's girl from the plains, who had come up there to teach the Frost Creek school. She failed as a teacher. She was born for the kitchen and farm. Andrew Malden saw it. She would make him as good a helpmate as any, better than the Chinese women and half-breeds with whom some of his neighbors consorted, so he married.

The mines were giving out. His keen eye saw there were mines above ground as well as below. He quietly left off placer mining, drew out some gold from a hidden purse, and, before the world of Gold City knew it, had nine hundred acres on Pine Tree Mountain, a big saw-mill going, a nice ranch home, and barns like folks back in the States.

At last a baby came—a baby boy; almost the first in Grizzly county. The neighbors would have cheered if they dared. Judge Lawson did dare to suggest a celebration, but the people were afraid of the stern man on Pine Tree Mountain.

Oh, how he loved that boy! His wife looked on with wonder, for she thought he knew not what stuff love was made of. It was not long. A few short years, and the lad, who seemed so strangely merry for a son of Andy Malden, grew pale and took the fever and died; and, where the pine trees stoop to shade the mountain flowers in hot midsummer, strange Yankee Sam and Andy, all alone, laid him to rest. There was no clergyman. The "Gospel Peddlers," as the miners called them, had not yet come to the hills to stay. Just as Sam was putting the soil over the rough box, Andy stopped him and muttered something about the boy's prayer. He must say it for him, and he whispered in a broken voice, "Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep."

That was the last prayer Andrew Malden had uttered. Many years had come and gone; more and more he had lived within himself. He used to go to the boy's grave on holidays. Now he never went. For years his wife had lived with him and kept his house and prepared his food, and grown, like him, silent and apart from all around. She died at last and he gave her a high-toned funeral; had a coffin from the city and a preacher and all that. She had died of loneliness. He did not know it. She did not realize it. He went on as if it was a matter of course. The old house was kept up carefully; a Chinaman, as silent as himself, kept it for him, and a corps of men kept him busy at the mill.

He was rich, the people said; he was mean and grinding, the men muttered; and yet he prospered when others failed. Men envied, feared, hated him. Now he was growing old and men were wondering who would have his riches when he was gone. He had no kin this side the Ohio; and, for aught he knew, nowhere. His wife's nephews and cousins, pegging away in these hills, were beginning to build air-castles of days when the Pine Tree mill should be theirs.

Such was the old man who drove along in the moonlight, past Mormon Bar and over Chichilla Hill, holding a sleeping lad in his arms; and feeling, for the first time in years, the heart within him.

It was nearer dawn than midnight when the tired team, which had been slowly creeping up the mountain road for hours, turned into the lane above the mill and waited for their owner to swing open the gate which barred the way to the private road leading through the oak pasture to Pine Tree Ranch and home. It was one of those matchless nights that come only in the mountains, when the world is flooded with a soft, silvery light and the great trees stand out transfigured against the sky, amid a silence profound and awe-inspiring.

It had been a long ride; aye, a long one indeed to Andrew Malden. He had traveled across more than half a century of life since they left Gold City. His own childhood, Mary Moore, old Kentucky, had all come back to him. Then he had thought of that silent grave down beyond Gold City, and of the large part of his life buried there. He turned to the lad at his side, sleeping unconscious of life's ills and disappointments, of which, poor boy, he had already had his share. The sight of the innocent face thrilled the old man. In his slumbers the boy murmured, "Mamma, papa;" and, turning, the old man did a strange thing for him. He leaned over and kissed the lad, and whispered, "Mamma, papa! Boy, as long as Andy Malden lives, he shall be both to you."

When they reached the house, he hushed the dogs to silence, bade Hans, who stared astonished at his master's guest, to take the horses; and, lifting the sleeping form, carried it into his room, and, gently removing coat and shoes, laid the boy in the great bed, while he prepared to stretch himself on a couch near by.

That night a new life came to Andrew Malden and the Pine Tree Ranch.