Читать книгу Acres of Unrest - Max Brand - Страница 10

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So Ruth McNair was to marry Charlie Hale.

When Andy Hale had gone, Ross Hale sat in a brown study for some time. "Well," he said at last, "Charlie was well off before, but he's a made man now. He's a made man now... lucky young devil!"

"A made man?" queried Peter in the same calm voice.

"Oh, his father has him pretty well fixed. His dad ain't blowed in all of his money the way that I have. Charlie's father has made his ranch the finest place that you ever laid eyes on, nearly. Maybe I ain't told you about the way that Andy had fixed up his ranch?"

"You haven't written to me about it," said Peter, "but I could guess a good deal from the appearance of Uncle Andy. I could see that he thinks better of himself than he used to."

"He does, and he has a reason for it, I can tell you. He has a good reason for it. He's made that place of his bloom, but what does it all matter... all that work of his... compared with what Ruth McNair will bring him?"

"Is she rich?" asked Peter.

"Oh, her dad has got more money than you could shake a stick at. A lot more money."

"A million, eh?"

"What's a million?" asked Ross Hale, shrugging his shoulders. "No, I don't suppose that he could sell out for a million. He ain't got that much improved land or such a lot of cows as all of that, but he's got enough range to really be worth more than that, and he could run three times as many cows as he's got now. Besides, will you look at all of the trimmings that old McNair has got? There's a company back in Denver that wants to buy the water rights to that big creek that goes busting through the McNair place. They don't mean the rights of watering their cows from that stream. That would be different. All that they mean is the right to dam up some of that water and turn it into electricity.

"McNair looked into the thing and liked it so mighty well that he said he would let them build the dam, not for any cash price, but for a share in the company. They put up the dam and do all of the work, and he gets fifty percent of the holdings. They say that the company will accept the business even at that figure. That alone might make McNair a millionaire. But it goes to show you what sort of a position the man will be in that marries McNair's heir." He threw back his head and uttered a faint groan. "Once there was a time, Peter... "

"Well?" Peter urged.

"Never mind. Never mind," replied Ross Hale. He broke out suddenly: "Why, Peter, your cousin is gonna be, by all odds, the biggest and the most important man in the whole county. You hear me?"

"I hear you," said Peter.

"Curse it!" cried his father. "It don't seem to bother you none!"

"Bother me? Of course not. I'm glad for the sake of cousin Charlie... that's all."

"Curse cousin Charlie! Don't the money end of things mean nothing to you?"

"Why should it?" asked Peter. "I could be very happy with a most moderate income."

His father wiped his perspiring forehead and finally muttered: "Well, there's ways and ways that an educated man can do things, and I'd be the last man in the world to deny it. You said that you had got a leaning for the law, Peter. I suppose that maybe you'll start right in being a lawyer in Sumnertown?"

"Start in being a lawyer?" Peter cried. "Why, Father, the law course takes three whole years after the regular course is finished."

Mr. Hale reached for the back of a chair and steadied himself. "Three years... more?" he gasped.

"Yes, at least three years."

"Three years more... ," Mr. Hale repeated, and began to laugh in a very odd fashion. "But maybe you're ready for something else. You never told me much about yourself, son. You never said much about your work, and so how can I know what you're ready for?"

"It's true," said Peter. "I'm afraid that I haven't kept you in touch with my work."

"When I busted my legs, nine years ago," said Ross Hale, "it cost me close onto a hundred and fifty dollars, first and last. Well, Peter, maybe you've fitted yourself for being a doctor, if you can't be a lawyer. Maybe you're ready to start out and make yourself a good living doctoring."

Peter shook his head. "The medical course is twice as long as the law course," he said. "A man has to spend four years on top of his collegiate work, and after that he has to work in a hospital as an intern for two years. Six years altogether, on top of his college diploma."

The rancher was almost speechless, but, when he had recovered some of his presence of mind, he muttered: "Law and medicine takes pretty near forever, then. Peter, tell me if there ain't no profession that this university does fit a man for?"

"There are technical branches of it," said Peter, "where a man can learn to be an engineer and such things."

"Mining and bridge building and such things. All fine work. I hope that you went in for such things, Peter!" cried his father.

"Never gave them a thought," Peter answered. "Most of the boys I knew were taking a general course, and I took one, too."

"What does a general course mean?" asked the father. "A little bit of everything and something of nothing?"

"You might call it that," Peter said, apparently unable to notice the agony and the biting disappointment in the tones of his father. "I don't know what I'm ready to work at, unless it were to be a teacher. I could teach in a high school... Greek or history... or Latin."

"A teacher!" shouted Ross Hale. "A teacher! Teach in a school? My son?" He broke into a wild laughter and lunged blindly from the room.

His son made no effort to follow him. He waited for a time, with his keen eyes fixed upon the uncurtained, shadeless window, through which the sun streamed. Peter finally gathered himself and set about examining the state of the larder and the provisions of meat in his father's house. He found an empty sugar sack, the last fragment of a side of bacon, mostly fat, a quarter of a sack of moldy potatoes, five or six pounds of cornmeal, a little salt, and half a pound of a very cheap brand of coffee.

Peter examined all of these possessions in detail. When he had examined everything, he swung himself dexterously down the hall toward his room. He did not need his crutches for this, for he had a most extraordinary skill in supporting himself with his hands when there was anything for him to press against—as, for instance, the walls of a hall. Then he would swing the ironbraced leg beneath him and so progress with great, awkward, and unhuman strides.

In his own room, he went over everything with an equal care—not a detail was missing. All was as it had been when he left. All was in good order, too. There was no sense of sticky mold and damp about the chamber, as there usually is in a room which has not been lived in for a long time. Instead, there was a sweetness in the atmosphere that proved this room had been cleaned and aired with some regularity. It told Peter everything that he could have asked.

Still he made a slow round of the rest of the old ranch house. It was like moving through the bare ribs of a building that has been wrecked by fire. He could remember this house in the old days as a veritable bower of coolness in summer and of warmth in winter, but this was now all changed, for the trees that had once shaded and beautified the old house were all gone, and he did not need to be told where the bodies of them had gone.

They had been transmuted into textbooks and tuition fees and all the other items that he had piled up so freely. Other men sent their sons to college. He had almost forgotten that he was being supported from so small a ranch and by so untalented a money-maker as Ross Hale.

The first suspicion had entered his mind when he saw the tumble-down span of horses that waited for him at the station and the faded old coat that his father wore. The sight of the house and the falling barn had been eloquent additional touches. However, all that he saw in the house itself was needed to sink the thought to his heart of hearts.

An axe began to ring behind the house. He went out and found his father busily engaged in cutting up some wood. But it was tough and time-seasoned oak, and the axe was dull, and the arms of Ross Hale seemed strangely weak on this day. Peter took the axe from him without a word.