Читать книгу Acres of Unrest - Max Brand - Страница 7

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Here was Doc Murray; the rich rancher, swung down from the steps of the train and looked about him with a joyful wave of the hand and a cheery word here and there to various faces that he recognized among the crowd as though he thought that this impromptu reception was being held in his honor. But there was no heed paid to rich Doc Murray. He suddenly recognized that he was not the center of the picture, but that he was obscuring it. He shrank suddenly to the side and away into the crowd, turning a bright scarlet.

Ross Hale smiled. He had waited a long time for this moment; he had invested eleven years of purgatory in the labor, wrecking his life and using up his farm. There was nothing left to him except a shell of his old existence. So if a few others had to suffer a little at the instant of his triumph—well, how could that be helped? And was it not really fitting, in a way?

Here was another and another dismounting from the train, blinking as the keen scrutiny of the public fell upon their faces. They glanced from side to side, as though frightened by this unexpected publicity. Then they scurried away. How lucky it was that his boy was to dismount last of all. How lucky it was.

He was not the first to see Peter. But he heard a little gasp from several people around him. Then, by a great effort, he controlled himself, clearing his eyes with a slight shake of the head. Above the crowd he saw the face for which he had yearned these many, many years. There was a set smile upon the lips. And he thought that he had never seen such a pale face in an athlete.

As he came closer, the people before him gave way. Was it possible that an expression of pity was in their eyes as they glanced at Ross Hale, on this most glorious day in the world?

They separated before him, and he had a clear view of Peter standing beside the train, while his baggage was handed down to him—standing beside the train with his wide, powerful shoulders bulging over the support of two crutches. Down to the waist he was a veritable giant of a man; below the waist he was distorted, grotesque—with an iron brace running along one leg. He moved and trailed the lower half of his body with a lurch.

Poor Ross Hale suddenly recalled the past three years. He remembered how the brilliant young athlete from Huntley School had mysteriously dropped from the football ranks. He remembered certain passages in the letter from the famous coach, Crossley. Well, that was enough.

Slowly he went toward Peter, and, as he walked, it seemed to him that he was making eleven steps, and each step meant a year of torture that he had undergone for the sake of this moment. And each year was now blazing with an incredible brilliance of torture in his soul.

He had failed—he had failed—he had failed! Here was his hero, his breaker of the ranks of men, his demigod, his Peter—a mere shattered wreckage crawling home from a ruined life!

Ross felt no pity for Peter; he felt no pity for himself. Muttering something—he hardly knew what—he calmly stooped and picked up the bags that Peter had brought with him. Then he strode away through the crowd, and that crowd melted away on either side.

The very first man to retreat was Sheriff Will Nast, who was soon to be called upon to make the decision upon the value of each of these two young men. Others went in haste. Voices were raised with a sham cheerfulness. People recalled a thousand-odd bits of business, anything that might furnish them with a decent pretext for turning and hurrying away.

Yet they did not go unnoticed. Here and there a deep, quiet voice spoke, as Peter Hale noticed and recognized one face and then another. He paused to speak with each and to shake hands with each. He had a clever way of shifting all his weight and his right crutch onto the left arm and the iron-braced left leg. Then, balanced a little precariously in this fashion, he had his whole right hand and arm free for shaking hands.

People thought that he looked very white and sick. His eyes were quite hollowed and shadowed. But his voice was perfectly cheerful. He had something to say to each one who he knew, and so he came with a surprising ease through their midst and out to the steps at the back of the platform. By this time, there were few people left. Everyone had started off at full speed. Consequently there were not so many eyes to see the little calamity that followed.

Peter, fumbling for the steps with his crutches, hardly noticed that one of the concrete steps had crumbled away. There was a grunt, the crutches plunged down through thin air, and the heavy body of Peter lurched to the ground and rolled in the dust.

Two or three ran to help him up. But he managed himself with a surprising adroitness. He had not lost the crutches, and now one had a chance to estimate the immense strength that must have belonged to him once. One could believe those old tales of how Peter had crushed through opposing football lines and come at the ball carriers with an incredible, cruel force, merely from seeing the lightness with which his long, powerful arms heaved him up out of the dust and the cinders and balanced him erect upon the crutches again.

His father, looking back, saw the commotion and its cause but did not hurry to the rescue. He felt an insane desire to throw back his head and burst into laughter, and he felt that if he ran to Peter, he would run with laughter that must not be heard.

Besides, there were plenty of others to brush the dirt from Peter's clothes. He thanked them gravely and calmly. It seemed to Ross Hale that his son had no shame and accepted the ministrations of the others with a pleasant smile, like one accustomed to the pity of the world. Ah, well, after this day the world might just as well end.

Only one thing was amazing—that the blow could have fallen so suddenly. One instant, he was like a king, above the rest of the people of Sumnertown and of Sumner Country. The next instant, there was the cause of his elevation reduced to a horrible mockery of manhood.

When the hulk of a man reached the buckboard, his father stood by. He would not offer help until it was asked, although he wondered how Peter would go about getting into the vehicle. But the moment was not so clumsy as it might have been, for Peter, balancing himself on the iron-braced left leg, put his crutches away in the back of the buckboard. Then he grasped the upper rim of the front wheel tire with one hand and the side of the seat with the other. He gave himself a swing and a lurch, and there he was, sitting in the seat, breathing a little hard with quivering nostrils.

It did not seem like a very great thing, except to one who knew something about the limitations of human strength. But Ross Hale knew. He had been crippled once for nearly eighteen months by the kick of a refractory mule that he was harnessing by the semilight of a lantern, before dawn. And he knew what it means to take the drag of a heavy body upon the arms alone. As Ross gathered up the reins and climbed into the buckboard, he rebuilt for himself the picture of Peter Hale as he might have been—as he once had been.

Once strength of foot had matched the strength of hand. Then he had been a veritable giant, indeed. Oh, to have had him only once come back here that the people of Sumnertown might have seen him in his glory—merely that they might contrast this glory with the wreck that it had come to now. But even that small mercy had not been granted to him, and he had read the disgust in the faces of the people who turned away from that station platform—disgust and pity commingled—than which there are no lower passions.

They would not forget; they had heard the lies for three years by which they were promised stories of the giant's prowess. This, they now felt, had been merely an artful deception practiced upon them by the father and the son—a stupid piece of artifice to keep from them the irrevocable fact—that the life and the body of Peter Hale were ruined things.

Ross put the whip to the ragged, down-headed team of mustangs and drove them out of the town in a whirl. But they passed over the first mile before he could look at Peter, and then it was only a side glance, which showed him his son sitting with a high head and a glance fixed calmly on the road before them.

Presently Peter said: "This goes even harder with you than I had feared, Father."

"Harder?" repeated the rancher. "Harder?" And then he laughed, but the sound was choked off and died in the pit of his throat.

"You see," said the level voice of Peter, "when I saw that you were so dead set on having me do something on the football field... why, after the accident, I talked it over with the coach and the doctor. They agreed that it might be a good thing if I didn't give you the great disappointment. They agreed, at that time, that there was one chance in ten that my legs might be untangled from the knots that they were in. So I took that chance... like a coward. And having started with fear, in that manner, I've never had the nerve to speak to you about it since. I've written those misleading letters to you. I've even let poor Crossley write lies to you. Bless him Tony for it, though. He meant the best in the world."

It was an echo from a far and glorified world—in which the son of Ross Hale called the great Crossley—whose picture had appeared in papers a thousand times—by his first name. Ross Hale sat quietly, without answering, and digested the bitter sweetness of this fact through the remainder of the miles that brought them to the ranch house.