Читать книгу Rogue River Feud - Zane Grey - Страница 4

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Keven Bell, returning home to Grant’s Pass after two terrible years in an army training-camp hospital, seemed to see all things strange and unfamiliar except the beloved river of his boyhood—the errant and boisterous Rogue.

He had not gone home at once, but wandered about the town, finally lingering at the river bridge. It troubled him that he could not remember well. But he knew his mother had died during his four-year absence from home, and his father’s last letter had acquainted him with more misfortune. Watching the green gliding, rolling river brought a break in his thought and feeling. A poignant spasm gripped his breast. His jaw quivered, and his eyes smarted and dimmed with tears. How long had it been since he had cared for anything?

Surely still for Rosamond Brandeth, whom he had loved before he left home to train for war! Long since her letters had ceased—so long that he could not recall when. He knew what to expect and had no bitterness then. Indeed he meant to release her from a claim that honor, at least, held binding. The river brought back memories of Rosamond.

At length he turned away. He had to ask a man, who peered strangely at him, how to find his father’s house. It looked old and dilapidated. He sat down on the porch, slowly realizing. Yes, he knew the rose vine, just budding green, and the flagstones in the walk.

The day was a Sunday in May. He had arrived from Seattle on the morning train. The streets appeared deserted. New houses across the common hid the banks of the river. Finally, hearing steps within, he knocked on the door. It opened.

There stood his father, greatly changed, now slight of build and stoop-shouldered, his hair gray, with amazed and slow recognition dawning in his mild blue eyes.

“Dad, don’t you know me? It’s Kev.”

“My son!” replied the older man, and reached for him. “I—I didn’t know you.... Come in.”

When Keven saw the sitting room, with its open grate, where a fire burned, he suffered another pang. That empty armchair by the table told him of the vacancy in this home. His father clasped his hands hard and gazed up, puzzled and anxious.

“Son, you’re not the same,” he said. “Taller.... Thin. You used to be big.... And your face—”

“I couldn’t write,” replied Keven, a hand going to his father’s shoulder. “But you heard of my accident?”

“I think I did. Long ago, wasn’t it? But I forget what. Once we thought you’d died. Then it was in the paper about your being in the army hospital. That was before your mother went.... What happened to you, Kev?”

“A lot. Cannon blew up. I stopped the breechblock with my face,” replied Keven. “I was pretty badly mussed up. But I didn’t know anything about it for months. They thought I’d die. I was in hospitals for two years. Then I pulled through. But my mind is bad. I notice it most in not being able to remember. Can’t see well out of one eye.... And look here—at my iron jaw.”

He drew down his lower lip, to expose the hideous thing that served for his lower maxillary.

“What’s that?” queried his father, nonplussed.

“I lost most of my lower jaw. The dentist patched it up with iron. I can chew with it. But I hate the taste. They said I could get a gold-and-platinum jaw someday, with teeth in it. Ha! Ha! When I strike gold along the Rogue!”

“Well! Well!... Sit down, son. So you never got to France?”

“No, worse luck. Four years! My health shattered—my eyesight impaired—my brain injured somehow. I’d been better if I’d gotten to the front. Four years for nothing.”

“My God!” replied his father huskily. “It seems hard.... And now you’re only twenty-six. Ruined! ... What a miserable farce! All that patriotic hokum! That wonderful training camp. What did they do for my son?”

“Worse than killed me, Dad,” replied Keven sadly. “I suffer pain all my waking hours. And I don’t sleep well. In the Army I learned a lot of rotten things. But you get so you don’t care. They wanted you not to care—to revert to savagery. Yet they fed us on saltpeter bread. ... Whisky gives me relief, though.... I’m sorry to tell you this, Dad. Better from me, though, than from anyone else. I had to come home. I’m a wreck. No money. Nothing but this uniform on my back. That’s all.”

“God has failed us,” replied the older Bell bitterly.

“I don’t remember where I stood in regard to God once. But sure He didn’t linger around that camp.”

“Son, if we lose faith we’re lost,” said his father, poignantly regretting his momentary confession. “It could have been worse. You might have been killed—or have been sent to an asylum. While there’s life there’s hope. Kev, I implore you to have hope.”

“For what, Dad?”

“That you’ve something left to live for,” was the earnest reply. “Find it—make it! They have failed you. Your country—your sweetheart! And you’ll find no friends now. But I say—by God, as long as you can wag, rise above it all! The damned sordid, rotten part of the world that seems in power. The destructive forces! ... Don’t let them kill your soul.”

“I understand, Dad.... Thanks. I know there’ll always be a bond between us. It’s something—it’s enough. I’ll try.... Tell me about Mother.”

“Kev, she just gradually went downhill,” returned Bell. “You should remember she was a sick woman before you left. She had a long, lingering illness. She was glad to go. Before she died she told me to get you back home here by the Rogue—that the river would cure you. She loved that river.... Well, I had to take more and more time away from the store, until gradually my business failed. I lost it.... Since then I’ve been carpentering. You know I was always handy with tools. They were my hobby. And now that hobby stands by me. You can never tell.”

“If only I had learned a trade!” sighed Keven. “I’m not so weak. I could work—I could stick at something that didn’t require thinking. But I never learned anything, except how to fish. I spent more time fishing than in school.”

“Kev, you can go back to the river,” said Bell thoughtfully.

“What? You don’t mean fishing?”

“Yes, I do. For a living. The market fishermen do well now. Some of them own their homes. Brandeth has gotten control of the canning factory at Gold Beach. He pays big wages. It’s an established business now. He got rich during the war.”

“Brandeth. You mean Rosamond’s father?”

“Yes, no one else than John Brandeth. Of course he never was poor. But now he’s rich. Built a magnificent new house. Has a big fruit ranch down on the river. He’s in everything. And, by the way, he got my store.”

“Straight or crooked, Dad?” queried Keven.

“All business is straight, since the war,” replied his father evasively. “But John Brandeth could have saved me from failing.”

“Business must be like war.... Dad, how about Rosamond?” returned Keven, averting his eyes.

“Grown into a beautiful young woman. Fine feathers make fine birds. She sure flies high. Drives her own car. Drinks and dances. Engaged to this high-stepper from Frisco and then some fellow round here—so the gossip runs. She never speaks to me, though it’s not so long since she begged candy from me at my store.... But, Kev, you haven’t any hopes, have you—about Rosamond?”

“No, indeed, Dad.... But she never broke our engagement. At least I never had word of it.... Was—that reported about town?”

“Lord, no, son. You’ve been long forgotten.”

“Ah, I see.”

“Forget all that, too, my son.... Let’s talk of other things. We’ll fix up your old room. And come out to the shed. I’ve built a new river boat. The same old model, Kev. I sell one now and then to a market fisherman. This one is spruce, twenty-one feet long, deep gunwales, sharp fore and aft, with watertight compartments. It’s a dandy.”

Sight of that Rogue River boat seemed to open a door in Keven’s heart to let memory in. For he had known every stone in the river from Savage Rapids to Blossom Bar, and beyond. To run the rapids, to drift with the still current, to listen to the singing waters, to fish the pools—these had been his joy from boyhood up. And sight of this long deep boat, sharp fore and aft, with its beautiful lines and its strong frame, brought that old forgotten joy surging back.

“Dad, it’s sure a dandy. Better than you used to build,” Keven said heartily.

“Necessity is the mother of improvement, son,” replied his father.

“What do you charge for these boats, Dad? I’ve forgotten.”

“Forty dollars to the market fishermen. They furnish oars, locks, lines.”

“This one sold?”

“No. But Garry Lord has his eye on it. Wanted to pay me ten on deposit. Garry can never keep money long enough to save up that much.”

“Garry Lord! ... Somehow that name seems familiar,” returned Keven ponderingly.

“Humph, it ought to be. You used to play hooky from school to fish with Garry Lord. How that distressed your mother! Garry never was any good, and now he’s worse. He’s grown up now. Just a lazy drunken low-down riverman!”

“Does he still live out on the edge of town, in a tumble-down shack under the pines by the river?”

“No. Brandeth bought that pine grove and the river front. He ousted Garry and the other loafers out there. Garry moved farther down the river.”

“I’ll hunt him up.... Dad, here’s your forty dollars for the boat. It about cleans me out.”

“Son, I can’t take your money.”

“Yes, you can. If you don’t some bootlegger will get it,” replied Keven, and forced the money into his father’s unwilling hands. “Is my old room available?”

“It has never been used. Mother locked it after you went to be a soldier. And she lost or hid the key. That room has never been opened.... But we can force the lock.”

Presently Keven Bell stood on the threshold of the room where he had lived his childhood and boyhood days. And on the threshold of the dim past, where vague scenes arose, like ghosts, like the musty cobwebbed things under his piercing gaze!

In the afternoon he walked out the broad avenue to the Brandeth mansion that lifted its shiny tiled red roof among the pines on a bench high above the river. He wanted to get something over—a duty he imagined he owed himself—something for which no letter would suffice. The fine-graveled road, the smooth path, the green lawn with its plants and statued fountain, the stately house that seemed to frown at his insolence—these made but momentary impressions. The maid who answered his ring informed him that Miss Brandeth was out motoring.

Keven returned to the main street and strolled its long length, passing many persons, not one of whom he recognized. Automobiles full of gay young people whizzed by him. Keven was used to being stared at. The attention he created, however, was not due to recognition. He went to the park, which was dotted with strollers and loungers, and from there back to the railroad station. An hour’s walk on Sunday afternoon assured Keven he was not known in his home town. But four years was an age and he had greatly changed. He ended upon the river road, from which he crossed a meadow to the pine-fringed bank.

He sat down in a shady fragrant brown-carpeted spot. It was lonely there. The road, the bridge, the town with its noisy cars and young people were out of sight. Suddenly the dull thoughts that had been stirred in him ceased to operate. And he felt the pleasantness, the welcome of the place.

The river ran clear, swift, and green over the rocky ledges. From the bend below floated a low musical roar of a rapid. It mingled with the sound of the wind in the pines. A crow cawed from the hills. In the shallow water red crayfish backed over the mossy stones.

Keven closed his eyes and lay back upon the pine mat, and all these sensations seemed magically intensified. At last, thought and remembrance encroached upon the first peace he had felt for years. How strange that it should come to him here on the bank of the Rogue! Even his physical pain had been in abeyance. It was something he must inquire into. Rising, he strode on down the river, past the white rapid that stopped his heart with a recollection. Here as a boy he had experienced his first upset and had drifted, clinging to his skiff, through the ugly rocks and rushing channels to the safety of shallow water below. How much better it would have been for him to perish then! But a doubt mocked his sadness.

At the end of the fringe of pines he espied a fisherman’s shack. He knew the type, though this one appeared more hastily and flimsily thrown up. It had been constructed of boards and stones and flattened gasoline cans, with a stovepipe sticking out of the roof. Yet it appealed to Keven. No location could have surpassed that upon which it stood. A giant pine spread wide branches down over the roof, to brush against it. Keven was calculating doubtfully about its being above high-water mark when he saw a man bending over a net which evidently he was repairing. Keven had to gaze keenly to make sure this was Garry Lord. Finally convinced, he slipped aside so that the shack hid him and went cautiously down the bank, with a warm, inexplicable desire to surprise Garry. And he peeped out from behind the shack, in time to see Garry throw aside the old net in disgust.

“Rotten!” he ejaculated. “Rotten as the damned nettin’ game itself! ... It ain’t no use. No net—no boat. An’ jail yawnin’ at me again!”

Keven stepped out. “Hello, Garry.”

The fisherman started quickly to rise and turn. He had a leathery, weather-beaten face, homely and hard, unshaven and dirty, yet despite these features and the unmistakable imprint of the bottle, somehow far from revolting. Perhaps that was due to the large, wide-open, questioning blue eyes. His ragged apparel further attested to his low estate.

“Fer the love of Mike!” he yelled suddenly. “It ain’t Kev Bell?”

“Yes, it is, Garry. All that’s left of him.”

“But, my Gord! Last I heerd you was dead!”

“No, worse luck, I’m alive.” There was no mistaking the glad-eyed, warm-fisted welcome of this fisherman, to which Keven felt strange reaction. He returned that hard grip.

“Gord, I’m glad to see you, Kev. An’ you hunted me up? Or was you jest walkin’ down the old river?”

“Dad told me where to find you,” replied Keven. “I got home today. The old place is changed, Garry. I didn’t see anyone I knew. Mother’s gone—Dad’s old and broken.... It’s tough to come home to—to all that.... Well, I’m lucky to get home at all. Garry, I was at the butt end of a gun that blew up. Breechblock hit me in the face. I’ve a bum eye, an iron jaw, and a sunspot on my brain. Ha! Ha! But that’s all, Garry, about me.”

“Set down, Kev. You are changed a lot. I’d knowed you, though, out of a thousand. You can still ketch the eyes of the girls.”

“Honest, Garry, I’m a cripple. Look here.” And Keven gave proofs of several of his physical defects.

“I heerd you’d been bunged up somethin’ fierce an’ was slated to cross the big river. Fact is, Kev, I heerd lots about you before an’ after you was hurt.”

It was Garry’s manner of speech, more than its content, that roused Keven’s curiosity. The fisherman regarded him gravely, as if remembering that before the war there was a certain definite barrier between them, and as if wondering now if that had been leveled.

“You remember Gus Atwell?” he queried guardedly.

“Yes, I guess so. Though I can’t recall his face.”

“He got a major’s commission.”

“Oh, yes. He lorded it over us at camp. God, that seems long ago. Atwell went to France long before I was injured.”

“Like hell he did,” retorted Garry with contempt. “He came home. Invalided they called it. We all called it nogutseted! ... Kev, he was as healthy as me.”

“Is that so? News to me. I guess there’ll be a lot of news.”

“You said it. An’ I’m wonderin’, Kev.... Wal, I’ll tell you straight. Atwell spread such talk about you thet it got to the ears of us fishermen.”

“Gossip? What about? My accident? How near death I came—and all that time in the hospital?”

“Not on your life,” snapped the riverman, with those keen bright eyes studying his visitor. “He spread a lot of rotten stuff. I can only remember one of the things. Thet was so queer no one’d ever forget it. About five girls in one family. Name Carstone. They lived near the trainin’ camp. Five girls from fifteen years old up to twenty-two, an’ every damn one of them had a baby. Five sisters! ... Thet’s the worst I ever heerd.”

“Carstone? Five sisters? That runs in my mind somehow—not exactly strange.”

“Well, Atwell said you was mixed up in thet. An’ there sure was a nine-days’ gabfest here at the Pass.”

“Garry, it’s a lie,” replied Keven hotly.

“I’m right glad to hear thet, Kev,” returned Garry fervently. “An’ if I was you I’d face Atwell with it. Make him crawl or beat hell out of him. Us upriver fishermen sure have it in for Atwell. You see he’s superintendent of the biggest cannery on the coast. Belongs to Brandeth, who’s gettin’ hold of everythin’. He about runs Gold Beach. Well, Atwell’s gang of downriver fishermen are against us, an’ we’ve had hell these last two years. Fights every Saturday night durin’ the nettin’ season. There’s been two killin’s. There’s a tough crowd down the river. They’re tryin’ to freeze us out.”

“Don’t stand for it, Garry,” said Keven stoutly.

“What can we do, Kev? Why, there’s only a few upriver fishermen who go down to the coast. An’ they shoot the Rogue, which you ought to remember is some job. No, we’re up against it. Atwell dominates the market here an’ on up the river. An’ at Gold Beach we have to sell to opposition canneries, none of which can afford to pay what Brandeth pays.... It sure riles me to see Atwell drivin’ around here in his fast cars. Spends as much time here as at Gold Beach. He’s chasin’ Brandeth’s girl now. Hell of a lot of good thet’ll do him. Fer there’s too swift a little lady fer him. She’s playin’ him fer a sucker.”

“You mean Rosamond Brandeth?” asked Keven quietly.

“Sure. She’s the only daughter. She’s as swift as she’s pretty.... By gosh, Kev, I forgot!” exclaimed the fisherman, slapping his knee. “You used to be sweet on her. I remember you used to borrow my boats to take her ridin’ on the river. When you was kids, an’ later, too.”

“Yes, I remember, Garry. It seems long ago.... But let’s talk fish. When does the season open?”

“Open now. But there’s no run yet. If I had a boat an’ a net I’d take another try at Gold Beach, if only to spite Atwell. Kev, I’m very suspicious about thet guy. But my boat won’t hold together no longer. If I tried to shoot Tyee or Mule Creek I’d be feed for little salmon. An’ I haven’t got no net, either. Last season I hand-lined salmon. Hard job an’ poor pay!”

“Is it enough to live on?”

“Well, yes, if you can make a little durin’ winter to help out.”

“What’s a net cost?”

“Around two hundred dollars. I could make one for less, but it takes time, an’ I’m lazy.”

“Garry, I’ve a little money. And Dad will lend me the balance. He’s just built a dandy new boat. Come in with me, Garry. We’ll be partners. I furnish equipment to start. We’ll share profits.”

“Kev, what are you talkin’ about?” asked the fisherman incredulously.

“I mean it, Garry.”

“You be a market fisherman!”

“Yes, I’d like it. I see no disgrace in it. I’ve got to work at something. And I never could do anything but handle a boat and fish.”

“You could do them, by gosh! But, Kev, you’re dotty. I’ve got a bad name. I’m only a lazy no-good, rum-guzzlin’ riverman. It’d ruin you to be braced with me.”

“Ruin? Ha! I’d like to know what I am now. The Army sounds great. But it’s a hideous lie! ... Garry, I don’t believe you’re as bad as you make out. Or perhaps as bad as the majority of Grant’s Pass believes. You know the Rogue. It’s about all there’s left for me. I always liked you. I’d swear by you. So come on. Let’s be partners. Let’s give Atwell a whirl.”

“By Gord, Kev, I’ll take you up!” shouted Garry, extending a horny hand. There was a birth light of love and loyalty in his eyes. “I taught you to run a boat an’ mebbe you can make a man of me. Shake!”