Sayre uttered a queer gasp. How could Rene make such a statement, try so hard to deceive herself, after only that very afternoon telling about the weevil in Frank’s hay? As if that hadn’t made clear as print the way Frank had found of getting even! Only too successfully, Sayre acknowledged. She started to blurt out her thought.
But the unconscious Rene was talking on with unmistakable sincerity. “Can’t you see, Sayre, how miserable I’ve been? And right from the very beginning, deep down in my heart, I’ve always liked you awfully, and wanted you to like me.”
“What was that other thing Frank threatened to tell if you told about the cockerel? Was it about his stealing Charley’s spreader print and films?”
Sayre felt Rene start in her arms. Then the sobbing utterance began again. “He never stole them, Sayre, really. That is, he never meant it for stealing. Frank found the print on the floor. You know, at the exhibit. You remember how crowded that room was. People brushing against the wall all the time. And he couldn’t find a tack just then to put the print back. It had been stepped on, anyhow. So he stuck it in his pocket. Then he forgot all about it, and put some other heavy things in on top of it so that the print got all crumpled and torn. There wasn’t any sense in giving it back then when it wasn’t good for anything. Besides, things found on the floor are always looked upon as rubbish.
“As for the films, he just took them to mail the way he heard Mr. Kitchell tell Charley to do. Truly he meant to mail them—after a while, that is. He only meant to hold them back first until the public fuss about Charley’s spreader had died down. Frank never dreamed the spreader would get to be so important. But when it did, Frank was pretty scared. So he told me about it. And I told him he’d simply got to give those films back. I’d have persuaded him to, too, before he lost them, if Spens hadn’t found his film. After that, it didn’t matter.”
Could this really be Rene, the naturally suspicious and sharp-witted? The heart of the clear-headed Sayre ached with pity at these childish attempts of the other girl’s loyalty to justify Frank. “It’s not really me. It’s herself she’s trying to convince,” Sayre divined. For a moment she was lifted out of her own troubles by sympathy for Rene. For even if the very worst were true, there could never be in one’s grief for such a boy as Charley any such engulfing misery as this of Rene’s about a boy like Frank.
“And you won’t think of Frank as really dishonest, will you, Sayre?” Rene pleaded on. “I’ll never forgive myself for telling you all this if you do. I—I—told you, so you’d understand. You’ve always seemed such an understanding sort of person.”
“You haven’t told me very much I didn’t practically know before. As for Frank,” replied Sayre’s candor, “I could never think of what he’s done as the least bit honorable, Rene; but I’ll try for your sake to believe he didn’t mean to be as much of a croo—as dishonest as he’s seemed. I know how loyal you meant to be to him in telling me. Charley’s always admired you for being so loyal—the way you’ve stayed Frank’s friend no matter what.”
“Oh, has he? How good you are to tell me!” Rene drank in eagerly the comfort which to Sayre, in spite of her efforts, seemed mechanical and cold.
She did not draw her arms away from Rene, but let the unhappy girl sob on, more and more quietly now until by degrees she sank into the sleep of exhaustion. Meanwhile all the feeling part of Sayre was busy with her own thoughts. So it was with a fellow like this Frank, whom Rene had so unintentionally pictured—so selfish, so revengeful, so lacking in honor, who could share his guilt with a girl and repay her loyalty and devotion by making her as miserable as Rene had unquestionably been, it was alone with a fellow like this that Charley had had to face the awful experiences of the last few days, perhaps even the entrance into Eternity itself. Into Sayre’s consciousness there persisted in creeping suggestions of the gossip she had heard that day. There wasn’t a glimmer of truth in any of it, of course. But, still, with a fellow like Frank—She shut off the thought resolutely.
Oh, if only day would ever come! What was that gray light just spreading through the window? Why, it was dawn. And then she knew no more. In her, too, youth had asserted itself and brought to her the comfort of sleep.
21
In the Hoskins Store
When Rene’s mother tiptoed into the room to tell Sayre that her father had come into town, she awakened neither Rene nor Sayre. Mr. Morgan had agreed it was best to let the girls sleep as long as they could. But at Mrs. Osgood’s next visit Sayre’s eyes opened. Laying her fingers on her lips, the mother beckoned to Sayre to get up, whispering, “Be as quick as you can, Sayre. Mr. Kitchell is downstairs and wants to speak to you.”
Sayre’s trembling hindered the speed of her dressing. “He’s got news. He’s got news.” It was more a sensation that tingled through her than a thought. Did not the very brightness of the morning sun seem to assert that things could not possibly be as they had appeared last night? But one glance at Mr. Kitchell’s gray face extinguished her optimism. “He, too, has lost all hope,” she knew.
“Sayre—” Mr. Kitchell was speaking. “Mr. Osgood came in on the morning train with the trophies. He took them straight to the Hoskins store. The window’s been emptied of everything else. They’re being arranged there on purple velvet. I thought perhaps you’d like to see them before the window curtain’s raised to let the public look. Your father’s there.”
“Oh, I couldn’t.” Look at those cups? Those medals? Now? When the boys who had won them—when Frank hadn’t won his fairly? The very suggestion shook her self-control. She struggled with herself for a moment. “I’d love to,” she managed to say quietly at last.
Mrs. Osgood was at her side with a cup of coffee. “Drink this, Sayre.”
Mechanically the girl obeyed. Mechanically she seated herself in Mr. Kitchell’s sedan. He laid a newspaper on her lap. “Another thing, I want you to see this. It’s just out.”
Sayre recoiled from the sheet, fearful of what it might contain. Then her eye caught the headline of the article to which Mr. Kitchell was pointing. Eagerly she began to read. When she looked up, her lips were quivering. “Oh, why couldn’t this have come before?”
“The public statement couldn’t. Not until the embargo was actually lifted. That, you see, happened only yesterday. But Charley knew it was coming.”
“I—I don’t understand.”
The teacher hesitated, as if searching to know just how much to say, while Sayre’s glance flitted again here and there over the newspaper paragraphs she had just been reading.
“The embargo by the State of Missouri upon alfalfa hay from northwestern Wyoming has been lifted through the action of the state legislature on recommendation of—”
Sayre skipped to the next paragraph.
“Entomologists of the Wyoming State Agricultural Experiment Station cooperating with similar authorities in the State of Missouri have convinced the Missouri State Board of Agriculture that there is no alfalfa weevil on the Pawaukee Irrigation Project.
“The embargo was placed—”
Again Sayre skipped. Her glance dropped to the lower part of the column:
“The scientists on whose reports the new state action rests declare it to be highly doubtful whether the insect’s appearance in the car in question was that of the dreaded weevil at all. If so, the insidious insect had taken up only a very brief residence there, and its presence may be accounted for by the extreme age of the freight car in which the condemned hay was originally shipped to the Missouri market.
“Some time ago, there had been transported by the railroad, in that decrepit, fateful car, furniture of Italian immigrants, which had been packed in Italy in alfalfa hay. It is possible that in the remaining fragments of that Italian hay there were lodged some traces of the dreaded weevil pest. It is common knowledge among alfalfa growers that the insidious insect has already entered in the above-mentioned manner certain other alfalfa-growing sections of the western United States, whose names we r
efrain from mentioning here.”
Sayre looked up. The paper slid slowly down over her knees to the floor. Mr. Kitchell was talking.
“We’ve been working at it for quite a while, Sayre, Mr. Cowan and Mr. Hansen and I. We got the state experiment station entomologists on the job at the start. Later we made our appeal to state officials and authorities. I needn’t go into the details of the story—the delays we met, and all that. I’ll only say that as far as we possibly could, we kept our investigations completely in the dark. It seemed the only wise thing to do. You see—”
Sayre was not following very closely. Her mind was too jumbled up with recollections—too busy puzzling out their meaning in the light of this new information. Those entomology bulletins that Charley had pored over last winter. His funny questions about the bugs in the Parsons south ditch alfalfa field. Rene’s confession yesterday about the insects in Frank’s field. The way Charley had poked about in all the Parsons fields. Why, other people must have been doing that same kind of poking about in other people’s fields.
With quick understanding and sympathy her mind leaped to Rene, to the girl’s confession and distress of the afternoon before. “How glad Rene’ll be! I must tell her as soon as I possibly can. It wasn’t her telling Mr. Hoskins that made the news of Frank’s weevil leak out. Other people, too, must have found out about Frank’s field having weevil.”
“You see—” Mr. Kitchell repeated. Again he was hesitating. “We are afraid of frustration, of having our efforts—successfully balked.”
Sayre gave a brisk nod. She was listening acutely now. “I see what you mean: Mr. Hoskins.”
The teacher chose to ignore the girl’s sharp comment. He turned to questioning. “Sayre, on that last day of the baling on your place, Frank did add some of his crop to yours?”
“I’m sure he did.” Briefly Sayre explained reasons for her opinion without hint of having received Rene’s confidence. “That’s why our crop went bigger than anybody counted on. And there were bugs in it, Mr. Kitchell. That’s why I don’t understand about this.” She motioned toward the newspaper at her feet.
“Yes. But not weevil. Just another small snout beetle which harms alfalfa little.”
“Oh!” broke forth Sayre’s relief. “And Charley and Frank knew it?”
“No, Sayre. They didn’t.” The teacher’s troubled solemnity did not lighten. “None of us knew for certain when we went to the contest. The final report had not come then. And Frank knew nothing at all about any of our efforts in the matter. He, I’m sure of it, was still confident that those beetles of his had been weevil.”
Sayre sat silent a moment, “And Frank knew,” she pondered aloud, “or was afraid, that Charley had suspicions about his having put his buggy hay with ours?”
“That’s about it, I’m afraid. You see we’d discovered the matter of those few beetles in Frank’s field. And Charley, like you, had put two and two together, just the way you have, about that extra hay. I’m confident he did, that is; he never actually said so, as far as I know. His honesty always made him want all the certainty he could get in a matter before he spoke or acted. But what he knew was enough, of course, to give him the whip hand in the situation that existed between him and Frank. Whether Charley had let Frank know he knew—or whether only a guilty conscience made Frank realize—”
“And you let things go on like that when you were pretty sure those bugs weren’t weevil?”
“It isn’t exactly scientific to publish mere suppositions in a situation like ours, Sayre. Not all our reasons, though, for keeping our doubts to ourselves were scientific ones. Some of us argued that it was a good thing to keep a boy like Frank thoroughly scared as long as we could. And, too, there was the matter of securing his father’s cooperation. We thought we might need a lot of that at the end to win the railroad’s influence. Mr. Hoskins has been a pretty big shipper, you know. And with the shoe he’d made Charley wear because of what had happened to the Pawaukee’s hay coming to fit so tightly on his own boy’s foot, you can see our advantage. Under the circumstances he could scarcely refuse us full cooperation when we wanted it.”
Again Sayre’s mind leaped momentarily back to Rene’s distress. “Why, her telling Mr. Hoskins probably really helped to make things come out right. Because what Rene knew must have made him surer that Frank had really done what Mr. Kitchell and the others thought he had. I’ll tell Rene that.”
“Probably, though,” Mr. Kitchell’s voice was going on, “we’d have got that cooperation, anyhow, when the right time for Mr. Hoskins, like the present, came. Hay’s scarce and high, now, you know. The market’s booming. Omaha and Kansas City are clamoring for all the Pawaukee’s got before other cities snatch it up.”
“Oh, I’m so glad. For all the poor people around here, I mean.”
The girl sat a while after that, solemnly gazing out of the car window through the mist in her eyes. Finally she murmured, “It seems as if Charley must know his name is cleared at last.”
“Perhaps he does,” the teacher chimed in softly. “Who knows?”
The car slid to a stop in front of the Hoskins store. Sayre’s glance fell and stayed on the big, wide show window, darkened by its low-drawn shade. For a long moment she made no movement at all toward leaving the car. It was as if at sight of that shade she had become too numbed to arouse her spirit to beat any further against the surrounding atmosphere of hopelessness. She hardly knew when Mr. Kitchell’s guiding hand helped her to alight. Almost like a hypnotized person she preceded him across the sidewalk and through the store door.
Yet all the while, inwardly, she was reliving the last time she had approached so close to that doorway! Charley was coming out of it then, and Mr. Hoskins’ infuriated face was behind it.
As she entered the store she saw at once that her father was there, facing the darkened window. She moved close to him and stood quietly, but she did not speak to him or know what he said to her. Only dimly was she conscious that Mr. Kitchell had paused and was standing behind her, and that the room contained other people, equally still and equally silent. Of what lay before her, however, she was vividly conscious in a queer kind of detached way.
How beautiful, how beautiful those silver trophies were, shining out clear and exquisite amidst all that surrounding gloom! On its pedestal in the center stood the big loving cup won by the team. Artistically beautiful beyond words, Sayre thought it, in the graceful dignity of its long contours and its curves. Around it, set here and there in the soft folds of the purple velvet, were the medals and the smaller individual cups won by Frank and Charley for their very own.
Sayre gazed and gazed. She had no feeling of resentment now, even after what Rene had told her, that so many of the cups bore Frank Hoskins’ name. Nor had she any sense of the long effort and struggle on the part of the boys which had gone into the winning of the honors for which those cups and medals stood. She was at last not even conscious of the air of futility and tragedy that brooded over their display. The feeling part of her had become so tired that for a little while, at least, it could feel no more.
Suddenly she awoke. All the silence about her had been shattered to bits by the reverberating clangor of the telephone bell. Mr. Kitchell was springing out of immobility to answer it. Swiftly the other people in the room formed themselves into a circle just behind him, respectfully leaving room at its front for Sayre and her father. The room’s mood of taut attention snatched at Mr. Kitchell’s brief responses. “Thank God! He’s here. At once. In my car.”
A short, interminable, breathless, listening wait. Then the receiver clicked back into place. Mr. Kitchell swung around, his eyes a glow of light in that darkened room. “They’re found,” he sang out. “The boys! And they’re alive!”
For an instant Sayre stood absolutely still. Then she groped toward a stool in front of a nearby counter. Her knees had completely failed her. Sinking down upon the stool, she began to cry.
But nobody noticed her breakdown. Eve
ryone was too intent upon Mr. Kitchell’s words. “It was Mr. Hoskins himself. They’d just reached the hospital at Metropolis. Physicians were examining the boys as he talked. They don’t know yet just what their condition is. It’s undoubtedly grave, but they’re alive. He wanted Mr. Morgan informed at once. We’ll leave immediately, Mr. Morgan, you and I, in my car. We’ll get there, whatever the roads, before the train leaves this town. Mr. Hoskins says to tell you that in the meantime everything possible will be done for your boy. Are you ready, Mr. Morgan? Have you warm clothes for the drive?”
Eager, kindly hands were pressing overcoat, sweater, and overshoes on the trembling, bewildered father.
Mr. Kitchell, too, was making himself ready as he talked. “They were found in an abandoned tarpaper hut, located in a hollow, nearly a half-mile from the road, so low that it had been completely hidden by snow. Looked like a drift no larger than many another. Somebody who knew the locality mentioned its existence to Mr. Hoskins, after Frank’s car had been found. He never rested until they had gained access to it. Found it hard to locate, followed false clews, had big crews of diggers working all night. Reached it, at last, this morning, just, he feels, in the very nick of time—” Mr. Kitchell hesitated, “if that.”
“Charley was conscious. He could talk, and he insisted over and over again that Mr. Hoskins report just one thing: that Frank Hoskins had saved his, Charley Morgan’s, life.”
22
The End of the Dream
“Come in,” Sayre called, hands deep in bread dough. She knew that ponderous knock.
The figure that entered was as ponderous as the knock. Out from upturned collar of faded overcoat and from engulfing cap emerged tow hair, a stolid face, alert, very blue eyes, and expressionless voice. “You got a letter from your papa today?”
The Young Adult Award-Winners Megapack Page 121
