Works of Robert W Chambers

by Robert W. Chambers

  “Sometimes, when you are very angry, you tell me I am not married to you.”

  “Can’t you take a little joke, you gol-dummed thing!” he yelled. “Ain’t you got no wit into you?”

  “I have never seen any certificate,” she said dully.

  “Quit that whinin’ about certificates. Don’t I tell you it’s all right? Ain’t I promised to give it to you just as soon as you make good—”

  A hot scarlet flush mantled her from brow to throat.

  “You’re mine to do with as I’ve a mind to!” he repeated. “Ain’t I proved it by the lickin’s I’ve give you? Hain’t you submitted to ’em like a dootiful wife? Hey? Ain’t that proof concloosive that you’re my wife?”

  “You can never prove it by anything except blows,” she said.

  “Ain’t it my right to cherish and love an’ philander—”

  “No!”

  “Hey! Not even if I give you your damn certificate — or hitch up with you legally?”

  “I don’t want you now.”

  “Then, by God—”

  “Remember what I’ve told you,” she said, her grey eyes coldly brilliant.

  He remembered. For when, married as she supposed, she had demanded the proof from him, he had attempted violence. Then, within the very hour of the informal ceremony, pretended or otherwise — she did not know which — the girl’s eyes opened, appalled at what she had done to herself. And, dishevelled, bruised, bleeding, but mistress of the dreadful situation, shotgun in hand, she had warned Glade from her room and had told him that if ever again he attempted that kind of violence, sooner or later she would kill him.

  And Glade believed her, and was afraid. Also he had a horror of bigamy, two brothers now serving terms for the overfond offense. Moreover, to complicate matters, a sick and abandoned wife of his in Hamilton County seemed to be too big a fool even to die. So what was an honest man to do — with a shotgun as an additional problem to worry him, and a young girl who submitted to blows but to nothing else — not even to a kiss.

  “G’wan to school!” snapped Glade. “D’y’ hear?”

  “Don’t touch me, Hal—”

  “Hey!” — he slapped her face, where she crouched. “I’ll learn ye to talk to me—”

  In a flash she had sprung from the bed, half naked, her grey eyes ablaze under her dishevelled hair.

  Both reached for the shotgun in the corner; she got it, whipped it to her cheek.

  “Jesus!” he shrieked. “Be you fixin’ fur to murder me?”

  “If you touch me again TO kill you, Hal.”

  “Put down that gun!”

  “No, I shall take it with me.... I am going.”

  “Well, go to hell then!” he snarled.

  “I may.... I don’t know where I am going. But am not coming back, Hal.”

  “Well, g’wan, then! Git out an’ stay out — you poor, sick-faced, whiny, gol-durned — thing! Pm done figurin’ what to do with you; I’m through; I’ve got enough o’ wimmen, by God! Git to hell out o’ here and stay!”

  And he went out, cursing and slamming the door of her room behind him.

  A letter summoning him to Albany reached Kent through the usual channels. Whether Burling merely desired to confer with him personally, or whether he was to be permanently detached from the district, he did not know.

  Standing there on the valley trail, pack strapped on his back, rifle in hand, he read and reread the letter, striving to arrive at some conclusion, but, study it as hard as he might, the brief, formal wording disclosed to him nothing of the Commissioner’s intentions.

  So he put the letter away inside his shooting coat once more, adjusted his pack and resumed the trend of thought, now, alas! sadly and desperately disordered by the summons from Burling. For the only thought that his youthful head now contained — and had contained for days — concerned Kathleen Glade and his own state of mind regarding her.

  Having been carefully brought up by several maiden aunts, he knew that it was not proper for unmarried young men to fall in love with married women. Which knowledge, heretofore, had irked him not at all, he considering such an event impossible as far as it concerned himself.

  Now, as he wandered along the trail, garbed and accoutered for his journey, his steps lagged. For he was asking himself to try to explain to himself exactly what had happened to himself on this same trail. And what was to become of the moral precepts inculcated by his maiden aunts?

  The effect of Burling’s sudden summons, the dawning realization that he might never again see Kathleen Glade, and his own low state of mind, required explanation.

  There seemed to be something really serious the matter with him, and he began to fear what might be the nature of it.

  As he moved slowly along the base of Lynx Peak his absent glance encountered the spilled heap of cattle salt. Many deer had enjoyed it unmolested, so thorough and complete had been his success in arousing alarm and suspicion in the minds of Glade and the wall-eyed one. And he concluded that the salt might be left there with perfect safety for the present.

  As he wandered along — not always keeping to the trail — for all his preoccupation, his quick eyes acted instinctively, faithful to their possessor’s business, noting imprints of deer and fox, the mark on a tree where a bear had rubbed head and shoulders, the cushioned progress of a wild cat across a swamp, dry powder from a rotten log where dusting grouse had left bits of down.

  Twice, mechanically, his feet followed the half obliterated trail of some law-breaker; but the dangling twigs hanging by a shred, which “lined” it, were old and withered; and when at length he came upon the concealed trap, the flat stone had crushed the rotting trip-stick, and a cover of newly fallen leaves blotted out an infamy that had failed.

  And now Kent began to consult his watch more frequently as the first sunbeams penetrated the trail, striping tree and moss and fallen leaves with palest fire.

  For the youthful schoolmistress should have passed at sunrise, and now the sun was high.

  Thick vapours drifted up from swamp and gully and rushing stream; the forest dimness pulsated with amber lights. A great barred owl dropped softly upon a limb overhead, folded his spotted wings, looked down at Kent out of dark, liquid eyes, snapped his beak, and settled himself into a feathery mass. The hour for slumber had come to the little folk of the forest.

  Why did the young schoolma’am tarry? She should have passed an hour since. And here was the trail’s level end before it twisted to the right in its snaky course up Lynx Peak.

  So he was not to meet her after all — not even to see her again before he left!

  Up that twisting trail and over the ample shoulder of Lynx Peak lay the course he must now follow. There was one valley to traverse on the other side, a train to flag, and then Albany and Burling. And he must be on his way.

  Watch open in his hand, he stood where the trail divided, giving himself his last chance to the limit of the last second.

  And one minute’s grace.

  Then he snapped the hunting case and turned sharply to the right. And saw her seated on a fallen tree, watching him.

  In the rush of surprise and happiness he sprang forward. There seemed to be no trace of self-consciousness in her or in him as she rose when he came up.

  “I thought you would come,” she said.

  “I was waiting for you,” he replied.

  “And I for you.”

  She bent her pretty head a trifle as he took her hands. “They’ve sent for me,” he said. “I am on my way back to Albany.”

  She said nothing.

  “Where are you going?” he asked. “The schoolhouse lies in the other direction.”

  “I shall not teach there any more.”

  “Then — where are you going on the Lynx Peak trail?”

  “I am going — somewhere — I don’t know where.”

  “You don’t know where you are going?”

  She lifted her grey eyes to his, then lowered them, shaking
her head.

  “Will you tell me what has happened?” he asked. “Hal Glade turned me out.”

  “Your husband!”

  “We were never married.”

  At that his sun-tanned face surged with heavy colour; and, looking up at him, and comprehending, her own cheeks burnt crimson signals answering his own. And she withdrew her hands from his.

  “It is not so — bad — as you think,” she said... “Do you — understand?”

  “No.”

  She sighed, twisting her slender fingers, and looking down. There was nothing further she could explain — nothing more she could say.

  “I must go now,” she said under her breath.

  But both lingered in silence for a moment longer.

  Then she turned away, and he moved forward beside her, slowly. The trail was steep.

  When they entered the first abandoned orchard, knee-deep in bleached wild grass, far on the shoulder of the mountain a rifle cracked, and the pack on Kent’s shoulders quivered with the bullet’s impact.

  Down he went flat into the high dead grass, pulling his little comrade with him, holding her rigid, motionless through the throbbing seconds.

  And far away down the wooded slope went crashing the would-be murderers in headlong flight — Glade with the coward’s reaction after vengeance fulfilled; the walleyed one no less fearful now that his first blow had been struck at Burling, although the 30-30 bullet which he supposed was embedded in Kent did not fit the magazine of his rusty 45-70.

  Kent lay very still, listening, and clutching his comrade close to the earth, closer and more rigidly as he felt her struggle — to rise, as he thought.

  But she was merely striving to crawl closer to him, deeming him hard hit and done for: and at last, when the heavy galloping of the assassins had died out in the valley below, and when Kent’s grip on her relaxed, she came creeping up beside him, trembling, and laid her whitened cheek against his.

  “Dear,” she whispered, “are you badly shot? Are you suffering?”

  Sheer astonishment struck him dumb. Her face touched his, her lips quivered.

  “I am with you,” she said tremulously. “I shall not leave you.... I have wanted you — so long — and now they have killed you—”

  “Kathleen!” he faltered.

  “Yes,” she whispered, “Kathleen — just as — as God made her — or she had not dared to touch you—”

  “Kathleen!”

  He had swung himself upright, carrying her with him. Bewildered, beginning to understand, she stammered out painfully: “Are you not hit? I — I heard the bullet strike—”

  “My pack! — Kathleen — Oh, little Kathleen—”

  “You fell! — I thought—” Her face surged in shamed colour; she turned her tear-wet eyes away.

  “There were more bullets in their magazines.... So I threw you flat in the grass.... Kathleen, married or unmarried, free or bound — whatever you are or were, I want you — I want you, Kathleen — beloved — tenderest heart in the world!... Speak to me, dear!”

  But her lips were no longer under control when he drew her burning face to his shoulder. Unstirring, silent, she lay there, her tears falling like an April rain that lingers in fragrance amid the sighing of newborn leaves.

  But at last the tardy gleam of sunshine came: and Kathleen lifted her head and looked up into her lover’s eyes, palely smiling.

  And life began from the very beginning for them, at that instant, and in that place.

  WILDRICK’S DUMP

  AFTER the death of her parents the solitary house became known to lumbermen and forest loafers as Wildrick’s Tavern, or Wildrick’s Dump. It had no tavern license.

  Her stepfather, Jim Wildrick, had no guide’s license either — not even a gun license — much less any general or special dispensation to sell malt or spirituous liquors. Which bothered him not at all. Also he cherished what he called a collie — the same bearing an astonishing resemblance to a deerhound. But nobody mentioned the resemblance to Wildrick.

  As for his stepdaughter, Helen Grey, when he acquired her he took her for granted, along with the house and acreage; and he lounged about his lawless business with no responsibility concerning her on his mind.

  Had it not been for the memory of better things the child must have succumbed to circumstances — her mind decadent, her morals a matter of chance.

  But she was thirteen when her father gave up his job as teacher in a New York school, and, with his meagre savings, built the unpainted frame house on the edge of the State Forest — where in a few months his lungs finished him.

  She was fourteen when her pretty, shallow mother married Jim Wildrick — and died of the experiment within the year, leaving Helen alone with this forest loafer on the shaggy edges of desolation. And it was not long before Wildrick’s Dump became notorious as a rendezvous for everything lawless and sordid in the region.

  When the new Commissioner of Conservation came into office Wildrick was warned to behave himself or get out. And Wildrick merely leered and spat and winked at his cronies.

  A few months later rumours floated through the wilderness that John Burling, the new Commissioner, meant to get Wildrick.

  But nothing seemed to happen.

  Poor food, poverty, and solitude do not hasten maturity. Adolescence came late to Helen Grey.

  For companions she had her father’s books, her memories of better things, and her own immature thoughts; for acquaintances she had her big, shambling stepfather, his forest loafing cronies, and the doubtful sort of men who sometimes came from cities, requiring a guide — being otherwise incompetent to catch trout or murder deer.

  There was in her life nothing else to emphasize existence except the waste of bushy land to the south, slashed, disfigured, and marred by those twin scourges loosed by a half-baked civilization — lumbermen and fire.

  Two miles to the north the State Forest bordered their own woods, where low, ugly mountains humped up against the sky. A shallow river, talkative, ever full of futile noises, gabbled incessantly behind the house.

  Southward, out through the sad and devastated country, a sandy road ran twenty miles before it passed the first house. Beyond that, here and there among the lower hills aggressive towns, dreary and hideous, affronted the remnants of a noble forest, already doomed to clothespins, chair splints, and firewood.

  Yet, ever to the child, Helen, southward somewhere beyond the skyline’s abominable desolation lay Paradise — rather a primitive and simple paradise to be sure, for, as she imagined, it contained as furniture merely books unlimited, baths with hot water, unsoiled clothing, and crowds of people who understood the grammatical construction of their native language. And for four years, now, she had been dreaming of such a heaven until it had become as far away and as unreal to her as the other Heaven.

  With the opening of the deer season that year a few motley hunting parties drifted into the tavern — one or two local “forest burns,” a dingy village clerk or two, a fat bartender from a distant town, and the local deputy game warden, fox-faced, gimlet-eyed, full of mean silences and plausible loquacity.

  To break the law was Wildrick’s specialty. Holes were as quickly dug for antlered heads in the velvet as for unantlered heads, in season and out. Also, from holes back of the house Wildrick extracted bottles when his guests required them.

  And around the sheet-iron stove in the Dump dirty transactions were ratified, illegally shot birds started toward their destination by parcel post, illegally taken pelts bartered, plans made to cut State timber, plans hatched to start forest fires when the burns and loafers of the region needed pin money — the Fire Wardens paying two dollars a day.

  So there was always more or less “business” to be transacted in the wilderness — and perhaps some of the business was more sinister than the mere breaking of game and forest and excise laws. As, for instance, when big Aristide Caron was found very dead below the logjam with a bloody peavy beside him — and when, in another i
nstance, nobody was ever able to find a flashy travelling man who went hunting accompanied only by a new rifle, a gold watch — and a hundred and fifty dollars. Also something — if not somebody — had kicked to death one William Finn, a forest squatter — the coroner’s inquest disclosing as much. But nothing was ever done about it. Wildrick said that a vicious cow was the guilty one. And Sagamore County let it go at that.

  In the first hunting party that came to Wildrick’s Dump that year were a shoe drummer, and a timber-looker out for pulp. And the drummer had gone into the kitchen and had wound both arms around Jim Wildrick’s stepdaughter when the timber-looker came in for the same purpose.

  The girl watched them sullenly while they fought it out, then went to her room to mend her tom dress while Wildrick, hearing the fracas, shambled in and cursed both combatants because they had broken the kitchen table.

  And on one of several similar occasions Wildrick intervened more pointedly:

  “Say, what the hell!” he shouted. “Ain’t any of you spry enough to git her without knockin’ down the hull house!”

  The girl’s arms and face were bruised, and a bright drop fell from her swollen lip.

  “An’ don’t you worry none, neither,” he added, turning and leering at her. “The man that gits the better o’ you has got to marry you sooner or later — or I’ll break his damn face for him.”

  Which threat impressed everybody; as legalizing such matters was often the tardy result of an afterthought in the imminency of emergency.

  The hunting season advanced; Helen’s gingham dress was mended and her swelled lip resumed its normally sensitive curve; the black and blue bruises faded from her arms and body. So she went about her life’s business as she found it, dreaming sometimes of her own species of paradise, sometimes of a relief still more wonderful, more desirable, except that she always had been terrified at the thought of being buried in these woods.

  All day long the routine of her life scarcely varied. First came the awakening in the bitter dusk of morning, then the reek of fire and kerosene lamp, crackle of frying food, men trampling to and fro with the thud of gunstocks on carpetless floors — the restless, incessant, ghost-like patter of the hound long since taught to conceal all emotional demonstrations.