The big range, p.7
The Big Range, page 7
That seemed to me foolish, tearing up sod that was perfect for good cattle, getting ready for dirt farming way out there far from any markets. But he was doing it right. With the ground ploughed deep and the sod turned over, the roots would be exposed and would rot all through the summer and fall and by the next spring the ground would be ready to be worked and planted. And meanwhile he could string his fences and build whatever sheds he would need and get his whole place in shape.
We ought to be getting really acquainted, I thought, being the only neighbors there in the valley and more than that, for the nearest other place was two miles away towards town. It was up to me to make the moves. I was the first in the valley. He was the second, the new-comer.
As I said, I tried once more. It was a Saturday afternoon and I was getting ready to ride to town and see if there was any mail and pick up a few things and rub elbows with other folks a bit and I thought of them there across the creek, always working and penned close with only a yoke of oxen that couldn’t make the eight miles in less than half a day each way. I harnessed the team to the buckboard and drove bouncing across the creek and to their place. The woman appeared in the cabin doorway, shading her eyes and staring at me. The son stopped ploughing off to the right and let go of the plough handles and started towards me. The father came around the side of the cabin and waved him back and came close to my wagon and stopped and planted his feet firmly and looked at me.
“I’m heading towards town,” I said. “I thought maybe you’d like a ride in the back. You can look the place over and meet some of the folks around here.”
“No, neighbor,” he said. He looked at me and then let his voice out a notch. “Sin and temptation abide in towns. When we came past I saw the two saloons and a painted woman.”
“Hell, man,” I said, “you find those things everywhere. They don’t bite if you let them alone.”
“Ah, yes,” he said. “Everywhere. All along the long way I saw them. They are everywhere. That is why I stopped moving at last. There is no escaping them in towns. Wherever people congregate, there is sin. I shall keep myself and mine apart.”
“All right,” I said. “So you don’t like people. But how about your wife and the boy? Maybe they’d like a change once in a while.”
His voice rolled out another notch. “They are in my keeping.” He looked at me and the light was right and for the first time I saw his eyes, bright and hot in their shadow-holes. “Neighbor,” he said, all stops out, “have I trespassed on your property?”
I swung the team in an arc and drove back across the creek. I unharnessed the team and sent them out in the side pasture with slaps on their rumps. I whistled the gray in and saddled him and headed for town at a good clip.
That was the last time. After that I simply watched what was happening up the valley. You could sum most of it with the one word—work. And the rest of it centered on the rock ledge at the base of the cliff where a hard layer jutted out about ten feet above the valley floor, flat on top like a big table. I saw him working there, swinging some tool, and after several days I saw what he was doing. He was cutting steps in the stone, chipping out steps to the ledge top. Then he took his son away from the ploughing for a day to help him heave and pry the fallen rocks off the ledge, all except three, a big squarish one and two smaller ones. Up against the big one he raised a cross made of two lengths of small log. Every day after that, if I was out early enough in the morning and late enough when the dusk was creeping in, I could see him and his woman and the son, all three of them on the ledge, kneeling, and I could imagine his voice rolling around them and echoing from the cliff behind them. And on Sundays, when there would be nothing else doing about their place at all, not even cooking smoke rising from the cabin chimney, they would be there hours on end, the woman and the son sometimes sitting on the two smaller stones, and the father, from his position leaning over the big stone, apparently reading from a book spread open before him.
It was on a Sunday, in the afternoon, that the son trespassed on my place. He came towards the house slow and hesitating like he was afraid something might jump and snap at him. I was sitting on the porch, the Winchester across my knees, enjoying the sunshine and waiting to see if the gopher that had been making holes in my side pasture would show its head. I watched him come, a healthy young figure in his dark pants and homespun shirt. When he was close, I raised my voice.
“Whoa, Jess,” I said. “Aren’t you afraid some evil might scrape off me and maybe get on you?”
He grinned kind of foolish and scrubbed one shoe-toe in the dirt. “Don’t make fun of me,” he said. “I don’t hold with that stuff the way father does. He said I could come over anyway. He’s decided perhaps you’re all right.”
“Thanks,” I said. “Since I’ve passed the test, why not step up here and sit a spell?”
He did, and he looked all around very curious and after a while he said: “Father thought perhaps you could tell him what to do to complete the claim and get the papers on it.”
I told him, and we sat awhile, and then he said: “What kind of a gun is that?”
“It’s a Winchester,” I said. “A repeater. A right handy weapon.”
“Could I hold it once?” he said.
I slipped on the safety and passed it to him. He set it to his shoulder and squinted along the barrel, awkward and self-conscious.
“Ever had a gun of your own?” I said.
“No,” he said. He handed the gun back quickly and stared at the porch floor. “I never had anything of my own. Everything belongs to father. He hasn’t a gun anyway. Only an old shotgun and he won’t let me touch it.” And after a minute: “I never had even a nickel of my own to buy a thing with.” And after a couple of minutes more: “Why does he have to be praying all the time, can you tell me that? That’s all he ever does, working and praying. Asking forgiveness for sins. For my sins and Ma’s sins too. What kind of sins have we ever had a chance to do? Can you tell me that?”
“No,” I said. “No, I can’t.”
We sat awhile longer, and he was looking out at the pasture. “Say, are those cattle—”
“Yes,” I said. “They’re Herefords. Purebreds. Some of the first in these parts. That’s why they’re fenced tight.”
“How’d you ever get them?” he said. “I mean them and everything you’ve got here.”
“Well,” I said, “I was a fool youngster blowing my money fast as I found it. Then one day I decided I didn’t like riding herd on another man’s cattle and bony longhorns at that when I knew there were better breeds. So, I started saving my pay.”
“How long did it take?” he said.
“It was eleven years last month,” I said, “that I started a bank account.”
“That’s a long time,” he said. “That’s an awful long time.”
“How old are you, Jess?” I said.
“Nineteen,” he said. “Nineteen four months back.”
“When you’re older,” I said, “it won’t seem like such a long time. When you’re getting along some, time goes mighty fast.”
“But I’m not older,” he said.
“No,” I said. “No. I guess you’re not.”
We sat awhile longer and then I got foolish. “Jess,” I said, “the ploughing’s done. That was the big job. The pressure ought to be letting up a bit now. Why don’t you drop over here an afternoon or two and help me with my haying? I’ll pay fair wages. Twenty-five cents an hour.”
His face lit like a match striking. “Hey, mister!” Then: “But Father—”
“Jess,” I said, “I never yet heard of work being sinful.”
I wondered whether he would make it and Wednesday he did, coming early in the afternoon and sticking right with me till quitting hour. He was a good worker. He had to be to make up for the time he wasted asking me questions about the country and people roundabout, and my place and my stock and the years I’d spent in the saddle. He was back again on Friday. When I called quits and we went across the pasture to the house, the father was standing by the porch waiting.
“Good evening, neighbor,” he said. “According to my son you mentioned several afternoons. They are done. I have come for the money.”
“Dutrow,” I said, “Jess did the work. Jess gets the money.”
“You do not understand,” he said, the tone beginning to roll. “My son is not yet of man’s estate. Until he is I am responsible for him and the fruit of his labor is mine. I am sworn to guard him against evil. Money in an untried boy’s pocket is a sore temptation to sin.”
I went into the house and took three dollars from the purse in my jacket pocket and went out and to Jess and put them in his hand. He stood there with the hand in front of him, staring down at it.
“Jess! Come here!”
He came, flinching and unwilling, the hand still stiff in front of him, and the father took the money from it.
“I’m sorry, Jess,” I said. “Looks like there’d be no point in your working here again.”
He swung his eyes at me the way a whipped colt does and turned and went away, trying to hold to a steady walk and yet stumbling forward in his hurry.
“Dutrow,” I said, “I hope that money burns your hand. You have already sinned with it.”
“Neighbor,” he said, “you take too much on yourself. My God alone shall judge my actions.”
I went into the house and closed the door.
It was about a month later, in the middle of the week, that the father himself came to see me, alone and in mid-morning and wearing his black coat and strange black hat under the hot sun as he came to find me.
“Neighbor,” he said, “have you seen my son this morning?”
“No,” I said.
“Strange,” he said. “He was not on his pallet when I rose. He missed morning prayers completely. He has not appeared at all.”
He stood silent a moment. Then he raised an arm and pointed a thick forefinger at me. His voice rolled at its deepest. “Neighbor,” he said, “if you have contrived with my son to go forth into the world, I shall call down the wrath of my God upon you.”
“Neighbor Dutrow,” I said, “I don’t know what your son’s doing. But I know what you’re going to do. You’re going to shut your yap and get the hell off my place.”
I don’t think he heard me. He wiped a hand across his face and down over his beard. “You must pardon me,” he said. “I am sore overwrought with worry.”
He strode away, down to the creek and left along it out of the valley towards town. The coat flapped over his hips as he walked and he grew smaller in the distance till he rounded the first hill and disappeared.
He returned in late afternoon, still alone and dusty and tired, walking slowly and staring at the ground ahead of him. He went past on the other side of the creek and to his place and stopped at the door of the cabin and the woman emerged and they went to the rock ledge and they were still kneeling there when the dark shut them out of my sight.
The next day, well into the afternoon, I heard a horse coming along the trace that was the beginning of the road into the valley and Marshal Eakins rode up to me by the barn and swung down awkward and stiff. He was tired and worn and his left shoulder was bandaged with some of the cloth showing through the open shirt collar.
“Afternoon, John,” he said. “Any coffee in the pot you could warm over?”
In the house I stirred the stove and put the pot on to heat I pointed at his shoulder.
“One of our tough friends?” I said.
“Hell, no,” he said. “I can handle them. This was an amateur. A crazy youngster.”
When he had his cup, he took a first sip and leaned back in his chair.
“That the Dutrow place up the creek?” he said.
“Yes,” I said.
“Must be nice neighbors,” he said. “It was their boy drilled me.” He tried the cup again and finished it in four gulps and reached for the pot. “His father was in town yesterday. Claimed the boy had run away. Right he was. The kid must have hid out during the day. Had himself a time at night. Pried a window at Walton’s store. Packed himself a bag of food. Took a rifle and box of shells. Slipped over to the livery stable. Saddled a horse and lit out.”
“He couldn’t ride,” I said.
“Reckon not,” Eakins said. “Made a mess of the gear finding a bridle and getting it on. Left an easy track too. Didn’t know how to make time on a horse. I took Patton and went after him. Must have had hours start, but we were tailing him before ten. Got off or fell off, don’t know which, and scrambled into some rocks. I told him we had the horse and if he’d throw out the gun and come out himself there wouldn’t be too much fuss about it. But he went crazy wild. Shouted something about sin catching up with him and started blazing away.”
“He couldn’t shoot,” I said.
“Maybe not,” Eakins said. “But he was pumping the gun as fast as he could and he got Patton dead center. We hadn’t fired a shot.”
Eakins started on the second cup.
“Well?” I said.
“So I went in and yanked him out,” Eakins said. “Reckon I was a little rough. Patton was a good man.”
He finished the second cup and set it down. “Got to tell his folks. Thought maybe you’d go along. Women give me the fidgets.” He pushed at the cup with a finger. “Not much time. The town’s a little hot. Trial will be tomorrow.”
We walked down to the creek and across and up to their place. The woman appeared in the cabin doorway and stared at us. The father came from somewhere around the side of the cabin. He planted his feet firmly and confronted us. His head tilted high and his eyes were bright and hot in their shadow-holes. His voice rolled at us.
“You have found my son.”
“Yes,” Eakins said, “we’ve found him.” He looked at me and back at the father and stiffened a little, and he told them, straight, factual. “The trial will be at ten tomorrow,” he said. “They’ll have a lawyer for him. It’s out of my hands. It’s up to the judge now.”
And while he was talking, the father shrank right there before us. His head dropped and he seemed to dwindle inside his rough black clothes. His voice was scarcely more than a whisper.
“The sins of the fathers,” he said, and was silent.
It was the woman who was speaking, out from the doorway and stretching up tall and pointing at him, the first and only words I ever heard her speak.
“You did it,” she said. “You put the thoughts of sin in his head, always praying about it. And keeping him cooped in with never a thing he could call his own. On your head it is in the eyes of God. You drove him to it.”
She stopped and stood still, looking at him, and her eyes were bright and hot and accusing in the pinched whiteness of her face, and she stood still looking at him.
They had forgotten we were there. Eakins started to speak again and thought better of it. He turned to me and I nodded and we went back along the creek and across and to the barn and he climbed stiffly on his horse and started towards town.
In the morning I saddled the gray and rode to the Dutrows’ place. I was thinking of offering him the loan of the team and the buckboard. There was no sign of any activity at all. The place looked deserted. The cabin door was open and I poked my head in. The woman was sitting on a straight chair by the dead fireplace. Her hands were folded in her lap and her head was bowed over them. She was sitting still. There’s no other way to describe what she was doing. She was just sitting.
“Where is he?” I said.
Her head moved in my direction and she looked vaguely at me and there was no expression on her face.
“Is he anywhere around?” I said.
Her head shook only enough for me to catch the slight movement and swung slowly back to its original position. I stepped back and took one more look around and mounted the gray and rode towards town, looking for him along the way, and did not see him.
I had no reason to hurry and when I reached the converted store building we used for a courthouse, it was fairly well crowded. Judge Cutler was on the bench. We had our own judge now for local cases. Cutler was a tall, spare man, full of experience and firm opinions, honest and independent in all his dealings with other people. That was why he was our judge. Marshal Eakins was acting as our sheriff until we would be better organized and have an office established. That was why he had taken charge the day before.
They brought in Jess Dutrow and put him in a chair at one side of the bench and set another at the other side for a witness stand. There was no jury because the plea was guilty. The lawyer they had assigned for Jess could do nothing except plead the youth of his client and the hard circumstances of his life. It did not take long, the brief series of witnesses to establish the facts. They called me to identify him and tell what I knew about him. They called Walton and the livery stable man to testify to the thefts. They called Eakins and had him repeat his story to put it in the court records. The defense lawyer was finishing his plea for a softening of sentence when there was a stirring in the room and one by one heads turned to stare at the outer doorway.
The father was there, filling the doorframe with his broad bulk in its black clothes. Dirt marks were on them as if he had literally wrestled with something on the ground. His hat was gone and his long hair flowed back unkempt. His beard was ragged and tangled and the cheeks above it were drawn as if he had not slept. But his voice rolled magnificently, searching into every corner of the room.
“Stop!” he said. “You are trying the wrong man!”
He came forward and stood in front of the bench, the wooden pedestal we used for a trial bench. He looked up at Judge Cutler on the small raised platform behind it.
“Mine is the guilt,” he said. “On my head let the punishment fall. My son has not yet attained his twenty and first birthday. He is still of me and to me and I am responsible for aught that he does. He was put into my keeping by God, to protect him and guard him from temptation and bring him safely to man’s estate. My will was not strong enough to control him. The fault therefore is in me, in his father that gave him the sins of the flesh and then failed him. On me the judgment I am here for it I call upon you to let him depart and sin no more.”
