V
‘I, ROBERT LEADLEY—’
That leak wasn’t in the mine.
‘I feel a trickle inside, young man—’
Thus, every little while, through the heat of the day, the old man intimated his hurt, and how he felt himself bleeding internally. Elbert’s idea was to set out at once and in a hurry to bring help from Slim Stake Camp, but Mr. Leadley so far had persistently refused to let him go.
‘Things I’ve got to say are more important. You never can tell when I’m apt to start talkin’—don’t go yet. I’m restin’ a little first, that’s all—’
When he dozed, Elbert roamed about outside, but within call. Everything imaginable in the way of canned goods, dried fruits, preserves, were stored in a shed as commodious as the cabin; ample supplies of tobacco, quantities of unused tools. Stocked for a year, the place looked; with at least a ton of baled hay and many bags of grain in the corral-shed. All the carpenter work was made of cedar; hand-tooling everywhere—work of a man who liked to bring out the best with a sharp blade; quaint art about the cabinets and wooden insets in the fireplace.
Down trail to the right from the cabin door was the tunnel entrance to the mine, and ahead out over many tree-tops, a glimpse of the Flats, in a great pit of saffron light. Elbert kept thinking he should go for help in spite of Mr. Leadley’s protestations. A call from the cabin hurried him in shortly after noon.
Twice the injured man’s lips started, before he got words going:
‘Maybe I ain’t goin’ to die, and maybe I am. That’s all right—only there’s some things I mean to say first. It wasn’t only a vacation I brought you here for—that and somethin’ else, though I didn’t expect to be hurried like this, in unburdenin’ my mind. Yes, sir, I took to you the minute you looked so inquirin’ as to what I meant, when I came in that leather-store ... same age and all that, as Bart down in Sonora—and when you hints you’d like to get down there .... Draw up a box to write on, and bring me a little leather sack of papers in the lower cabinet by the fireplace—the key in the wallet here. You’re to write down what I say.’
Reserves of will-power were drawn upon; part of the quaint twang went out of the old man’s speech:
‘I, Robert Leadley, of the Dry Cache mine, near San Forenso, Arizona, in sound mind, so far as I know, but badly hurt from a fallen rock in the tunnel of said mine—my own fault because I knew for a long time there were spots that needed timbering—do hereby confer upon my young friend, Elbert Sartwell, who is writing this at my word, the sole right and authority to manage and administer all property I possess—’
Elbert had no chance to interrupt. The enumeration went on without a break, including the Dry Cache mine, saddle-horse, all goods stored in cabin and corral-shed, bank-books, documents and keys to a lock-box in the San Forenso Bank—amounting to about ninety thousand dollars, Mr. Leadley explaining that he had refused an offer of seventy-five thousand dollars for the mine itself.
‘Don’t sell in a hurry,’ he broke in. ‘There’s a gold tooth in her head. Mort Cotton understands. You can tell that to Bart—’
‘I tell Bart—’
‘That’s the general idea—’
‘But how do you mean, Mr. Leadley?’
‘Because Mort Cotton can’t go—I’ve talked to him—and administerin’ property isn’t his line. It’s—it’s because I took to you—that’s the main reason. Listen on—let me get it all out straight.’
Gradually it appeared that Mr. Leadley’s desire was to leave the bulk of what he possessed to his only son, Bart Leadley, now somewhere in Sonora, Mexico, at large, and Elbert’s work to find same. Elbert was to be identified by Mr. Cotton who would help him through business of bank and possible probate, and answer all questions as to why the property could not be left and arranged for in the usual way. A generous salary and expense account was provided, and on the day Bart Leadley was brought back to the States, Elbert was at liberty to assign to himself a one-fifth interest in the Dry Cache mine; a second one fifth to go to Mort Cotton, memo of which was on separate paper, and three fifths to the son, Bart Leadley.
Elbert’s eye was held to the page, after this was written, his mind so lost in what it all meant, that the voice from the bunk actually startled after a silence:
‘Well, how about it, young man—does the paper stand?’
‘But—in case your son isn’t to be found—at least, from anything I can do?’
‘All you have to do is convince Mort Cotton of the facts, and the whole business then lies between you and him. There’s nobody else.’
Elbert went to the door to breathe, more astonished than ever before in his life; astonished and hurt, too, by the reality of this friendliness, and the mystery of the smiling courage with which Mr. Leadley bore his pain. Sonora—to find Bart Leadley at large in Sonora—expenses to draw from—an interest in the mine. His eyelids narrowed as he turned from the corral, where the mare stood listening in the vivid afternoon light.
Then presently he saw, stretched from one branch of scrub-oak to another, between him and the corral gate, a shining thread that hung and waved in the sunlight. Just a spider’s suspension cable, but a deep meaning now about that connecting thread; so thin one wouldn’t see at all, if the sun hadn’t been shining just right. Mr. Leadley had trusted him, felt drawn to him, even before the accident in the shaft—mysterious threads binding people together. Why, that must have been the meaning of his taking the job in the leather-store. The voice called from behind:
‘But Bart Leadley isn’t dead! I don’t feel he’s dead,’ Mr. Leadley said, when Elbert hurried in. ‘No, you won’t be able to go for a doctor just yet—little later for that, maybe. The paper’s done, but there’s something to tell about Red Ante before you go—and, yes, about Mamie. I’m giving her to you outright, not that Bart isn’t a horseman—he’s that before everything else—but you might be a long time findin’ him, and I don’t want her to change hands too often. And then you’re the one who’ll need her in Sonora.... Don’t try to run her, young man. Just try to come to an understanding. Stand around and talk to her—she’s one more listenin’ mare. She likes to be consulted about family affairs. It won’t do you no harm. And don’t ever tie her up, when you camp in the open. She’ll graze within range and keep an eye on you besides, like her mother used to. You’ll get the hang of each other. Keep on her right side, and whistle when you want her—’
He put two fingers to his lips to show how. Elbert couldn’t make a sound that way. He thought of getting a whistle to carry.
As dusk thickened, a wind stirred across high country—sometimes the sound of a waterfall, sometimes the sound of the sea in the top branches of big timber. The mountains grew heavy on Elbert’s heart with the falling night. Meanwhile he was encouraged to bake a honey-cake for his own supper.
‘No, you don’t need salt nor sodie—all that’s in the flour—just can-milk and honey in the batter, an’ grease on the pan.... Not too near the coals, an’ keep turnin’ her round and round. You’ll have a cake yet, young man, and what you have over you can feed Mamie to-morrow. She’ll like it, if it’s good.’
‘Just a trickle—’
Elbert heard the words from time to time through the first half of the night. Then for a while delirium was unmistakable:
‘You didn’t have to go, Bart—’ the voice once said in a wistful tone, and names were uttered with dread, yet a kind of life-long familiarity as well: ‘Welton—Letchie Welton.’ ... ‘Palto’ ... ‘Mort Cotton’ ... ‘Red Ante’ and in and out through sustained incoherencies, with dreadful impressiveness, references to a blacksmith shop: and once starting up, the old man found Elbert’s eyes and spoke slowly with intolerable contrition:
‘There are times when you can’t wash your hands, I’m sayin’. It wasn’t what I did—but what I didn’t do!’
Toward daylight he slept, but it was only for an hour or so. Elbert, drowsing in a chair, heard the call.
‘Start some coffee for yourself, and turn in a measure of grain for Mamie; then draw your chair close. You’ll be goin’ down trail for a doctor this morning—I know it’s bearin’ heavy on you, and maybe there won’t be much talkin’ after the doctor comes.’
Altogether quiet and hasteless—so different from the delirium of the night. It was dim and cool in the cabin; the sun not yet over the ridge; fragrant firelight, coffee on to boil.
‘You can telephone Mort, too, from the lower camp. He wouldn’t like it, if I didn’t let him know, and bring your coffee here.... Yep, sit in close.’
At times it seemed as if the old man were easing a burden from his heart, as gradually Elbert began to get it all straight: The mining town of Bismo, Arizona, one morning twelve years ago; an old storekeeper, murdered in the night—young Bart hanging around, though sent back—Bart following the posse and being permitted to stay by the marshal when they were ten miles out.
Elbert had to be reminded of his coffee as the story of the three days’ chase carried on—hunger, thirst, fatigue: how one of the Mexicans split, breaking up the pursuing party also—Letchie Welton, Mort Cotton, Bob Leadley and his son Bart continuing straight south, four others turning east. Then it was that the telling took on an unprecedented intensity, though the voice was held low.
‘Over a hundred miles from Bismo, and just before dark, coming to water and an abandoned town called Red Ante. Bart ridin’ light and easy; the rest of us done for, my horse dyin’ under me, ears loppin’, the weight of his head hangin’ on my arm. I’d ridden him to death—that made me all the uglier.... Gettin’ dark, as I say, and we halted at the edge of that dusty hell-hole, everything saggin’ and sand-blown.... Palto—our work wasn’t over—’
‘But what did they do to him?’ Elbert burst out a moment later; yet he was afraid to hear. The cabin interior had taken on a startling unreality. He seemed to be back in Red Ante ... the lone sandy road that nightfall twelve years ago. Then the quiet words:
‘Recollect what I told you was in the blacksmith shop?’
Elbert moved to the door, his eyelids narrowed by the sunlight. He was ill, intolerably shaken, but the weary voice followed him.
‘I know it ain’t pleasant to hear, young man. It ain’t been pleasant to live through—that night, nor for a dozen years. It don’t get no better, but you’ve got to know. And there’s only a little more—’
Elbert braced for the rest. What called his will-power to bear it was that he was only listening to a story a dozen years later, and this man had lived through the action of it—had heard the sounds—had lost his boy—just a note pinned to the saddle, all that was left.
The old man turned his face away.
‘I guess that’s about talk enough from me right now,’ he said after a moment, ‘only that when we got back to Bismo, they entered a murder charge against Bart. ‘Mebbe it was murder Letchie,’ Mort Cotton said at the hearin’, ‘but the most merciful bullet I ever heard fired, was that one of Bart’s just ’fore he rid out of Red Ante.’ But no words of Mort’s or mine did any good.... You can go down trail now. Mort’ll tell you the rest, if I don’t get to it—’