_ CHAPTER XVII. JESSIE'S LETTER
Scipio's long day was almost over. The twins were in bed, and the little man was lounging for a few idle moments in the doorway of his hut. Just now an armistice in his conflict of thought was declared. For the moment the exigencies of his immediate duties left him floundering in the wilderness of his desolate heart at the mercy of the pain of memory. All day the claims of his children had upborne him. He had had little enough time to think of anything else, and thus, with his peculiar sense of duty militating in his favor, he had found strong support for the burden of his grief.
But now with thought and muscles relaxed, and the long night stretching out its black wings before him, the gray shadow had risen uppermost in his mind once more, and a weight of unutterable loneliness and depression bore down his spirit.
His faded eyes were staring out at the dazzling reflections of the setting sun upon the silvery crests of the distant mountain peaks. In every direction upon the horizon stretched the wonderful fire of sunset. Tongues of flame, steely, glowing, ruddy, shot up and athwart the picture in ever-changing hues before his unseeing eyes. It was all lost upon him. He stared mechanically, while his busy brain struggled amongst a tangle of memories and thought pictures. The shadows of his misfortune were hard besetting him.
Amidst his other troubles had come a fresh realization which filled him with something like panic. He had been forced to purchase stores for his household. To do so he had had to pay out the last of his fourth ten-dollar bill. His exchequer was thus reduced to ten dollars. Ten dollars stood between him and starvation for his children. Nor could he see the smallest prospect of obtaining more. His imagination was stirred. He saw in fancy the specter of starvation looming, hungrily stretching out its gaunt arms, clutching at his two helpless infants. He had no thought for himself. It did not occur to him that he, too, must starve. He only pictured the wasting of the children's round little bodies, he heard their weakly whimperings at the ravages of hunger's pangs. He saw the tottering gait as they moved about, unconscious of the trouble that was theirs, only knowing that they were hungry. Their requests for food rang in his ears, maddening him with the knowledge of his helplessness. He saw them growing weaker day by day. He saw their wondering, wistful, uncomprehending eyes, so bright and beautiful now, growing bigger and bigger as their soft cheeks fell away. He--
He moved nervously. He shifted his position, vainly trying to rid himself of the haunting vision. But panic was upon him. Starvation--that was it. Starvation! God! how terrible was the thought. Starvation! And yet, before--before Jessie had gone he had been no better off. He had had only fifty dollars. But somehow it was all different then. She was there, and he had had confidence. Now--now he had none. Then she was there to manage, and he was free to work upon his claim.
Ah, his claim. That was it. The claim lay idle now with all its hidden wealth. How he wanted that wealth which he so believed to be there. No, he could not work his claim. The children could not be left alone all day. That was out of the question. They must be cared for. How--how?
His brain grew hot, and he broke out into a sweat. His head drooped forward until his unshaven chin rested upon his sunken chest. His eyes were lusterless, his two rough hands clenched nervously. Just for one weak moment he longed for forgetfulness. He longed to shut out those hideous visions with which he was pursued. He longed for peace, for rest from the dull aching of his poor torn heart. His courage was at a low ebb. Something of the nature of the hour had got hold of him. It was sundown. There was the long black night between him and the morrow. He felt so helpless, so utterly incapable.
But his moment passed. He raised his head. He stood erect from the door casing. He planted his feet firmly, and his teeth gritted. The spirit of the man rose again. He must not give way. He would not. The children should not starve while there was food in the world. If he had no money, he had two strong hands and--
He started. A sudden noise behind him turned him facing about with bristling nerves. What was it? It sounded like the falling of a heavy weight. And yet it did not sound like anything big. The room was quite still, and looked, in the growing dusk, just the same as usual.
Suddenly the children leapt into his thought, and he started for the inner room. But he drew up short as he passed behind the table. A large stone was lying at his feet, and a folded paper was tied about it. He glanced round at the window and--understood.
He stooped and picked the missile up. Then he moved to the window and looked out. There was no one about. The evening shadows were rapidly deepening, but he was sure there was no one about. He turned back to the door where there was still sufficient light for his purposes. He sat down upon the sill with the stone in his hand. He was staring at the folded paper.
Yes, he understood. And instinctively he knew that the paper was to bring him fresh disaster. He knew it was a letter. And he knew whence it came.
At last he looked up. The mystery of the letter remained. It was there in his hand, waiting the severing of the string that held it, but somehow as yet he lacked the courage to read it. And so some moments passed. But at last he sighed and looked at it again. Then he reached round to his hip for his sheath-knife. The stone dropped to the ground, and with it the outer covering of the letter. With trembling fingers he unfolded the notepaper.
Yes, it was as he expected, as he knew, a letter from Jessie. And as he read it his heart cried out, and the warm blood in his veins seemed to turn to water. He longed for the woman whose hand had penned those words as he had never longed for anything in his life. All the old wound was ruthlessly torn open, and it was as though a hot, searing iron had been thrust into its midst. He cared nothing for what she had done or was. He wanted her.
It was a letter full of pathetic pleading for the possession of Vada. It was not a demand. It was an appeal. An appeal to all that was his better nature. His honesty, his manliness, his simple unselfishness. It was a letter thrilling with the outpourings of a mother's heart craving for possession of the small warm life that she had been at such pains to bestow. It was the mother talking to him as he had never heard the wife and woman talk. There was a passion, a mother love in the hastily scrawled words that drove straight to the man's simple heart. One little paragraph alone set his whole body quivering with responsive emotion, and started the weak tears to his troubled eyes.
"Let me have her, Zip. Let me have her. Maybe I've lost my right, but I'm her mother. I brought her into the world, Zip. And what that means you can never understand. She's my flesh and blood. She's part of me. I gave her the life she's got. I'm her mother, Zip, and I'll go mad without her."
He read and re-read the letter. He would have read it a third time, but the tears blinded his eyes and he crushed it into his pocket. His heart yearned for her. It cried out to him in a great pity. It tore him so that he was drawn to words spoken aloud to express his feelings.
"Poor gal," he murmured. "Poor gal. Oh, my Jessie, what you done--what you done?"
He dashed a hand across his eyes to wipe away the mist of tears that obscured his vision and stood up. He was face to face with a situation that might well have confounded him. But here, where only his heart and not his head was appealed to, there was no confusion.
The woman had said he could not understand. She had referred to her motherhood. But Scipio was a man who could understand just that. He could understand with his heart, where his head might have failed him. He read into the distracted woman's letter a meaning that perhaps no other man could have read into it. He read a human soul's agony at the severing of itself from all that belonged to its spiritual side. He read more than the loss of the woman's offspring. He read the despairing thought, perhaps unconscious, of a woman upon whom repentance has begun its work. And his simple heart went out to her, yearning, loving. He knew that her appeal was granted even before he acknowledged it to himself.
And strangely enough the coming of that letter--he did not pause to think how it had come--produced a miraculous change in him. His spirit rose thrilling with hope, and filled with a courage which, but a few moments before, seemed to have gone from him forever. He did not understand, he did not pause to think. How could he? To him she was still his Jessie, the love and hope of his life. It was her hand that had penned that letter. It was her woman's heart appealing to his mercy.
"God in heaven," he cried, appealing to the blue vault above him in which the stars were beginning to appear. "I can't refuse her. I just can't. She wants her so--my poor, poor Jessie."
* * * * *
It was late in the evening when Scipio returned from the camp driving Minky's buckskin mule and ancient buckboard. His mind was made up. He would start out directly after breakfast on the morrow. He had resorted to a pitiful little subterfuge in borrowing Minky's buckboard. He had told the storekeeper that he had heard of a prospect some distance out, and he wanted to inspect it. He said he intended to take Vada with him, but wished to leave Jamie behind. Minky, as a member of the Trust, had promptly lent him the conveyance, and volunteered to have Jamie looked after down at the store by Birdie until he returned. So everything was made easy for him, and he came back to his home beyond the dumps with the first feeling of contentment he had experienced since his wife had deserted him.
Having made the old mule snug for the night on the leeward side of the house, he prepared to go to bed. There was just one remaining duty to perform, however, before he was free to do so. He must set things ready for breakfast on the morrow. To this end he lit the lamp.
In five minutes his preparations were made, and, after one final look round, he passed over to the door to secure it. He stood for a moment drinking in the cool night air. Yes, he felt happier than he had done for days. Nor could he have said why. It was surely something to do with Jessie's letter, and yet the letter seemed to offer little enough for hope.
He was going to part with Vada, a thought which filled him with dismay, and yet there was hope in his heart. But then where the head might easily enough fail his heart had accepted responsibility. There was a note in the woman's appeal which struck a responsive chord in his own credulous heart, and somehow he felt that his parting with Vada was not to be for long. He felt that Jessie would eventually come back to him. He felt, though he did not put the thought into words, that no woman could feel as she did about her children, and be utterly dead to all the old affection that had brought them into the world.
He turned away at last. The air was good to breathe to-night, the world was good after all. Yes, it was better than he had thought it. There was much to be done to-morrow, so he would "turn in."
It was at that moment that something white lying at his feet caught his eye. Instantly he remembered it, and, stooping, picked it up. How strange it was the difference of his feelings as he lifted the outer wrapping of Jessie's letter now. There was something almost reverent in the way he handled the paper.
He closed the door and secured it, and went across to the lamp, where he stood looking down at the stained and dirty covering. He turned it over, his thoughts abstracted and busy with the woman who had folded it ready for its journey to him. Yes, she had folded it, she had sent it, she--
Suddenly his abstraction passed, and he bent over the disfiguring finger-marks. There was writing upon the paper, and the writing was not in Jessie's hand. He raised it closer to his eyes and began to read. And, with each word he made out, his faculties became more and more angrily concentrated.
"You'll hand the kid over at once. I'll be on the Spawn City trail
ten miles out. If you ain't there with the kid noon to-morrow
there's going to be bad trouble.
James."
"James! James!" Scipio almost gasped the name. His pale eyes were hot and furious, and the blood surged to his brain.
He had forgotten James until now. He had forgotten the traitor responsible for his undoing. So much was Jessie in his life that James had counted for little when he thought of her. But now the scoundrel swept all other thoughts pell-mell out of his head. He was suddenly ablaze with a rage such as he had never before experienced. All that was human in him was in a state of fierce resentment. He hated James, and desired with all his small might to do him a bodily hurt. Yes, he could even delight in killing him. He would show him no mercy. He would revel in witnessing his death agonies. This man had not only wronged him. He had killed also the spiritual purity of the mother of his children. Oh, how he hated him. And now--now he had dared to threaten. He, stained to his very heart's core with villainy, had dared to interfere in a matter which concerned a mother's pure love for her children. The thought maddened him, and he crushed the paper in his hand and ground it under his heel.
He would not do it. He could not. He had forgotten the association to which he was sending the innocent Vada. No, no. Innocent little Vada. Jessie must do without her.
He flung himself into a chair and gave himself up to passionate thought. For two hours he sat there raging, half mad with his hideous feelings against James. But as the long hours slipped away he slowly calmed. His hatred remained for the man, but he kept it out of his silent struggle with himself. In spite of his first heated decision he was torn by a guiding instinct that left him faltering. He realized that his hatred of the man, and nothing else, was really responsible for his negative attitude. And this was surely wrong. What he must really consider was the welfare of Vada, and--Jessie. The whole thing was so difficult, so utterly beyond him. He was drawn this way and that, struggling with a brain that he knew to be incompetent. But in the end it was again his heart that was victorious. Again his heart would take no denial.
Confused, weary, utterly at a loss to finally decide, he drew out Jessie's letter again. He read it. And like a cloud his confusion dispersed and his mind became clear. His hatred of James was thrust once more into the background. Jessie's salvation depended on Vada's going. Vada must go.
He sighed as he rose from his chair and blew out the lamp.
"Maybe I'm wrong," he murmured, passing into the bedroom. "Maybe. Well, I guess God'll have to judge me, and--He knows." _