Openings in the Old Trail

“Wha-at?” said Mr. Byers, putting down his glass and gazing with drunken gravity at the sad-eyed yet good-humoredly tolerant man before him. “You?—you had the temper?”

“I reckon that’s what the court allowed,” said Abner simply.

Mr. Byers stared. Then after a moment’s pause he nodded with a significant yet relieved face. “Yes, I see, in course. Times when you’d h’isted too much o’ this corn juice,” lifting up his glass, “inside ye—ye sorter bu’st out ravin’?”

But Abner shook his head. “I wuz a total abstainer in them days,” he said quietly.

Mr. Byers got unsteadily on his legs and looked around him. “Wot might hev bin the general gait o’ your temper, pardner?” he said in a hoarse whisper.

“Don’t know. I reckon that’s jest whar the incompatibility kem in.”

“And when she hove plates at your head, wot did you do?”

“She didn’t hove no plates,” said Abner gravely; “did she say she did?”

“No, no!” returned Byers hastily, in crimson confusion. “I kinder got it mixed with suthin’ else.” He waved his hand in a lordly way, as if dismissing the subject. “Howsumever, you and her is ‘off’ anyway,” he added with badly concealed anxiety.

“I reckon: there’s the decree,” returned Abner, with his usual resigned acceptance of the fact.

“Mrs. Byers wuz allowin’ ye wuz thinkin’ of a second. How’s that comin’ on?”

“Jest whar it was,” returned Abner. “I ain’t doin’ anything yet. Ye see I’ve got to tell the gal, naterally, that I’m di-vorced. And as that isn’t known hereabouts, I don’t keer to do so till I’m pretty certain. And then, in course, I’ve got to.”

“Why hev ye ‘got to’?” asked Byers abruptly.

“Because it wouldn’t be on the square with the girl,” said Abner. “How would you like it if Mrs. Byers had never told you she’d been married to me? And s’pose you’d happen to hev bin a di-vorced man and hadn’t told her, eh? Well,” he continued, sinking back resignedly against the tree, “I ain’t sayin’ anythin’ but she’d hev got another di-vorce, and FROM you on the spot—you bet!”

“Well! all I kin say is,” said Mr. Byers, lifting his voice excitedly, “that”—but he stopped short, and was about to fill his glass again from the decanter when the hand of Abner stopped him.

“Ye’ve got ez much ez ye kin carry now, Byers,” he said slowly, “and that’s about ez much ez I allow a man to take in at the Big Flume Hotel. Treatin’ is treatin’, hospitality is hospitality; ef you and me was squattin’ out on the prairie I’d let you fill your skin with that pizen and wrap ye up in yer blankets afterwards. But here at Big Flume, the Stage Kempenny and the wimen and children passengers hez their rights.” He paused a moment, and added, “And so I reckon hez Mrs. Byers, and I ain’t goin’ to send you home to her outer my house blind drunk. It’s mighty rough on you and me, I know, but there’s a lot o’ roughness in this world ez hez to be got over, and life, ez far ez I kin see, ain’t all a clearin’.”

Perhaps it was his good-humored yet firm determination, perhaps it was his resigned philosophy, but something in the speaker’s manner affected Mr. Byers’s alcoholic susceptibility, and hastened his descent from the passionate heights of intoxication to the maudlin stage whither he was drifting. The fire of his red eyes became filmed and dim, an equal moisture gathered in his throat as he pressed Abner’s hand with drunken fervor. “Thash so! your thinking o’ me an’ Mish Byersh is like troo fr’en’,” he said thickly. “I wosh only goin’ to shay that wotever Mish Byersh wosh—even if she wosh wife o’ yours—she wosh—noble woman! Such a woman,” continued Mr. Byers, dreamily regarding space, “can’t have too many husbands.”

“You jest sit back here a minit, and have a quiet smoke till I come back,” said Abner, handing him his tobacco plug. “I’ve got to give the butcher his order—but I won’t be a minit.” He secured the decanter as he spoke, and evading an apparent disposition of his companion to fall upon his neck, made his way with long strides to the hotel, as Mr. Byers, sinking back against the trees, began certain futile efforts to light his unfilled pipe.

Whether Abner’s attendance on the butcher was merely an excuse to withdraw with the decanter, I cannot say. He, however, dispatched his business quickly, and returned to the tree. But to his surprise Mr. Byers was no longer there. He explored the adjacent woodland with non-success, and no reply to his shouting. Annoyed but not alarmed, as it seemed probable that the missing man had fallen in a drunken sleep in some hidden shadows, he returned to the house, when it occurred to him that Byers might have sought the bar-room for some liquor. But he was still more surprised when the barkeeper volunteered the information that he had seen Mr. Byers hurriedly pass down the side veranda into the highroad. An hour later this was corroborated by an arriving teamster, who had passed a man answering to the description of Byers, “mor’ ‘n half full,” staggeringly but hurriedly walking along the road “two miles back.” There seemed to be no doubt that the missing man had taken himself off in a fit of indignation or of extreme thirst. Either hypothesis was disagreeable to Abner, in his queer sense of responsibility to Mrs. Byers, but he accepted it with his usual good-humored resignation.

Yet it was difficult to conceive what connection this episode had in his mind with his suspended attention to Mary Ellen, or why it should determine his purpose. But he had a logic of his own, and it seemed to have demonstrated to him that he must propose to the girl at once. This was no easy matter, however; he had never shown her any previous attention, and her particular functions in the hotel,—the charge of the few bedrooms for transient guests—seldom brought him in contact with her. His interview would have to appear to be a business one—which, however, he wished to avoid from a delicate consciousness of its truth. While making up his mind, for a few days he contented himself with gravely regarding her in his usual resigned, tolerant way, whenever he passed her. Unfortunately the first effect of this was an audible giggle from Mary Ellen, later some confusion and anxiety in her manner, and finally a demeanor of resentment and defiance.

This was so different from what he had expected that he was obliged to precipitate matters. The next day was Sunday,—a day on which his employees, in turns, were allowed the recreation of being driven to Big Flume City, eight miles distant, to church, or for the day’s holiday. In the morning Mary Ellen was astonished by Abner informing her that he designed giving her a separate holiday with himself. It must be admitted that the girl, who was already “prinked up” for the enthrallment of the youth of Big Flume City, did not appear as delighted with the change of plan as a more exacting lover would have liked. Howbeit, as soon as the wagon had left with its occupants, Abner, in the unwonted disguise of a full suit of black clothes, turned to the girl, and offering her his arm, gravely proceeded along the side veranda across the mound of debris already described, to the adjacent wilderness and the very trees under which he and Byers had sat.

“It’s about ez good a place for a little talk, Miss Budd,” he said, pointing to a tree root, “ez ef we went a spell further, and it’s handy to the house. And ef you’ll jest say what you’d like outer the cupboard or the bar—no matter which—I’ll fetch it to you.”

But Mary Ellen Budd seated herself sideways on the root, with her furled white parasol in her lap, her skirts fastidiously tucked about her feet, and glancing at the fatuous Abner from under her stack of fluffy hair and light eyelashes, simply shook her head and said that “she reckoned she wasn’t hankering much for anything” that morning.

“I’ve been calkilatin’ to myself, Miss Budd,” said Abner resignedly, “that when two folks—like ez you and me—meet together to kinder discuss things that might go so far ez to keep them together, if they hez had anything of that sort in their lives afore, they ought to speak of it confidentially like together.”

“Ef any one o’ them sneakin’, soulless critters in the kitchen hez bin slingin’ lies to ye about me—or carryin’ tales,” broke in Mary Ellen Budd, setting every one of her thirty-two strong, white teeth together with a snap, “well—ye might hev told me so to oncet without spilin’ my Sunday! But ez fer yer keepin’ me a minit longer, ye’ve only got to pay me my salary to-day and”—but here she stopped, for the astonishment in Abner’s face was too plain to be misunderstood.

“Nobody’s been slinging any lies about ye, Miss Budd,” he said slowly, recovering himself resignedly from this last back-handed stroke of fate; “I warn’t talkin’ o’ you, but myself. I was only allowin’ to say that I was a di-vorced man.”

As a sudden flush came over Mary Ellen’s brownish-white face while she stared at him, Abner hastened to delicately explain. “It wasn’t no onfaithfulness, Miss Budd—no philanderin’ o’ mine, but only ‘incompatibility o’ temper.’”

“Temper—your temper!” gasped Mary Ellen.

“Yes,” said Abner.

And here a sudden change came over Mary Ellen’s face, and she burst into a shriek of laughter. She laughed with her hands slapping the sides of her skirt, she laughed with her hands clasping her narrow, hollow waist, laughed with her head down on her knees and her fluffy hair tumbling over it. Abner was relieved, and yet it seemed strange to him that this revelation of his temper should provoke such manifest incredulity in both Byers and Mary Ellen. But perhaps these things would be made plain to him hereafter; at present they must be accepted “in the day’s work” and tolerated.

“Your temper,” gurgled Mary Ellen. “Saints alive! What kind o’ temper?”

“Well, I reckon,” returned Abner submissively, and selecting a word to give his meaning more comprehension,—“I reckon it was kinder—aggeravokin’.”

Mary Ellen sniffed the air for a moment in speechless incredulity, and then, locking her hands around her knees and bending forward, said, “Look here! Ef that old woman o’ yours ever knew what temper was in a man; ef she’s ever bin tied to a brute that treated her like a nigger till she daren’t say her soul was her own; who struck her with his eyes and tongue when he hadn’t anythin’ else handy; who made her life miserable when he was sober, and a terror when he was drunk; who at last drove her away, and then divorced her for desertion—then—then she might talk. But ‘incompatibility o’ temper’ with you! Oh, go away—it makes me sick!”

How far Abner was impressed with the truth of this, how far it prompted his next question, nobody but Abner knew. For he said deliberately, “I was only goin’ to ask ye, if, knowin’ I was a di-vorced man, ye would mind marryin’ me!”

Mary Ellen’s face changed; the evasive instincts of her sex rose up. “Didn’t I hear ye sayin’ suthin’ about refreshments,” she said archly. “Mebbe you wouldn’t mind gettin’ me a bottle o’ lemming sody outer the bar!”

Abner got up at once, perhaps not dismayed by this diversion, and departed for the refreshment. As he passed along the side veranda the recollection of Mr. Byers and his mysterious flight occurred to him. For a wild moment he thought of imitating him. But it was too late now—he had spoken. Besides, he had no wife to fly to, and the thirsty or indignant Byers had—his wife! Fate was indeed hard. He returned with the bottle of lemon soda on a tray and a resigned spirit equal to her decrees. Mary Ellen, remarking that he had brought nothing for himself, archly insisted upon his sharing with her the bottle of soda, and even coquettishly touched his lips with her glass. Abner smiled patiently.

But here, as if playfully exhilarated by the naughty foaming soda, she regarded him with her head—and a good deal of her blonde hair—very much on one side, as she said, “Do you know that all along o’ you bein’ so free with me in tellin’ your affairs I kinder feel like just telling you mine?”

“Don’t,” said Abner promptly.

“Don’t?” echoed Miss Budd.

“Don’t,” repeated Abner. “It’s nothing to me. What I said about myself is different, for it might make some difference to you. But nothing you could say of yourself would make any change in me. I stick to what I said just now.”

“But,” said Miss Budd,—in half real, half simulated threatening,—“what if it had suthin’ to do with my answer to what you said just now?”

“It couldn’t. So, if it’s all the same to you, Miss Budd, I’d rather ye wouldn’t.”

“That,” said the lady still more archly, lifting a playful finger, “is your temper.”

“Mebbe it is,” said Abner suddenly, with a wondering sense of relief.

It was, however, settled that Miss Budd should go to Sacramento to visit her friends, that Abner would join her later, when their engagement would be announced, and that she should not return to the hotel until they were married. The compact was sealed by the interchange of a friendly kiss from Miss Budd with a patient, tolerating one from Abner, and then it suddenly occurred to them both that they might as well return to their duties in the hotel, which they did. Miss Budd’s entire outing that Sunday lasted only half an hour.

A week elapsed. Miss Budd was in Sacramento, and the landlord of the Big Flume Hotel was standing at his usual post in the doorway during dinner, when a waiter handed him a note. It contained a single line scrawled in pencil:—

“Come out and see me behind the house as before. I dussent come in on account of her. C. BYERS.”

“On account of ‘her’!” Abner cast a hurried glance around the tables. Certainly Mrs. Byers was not there! He walked in the hall and the veranda—she was not there. He hastened to the rendezvous evidently meant by the writer, the wilderness behind the house. Sure enough, Byers, drunk and maudlin, supporting himself by the tree root, staggered forward, clasped him in his arms, and murmured hoarsely,—

“She’s gone!”

“Gone?” echoed Abner, with a whitening face. “Mrs. Byers? Where?”

“Run away! Never come back no more! Gone!”

A vague idea that had been in Abner’s mind since Byers’s last visit now took awful shape. Before the unfortunate Byers could collect his senses he felt himself seized in a giant’s grasp and forced against the tree.

“You coward!” said all that was left of the tolerant Abner—his even voice—“you hound! Did you dare to abuse her? to lay your vile hands on her—to strike her? Answer me.”

The shock—the grasp—perhaps Abner’s words, momentarily silenced Byers. “Did I strike her?” he said dazedly; “did I abuse her? Oh, yes!” with deep irony. “Certainly! In course! Look yer, pardner!”—he suddenly dragged up his sleeve from his red, hairy arm, exposing a blue cicatrix in its centre—“that’s a jab from her scissors about three months ago; look yer!”—he bent his head and showed a scar along the scalp—“that’s her playfulness with a fire shovel! Look yer!”—he quickly opened his collar, where his neck and cheek were striped and crossed with adhesive plaster—“that’s all that was left o’ a glass jar o’ preserves—the preserves got away, but some of the glass got stuck! That’s when she heard I was a di-vorced man and hadn’t told her.”

“Were you a di-vorced man?” gasped Abner.

“You know that; in course I was,” said Byers scornfully; “d’ye meanter say she didn’t tell ye?”

“She?” echoed Abner vaguely. “Your wife—you said just now she didn’t know it before.”

“My wife ez oncet was, I mean! Mary Ellen—your wife ez is to be,” said Byers, with deep irony. “Oh, come now. Pretend ye don’t know! Hi there! Hands off! Don’t strike a man when he’s down, like I am.”

But Abner’s clutch of Byers’s shoulder relaxed, and he sank down to a sitting posture on the root. In the meantime Byers, overcome by a sense of this new misery added to his manifold grievances, gave way to maudlin silent tears.

“Mary Ellen—your first wife?” repeated Abner vacantly.

“Yesh!” said Byers thickly, “my first wife—shelected and picked out fer your shecond wife—by your first—like d–d conundrum. How wash I t’know?” he said, with a sudden shriek of public expostulation—“thash what I wanter know. Here I come to talk with fr’en’, like man to man, unshuspecting, innoshent as chile, about my shecond wife! Fr’en’ drops out, carryin’ off the whiskey. Then I hear all o’ suddent voice o’ Mary Ellen talkin’ in kitchen; then I come round softly and see Mary Ellen—my wife as useter be—standin’ at fr’en’s kitchen winder. Then I lights out quicker ‘n lightnin’ and scoots! And when I gets back home, I ups and tells my wife. And whosh fault ish’t! Who shaid a man oughter tell hish wife? You! Who keepsh other mensh’ first wivesh at kishen winder to frighten ‘em to tell? You!”

But a change had already come over the face of Abner Langworthy. The anger, anxiety, astonishment, and vacuity that was there had vanished, and he looked up with his usual resigned acceptance of the inevitable as he said, “I reckon that’s so! And seein’ it’s so,” with good-natured tolerance, he added, “I reckon I’ll break rules for oncet and stand ye another drink.”

He stood another drink and yet another, and eventually put the doubly widowed Byers to bed in his own room. These were but details of a larger tribulation,—and yet he knew instinctively that his cup was not yet full. The further drop of bitterness came a few days later in a line from Mary Ellen: “I needn’t tell you that all betwixt you and me is off, and you kin tell your old woman that her selection for a second wife for you wuz about as bad as your own first selection. Ye kin tell Mr. Byers—yer great friend whom ye never let on ye knew—that when I want another husband I shan’t take the trouble to ask him to fish one out for me. It would be kind—but confusin’.”

He never heard from her again. Mr. Byers was duly notified that Mrs. Byers had commenced action for divorce in another state in which concealment of a previous divorce invalidated the marriage, but he did not respond. The two men became great friends—and assured celibates. Yet they always spoke reverently of their “wife,” with the touching prefix of “our.”

“She was a good woman, pardner,” said Byers.

“And she understood us,” said Abner resignedly.

Perhaps she had.