Heart's Kindred

Then he wrote out a receipt to Jem Moor, with a blank for the sum and for Bunchy’s signature.

When he could, he drew Jem in a corner and thrust at him the papers. The little man stared at them, with a peculiarly ugly, square dropping of his jaw, and eyes pointed at top.

“Don’t bust,” said the Inger, “and don’t think it’s you. It ain’t you. The check isn’t drawn to you, is it? I want to hell-and-devil Bunchy some, that’s all. Shut up your mouth!” he added, when Jem tried gaspingly to thank him.

Then he got out of the place, where sharp music was beginning and the ten or twelve women were dancing among the tables, and went down the street, thronged now with the disappointed guests, intent on forcing the ruined evening to some wild festivity. When they called to him to join them, he hardly heard. He went straight through the town and shook it from him and met the desert, and took his own trail.

The night was now one of soft, thick blackness, on which the near stars pressed. The air had a sharp chill – as if it bore no essence of its own but hung empty of warmth when the daylight was drained from it. The stillness was insistent. In a place of water, left from the rains, and still deep enough to run in ripples over the sedge, frogs were in chorus.

There was a sentinel pepper tree on the edge of the town and here a mocking-bird sang out, once, and was still. These left behind, and the saw and crack and beat of the music dying, the Inger faced the dark, gave himself to the exultation which flowed in him, mounted with it to a new place.

The liquor which he had drunk was in his veins, and to this the part of him which understood all the rest of him credited his swimming delight. But separate from this, as his breath was separate, there came and went like a pulse, something else which he could not possibly have defined, born in him in the street, when he had heard Jem Moor’s bad news.

He threw out his arms and ran, staggering. What was there that he must do? Here he was, ready for it. What was there that he must do? Then he remembered. The War! He would have that. That was what he could do.

He stood still on the desert, and imagined himself one of thousands on the plain. What if he were with them there in the darkness? What if the rise of the sand were the edge of the opposite trenches, with men breathing behind them, waiting? With a drunken laugh, he pulled his revolver, and fired and shouted. Why, he could plough his way through anything. He should not go down – not he! But he should be fighting like this in the field of civilized men, and not taking his adventures piecemeal, in a back lot of the world, with a skulking sheriff or two and Bunchy for adversary. To-morrow! He would go to-morrow, and find what his life could give him.

But this other thing that was pulsing in him … the girl! What about her? Was he not to find her, was he not to have her? He closed his eyes and swam in the thought of her. War and the woman – suddenly he was aflame with them both.

When he went into the wood, he went singing. He himself was the centre of the night and of his universe. The wood, Whiteface, his journey, the war, lay ready to his hand as accessory and secondary to his consciousness. He felt his own life, and other life was its background. He made a long crying guttural noise, like an animal. He shook his great body and crashed through the undergrowth, the young saplings stinging his cheeks. To-morrow – he would be off to-morrow…

He emerged upon the little space which was his home. The fire had fallen and was a red glow, and a watching eye. Rolled in his blanket beside it lay his father, deeply breathing. In a moment the Inger became another being. He stood tense, stepped softly, entered quietly the open door of his hut.

Within something stirred, was silent, stirred again, with a movement as of garments. Out of the darkness, her voice came:

“Mr. Inger: … It’s Lory Moor.”

III

For a moment he thought that this would be a part of his crazy dreaming, and he said nothing. But then he knew that she had risen and was standing before him; and he heard her breath, taken tremblingly. Her words came rushing – almost the first words that he had ever heard her say:

“You been down there. You know. I don’t know where to go. Oh – don’t tell ’em!”

“Tell ’em,” he muttered, stupidly. “Tell ’em?”

“I can’t do it,” she said gaspingly. “I can’t – I can’t.”

She was sobbing, and the Inger, so lately a flame of intent and desire, did not dare to touch her, and had no least idea what to say to her. In a moment she was able to speak again.

“I thought I could hide here for a day or two,” she said, “till they quit huntin’. Then I could get away. Would you hide me, somehow? – would you?”

He was silent, trying to think, with a head not too clear, how best to do it; and she misunderstood.

“Don’t make me go back – don’t tell Dad and Bunchy! If you can’t hide me, I’ll go now,” she said.

“What you talkin’?” he said, roughly. “I’m thinkin’. Thinkin’ up how. Thinkin’ up how.” He put his hands to his temples. “My head don’t think,” he said thickly.

“Here in the hut,” she said, eagerly and clearly. “They’ll never think of comin’ up here. Why, I don’t hardly know you.”

“Won’t they though?” said the Inger, suddenly, and dimly remembered Bunchy, and the blow for the sake of the girl. Last, there came dancing to him something about a check for the debt to Bunchy which she had not paid.

“As it happens,” said the Inger, “this is jus’ the first place where they will come lookin’ for you. Jus’ the first place…”

“Why?” she cried.

“Nev’ you mind,” he said.

He could almost see her, standing within his door, her white face blooming from the black. But his sense of her was obscured to him by the need for immediate action, and by his utter present inability to cope with that need.

“How’d you come – to come – to come up here?” he asked curiously.

For a breath she hesitated, and there was a soft taking of breath in her answer.

“I didn’t know no woman I could tell,” she said, “nor no other decent man.”

From head to foot a fire went over the Inger, such as he had never known. And first he was weak with her words, and then he was jubilantly strong. He put them away, but they lay within him burning, where again and again he could turn to them for warmth.

“How – how’d you hit the trail up?” he asked almost gently.

Again she was silent for a moment, and her answer was very low.

“I’d been by here once-to-twice before,” she said.

Hazily he turned this over. The trail led only to his hut. No one ever came who had not come to be there. Unless —

He threw back his head as something new swam to consciousness. She stood quietly, waiting to hear what he would do. Some sense of this sudden new dependence on him beset him like words.

“They’s a way over the mountain,” he muttered. “I made it in that sheriff business. Can you take that?”

“I’ll go any way,” she said.

“It’s pretty rough,” he told her. “It’s pretty rough,” he repeated with intense care. “I’ll take you. I’ll take you,” he insisted thickly.

“You mean you’d go with me?” she asked.

“You’d never fin’ it if I didn’t,” he told her. “Y-you’d never fin’ it. Never.”

“I’ll go any way,” she repeated. “But I didn’t mean to – to come down on to you like that.”

“Tha’s nothing,” he said. “Tha’s nothing. Tha’s nothing.”

He put his hand to his head, with the need to touch it and to make it work properly. He had to think of things to do, and how could he do that? His father, for example – what should he do about him? He went a few steps without the door, and tried to consider, looking at the sleeping figure by the fire. The faint glow of the coals made a little ring of dim light. In it he stood, swaying.

“Oh my God,” she said, behind him. “You are drunk.”

“Li’l bit,” he admitted. “Li’l bit. Not enough to scare a b-baby.”

She put this away scornfully. “Scare nothin’,” she said sharply. “Can you keep to the trail? That’s all.”