The Helpers

"But you went to luncheon with him afterward. Didn't he explain?"

"Not a word. I tried my level best to pull the thing out of the hole two or three times, but it was buried too deep for me. And somehow that idiotic sneer of his seemed to color everything he said. He seemed to take it for granted that I'd been setting him down all these months for a scalawag, and everything I could say got twisted into a slap. We worried through the meal, and the cigars after it, in some sort of thankless fashion; but I wouldn't do it again for a farm."

Myra became reflectively thoughtful, and with the jarring of the car the bit of money paper fell to the floor. Dick recovered it, put it away, and waited patiently for her comment. When it came it was no more than a leading question.

"What do you make of it, Dick?"

"I don't know what to make of it. If I could break away from all the things I used to know about him, I should say he acts like a man who has done something to make him declare war upon himself, and – as a natural consequence – upon everybody else. He seems to be ready to fight at the drop of the hat, and that's a bad symptom."

"It is a symptom of a guilty conscience, isn't it?"

Bartrow did not answer at once. To speak by the fact was to admit that all his loyal upholdings of Jeffard had been spent upon an unworthy object, and he was reluctant in just proportion to his loyalty. But the fact was large – too large to be overleaped.

"It is a symptom, yes; and I'm beginning to be afraid it's a true one in Jeffard's case. I didn't find a soft spot in him anywhere till we came to speak of Lansdale."

"They are still friends?"

"Y – es, in a way; a sort of give-and-take way. Lansdale is cool and pretty well-calculated in his friendships as in everything else; and I imagine he forgathers with Jeffard without prejudice to his own private convictions in the Garvin affair. It's a bit odd, but Jeffard seems to have most of the remembrances on his side."

"The kindly ones, you mean?"

"Yes. I hadn't seen Lansdale yet, and I asked Jeffard how he was looking. He wagged his head, and there was a look in his eyes that I'd seen there more than once in the old days. 'Unless there is something to be done more than has been tried, it's only a question of weeks,' said he; and then he went back to something I had said that morning in Leadville just before he climbed the engine for the race to Aspen."

Myra's eyebrows arched a query, and he elucidated.

"Didn't I tell you? We had been talking about Connie, and I had hinted that she'd be willing to buy health for Lansdale at a price; and he" —

Myra cut in swiftly. "Has she told you that, Dick?"

"Hardly; but I've eyes, haven't I? Well, as I was saying, Jeffard went back to that, and asked if Lansdale's recovery still meant as much to Connie. I told him I thought it meant rather more than less; and then he went into his shell, and when he came out it was on the human side. Said he had money to burn now, and asked if there was anything anybody could do to give Lansdale a better show for his white alley. I told him what I'd do if I could break away from the Myriad."

"I remember; you said you would take him afield."

"Yes. Rig up a team and a camping outfit, and chase him out into the mountains. Make him live outdoors for a month or two, and belt him over the head if I ever caught him sharpening a lead pencil. He's grinding away with Kershaw nights and Sundays, and trying to write a novel between times. It's a clear case of work-to-death."

Myra nodded. "I think so; I have thought so all along. But he wouldn't go with Mr. Jeffard."

"That's what I thought, and what I told Jeffard when he hinted at the thing. But we were both off; and that brings me to the other happening. After we'd smoked over it – Jeffard and I – we went around and hunted up Lansdale's doctor. The medicine-man agreed with me that it was the only chance, but he didn't give us much encouragement. Said it was a forlorn hope, with the odds against Lansdale; that he'd die if he didn't go, and would probably die if he did. Jeffard had been in and out of his shell two or three times since the beginning of it, but he came out again at that and stayed out. Said he owed Lansdale, and that would be a good way to wipe out the account. I told him that wouldn't go; that if he wanted to do Lansdale a good turn, he'd have to do it on its merits. 'I sha'n't be such a fool as to tell Lansdale I'm trying to square up with him,' says he. 'You go and persuade him.'"

Myra's hand was on his knee. "You poor boy!" she said; "they always unload the thankless things on you, don't they? Did you try?"

"Sure. If I'd felt like hanging back, a sight of Lansdale would have done the business for me. It's awful, little woman. I've seen dead men, and men that were going to die, but never a dying one that wanted so hard to live. Of course, he kicked clear over the traces when I proposed it, though I lied like a whitehead, and tried to make him believe it was my scheme to help Jeffard get cured of his case of mental and moral 'jimmies.' When that failed, I dug right down to hard-pan. 'You want to live, don't you?' said I, and when he admitted it, I biffed him square on the point of the jaw. Says I, 'Then it's a question of your stiff-necked New England pride against your love for a little girl who would give her right hand to see you well and strong, is it? You're not as good a man as I thought you were.'"

Myra was moved to protest. "Oh, Dick! I do hope you haven't taken too much for granted! But go on; what did he say?"

"I thought he'd rise up and fall on me at first; but he didn't. He mumbled something about the 'precious balms of a friend breaking his head,' and said I was altogether mistaken; that Connie was only an angel of mercy, one of God's little ones, and a few other things of that sort."

"'Only'!" laughed Myra.

"Yes, 'only.' But I could see that my shoulder-blow had knocked him out. He switched the talk to Jeffard, and pretty soon he was asking me if I really thought he could do any good in that quarter; or if my saying so was merely a lie cut out of whole cloth. I was soaked through by that time, and another plunge more or less didn't cut any figure, so I told him it wasn't a lie; that there was still hope for Jeffard if any one would lay hold of him and stick to him. 'What kind of hope, Dick?' says he. And I said, 'The only kind that counts; the kind that'll make him all through what he is in part.' He shook his head at that, and said, 'I don't know. That would mean repentance and restitution, – and the money's got its teeth into him now.' I'll have to admit that I was arguing dead against the probabilities, and I knew it; but I wouldn't let go."

Myra's smile was tempered with affectionate pride. "You never do let go. Did he finally listen to reason?"

"Yes, at the end of it. But if it were six for himself and Connie, it was a good half-dozen for Jeffard. 'I'll go, Dick,' said he. 'I'm afraid your assumptions are all good-hearted wishes, but I'll go. Perhaps, if it comes to the worst, God will give me a man for my leave-taking.' That was a new side of him, to me; the Puritan side, isn't it?"

"The human side," she amended. "It is merely crusted a little thicker in the Puritan family."

"But it's there, all the same. Out here, where the horizons and other things are pretty wide open, we're apt to say what we think, and pretty much all of it; but Lansdale and his kind think a good bit more and keep it to themselves. He's all right. I only wish his getting well were as sure as the goodness of him. Are you getting sleepy? Want your berth made down?"

"Presently." Myra was gazing out at the night-wall slipping past the car windows, and for her the thick blackness mirrored a picture of a sweet-faced young woman sitting on a denim-covered lounge, with her hands tight clasped over one knee and her eyes alight with a soft starglow of compassion. And because of the picture, she said: "I'm afraid you didn't take too much for granted, Dick; and I could almost wish it were otherwise. It is heart-breaking to think of it."

Dick went over to a seat beside her, and tried to put himself as nearly as possible at her point of view.

"Let's not try to cross their bridges for them beforehand, little woman," he said, with his lips at her ear. "Life is pretty middling full for all of us, – for us two, at any rate."

It was five minutes later, and the train had stopped for orders at the canyon gateway, when she turned to him to say: "What do you think about Mr. Jeffard now, Dick? Are we all mistaken? or is he the hardened cynic he seems to be?"

Bartrow did not reply on the spur of the moment, as was his custom. When he had reasoned it out, he said: —

"I think we ought to break away from the notion that a man has got to be either all angel or all devil. Jeffard's a human man, like the rest of us. He's done some good things that I know of, – and one pretty bad one; and it's the bad one that is setting the pace for him just now. But, as I once said to Lansdale, I'm betting on the finish. One bad curve needn't spoil a whole railroad."

Myra's hand sought and found his under cover of her wrap. "You are loyalty itself, Dick, and I can't help loving you for it. But you say 'one bad one.' Have you forgotten the Irish girl?"

Dick set his jaw at that, and the big hand closed firmly over the small one.

"When I have to believe that of him, Myra, my faith in my kind will drop back more notches than one. That would make him all devil, don't you see?"

But her charity outran his. "No, Dick; I don't quite see it. It is just one more coil in the puzzle-tangle of good and evil that you spoke of. Connie knows it, and if she can find it in her heart to forgive him" —

There was reverent awe in Bartrow's rejoinder. "Do you mean to say she'd forgive him —that?"

The intermittent clatter and roar of the canyon climb had begun, and in one of the breathing spaces Myra made answer.

"She is one of God's little ones, as Mr. Lansdale said. I think she would forgive him even that." And in the next gap in the clamor, "Did you tell him about Garvin?"

Dick shook his head. "No, I didn't dare to. It's a hard thing to say, but I'm not sure he wouldn't prosecute Jim for the attempt to kill. There's no such vindictiveness in the world as that which dates back to benefits forgot. But I told Lansdale, and gave him leave to make use of it if the time should ever come when he could do it without jeopardizing Garvin."

At which Myra's charity stumbled and fell and ran no more.

"That time will never come, Dick. Mr. Jeffard has a double feud with Garvin, – he is Garvin's debtor for benefits forgot, as you say; and he has done Garvin an injury. I am glad you didn't tell him."

CHAPTER XXXI

"She's gone to her rest, at last, poor soul, and it's happy she'd be if it wasn't for the childer."

Constance had been waiting through the long hours of the afternoon for Margaret's return from Owen David's shanty on the North Side; waiting for the summons to the death-bed of the mother of Owen David's children. She had promised to go, wherefore her heart smote her and the ready tears welled up at Margaret's announcement.

"Oh, Margaret! Why didn't you come for me!"