THE MAN FROM THE BITTER ROOTS
by
Caroline Lockhart
Author of"The Fighting Shepherdess," "The Lady Doc," etc.
"You've got to tell the truth before she stops! Why didyou burn out this plant?"]
Frontispiece byGayle Hoskins
A. L. Burt CompanyPublishers New York
Published by arrangement with J. B. Lippincott Company
Copyright, 1915, by Street & SmithCopyright, 1915, by J. B. Lippincott CompanyPublished October, 1915
Printed By J. B. Lippincott Companyat the Washington Square PressPhiladelphia, U. S. A.
ToMY GOOD FRIENDMRS. LOUIS HOWETHIS BOOK IS DEDICATED WITHALL GRATITUDE AND AFFECTION
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. Before He Grew Up 11 II. "Pardners" 20 III. The Game Butchers 32 IV. Self-Defence 39 V. The Jack-Pot 54 VI. The Returned Hero 73 VII. Sprudell Goes East 78 VIII. Uncle Bill Finds News in the "Try-Bune" 89 IX. The Yellow-Leg 103 X. "Capital Takes Holt" 119 XI. The Ghost at the Banquet 128 XII. Thorns--and a Few Roses 140 XIII. "Off His Range" 147 XIV. His Only Asset 157 XV. Millions! 169 XVI. "Slim's Sister" 182 XVII. A Practical Man 202 XVIII. Prophets of Evil 214 XIX. At the Big Mallard 221 XX. "The Forlorn Hope" 231 XXI. Toy 237 XXII. The General Manager 244 XXIII. "Good Enough" 252 XXIV. The Midnight Visitor 260 XXV. The Clean-Up 269 XXVI. Failure 288 XXVII. Uncle Bill Is Ostracized 301XXVIII. "Annie's Boy" 314
THE MAN FROM THE BITTER ROOTS
I.
BEFORE HE GREW UP.
The little white "digger," galloping with the stiff, short-legged jumpsof the broken-down cow pony, stopped short as the boy riding him pulledsharply on the reins, and after looking hard at something which lay in abare spot in the grass, slid from its fat back.
He picked up the rock which had attracted his eye, and turned it overand over in his hand. His pockets bulged with colored pebbles andodd-looking stones he had found in washouts and ravines. There was nogreat variety on the Iowa prairie, and he thought he knew them all, buthe had never seen a rock like this.
He crossed his bare, tanned legs, and sat down to examine it moreclosely, while the lazy cow pony immediately went to sleep. The stonewas heavy and black, with a pitted surface as polished as though someone had laboriously rubbed it smooth. Where did it come from? How did itget there? Involuntarily he looked up at the sky. Perhaps God had thrownit down to surprise him--to make him wonder. He smiled a little. God wasa very real person to Bruce Burt. He had a notion that He kept closewatch upon his movements through a large crack somewhere in the sky.
Yes, God must have tossed it down, for how else could a rock sodifferent from every other rock be lying there as though it had justdropped? He wished he had not so long to wait before he could show it tohis mother. He was tempted to say he saw it fall, but she might ask him"Honest Injun?" and he decided not. However, if God made crawfish gointo their holes backward just to make boys laugh, and grasshoppers chewtobacco, why wouldn't He----
The sound of prairie grass swishing about the legs of a galloping horsemade him jump, startled, to his feet and thrust the strange rock intothe front of his shirt. His father reined in, and demanded angrily:
"What you here for? Why didn't you do as I told you?"
"I--I forgot. I got off to look at a funny rock. See, papa!" His blackeye sparkled as he took it from his shirt front and held it up eagerly.
His father did not look at it.
"Get on your horse!" he said harshly. "I can't trust you to do anything.We're late as it is, and women don't like people coming in on 'em atmeal-time without warning." He kicked his horse in the ribs, andgalloped off.
The abashed look in the boy's face changed to sullenness. He jumped onhis pony and followed his father, but shortly he lowered his blacklashes, and the tears slipped down his cheeks.
Why had he shown that rock, anyhow? he asked himself in chagrin. Hemight have known that his father wouldn't look at it, that he didn'tlook at anything or care about anything but horses and cattle. Certainlyhis father did not care about _him_. He could not remember when thestern man had given him a pat on the head, or a good-night kiss. Thethought of his father kissing anybody startled him. It seemed to himthat his father seldom spoke to him except to reprimand or ridicule him,and the latter was by far the worse.
His eyes were still red when he sat down at the table, but the discoverythat there was chicken helped assuage his injured feelings, and when thefarmer's wife deliberately speared the gizzard from the platter and laidit on his plate the world looked almost bright. How did she know that heliked gizzard, he wondered? The look of gratitude he shyly flashed herbrought a smile to her tired face. There were mashed potatoes, too, andgravy, pickled peaches, and he thought he smelled a lemon pie. Hewondered if they had these things all the time. If it wasn't for hismother he believed he'd like to live with Mrs. Mosher, and golly! wasn'the hungry! He hoped they wouldn't stop to talk, so he'd dare begin.
He tried to regard his mother's frequent admonitions concerning"manners"--that one about stirring up your potatoes as though you weremixing mortar, and biting into one big slab of bread. He did his best,but his cheek protruded with half a pickled peach when he heard hisfather say:
"I sent Bruce on ahead to tell you that we'd be here, but he didn't mindme. I found him out there on the prairie, looking at a rock."
All eyes turned smilingly upon the boy, and he reddened to the roots ofhis hair, while the half peach in his cheek felt suddenly like a wholeone.
"It was a funny kind of rock," he mumbled in self-defence when he couldspeak.
"The rock doesn't have to be very funny to make you forget what you'retold to do," his father said curtly, and added to the others: "Hismother can't keep pockets in his clothes for the rocks he packs aroundin them, and they're piled all over the house. He wants her to send awayand get him a book about rocks."
"Perhaps he'll be one of these rock-sharps when he gets big," suggestedMr. Mosher humorously. "Wouldn't it be kinda nice to have a perfesser inthe family--with long hair and goggles? I come acrost one once thathunted bugs. He called a chinch bug a Rhyparochromus, but he saddled hishorse without a blanket and put bakin' powder in the sour-dough."
In the same way that the farmer's wife knew that boys liked gizzards,she knew that Bruce was writhing under the attention and the ridicule.
"He'll be a cattleman like his dad," and she smiled upon him.
His father shook his head.
"No, he doesn't take hold right. Why, even when I was his age I couldtell a stray in the bunch as far as I could see it, and he don't knowthe milk cow when she gets outside of the barn. I tell his mother I'mgoin' to work him over again with a trace strap----"
The sensitive boy could bear no more. He gave one regretful glance athis heaping plate, a shamed look at Mrs. Mosher, then sprang to his feetand faced his father.
"I won't learn cattle, and _you_ can't make me!" he cried, with blazingeyes. "And you _won't_ work me over with a trace strap! You've licked meall I'll stand. I'll go away! I'll _run_ away, and I won't come hometill I'm white as a darned sheep!"
"Bruce!" His father reached for his collar, but the boy was gone. Hischair tipped over, and his precious rock dropped from his shirt frontand bounced on the floor. It _was_ a precious rock, too, a fragment ofmeteorite, one which fell perhaps in the shower of meteoric stones inIowa in '79.
"He's the touchiest child I ever saw," said Burt apologetically, "andstubborn as a mule; but you'd better set his plate away. I guess thegentleman will return, since he's twenty-five miles from home."
The farmer's wife called after the boy from the doorway, but he did notstop. Hatless, with his head thrown back and his fists clenched tightagainst his sides, he ran with all his might, his bare feet kicking upthe soft, deep dust. There was something pathetic to her in the lonelylittle figure vanishing down the long, straight road. She wished it hadnot happened.
"It isn't right to tease a child," she said, going back to her seat.
"Well, there's no sense in his acting like that," Burt answered. "I'vetried to thrash some of that stubbornness out of him, but his will ishard to break."
"I don't believe in so much whipping," the woman defended. "Traits thatchildren are punished for sometimes are the makin' of them when they'regrown. I think that's why grandparents are usually easier with theirgrandchildren than they were with their own--because they've lived longenough to see the faults they whipped their children for grow intovirtues. Bruce's stubbornness may be perseverance when he's a man, andto my way of thinking too much pride is far better than too little."
"Pride or no pride, he'll do as I say," Burt answered, with anobstinacy of tone which made the farmer's wife comment mentally that itwas not difficult to see from whom the boy had inherited _that_ trait.
But it was the only one, since, save in coloring and features, they weretotally dissimilar, and Burt seemed to have no understanding of hispassionate, warm-hearted, imaginative son. Perhaps, unknown to himself,he harbored a secret resentment that Bruce had not been the little girlwhose picture had been as fixed and clear in his mind before Bruce cameas though she were already an actuality. She was to have had flaxenhair, with blue ribbons in it, and teeth like tiny, sharp pearls. Shewas to have come dancing to meet him on her toes, and to have snuggledcontentedly on his lap when he returned from long rides on the range.Boys were all right, but he had a vague notion that they belonged totheir mothers. Bruce was distinctly "his mother's boy," and this wastacitly understood. It was to her he went with his hurts for caresses,and with his confidences for sympathy and understanding.
Now there was nothing in Bruce's mind but to get to his mother. Whilehis breath lasted and he burned with outraged pride and humiliation, theboy ran, his thought a confused jumble of mortification that Mrs. Moshershould know that he got "lickings," of regret for the gizzard and mashedpotatoes and lemon pie, of wonder as to what his mother would say whenhe came home in the middle of the night and told her that he had walkedall the way alone.
He dropped to a trot, and then to a walk, for it was hot, and even ahurt and angry boy cannot run forever. The tears dried to grimy streakson his cheeks, and the sun blistered his face and neck, while hediscovered that stretches of stony road were mighty hard on the soles ofthe feet. But he walked on purposefully, with no thought of going back,thinking of the comforting arms and shoulder that awaited him at theother end. After all, nobody took any interest in rocks, except mother;nobody cared about the things he really liked, except mother.
Toward the end of the afternoon his footsteps lagged, and sunset foundhim resting by the roadside. He was so hungry! He felt so little, soalone, and the coming darkness brought disturbing thoughts of coyotesand prairie wolves, of robbers and ghosts that the hired man said he hadseen when he had stayed out too late o' nights.
Ravines, with their still, eloquent darkness, are fearsome places forimaginative boys to pass alone. Hobgoblins--the very name sent chills upand down Bruce's spine--would be most apt to lurk in some such place,waiting, waiting to jump on his back! He broke and ran.
The stars came out, and a late moon found him trudging still. He limpedand his sturdy shoulders sagged. He was tired, and, oh, so sleepy, butthe prolonged howl of a wolf, coming from somewhere a long way off, kepthim from dropping to the ground. Who would have believed thattwenty-five miles was such a distance? He stopped short, and how hardhis heart pumped blood! Stock-still and listening, he heard the clatterof hoofs coming down the road ahead of him. Who would be out this timeof night but robbers? He looked about him; there was no place on theflat prairie to hide except a particularly dark ravine some little wayback which had taken all his courage to go through without running.
Between robbers and hobgoblins there seemed small choice, but he choserobbers. With his fists clenched and the cold sweat on his forehead, hewaited by the roadside for the dark rider, who was coming like the wind.
"Hello!" The puffing horse was pulled sharply to a standstill.
"Oh, Wess!" His determination to die without a sound ended in a brokencry of gladness, and he wrapped an arm around the hired man's leg tohold him.
"Bruce! What you doin' here?"
"They plagued me. I'm going home."
"You keep on goin', boy. I'm after you and your father." There wassomething queer in the hired man's voice--something that frightened him."Your mother's taken awful sick. Don't waste no time; it's four milesyet; you hustle!" The big horse jumped into the air and was gone.
It was not so much what the hired man said that scared him so, but theway he said it. Bruce had never known him not to laugh and joke, or seenhim run his horse like that.
"Oh, mamma, mamma!" he panted as he stumbled on, wishing that he couldfly.
When he dragged himself into the room, she was lying on her bed, raisedhigh among the pillows. Her eyes were closed, and the face which was sobeautiful to him looked heavy with the strange stupor in which she lay.
"Mamma, I'm here! Mamma, I've come!" He flung himself upon the soft,warm shoulder, but it was still, and the comforting arms lay limp uponthe counterpane.
"Mamma, what's the matter? Say something! Look at me!" he cried. But thegray eyes that always beamed upon him with such glad welcome did notopen, and the parted lips were unresponsive to his own. There was nomovement of her chest to tell him that she even breathed.
A fearful chill struck to his heart. What if she was dying--dead! Otherboys' mothers sometimes died, he knew, but his mother--_his_ mother! Hetugged gently at one long, silken braid of hair that lay in his grimyhand like a golden rope, calling her in a voice that shook with fright.
The cry penetrated her dulled senses. It brought her back from theborderland of that far country into which she had almost slipped.Slowly, painfully, with the last faint remnant of her will power, shetried to speak--to answer that beloved, boyish voice.
"My--little boy----" The words came thickly, and her lips did not seemto move.
But it was her voice; she had spoken; she was not dead! He hugged herhard in wild ecstasy and relief.
"I'm glad--you came. I--can't stay--long. I've had--such hopes--foryou--little boy. I've dreamed--such dreams--for you--I wanted tosee--them all come true. If I can--I'll help you--from--the other side.There's so much--more I want to say--if only--I had known---- Oh,Bruce--my--li--ttle boy----" Her voice ended in a breath, and stopped.