Starr, of the Desert. B. M. Bower

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СКАЧАТЬ softened, quivered until she thought he was going to cry like a woman. But he only came and laid a shaking hand on her head and smoothed her hair as one caresses a child.

      "Don't oppose me in this, Babe," he said wearily. "I've thought it all out, and it's best for all of us. I can't see you dying here by inches—in the harness. And think of Vic, if that happened. He's just at the age where he needs you. I couldn't do anything much with him alone. It's the best thing to do, the only thing to do. Don't say anything more against it, don't argue. When the time comes, you'll do your part bravely, as I shall do mine. And if you feel that it isn't worth while for yourself, think of Vic."

      Peter turned abruptly and went into his room, and Helen May dropped her head down upon her arms and cried awhile, though she did not clearly understand why, except that life seemed very cruel, like some formless monster that caught and squeezed the very soul out of one. Soon she heard Vic coming, and pulled herself together for the lecture he had earned by going out without permission and staying later than he should. On one point dad was right, she told herself wearily, while she was locking up for the night. Town certainly was no place for Vic.

      The next day, urged by her father, Helen May met Johnny Calvert, and cooked him a nice dinner, and heard a great deal about her new claim. And Monday, furthermore, the three attended to certain legal details. She had many moments of panic when she believed her father was out of his mind, and when she feared that he would do some desperate thing like stealing money to carry out this strange plan. But she did as he wished. There was a certain inflexible quality in Peter's mild voice, a certain determination in his insignificant face that required obedience to his wishes. Even Vic noticed it, and eyed Peter curiously, and asked Helen May what ailed the old man.

      An old man Peter was when he went to his room that night, leaving Helen May dazed and exhausted after another evening spent in absorbing queer bits of information from the garrulous Johnny Calvert. She would be able to manage all right, now, Peter told her relievedly when Johnny left. She knew as much about the place as she could possibly know without having been there.

      He said good night and left her wondering bewilderedly what strange thing her dad would do next. In the morning she knew.

      Peter did not answer when Helen May rapped on his door and said that breakfast would be ready in five minutes. Never before had he failed to call out: "All right, Babe!" more or less cheerfully. She waited a minute, listening, and then rapped again and repeated her customary announcement. Another wait, and she turned the knob and looked in.

      She did not scream at what she found there. Vic, sleeping on the couch behind a screen in the living room, yawned himself awake and proceeded reluctantly to set his feet upon the floor and grope, sleepy-eyed, for his clothes, absolutely unconscious that in the night sometime Peter had passed a certain mountain of difficulty and had reached out unafraid and pulled wide open the door of opportunity for his children.

      Beyond the door, Helen May was standing rigidly beside the bed where

       Peter lay, and was reading for the second time the letter which Peter had

       held in his hand. At first her mind had refused to grasp its meaning.

       Now, reading slowly, she knew …

      Dear Babe, (said the letter).

      Don't be horrified at what I have done. I have thought the whole matter over calmly, and I am satisfied that this is the best way. My life could not go on very long, anyway. The doctor made that plain enough to me Sunday. I saw him. I was in a bad way with kidney trouble, he said. I knew it before he told me. I knew I was only good for a few months more at the most, and I would soon be a helpless burden. Besides, I have heart trouble that will account for this sudden taking off, so you can escape any unpleasant gossip.

      Take the life insurance and use it on that claim, for you and Vic. Live out in the open and get well, and make a man of Vic. Three thousand dollars ought to be ample to put the ranch on a paying basis. And don't blame your dad for collecting it now, when it will do the most good. I could see no benefit in waiting and suffering, and letting you get farther downhill all the while, making it that much harder to climb back. Go at once to your claim, and do your best—that is what will make your dad happiest. You will get well, and you will make a home for you and Vic, and be independent and happy. In doing this you will fulfill the last, loving wish of your father.

      PETER STEVENSON.

      P.S. Better stock the place with goats. Johnny Calvert thinks they would be better than sheep.

CHAPTER THREE

       Table of Contents

      VIC SHOULD WORRY

      Wise man or fool, Peter had taken the one way to impress obedience upon Helen May. Had he urged and argued and kept on living, Helen May could have brought forth reasons and arguments, eloquence even, to combat him. But Peter had taken the simple, unanswerable way of stating his wishes, opening the way to their accomplishment, and then quietly lying back upon his pillow and letting death take him beyond reach of protest.

      For days Helen May was numb with the sudden dropping of Life's big responsibilities upon her shoulders. She could not even summon energy enough to call Vic to an accounting of his absences from the house. Until after the funeral Vic had been subdued, going around on his toes and looking at Helen May with wide, solemn eyes and lips prone to trembling. But fifteen years is the resilient age, and two days after Peter was buried, Vic asked her embarrassedly if she thought it would look right for him to go to the ball game. He had to do something, he added defensively.

      "Oh, I guess so; run along," Helen May had told him absently, without in the least realizing what it was he had wanted to do. After that Vic went his way without going through the ceremony of asking her consent, secure in the knowledge of her indifference.

      The insurance company for which she had worked set in motion the wheels that would eventually place in her hands the three thousand dollars for which Peter had calmly given his life. She hated the money. She wanted to tell her dad how impossible it was for her to use a cent of it. Yet she must use it. She must use it as he had directed, because he had died to open the way for her obedience. She must take Vic, against his violent young will, she suspected, and she must go to that claim away off there somewhere in the desert, and she must live in the open—and raise goats! For there was a certain strain of Peter's simplicity in the nature of his daughter. His last scrawled advice was to her a command which she must obey as soon as she could muster the physical energy for obedience.

      "What do I know about goats!" she impatiently asked her empty room one morning after a night of fantastic dreams. "They eat tin cans and paper, and Masonic candidates ride them, and they stand on high banks and look silly, and have long chin whiskers and horns worn back from their foreheads. But as to raising them—what are they good for, for heaven's sake?"

      "Huh? Say, what are you mumbling about?" Vic, it happened, was awake, and

       Helen May's door was ajar.

      "Oh, nothing." Then the impulse of speech being strong in her, Helen May pulled on a kimono and went out to where Vic lay curled up in the blankets on the couch. "We've got to go to New Mexico, Vic, and, live on that land dad bought the rights to, and raise goats!"

      "Yes, we have—not!"

      "We have. Dad said so. We've СКАЧАТЬ