Starr, of the Desert by B. M. Bower (most inspirational books txt) 📖

would pay to ship the stuff on to the claim."

"For heaven's sake, dad! What are you counting on?" Helen May gave a hysterical laugh that set her coughing in a way to make the veins stand out on forehead and throat. (Peter's hands blenched into fighting fists while he waited for the spasm to wear itself out. She should not go the way her mother had gone, he was thinking fiercely.) "What—are—you counting on?" she repeated, when she could speak again.

"Well, I'm counting on—a source that is sure," Peter replied vaguely. "The way will be provided, when the time comes. I—I have thought it all out calmly, Babe. The money will be ready when you need it."

"Dad, don't borrow money! It would be a load that would keep us staggering for years. We are going along all right, better than hundreds of people all around us. I'm feeling better than I was; now the weather is settled, I feel lots better. You can sell whatever you bought; maybe you can make a profit on the sale. Try and do that, dad. Get enough profit to pay for that gray suit I saw in the window!" She was smiling at him now, the whimsical smile that was perhaps her greatest charm.

"Never mind about the gray suit." Peter spoke sharply. "I won't need it." He got up irritably and began pacing back and forth across the little sitting room. "You're not better," he declared petulantly. "That's the way your mother used to talk—even up to the very last. A year in that office would kill you. I know. The doctor said so. Your only chance is to get into a high, dry place where you can live out of doors. He told me so. This young man with the homestead claim was a godsend—a godsend, I tell you! It would be a crime—it would be murder to let the chance slip by for lack of money. I'd steal the money, if I knew of any way to get by with it, and if there was no other way open. But there is a way. I'm taking it.

"I don't want to hear any more argument," he exclaimed, facing her quite suddenly. His eyes had a light she had never seen in them before. "Monday you will go with me and attend to the necessary legal papers. After that, I'll attend to the means of getting there."

He stood looking down at her where she sat with her hands clasped in her lap, staring up at him steadfastly from under her eyebrows. His face 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 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 got to do it, Vic. I expect we'd better start as soon as the insurance is paid, and that ought to be next week. Malpais is the name of the darned place. Inez Garcia says Malpais means bad country. I asked her when she was here yesterday. I expect it does, though you can't tell about Inez. She's tricky about translating stuff; she thinks it's funny to fake the meaning of things. But I expect it's true; it sounds like that."

"I should worry," Vic yawned, with the bland triteness of a boy who speaks mostly in current catch phrases. "I've got a good chance for a juvenile part in that big five-reeler Walt's going to put on. Fat chance anybody's got putting me to herding goats! That New Mexico dope got my number the first time dad sprung it. Not for mine!"

Helen May sat down on the arm of a Mission chair, wrapped her kimono around her thin figure, and looked at Vic from under her lashes. Besides raising goats and living out in the open, she was to make a man of Vic. She did not know which duty appalled her most, or which animal seemed to her the more intractable.

"We've got to do it," she said simply. "I don't like it either, but that doesn't matter. Dad planned that way for us."

Vic sat up crossly, groping for the top button of his pajama coat. His long hair was tousled in front and stood straight up at the back, and his lids were heavy yet with sleep. He looked very young and very unruly, and as though several years of grace were still left to Helen May before she need trouble herself about his manhood.

"Not for mine," he repeated