He was striding about the room as he said this, and I watched his magnificent enthusiasm in a sort of dream. Finally he stopped and frowned at me.
“Well?” he snapped out. “Well?”
“What?” I asked him blankly.
“Damnation, man. I’m asking you if you want to be a partner in a hundred-and-fifty-thousand-dollar business. Isn’t that enough to keep you awake?”
I roused myself at that. “You’re too generous,” I told him, “but I have something to work at for a while. There’s something else on my mind that I have to clear away first.”
“What’s that?” he barked out in this new fashion he had picked up since he became a businessman. “What’s more important than your own good, man?”
“Zintcallasappa and your son.”
He turned crimson to the eyes, and a great purple vein stood out on his forehead, jagged as a lightning flash that rips across the sky. It was the danger sign in him, but in an instant he banished that mood. He stood there, looking sadly down at me.
“I thought I could talk you out of it,” he sighed, “but I might as well try to talk the Rocky Mountains off their feet. Go on, Lew, say whatever you please. I’ll listen.”
I packed a pipe, turning the words over in my mind and making a dozen different beginnings. After I had begun to smoke, I saw the truth as the drifts of blue-brown shadows went up and flattened against the ceiling.
Words would do no good. If he had left the girl once, he would leave her again. He laid his hand on my shoulder.
“Say something, Lew,” he begged. “I don’t care how you damn me, it will be better than this silence. If you want to call me a dog, a heartless dog…a traitor, a hypocrite, I’ll admit that I’m all that. I’ve made a mistake… a horrible mistake, and I want to pay for it. I want to suffer for it. Poor girl, I’ll give her more than any Indian ever had since the beginning of time. I’ll fix her up on a ranch in the south and see that her interests are cared for. The…the boy…I’ll see that he’s educated, and that he gets everything the world can give him.”
“Except a father?” I said.
Whip your gentlest dog long enough in a corner and it will show its teeth at last. Morris gave me an ugly glance, but almost at once he sighed and then leaned back against the wall.
“Don’t you see, Lew?” he asked. “The whole thing is impossible. I can’t bring an Indian… not even Zintcallasappa …into my life. It… it would wreck me.”
“I don’t quite see,” I answered. “When I’m married, I expect my home to be nine tenths of the world to me. As long as I can keep that home happy, I won’t care how the other tenth of the world shrugs its shoulders or smiles.”
He looked before him fixedly, seeing the vision of such a state of things and growing red. “That would drive me mad!” he burst out at last.
I went on smoking.
Then he shouted with a new alarm in his voice: “Lew, Lew, do you mean that it will make any difference between you and me? D’you mean that it will put an end to our friendship? Lord, Lew, rather than that, I’ll get her…I’ll bring her here
I went on smoking, watching him through the thin drifts, but, oh, how sad my heart was. His voice trailed away. He made a feeble little gesture with both hands.
“Well,” he concluded, “you’ve seen Mary Kearney. Can you blame me? Can you blame any man for going mad about her? Heaven put such women on earth for the special purpose of depriving men of their wits. And I have none about her. I’d despise the man who could stand in front of her for ten seconds without losing his heart.” He added with a faint laugh: “Except you, old man. You have nothing but horses and rifles.. .and honor, confound you.”
“Are you to be married?” I asked him, with a hand gripping me by the throat.
“I hope so. She likes me. Sometimes I think that she more than likes me. But her mind changes like a wind vane. It’s all right with Mister Kearney. He’s mighty rich, but he knows that I’m firmly settled as far as that goes. He approves. She doesn’t hate me at least. Between you and me, I’d take heavy odds that I marry her within a year.”
I could not tell why it was that the hand relaxed its grip upon my throat, but what I said made Morris gape.
“I’d like to lay that bet with you,” I said.
“Damn it, Lew, what do you mean?” he cried.
“I don’t know, except that the words slipped out. A man has his own ideas about some things.. .queer ideas, you may say. But I have a pretty strong conviction that you’ll never be her husband.”
He could only stare at me. “Lew,” he said at last, frowning, “has she hit you, too?”
I broke out into laughter. “Me? A low ruffian like me? I’m not a fool, old-timer.”
I told him everything that had happened. He seemed a little amused, a little serious. But at last he said: “I don’t think there’ll be any trouble. I know the men in this town, and they know me. They also know that you’re my friend by this time. Now, Lew, it’s time to think over how we’re going to celebrate.”
I told him that a bed was all I wanted, and, when he was convinced that I meant what I said, he made me take his own bed. I stretched out between cool sheets on a mattress for the first time in more than five years. It seemed wonderfully comfortable, and I went to sleep only to awaken in five minutes out of a dream that I was being buried alive. I took a roll of blankets outdoors and lay down under the stars. And so I slept like a stunned man until the sun shone in my face again.
ASSEMBLING AN ARMY
Everything that had been whirling through my brain when I went to sleep - whirling in confusion - was fixed and clear when I wakened. I could see the simple truth of everything. First of all, I could see that Chuck Morris would never return to Zintcallasappa. I could see, too, that it was dangerous for me to remain at the fort. Dangerous not to Morris, but dangerous to myself. When I stood up and drew a few breaths of the purity of the morning air, I felt if I saw the blue eyes and the smiling mouth of Mary Kearney once again, I should be madly, madly in love with her. So, honestly as I thought and for the sake of everyone, it seemed to me the proper thing to get back to the Sioux as fast as I could.
I went into the shack and found Chuck, snoring - not at all like the prairie days when he was always the first to rouse me. I wrote a little note and put it on the table where he was sure to find it.
Dear old Chuck:
It seems that I can’t be any use. I hoped that I could straighten out the tangle and save Zintcallasappa… save you, too, from doing what looked like a pretty bad thing. Well, now that I’ve seen you and seen the other girl, I feel that I haven’t a right to so much as criticize. I’m going back to Standing Bear and Sitting Wolf and the rest to say good bye to them, as you’ve done. You’ve shown me one truth, that a white man has to live his life among white people. Yesterday I came in like a wild beast and showed my teeth when people rubbed me the wrong way. I’ve got to learn better! I’ll make one more fling at finding my father out on the prairies …but perhaps I’ve been a fool straight through. Probably he’s nowhere near the prairies! Good bye, old man. The best luck in the world to you.