He worked furiously, as though it were a matter of life and death, and under the savage scrubbing the giant letter C slowly began to disappear. When the C was completely obliterated, he attacked the letter O, then the W, working along the entire length of the wagon bed. Letter by letter, the glaring yellow-painted word COWARD disappeared from the surface of the weathered plank's.
At last he was through and stood panting, with sweat dripping from his forehead. The word was no longer there, but it still maddened him when he thought of it. While his back was turned someone had painted it there. The painter had been afraid to say the word to his face!
Slowly his rage deserted him and left him only sickness. These upright citizens who paint dirty words while a man is not looking—were they the ones he had once fought to protect? How could they have the gall to expect him to protect them now?
A good deal of Owen's anger had disappeared in the savagery of his work. But within him was something more dangerous than anger—a cold bitterness that threatened to destroy every principle he had ever believed in. Giving in to this bitterness would mean that he had thrown away the best, strongest, most productive years of his life, for it would mean that civilization was not worth saving or fighting for. It would prove that government by the people was as senseless in theory as it too often was in practice, for the people themselves were obsessed by greed and selfishness and cowardice and incapable of governing themselves. It would indicate that any form of law was idiocy.
If he accepted this conviction, born in bitterness, he must also accept the following truth, that his own ideals were idiocies. Owen Toller was not an unintelligent man; he had not risked his life a hundred times as a law-enforcement officer without reason or principle. But now a war raged within his own mind and conscience.
That night, after the children had been put to bed, Owen sat beside the flickering light of a coal-oil lamp, staring hard and unseeing at the printed page of theReunion Reflex. On the other side of the parlor Elizabeth did her sewing beside another lamp. Owen still fought his silent battle.
At last, after a long wordless hour, Owen put aside the paper and seemed to notice his wife for the first time. “Iguess I haven't been easy to live with,” he said soberly. “I'm sorry.”
Elizabeth glanced up from her work, but there was nothing for her to say.
“I've been doing some thinking,” Owen said quietly. “I guess I've been trying to keep things from you, and that's not right.”
Elizabeth made herself smile. “You don't have to talk about it if you don't want to.”
“I want to. You've got a right to know how we stand in the community.” He shook his head. “I'm afraid it isn't good. You heard what Arch Deland said the other day, and today I found out that it's true. They're beginning to hate me, Elizabeth. Today while I was marketing on Main Street one of them painted something on the wagon bed. The word was 'coward,' and the letters were three feet high and spread out the length of the wagon. The paint was yellow.”
Elizabeth sat in shocked silence.
“So that's the way it is,” he said tightly. “They're worked up like people going to a lynching or a witch burning. To hide their own cowardice, they had to find a goat, and I'm it.”
His wife made a small sound in her dry throat. “Owen, are you sure it's as bad as you say?”
“I'm sure. I saw it in the faces of people who have been my friends for years. They aren't worth protecting!” he said angrily. “Even if they had put me in the sheriff's office, I think I'd quit, because they simply aren't worth the bother. But they aren't the ones who have to pay because of a gang like the Brunners. Oh, they might beat their breasts when a load of freight comes late, but it's people like the Ransoms that suffer. And the hillpeople too. I've known them, and they're no worse than any other people. That boy that brought the wounded girl here— maybe he was a gang member, but he wasn't truly bad.”
Restlessly Owen came to his feet, paced the length of the small parlor. He strode to the front door and stood looking out at the night.
“I don't know....” he said at last. “Maybe they're all right. Ben McKeever, Judge Lochland, the man who painted 'coward' on my wagon bed. If the railroad brought a spur line in here it would bring work and settle the country and maybe there wouldn't be any room left for people like the Brunners. Maybe McKeever was right about all that. And maybe Judge Lochland was right when he said the Brunners' stock in trade was hate, which they peddled to the hillpeople.”
Owen turned away from the door, frowning deeply.
“Elizabeth, Judge Lochland said it was a fact of history that civilization has managed to advance, despite fear and timidity, because it has always found a man of strength to fill the breach in times of crisis. Do you believe that?” Elizabeth Toller, who had majored in history at a famous seminary in Missouri, answered, “I don't know, Owen.”
“Maybe he was right,” Owen said quietly, “although I can't imagine why he came to me with the story.”
Elizabeth Toller looked at her husband then and tried to see him through the wise eyes of Judge Lochland. She realized that Judge Lochland had penetrated the exterior of the man and had discovered a quality that she had not recognized before. Perhaps it was not heroic in the classical sense; and yet there was strength here that she had not suspected, and moral power that she had never seen unleashed. Here was a man, but one who walked taller than other men she had known; that was why she loved him, and why she feared for him.
It was strange, but this brief insight into the bigness of the man whom she had married five years ago did not make her feel smaller by comparison; she grew a bit within her own mind to meet him.
Now, as Owen looked at her, worried by his own thoughts, Elizabeth came very erect in her chair and worked busily at her sewing. For a moment she had opened the gate of reality. She had seen her husband as others, with clearer eyes, had seen him. And she knew that a five-year dream was nearly over.
She sat quietly for a moment and discovered that her fear was not quite so formidable, now that she had faced it squarely. At last she put her sewing aside.
“Owen,” she said firmly, “what do you think you should do?”
He looked puzzled, coming slowly from the depths of his own thoughts. “What should I do?”
“Do you think it's your duty to go after the Brunners?”
He blinked. “What kind of question is that? Being a husband and a father are my duties.”
She stood up then and came to him. “Owen, I'm not thinking of the word that was painted on the wagon bed today, or what others might think of us. I'm not thinking of Ben McKeever and his threats, or of Judge Lochland and his appeals out of history; what they think isn't important. But what you think of yourself is. What do you think, Owen?”
He seemed almost angered at the question, but she was looking squarely into his face and he could not escape it. “I told you what I think,” he said shortly. “My duty is here with my family. What do you want me to think?”