30,000 On the Hoof (30 page)

Late on Sunday afternoon Logan arrived with Abe and Grant, having made a record trip from Sycamore. George, who hurried to the house to tell his mother and Barbara, declared: "Dad is hipped with his cattle prospects.

Grant is crazy about war. Abe is sold on marriage... Son-of-a-gun rushed off to fix it up with the pastor. Guess we're leaving to-morrow-----Bab, I think you should wait until we come back from the war."

"Why?" interrupted Lucinda, softly.

"Aw, looks like Abe wanted to cinch her before he goes," declared George, not without bitterness. "Suppose he came back with a leg shot off? Bab would be tied to half a man all her life."

"I'd rather be tied to half of Abe than to the whole world of men."

"Bab! Forgive me. I reckon it still hurts. But I hope and pray Abe will come back and you'll be happy."

"Thank you, George," replied Barbara, with emotion. "You'll see us married?"

"Sure. I'll be game, Bab. So long as I can't have you, I'm glad it's that lucky hombre, Abe... I wish I had an anchor like you. My God, it seems a soldier needs one! I'm finding that out. These cowboys are loco. And the girls--clean out of their heads!"

Presently Abe strode in to fold both Lucinda and Barbara in a bearish hug. Rough-clad, unshaven, smelling of horses and dust and hay--how splendidly virile he was! A devoted spirit shone from his eyes.

"Darling, we're to be married at seven," he said, fervently. "Gosh, it's too wonderful to be true!... Mr. Haskell, the new pastor, can get a licence for us, even if it is Sunday. You've got just an hour to make yourself the loveliest bride that ever was. I'll change at the hotel and be back pronto."

He was gone. Lucinda saw through dim eyes how Barbara faced the door by which he had left, with her quivering hands half outstretched.

"Hurry, dear," admonished Lucinda. "It's well you have everything ready to put on. I must rustle, too."

Logan did not appear. Lucinda thought impatiently that the man was so insane over his cattle project that he could not remember his wife or his children. Abe came, shining of face, his eyes bright as stars, with a white flower in the lapel of his dark coat. Barbara could well worship that young giant of the woods. He was like a superb pine. Lucinda lived over again in anguish the conception, the birth, the growth of this her favourite son, and at last, in that supreme moment, loved him so greatly she would not have had his life otherwise.

Grant arrived, gay and handsome.

"Oh, Bab, but you're sweet! You're a peach! How can' Abe ever leave you?

I couldn't."

Then George followed, pale, dark of eye, gallant of speech, the unaccepted lover who had come through the fires of relinquishment. But Logan did not come. They waited until seven; then Abe led Barbara out, followed by Lucinda with George and Grant. It was but a short walk to the pastor's house. How pleased Lucinda was to learn that Abe had thought of being married in church! Mr. Haskell's wife and sister accompanied the party. The church was brightly lighted, and Abe had thought to have flowers at the altar. The minister's deep voice, quavering a little, broke the silence. How quick the ceremony! Lucinda wanted it to be long.

She scarcely heard the solemn queries of the pastor, Abe's deep affirmative, and Barbara's low and eloquent promises. The scene at the altar seemed to fade. Lucinda saw envisioned a little ragged boy leading a curly-haired girl along the lonely road. So long ago and far away! So appallingly sweet this picture. So tragic the reality of Abe bending to kiss the bride!

George snatched her away with a gay cry and leaned to kiss her. "One for me, Bab--one for Abe--and one for you... God bless you and bring him back!"

Grant took his turn. "Barbara, you're a Huett at last." Then Lucinda embraced Barbara, and held her close for a mute, convulsive moment.

They went down town for dinner. No one would have thought that it was Sunday. The saloons, the dance-halls, the gambling halls, the theatres and restaurants were wide open. Among the stream of cowboys with their girls moved beaded and brick-coloured Indians, dark of visage, sombre of eye.

"Bunch of Navajos from the Painted Desert in town to enlist," announced George, as the wedding-party found seats reserved for them in the restaurant. "Won't wait for the draft any more than we would! I call that just great. And say, won't there be hell among the German front when these Navvies slip out of the trenches at night to throw bombs? They'll just eat that job up... Redskins, niggers, greasers, all enlisting! Are they Americans? Well, I guess!"

"Brother, that'll do you," said Abe, shaking a brown fist at George.

"Barbara and I have just been married. We don't know there's a war.

To-morrow is a thousand years away for us. Let us be happy at our wedding-dinner. Let us think of Sycamore and the old days that will never return."

Logan came at last to join them, regretful, impressive in his felicitations to the bride and groom--a Logan Huett who had evidently found himself to be one of the State's big cattlemen. It seemed as if he had left off a plodding and unsuccessful character with his old clothes.

Barbara beamed upon him. Lucinda forced her subtle and clairvoyant divinations into the background of her consciousness. She would be happy with them all this last time. And they all were happy, if to be happy was to rise above and forget their agony, to eat and talk and laugh, to tease the bride with reminiscences of the past, to speak lovingly of Sycamore and the days that were no more.

Lucinda lay awake long hours that night, praying to bear up, hoping the dawn would never arrive. But it did come--a grey, cold breaking of day at the window.

She heard trotting horses and whistling cowboys go by, and the creak of wagon wheels and hum of motors. The business of the world did not halt for heart-broken mothers.

At breakfast Logan talked about the cattle market. Lucinda at last, in desperation, turned upon him.

"Logan Huett, are you mad about cattle?... Good God, man, don't you realize your sons are leaving to-day for the war?"

"Why, Luce!... What the hell?... Aw, don't be so cut up. Sure the boys are going to enlist. And it's the proudest day of my life. But it doesn't faze me, wife. You women jump at conclusions. America will never get in this war. Once our army reaches Europe, if it ever does, those Germans will quit like yellow dogs. They're licked right now. Well, then, what of that? Our boys will get some military work--a good thing in itself--they'll see some of the U. S. if not France, and they'll come back all the better for service. We'll have our new house then, and a couple of nice girls picked out for George and Grant."

Thus the practical cattleman dismissed the dreadful thing, which, like a poisonous lichen, was eating into Lucinda's heart. For a while after Logan was gone, Lucinda attended to the housework, and she derived some comfort from his deductions. But this did not last long under the pitiless light of her intuition. She was a woman--a mother--and she could not explain what she knew. There seemed to be a sixth sense in her, an intelligence that had not yet clarified for her its subtlety.

Barbara came at noon, transformed into a woman, her face lovely with its pale pearl colour, her eyes shadowed, the exquisite violet dark and dim.

"Mother--he--they leave at two," she sobbed. "It's a special train--westbound... They go to some place in Washington State--a training camp for soldiers... I've had my last moment alone with Abe. He's rushed to get through. But they accepted him pronto... Dad is down there bragging about how many Germans my--my husband will kill... Yes, Dad is, Mother.

He's smoking a big cigar, his chest swelled out, his thumbs in the armholes of his vest. Oh, it's disgusting!... It's terrible! Dad can't see. George is drinking and doesn't care. Grant is on fire with some strange passion that I think is false... But Abe, he is different--his heart is breaking, too."

"Then why does he go?" asked Lucinda, stern in her judgment.

"He'd have to go, anyway. But Abe wants to. Down street he pointed out a war poster on the billboard. It was a picture of a gorilla making off with a white woman. It said in big black letters: 'Save your sweetheart from the Huns!' Abe wants to go because of that. Oh, Mother, I--I can't endure it!" She seemed on the verge of collapse.

"You must, Barbara. At least until after they go. We must not let them carry away memories of miserable faces. Our woman's lot is harder. Men fight and women weep, you know."

At two o'clock that day, when the special train pulled into the station, all the people of Flagg and its environs were present. Banners and flags waved from the windows. Young faces, keen, tanned, somehow raw and primitive, flashed upon the spectators. These young men joked and made witty remarks to the girls present.

Lucinda's little party was only one of a dozen such groups. They could not be alone, even if they thought of such a thing. The crowd was loud in its good cheer, its well-wishing, its farewell to its youthful champions.

All along the front of that line Lucinda saw the wet eyes of women. They were all mothers, all sisters, all sweethearts of these boys going away to war. That light of glory in their eyes, dimmed by tears, told the secret of that sacrifice. This woman acclaim of the soldier was in the race.

"All aboard!" yelled the conductor.

Grant put his arms around Barbara and Lucinda. Tears coursed down his cheeks.

"Good-bye, Bab... Good-bye, Mother... Don't take it--hard. Ten to one we'll never get to France... So long, Dad! Good luck with the herd!" He snatched up his luggage and ran to board the train.

Abe stood aside to let George at Barbara. The parting had sobered him.

His farewell was a kiss and a gallant smile. "Barbara, if I make a good soldier, I'll owe it to you." And he turned to Lucinda: "Mother!" That was all he said, but he clasped her close. As he kissed her, Lucinda suffered the ghastly illumination of her dark forebodings. George would never come back to her. But he, young, physical, elemental, never divined that awful truth. He broke from her, wrung Logan's hand, and rushed away.

The train was moving. Abe let go of his mother, pressed Barbara's rapt face to his breast, then followed his brothers. Logan ran along the car-step from which Abe was waving.

"Son," he shouted huskily, "you gotta be at that turkey shootin' at Pine!"

The long, sustained cheer of the watchers died into a strange sobbing breath as the train pulled out and left them standing there.

Chapter
FIFTEEN
.

Huett met his old friend Al Doyle in the bank. As a young man Al had helped build the Union Pacific Railroad and the Santa Fe. He had been pioneer, cattleman, lumberman, teamster, and guide. If there was one Arizonian who knew the West it was Doyle. Of late years Doyle had been guiding geologists and archaeologists into the canyon country, and hunters down over the Tonto Rim.

"Howdy, Al," said Huett.

"Wal, hullo, old-timer," replied Doyle. "What do you hear from your sons?"

"Not much lately. Letters few and far between, and all cut up. Makes me tired. Abe's at the front. They shoved him along pronto. George and Grant among the reserves."

"They'll smoke up that Boche outfit before the snow flies. Hell of a war, Logan! We got in just in time to save France and England. With Hindenburg falling back and the Yanks arriving by shiploads it won't be long now."

"Al, I haven't sold out my cattle yet."

"Say, old timer, you don't have to tell me that. You've ootfiggered all the big blokes who reckoned they was smart. But, Logan, don't be a hawg.

Don't wait too long. There's bound to be a slump when winter sets in. On the q. T. I'll give you a tip from Charteris. The Government has ordered cattle from the Argentine."

"You don't say!" ejaculated Huett, astonished and impressed.

"If the war ended in November, say, you fellows who're hanging on to your cattle would be left holding the sack. After the war the bottom will drop out of everything. I went through the Civil War, Logan; I know. If we had hard times after that Civil War, what'll we have after this World War?"

"Hard times! Why, Al, that's not conceivable. Take Flagg. The place is lousy with money. You see money sticking round loose. No one would stop to pick up a greenback from the gutter."

"Shore. And that's just why, Logan. This war has made the U. S. enormously rich. Seventeen thousand new millionaires! Everybody is rich. The value of money has been lost sight of. An orgy of spending, gambling, wasting will follow this. And then just you wait!"

"Al, are you giving me a tip or a hunch?" queried Logan, good-humouredly, though he began to take the old westerner seriously.

"Both... How's your stock making oot? It's a dry season."

"They're okay. I sent some cowboys down last month to keep tab on them.

If everything wasn't jake I'd have heard."

"Best canyon ranges in Arizona. And you're running thirty thousand head?"

"Thereabouts. Some over that, George counted."

"Huett, are you getting dotty in your old age? Cattle selling now at forty dollars on the hoof! Good God, what do you want?"

"I been holding out. Was offered forty-two a while back. Reckon I can get more from Mitchell, the Government buyer."